17 Facts About Socialist state

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 concept of a socialist state is 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.

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.

The Soviet Union proclaimed itself a socialist state and proclaimed its commitment to building a socialist economy in its 1936 constitution and a subsequent 1977 constitution.

The preamble to the 1976 Constitution of Portugal states that the Portuguese state has as one of its goals opening "the way to socialist society".

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Socialist state policies practiced by parties such as the Singaporean People's Action Party during its first few decades in power were of a pragmatic kind as characterized by its rejection of nationalization.

Term socialist state is widely used by Marxist–Leninist parties, theorists and governments to mean a state under the control of a vanguard party that is organizing the economic, social and political affairs of said state toward the construction of socialism.

The Leninist definition of a socialist state is a state representing the interests of the working class which presides over a state capitalist economy structured upon state-directed accumulation of capital with the goal of building up the country's productive forces and promoting worldwide socialist revolution while the realization of a socialist economy is held as the long-term goal.

Karl Marx and subsequent thinkers in the Marxist tradition conceive of the Socialist 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.

In other words, "the centralized Socialist state power 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 character 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 Socialist 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.

Engels argued such a Socialist state would be a temporary affair and suggested a new generation brought up in "new and free social conditions" will be able to "throw the entire lumber of the Socialist state on the scrap-heap".

Socialist state regarded this structural paradox as the necessary preparation for and antithesis of the desired workers' state which he forecast would follow.

The American Marxist Raya Dunayevskaya dismissed it as a type of state capitalism because state ownership of the means of production is a form of state capitalism; the dictatorship of the proletariat is a form of democracy and single-party rule is undemocratic; 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.

Socialist state adopted state capitalist policies, defending them from left-wing criticism, but arguing that they were necessary for the future development of socialism and not socialist in themselves.

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.

Libertarian communists, including anarchists, councillists, leftists and Marxists, 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.