Democratic socialism just means you believe in democratically governed socialism, not that you think you can just vote capitalism into socialism. There's both reformist and revolutionary democratic socialists. I both believe in democracy and also see that the only way to overturn capitalism (at least in the US) would be through revolution. All the democratic part means is that they're opposed to monarchies or dictatorships.
Are you saying that you can have undemocratic socialism?
Isn't that what USSR was, dictatorship?
No, the soviet union was democtatic. The soviet union had a more comprehensive and complex system of democracy than liberal democracy.
It was even dissolved through a vote
Illegally though, most of citizens voted against in a referendum that was just ignored.
Yep, that's also true. My point was more along the lines of Michael Parenti's, where the so-called totalitarian USSR never seemed to need blood to overturn it. Can definitely see how it would be counter-productive to use it as a point, though.
Dictatorship of the proletariat is democracy for the people
And at what point is it no longer a "dictatorship of the proletariat"? Do you really think, say, the Soviet leaders were looking out "for the proletariat"? Is Kim Jong-Un doing so because the country's official name contains the word "people"?
The working class saw a doubling of life expectancy, reduced working hours, tripled literacy rates, cheap or free housing, free, high quality healthcare and education, and the gap between the top and bottom of society was around ten times, as opposed to thousands to millions. The structure of society in socialist countries is fashioned so that the working class is the prime beneficiary. Having "people" in the name of the country makes no difference on structure, be it the PRC, DPRK, or otherwise, what matters is the structure of society.
How? You still have 1 person having full power instead of being first among equals?
Stalin was a captain of a team
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf
Counterpoint:
You don't, though, this is ahistorical. Not only was the politburo a team, but the politburo wasn't all-powerful, merely the central organ. There was a huge deal of local autonomy.
There was no dictatorship of the proletariat. Trotsky prevented labor unions from going on strike. War communism was forcing workers to labor as slaves. The new economic policy sent managers bourgeois back to run the factories.
It was a top down dictatorship. Not a bottom up dictatorship of the proletariat. It was supposed to be all the power to the soviets. The soviets ended up being a tool for the politburo.
This is remarkably liberal. In times of existential war, strict control and competent planning was necessary. The NEP was strictly necessary going from barely out of feudalism to a somewhat developed industrial base upon which economic planning can actually function properly. The system of soviet democracy waa far better at letting workers run society, and the wealthiest in the USSR were only about ten times as wealthy as the poorest (as compared to the thousands to millions under Tsarism and now capitalism).
The USSR was a dictatorship of the proletariat, through and through. There is no fantasy version of socialism that can ever exist without needing to deal with existing conditions, obstacles, and barriers.
All socialism is democratic, so "democratic socialism" in practice either means reformist socialism, social democracy (capitalism with safety nets, usually dependent on imperialism), or is a means to distance this new socialism from the really existing socialism in the world today and historically. Reformism is wrong and doesn't work, social democracy is still capitalism and depends on imperialism in the global north version, and the last is just red scare "left" anti-communism that reeks of chauvanism.
The voting for leftists into office one is there twice.
Fixed
Thank you, as a democratic socialist this is what I was looking for.
Sometimes I wonder how many “Marxists” really have read Marx.
The DSA has everyone from reformist soc dems, to anarchists, to MLs, to Maoist Third Worldists
and that's precisely the reason it's been so effective