State Socialism

State socialism is a variant of socialism which advocates public ownership of major industries, remedial measures to benefit the working class, and a gradual process of developing socialism through government policy. "State socialism" may also be used to classify any variety of socialist philosophies that advocates the ownership of the means of production by the state apparatus, either as a transitional stage between capitalism and socialism, or as an end-goal in itself.

In Statism and Anarchy, Mikhail Bakunin identified a "statist" tendency within the socialist movement and contrasted it with anarchist socialism, arguing that Karl Marx's theory of transition from capitalism to socialism in which the working class seized state power in a Dictatorship of the proletariat would eventually lead to a usurpation of power by the state apparatus acting in its own self-interest. Benjamin Tucker, an American individualist anarcho-socialist author, wrote of "state socialism" in his 1886 essay entitled State Socialism and Anarchism, defining it as a tendency that advocated for governmental control over the means of production as a necessary strategy in order to transition from capitalism to socialism.

As a political ideology, state socialism rose to prominence during the 20th century Bolshevik, Leninist and later Marxist-Leninist revolutions where single-party control over the state, and by extension, over the political and economic spheres of society was justified as a means to safeguard the revolution against counter-revolutionary insurrection and foreign invasion. The Stalinist theory of Socialism in one country further legitimized state-directed activity in an effort to rapidly mobilize the Soviet Union's resources to industrialize its internal economy.

Proponents of state socialism claim the state, through practical considerations of governing, must play at least a temporary part in building socialism. It is possible to conceive of a democratic state that owns the means of production but is internally organized in a participatory, cooperative fashion, thereby achieving both common ownership of productive property and workplace democracy in day-to-day operations.

State socialism is one of the dividing lines within the broader socialist movement, and is often contrasted non-state or anti-state forms of socialism, such as those that advocate direct self-management, adhocracy and direct cooperative ownership and management of the means of production, and political philosophies such as libertarian socialism, anarchist socialism, anarchist communism, syndicalism, free-market socialism, De Leonism and economic democracy. These forms of socialism are opposed to hierarchical technocratic socialism, scientific management, and state-directed economic planning.