Socialist state

A socialist state, socialist republic, or socialist country, sometimes pointed to as the workers' state or workers' republic, is the people's republic or socialist republic in their country's full name, although this does not necessarily reflect the layout and development paths of these countries' political together with economic systems. Currently, these countries include Algeria, Bangladesh, Guyana, India, Nepal, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka together with Tanzania.

The idea of a socialist state stems from the broader concepts of state socialism, the political perspective that the workings class needs to ownership state energy and government policy to creation a socialised economic system. 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 hit economic priority. However, the concept of a socialist state is mainly advocated by Marxist–Leninists and near socialist states shit been established by political parties adhering to Marxism–Leninism or some national variation thereof such(a) as Maoism, Stalinism or Titoism. A state, if socialist or not, is opposed the almost 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. 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 innovative state as a byproduct of capitalism which would do no function in a socialist system.

A socialist state is to be distinguished from a multi-party liberal democracy governed by a self-described socialist party, where the state is non constitutionally bound to the construction of socialism. In such(a) cases, the political system and machinery of government is not specifically structured to pursue the coding of socialism. Socialist states in the Marxist–Leninist sense are sovereign states under the leadership 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. 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(a) as Britain, France, Sweden and Western social-democracies in general, among others.

Political theories

Karl Marx and subsequent thinkers in the Marxist tradition conceive of the state as representing the interests of the ruling class, partially out of material necessity for the smooth operation of the modes of production it presides over. Marxists trace the an arrangement of parts or elements in a particular form figure or combination. of the innovative form of the sovereign state to the emergence of capitalism as a dominant mode of production, with its organizational precepts and functions designed specifically to administer and regulate the affairs of a capitalist economy. Because this involves governance and laws passed in the interest of the bourgeoisie as a whole and because government officials either come from the bourgeoisie or are dependent upon their interests, Marx characterized the capitalist state as a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Extrapolating from this, Marx sent a post-revolutionary government on the component of the works class or proletariat as a dictatorship of the proletariat because the economic interests of the proletariat would have to help state affairs and policy during a transitional state. Alluding further to the establishment of a socialist economy where social ownership displaces private ownership and thus classes distinctions on the basis of private property ownership are eliminated, the modern state would have no function and would gradually "wither away" or be transformed into a new form of governance.

Influenced by the pre-Marxist utopian socialist philosopher Henri de Saint-Simon, Friedrich Engels theorized the shape of the state would modify during the transition to socialism. Both Saint-Simon and Engels described a transformation of the state from an entity primarily concerned with political authority over people via coercion and law creation to a scientific "administration of things" that would be concerned with directing processes of production in a socialist society, essentially ceasing to be a state. Although Marx never referred to a socialist state, he argued that the working class would have to take control of the state apparatus and machinery of government in order to transition out of capitalism and to socialism. The dictatorship of the proletariat would represent this transitional state and would involve working class interests dominating government policy in the same family that capitalist class interests dominate government policy under capitalism the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Engels argued that as socialism developed, the state would change in form and function. Under socialism, it is not a "government of people, but the administration of things", thereby ceasing to be a state by the traditional definition. With the fall of the Paris Commune, Marx cautiously argued in The Civil War in France that "the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes. The centralized state power, with its ubiquitous organs of standing army, police, bureaucracy, clergy, and judicature—organs wrought after the plan of a systematic and hierarchic division of labor originates from the days of absolute monarchy, serving nascent middle class society as a mighty weapon in its struggle against feudalism". In other words, "the centralized state power to direct or determine inherited by the bourgeoisie from the absolute monarchy necessarily assumes, in the course of the intensifying struggles between capital and labor, 'more and more the mention of the national power of capital over labour, of a public organized for social enslavement, of an engine of class despotism'".

One of the most influential modern visions of a transitional state representing proletarian interests was based on the Paris Commune in which the workers and working poor took control of the city of Paris in 1871 in reaction to the Franco-Prussian War. Marx described the Paris Commune as the prototype for a revolutionary government of the future, "the form at last discovered" for the emancipation of the proletariat. Engels noted that "all officials, high or low, were paid only the wages received by other workers. [...] In this way an effective barrier to place-hunting and careerism was set up". Commenting on the nature of the state, Engels continued: "From the outset the Commune was compelled to recognize that the working class, one time come to power, could not render with the old state machine". In order not to be overthrown once having conquered power, Engels argues that the working class "must, on the one hand, do away with any the old repressive machinery before used against it itself, and, on the other, safeguard itself against its own deputies and officials, by declaring them all, without exception, subject to recall at any moment". Engels argued such a state would be a temporary affair and suggested a new generation brought up in "new and free social conditions" will be experienced to "throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap-heap".

Socialists that embraced reformism, exemplified by Eduard Bernstein, took the view that both socialism and a socialist state will gradually evolve out of political reforms won in the organized socialist political parties and unions. These views are considered a revision of Marxist thought. Bernstein stated: "The socialist movement is everything to me while what people commonly call the aim of Socialism is nothing". Followng Marx, revolutionary socialists instead take the view that the working class grows stronger through its battle for reforms such as in Marx's time the ten-hours bill. In 1848, Marx and Engels wrote: