A Democratic Turn within Democratic Socialism? State-Centric and Anti-Statist Visions of Socialism and the Challenge of Democratic Mirroring.

In this paper, we theorize the democratic aspect of democratic socialism through some of its recent, theoretical articulations and several of its historical, fugitive appearances. To illustrate a potential democratic turn, we highlight how these moments reflect a paradox of democratic spirit: the necessity of cultivating collective consciousness of popular power, while also acknowledging the limits of this power through a lingering attachment to the liberal democratic state as the means of achieving or supporting a democratic socialist vision. We call this democratic mirroring, which exceeds a concept of representation centered on the constitutional state. Although the state should be an important site of struggle, we maintain the spirit of democratic socialism is animated by quotidian struggles for a decent existence and those struggles must be mirrored in a way that supports the political education, political psychology, and the political self-respect of the "demos" implied within democratic socialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]