 Dear students, in this module we are going to discuss democratic socialism. Democratic socialism is a political and economic theory that seeks to achieve socialist goals through democratic means. And democratic socialists argue that the means of production should be owned and controlled by the people and that our strong social safety net and public services are essential for promoting equality and social justice. It's a very interesting theory that in which democratic socialists think that all the resources of any country or any society should be a collective property and people should be able to decide how these resources will be distributed. Ideally it's a very attractive idea, however when we see it pragmatically and practically we feel that this is practically impossible because decision making process is not necessary for all the people of the society to be included in the democratic process. For every minute detail or every minute policy we cannot engage all the people in it. It is that the representatives of the political democratic system, the representatives of the people are engaged in the decision making process by sitting on powerful positions and the common public masses are reflecting through their decisions and policies. But will this reflection be justified and acceptable to the people? Because we see that even today in the democratic system, people are not satisfied with their democratically elected representatives. It starts to be dissatisfaction in a very short period of time and people come to the streets for the protest and according to their will or wish, that democratic system is not able to perform. So in the democratic socialist system, because it is about distribution of resources and equal distribution of resources, we will have to see whether equal distribution of resources by use of public behaviour is possible or not. So in Pakistan, the democratic socialist ideas have influenced political movements and labour unions although the country has not experienced the significant socialist revolution. The relationship between the state and economy in a democratic socialist system is characterized by a high level of state intervention and planning with the aim of ensuring that the resources are distributed according to the need. So the need is also a question mark that who will decide the need because the need of any individual can decide for themselves or an external or third person will decide that we can objectively define the need or base this subjective opinion on it. So again it is a criticism from a social, from a capitalistic point of view whether democratic socialism is feasible or possible. In today's world, it is a food for thought for you to see which country is more closer to the democratic socialism.