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Socialist state

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.

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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]

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]

  1. ^ Wilczynski, J. (2008). The Economics of Socialism after World War Two: 1945–1990. Aldine Transaction. p. 21. ISBN 978-0202362281. Contrary to Western usage, these countries describe themselves as 'Socialist' (not 'Communist'). The second stage (Marx's 'higher phase'), or 'Communism' is to be marked by an age of plenty, distribution according to needs (not work), the absence of money and the market mechanism, the disappearance of the last vestiges of capitalism and the ultimate 'whithering away' of the State.
  2. ^ Steele, David Ramsay (September 1999). From Marx to Mises: Post Capitalist Society and the Challenge of Economic Calculation. Open Court. p. 45. ISBN 978-0875484495. Among Western journalists the term 'Communist' came to refer exclusively to regimes and movements associated with the Communist International and its offspring: regimes which insisted that they were not communist but socialist, and movements which were barely communist in any sense at all.
  3. ^ Rosser, Mariana V.; Rosser, J. Barkley Jr. (23 July 2003). Comparative Economics in a Transforming World Economy. MIT Press. p. 14. ISBN 978-0262182348. Ironically, the ideological father of communism, Karl Marx, claimed that communism entailed the withering away of the state. The dictatorship of the proletariat was to be a strictly temporary phenomenon. Well aware of this, the Soviet Communists never claimed to have achieved communism, always labeling their own system socialist rather than communist and viewing their system as in transition to communism.
  4. ^ Williams, Raymond (1983). "Socialism". Keywords: A vocabulary of culture and society, revised edition. Oxford University Press. p. 289. ISBN 978-0-19-520469-8. The decisive distinction between socialist and communist, as in one sense these terms are now ordinarily used, came with the renaming, in 1918, of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks) as the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). From that time on, a distinction of socialist from communist, often with supporting definitions such as social democrat or democratic socialist, became widely current, although it is significant that all communist parties, in line with earlier usage, continued to describe themselves as socialist and dedicated to socialism.
  5. ^ Article Preamble, Section Preamble of the Constitution of the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria (28 November 1996): "Gathered in the national movement and later within the National Front of Liberation, the Algerian people have made great sacrifices to assume their collective destiny in the framework of recovered freedom and cultural identity and to build authentic people's democratic constitutional institutions. The National Front of Liberation crowned the sacrifices of the best sons of Algeria during the people's war of liberation with independence and built a modern and full sovereign State".
  6. ^ Article Preamble, Section Preamble of the Constitution of the People's Republic of Bangladesh (4 November 1972): "Further pledging that it shall be a fundamental aim of the State to realise through the democratic process, a socialist society free from exploitation, a society in which the rule of law, fundamental human rights and freedoms, equality and justice, political, economic and social, will be secured for all citizens".
  7. ^ Article Preamble, Section Preamble of the Constitution of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana (20 February 1980): "Convinced that the organisation of the State and society on socialist principles is the only means of ensuring social and economic justice for all of the people of Guyana; and, therefore, being motivated and guided by the principles of socialism".
  8. ^ Article Preamble, Section Preamble of the Constitution of the Republic of India (26 November 1949): "We, the people of India, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic and to secure to all its citizens".
  9. ^ Article 4, Section 1 of the Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal (20 September 2015): "Nepal is an independent, indivisible, sovereign, secular, inclusive democratic, socialism-oriented federal democratic republican state".
  10. ^ Article 5, Section 1 of the Constitution of the Republic of Nicaragua (1 January 1987): "Liberty, justice, respect for the dignity of the human person, political and social pluralism, the recognition of the distinct identity of the indigenous peoples and those of African descent within the framework of a unitary and indivisible state, the recognition of different forms of property, free international cooperation and respect for the free self-determination of peoples, Christian values, socialist ideals, and practices based on solidarity, and the values and ideals of the Nicaraguan culture and identity, are the principles of the Nicaraguan nation. [...] The socialist ideals promote the common good over individual egoism, seeking to create an ever more inclusive, just and fair society, promoting an economic democracy which redistributes national wealth and eliminates exploitation among human beings".
  11. ^ Article Preamble, Section Preamble of the Constitution of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka (7 September 1978): "[T]o constitute Sri Lanka into a democratic socialist republic whilst ratifying the immutable republican principles of representative democracy, and assuring to all peoples freedom, equality, justice, fundamental human rights and the independence of the judiciary".
  12. ^ Article 3, Section 1 of the Constitution of the United Republic of Tanzania (25 April 1978): "The United Republic is a democratic, secular and socialist state which adheres to multi-party democracy".
  13. ^ Lenin, Vladimir (1917). The State and Revolution. "Chapter 5". Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved 8 February 2020.
  14. ^ Lenin, Vladimir (February—July 1918). Lenin Collected Works Vol. 27. Marxists Internet Archive. p. 293. Quoted by Aufheben. Archived 18 March 2004 at the Wayback Machine.
  15. ^ Lenin, Vladimir (1921). "The Tax in Kind". Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved 8 February 2020.
  16. ^ Pena, David S. (21 September 2007). "Tasks of Working-Class Governments under the Socialist-oriented Market Economy". Political Affairs. Archived 5 September 2008 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 8 February 2020.
  17. ^ McKay, Iain, ed. (2008). "Isn't libertarian socialism an oxymoron?". An Anarchist FAQ. Vol. I. Stirling: AK Press. ISBN 978-1-902593-90-6. OCLC 182529204.
  18. ^ Schumpeter, Joseph (2008) [1942]. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. Harper Perennial. p. 169. ISBN 978-0-06-156161-0. But there are still others (concepts and institutions) which by virtue of their nature cannot stand transplantation and always carry the flavor of a particular institutional framework. It is extremely dangerous, in fact it amounts to a distortion of historical description, to use them beyond the social world or culture whose denizens they are. Now ownership or property – also, so I believe, taxation – are such denizens of the world of commercial society, exactly as knights and fiefs are denizens of the feudal world. But so is the state (a denizen of commercial society).
  19. ^ McKay, Iain, ed. (2012). "Why do anarchists oppose state socialism?". An Anarchist FAQ. Vol. II. Edinburgh: AK Press. ISBN 978-1-902593-90-6. OCLC 182529204.
  20. ^ McKay, Iain, ed. (2012). "What would an anarchist society look like?". An Anarchist FAQ. Vol. II. Edinburgh: AK Press. ISBN 978-1-902593-90-6. OCLC 182529204.
  21. ^ Fleming, Richard Fleming (1989). "Lenin's Conception of Socialism: Learning from the early experiences of the world's first socialist revolution". Forward. 9 (1). Retrieved 27 December 2015.
  22. ^ Lenin Collected Works. 27: 293. Quoted by Aufheben. Archived 18 March 2004 at the Wayback Machine.
  23. ^ Cite error: The named reference Barrett 1978 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  24. ^ Cite error: The named reference Dissident 1991 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  25. ^ Cite error: The named reference Kendall 2011 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  26. ^ Cite error: The named reference Li 2015 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

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