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Socialist state

A socialist state, socialist republic, or socialist country, sometimes referred to as a workers' state or workers' republic, is a sovereign state constitutionally dedicated to the establishment of socialism. The term communist state is often used synonymously in the West, specifically when referring to one-party socialist states governed by Marxist–Leninist communist parties, despite these countries being officially socialist states in the process of building socialism and progressing toward a communist society. These countries never describe themselves as communist nor as having implemented a communist society.[1][2][3][4] Additionally, a number of countries that are multi-party capitalist states make references to socialism in their constitutions, in most cases alluding to the building of a socialist society, naming socialism, claiming to be a socialist state, or including the term people's republic or socialist republic in their country's full name, although this does not necessarily reflect the structure and development paths of these countries' political and economic systems. Currently, these countries include Algeria,[5] Bangladesh,[6] Guyana,[7] India,[8] Nepal,[9] Nicaragua,[10] Sri Lanka[11] and Tanzania.[12]

This article is about countries constitutionally committed to socialism. For countries governed by Marxist–Leninist communist parties, see Communist state. For a list of self-proclaimed socialist states, see List of socialist states. For constitutional references to socialism in multi-party democracies, see Socialism in liberal democratic constitutions.

The idea of a socialist state stems from the broader notion of state socialism, the political perspective that the working class needs to use state power and government policy to establish a socialised economic system. The term can vary in its use from meaning a political system to adopting terms of a welfare state. This may either mean a system where the means of production, distribution, and exchange are nationalised or under state ownership, or simply a system in which social values or workers' interests have economic priority.[13][14][15] However, the concept of a socialist state is mainly advocated by Marxist–Leninists and most socialist states have been established by political parties adhering to Marxism–Leninism or some national variation thereof such as Maoism, Stalinism, Titoism or Ho Chi Minh Thought.[16] A state, whether socialist or not, is opposed the most by anarchists, who reject the idea that the state can be used to establish a socialist society due to its hierarchical and arguably coercive nature, considering a socialist state or state socialism as an oxymoron.[17] The concept of a socialist state is also considered unnecessary or counterproductive and rejected by some classical, libertarian, and orthodox Marxists, libertarian socialists and other socialist political thinkers who view the modern state as a byproduct of capitalism, which would have no function in a socialist system.[18][19][20]


A socialist state is to be distinguished from a multi-party liberal democracy governed by a self-described socialist party, where the state is not constitutionally bound to the construction of socialism. In such cases, the political system and machinery of government is not specifically structured to pursue the development of socialism. Socialist states in the Marxist–Leninist sense are sovereign states under the control of a vanguard party which is organizing the country's economic, political, and social development toward the realization of socialism. Economically, this involves the development of a state capitalist economy with state-directed capital accumulation with the long-term goal of building up the country's productive forces while simultaneously promoting world communism.[21][22]


Academics, political commentators, and other scholars tend to distinguish between authoritarian socialist and democratic socialist states, with the first representing the Soviet Bloc and the latter representing Western Bloc countries which have been democratically governed by socialist parties such as Britain, France, Italy, and Western social-democracies in general, among others, all of which operate within a capitalist mode of production.[23][24][25][26]

Criticism within left-wing movements[edit]

Anarchism and Marxism[edit]

Many democratic and libertarian socialists, including anarchists, mutualists, and syndicalists, criticize the concept of establishing a socialist state instead of abolishing the bourgeois state apparatus outright. They use the term state socialism to contrast it with their own form of socialism, which involves either collective ownership (in the form of worker cooperatives) or common ownership of the means of production without state centralized planning. Those socialists believe there is no need for a state in a socialist system because there would be no class to suppress and no need for an institution based on coercion and therefore, regard the state being a remnant of capitalism.[18][19][20] They hold that statism is antithetical to true socialism,[17] the goal of which is the eyes of libertarian socialists such as William Morris, who wrote as follows in a Commonweal article: "State Socialism? — I don't agree with it; in fact, I think the two words contradict one another, and that it is the business of Socialism to destroy the State and put Free Society in its place".[92]


Classical and orthodox Marxists also view state socialism as an oxymoron, arguing that while an association for managing production and economic affairs would exist in socialism, it would no longer be a state in the Marxist definition, which is based on domination by one class. Preceding the Bolshevik-led revolution in Russia, many socialist groups—including reformists, orthodox Marxist currents such as council communism, and the Mensheviks, as well as anarchists and other libertarian socialists—criticized the idea of using the state to conduct planning and nationalization of the means of production as a way to establish socialism.[93] Lenin himself acknowledged state capitalism as part of the transition from capitalism to socialism.[94][95]


Critical of the economy and government of socialist states, left communists such as the Italian Amadeo Bordiga said that their socialism was a form of political opportunism which preserved rather than destroyed capitalism because of the claim that the exchange of commodities would occur under socialism; the use of popular front organisations by the Communist International;[96] and that a political vanguard organized by organic centralism was more effective than a vanguard organized by democratic centralism.[97] The American Marxist Raya Dunayevskaya also dismissed it as a type of state capitalism[98] because state ownership of the means of production is a form of state capitalism;[99] the dictatorship of the proletariat is a form of democracy and single-party rule is undemocratic;[100] and Marxism–Leninism is neither Marxism nor Leninism, but rather, a composite ideology which socialist leaders like Joseph Stalin used to expediently determine what is communism and what is not communism among the Eastern Bloc countries.[101]

