Talk:State socialism
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I have a suggested redraft below...
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State socialism, broadly speaking, is any variety of socialism which relies on ownership of the means of production and control of the work process and product by the [[state]. These states maintain such essential features of capitalist relations as commodity production and the wage system. There are four basic approaches to the idea of state socialism.
- Some socialists see this form of state as the goal of socialism. State socialism is often referred to simply as "socialism" by these socialist. Today, many political parties on the political left advocate a mild version of what may be considered "state socialism", in the form of social democracy. These moderate socialists do not advocate the overthrow of capitalism in a socialist revolution, and they support the continuing existence of the capitalist state and the capitalist economic system, only turned to more social purposes. Democratic Socialists argue for a gradual, peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism. They wish to abolish capitalism, but through evolution rather than revolution.
- Some socialists consider a socialist state to be a necessary transitional stage. Marxism holds that a socialist revolution is the only practical way to implement fundamental progressive change against the capitalist system. Most Marxists, including Fredrick Engels, maintain that after a certain period of time under socialism, the state should "wither away", producing a communist society: the intial state form of such societies are often termed workers' states.
- Others, who describe this form of state as state socialism, because in their opinion it retains the basic features of capitalism and can, therefore, never make a successful transition to communism.
- Libertarian socialists go further, deriding even Marxism as state socialism. They use the term in contrast with their own form of socialism, which involves collective ownership of the means of production without state intervention.
Of course, the state did not, in fact, wither away in the 20th century's "communist" states. Some Marxists defend them and contend that the transitional period simply wasn't finished. Other Marxists denounce those "Communist" states as too centralist, arguing that their leadership was corrupt and that it abandoned Marxism in all but name. In particular, most Trotskyist and left-communist tendencies of Marxism called those countries either deformed workers states or state capitalist states, to contrast them with states where the workers would directly hold power over the work process and work product. These Marxists argue either that the bureaucracy in the USSR had become a capitalist class by the 1930s or that the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1989-1991 period, as well as China is the same period, marked their transition back to market capitalist economies.
[edit] The suggested redraft
I think that the suggested redraft above (by DuncanBCS) is a strong improvement over the article as it stands. Any comments? If no discussion here, I will make the change in a week or two. BobFromBrockley 11:12, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
