Quotes from Gary Dorrien

a reminder of the nineteenth-century dream of democratic socialism—a fully democratized society in which the people control the economy and government, no group dominates any other, and every citizen is free, equal, and included.

the greatest democratic socialist achievements occur through organizations that begin with the everyday praxis of unions and social movements; dismantle structures of racial, gender, sex, class, and imperial domination; welcome religious allies; renew the struggles for freedom, equality, and cooperative community; and care for the planet's ecological health.

Charles Fourier, in France, and Robert Owen, in England, propounded the original idea of socialism in the 1820s. It was to achieve the unrealized demands of the French Revolution, which never reached the working class. Instead of pitting workers against each other, a cooperative mode of production and exchange would allow them to work for each other. Socialism was about reorganizing society as a cooperative community.

Early Christian socialism in England, Germany, Switzerland, the United States, and Canada was a creative response to the social ravages of unfettered nineteenth-century capitalism.

In England and North America it was predominantly cooperative, progressive, social ethical, and pragmatic, usually fusing liberal and democratic elements, with less opposition from ecclesiastical establishments than Christian socialists experienced elsewhere.