Leninism[edit]

Although most Marxist–Leninists distinguish between communism and socialism, Bordiga, who did consider himself a Leninist and has been described as being "more Leninist than Lenin",[102] did not distinguish between the two in the same way Marxist–Leninists do. Both Lenin and Bordiga did not see socialism as a separate mode of production from communism, but rather, just as how communism looks as it emerges out of capitalism before it has "developed on its own foundations".[103]


This is coherent with Marx and Engels, who used the terms communism and socialism interchangeably.[104][105] Like Lenin, Bordiga used socialism to mean what Marx called the lower-phase communism.[106] For Bordiga, both stages of socialist or communist society—with stages referring to historical materialism—were characterized by the gradual absence of money, the market, and so on, the difference between them being that earlier in the first stage, a system of rationing would be used to allocate goods to people, while in communism this could be abandoned in favour of full free access. This view distinguished Bordiga from Marxist–Leninists, who tended, and still tend, to telescope the first two stages and so have money and the other exchange categories surviving into socialism. But Bordiga would have none of this. For him, no society in which money, buying and selling, and the rest survived could be regarded as either socialist or communist—these exchange categories would die out before the socialist rather than the communist stage was reached.[96] Stalin made the claim that the Soviet Union had reached the lower stage of communism and argued that the law of value still operated within a socialist economy.[107]


Marx did not use the term socialism to refer to this development and instead called it a communist society that has not yet reached its higher-stage.[108] The term socialism to mean the lower-state of communism was popularized during the Russian Revolution by Lenin. This view is consistent with, and helped to inform early concepts of, socialism in which the law of value no longer directs economic activity, namely, that monetary relations in the form of exchange-value, profit, interest, and wage labour would not operate and apply to Marxist socialism.[109] Unlike Stalin, who first claimed to have achieved socialism with the Soviet Constitution of 1936[110][111][112][113] and then confirmed it in the Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR,[114][115][116][117][118] Lenin did not call the Soviet Union a socialist state, nor did he claim that it had achieved socialism.[119] He adopted state capitalist policies,[13][14][15][16] defending them from left-wing criticism,[120] but arguing that they were necessary for the future development of socialism and not socialist in themselves.[121][122] On seeing the Soviet Union's growing coercive power, Lenin was quoted as saying that Russia had reverted to "a bourgeois tsarist machine [...] barely varnished with socialism".[123]

Libertarian socialism[edit]

A variety of non-state, libertarian communist and socialist positions reject the concept of a socialist state altogether, believing that the modern state is a byproduct of capitalism and cannot be used for the establishment of a socialist system. They reason that a socialist state is antithetical to socialism and that socialism will emerge spontaneously from the grassroots level in an evolutionary manner, developing its own unique political and economic institutions for a highly organized stateless society. Libertarian communists, including anarchists, councillists, leftists, and Marxists, also reject the concept of a socialist state for being antithetical to socialism, but they believe that socialism can only be established through revolution and dissolving the existence of the state.[17][19][20] Within the socialist movement, there is criticism towards the use of the term socialist states in relation to countries such as China and previously of Soviet Union and Eastern and Central European states before what some term the "collapse of Stalinism" in 1989.[124][125][126][127]


Anti-authoritarian communists and socialists such as anarchists, other democratic and libertarian socialists, as well as revolutionary syndicalists and left communists[128] claim that the so-called socialist states actually presided over state capitalist economies and cannot be called socialist.[98] Those socialists who oppose any system of state control whatsoever believe in a more decentralized approach which puts the means of production directly into the hands of the workers rather than indirectly through state bureaucracies[17][19][20] which they claim represent a new elite or class.[129][130][131][132] This leads them to consider state socialism a form of state capitalism[96] (an economy based on centralized management, capital accumulation and wage labor, but with the state owning the means of production)[133] which Engels stated would be the final form of capitalism rather than socialism.[134]

Trotskyism[edit]

Some Trotskyists following on from Tony Cliff deny that it is socialism, calling it state capitalism.[135] Other Trotskyists agree that these states could not be described as socialist,[136] but deny that they were state capitalist.[137] They support Leon Trotsky's analysis of pre-restoration Soviet Union as a workers' state that had degenerated into a bureaucratic dictatorship which rested on a largely nationalized industry run according to a production plan[138][139][140] and claimed that the former Stalinist states of Central and Eastern Europe were deformed workers' states based on the same relations of production as the Soviet Union.[141] Some Trotskyists such as the Committee for a Workers' International have at times included African, Asian, and Middle Eastern socialist states when they have had a nationalized economy as deformed workers' states.[142][143] Other socialists argued that the neo-Ba'athists promoted capitalists from within the party and outside their countries.[144]

Legislatures in communist states

Soviet democracy

Soviet (council)

Soviet republic (system of government)