Socialist Pluralism and Pluralist Socialism

Abstract

The English school of ‘socialist pluralists' of the early twentieth century pictured socialism as an order in which maximum autonomy of social and economic functions coexisted with a minimum of political functions. The ‘pluralist socialists' among the Czech reformers of the 1960s, by contrast, insisted that such autonomy can be realised and sustained only in conjunction with effective political modalities. The pluralization of socialist regimes entailed for them, therefore, not ‘the withering away of the state’ but its invigoration as a space for contesting general ends. Such contestation was envisaged principally in terms of competition between political parties which could give expression to ideological differentiation even within the confines of socialist belief, the implication being that agreement on fundamental societal values does not pre-empt diversity over political ends.