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A major difference between [[democracy]] and [[socialism]] is the [[free market]] principle which allows buyers and sellers to agree on price without government interference. Democracy, a political system which promotes individual initiative, generally supports [[free markets]]. Socialism in most of its forms interferes with individual initiative. Despite this, however, several adherents to Socialism see Democracy, specifically [[pure democracy]], as being at the very least a tool to implementing socialism if not outright being one and the same with it. Karl Marx, for example, once declared that "Democracy is the road to Socialism", and Vladimir Lenin likewise declared that "Democracy and Socialism are inseparable."<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20050306035722/http://www.libertocracy.com/Webessays/state/democracy/Communist_Manifesto.htm</ref>

A major difference between [[democracy]] and [[socialism]] is the [[free market]] principle which allows buyers and sellers to agree on price without government interference. Democracy, a political system which promotes individual initiative, generally supports [[free markets]]. Socialism in most of its forms interferes with individual initiative. Despite this, however, several adherents to Socialism see Democracy, specifically [[pure democracy]], as being at the very least a tool to implementing socialism if not outright being one and the same with it. Karl Marx, for example, once declared that "Democracy is the road to Socialism", and Vladimir Lenin likewise declared that "Democracy and Socialism are inseparable."<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20050306035722/http://www.libertocracy.com/Webessays/state/democracy/Communist_Manifesto.htm</ref> Indeed, in both "The State and Revolution" and "What Is to Be Done?", Vladimir Lenin specifically referred to the methods of turning a country socialist as "democratic" and used the terms "democratic" and "socialist" interchangeably, and even referred to the Communists as "Social-Democrats".<ref>[http://www.marx.be/sites/default/files/documents/EN/texts/sr_and_sq.PDF The State and Revolution] by Vladimir Lenin<br />"...at a certain stage in the development of democracy, it first welds together the class that wages a revolutionary struggle against capitalism -- the proletariat -- and enables it to crush, smash to smithereens, wipe off the face of the earth the bourgeois, even the republican-bourgeois, state machine -- the standing army, the police and the bureaucracy -- and to substitute for it a more democratic state machine, but a state machine nevertheless, in the shape of the armed masses of workers who develop into a militia in which the entire population takes part."</ref><ref>[https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/iii.htm What Is To Be Done?]<br />...the Social-Democrat’s [Communist's] ideal should not be the trade union secretary, but the tribune of the people, who is able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects; who is able to generalise all these manifestations and produce a single picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation; who is able to take advantage of every event, however small, in order to set forth before all his socialist convictions and his democratic demands, in order to clarify for all and everyone the world-historic significance of the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat.</ref>

Democracy and socialism are both political systems, although much of socialism is more concerned with the economy. [[Marxist]] countries have created socialism which transcends mere economics by combining a political [[despotism]] which enforces [[atheism]].<ref>http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Socialism.html</ref>

Democracy and socialism are both political systems, although much of socialism is more concerned with the economy. [[Marxist]] countries have created socialism which transcends mere economics by combining a political [[despotism]] which enforces [[atheism]].<ref>http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Socialism.html</ref>