State capitalism

State capitalism is an economic system in which the state undertakes business and commercial economic activity (i.e. for-profit) and where the means of production are organized and managed as state-owned enterprises (including the processes of capital accumulation, centralized management and wage labor), or where there is otherwise a dominance of corporatized government agencies (agencies organized along business-management practices) or of public companies such as publicly listed corporations in which the state has controlling shares.[1] Marxist literature defines state capitalism as a social system combining capitalism with ownership or control by a state. By this definition, a state capitalist country is one where the government controls the economy and essentially acts like a single huge corporation, extracting the surplus value from the workforce in order to invest it in further production.[2] This designation applies regardless of the political aims of the state (even if the state is nominally socialist).[3] Many scholars argue that the economy of the Soviet Union and of the Eastern Bloc countries modeled after it, including Maoist China, were state capitalist systems. They also argue that the current economy of China constitutes a form of state capitalism.[3][4][5][6][7][8][9]

This article is about a variant of capitalism. For the concept of the functions of the state under capitalism, see Capitalist state.
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As a term, state capitalism is also used by some authors in reference to a private capitalist economy controlled by a state, i.e. a private economy that is subject to economic planning and interventionism. This term has been used to describe the controlled economies of the Great Powers during the World War I.[10] Alternatively, state capitalism may refer to an economic system where the means of production are privately owned, but the state has considerable control over the allocation of credit and investment.[11] This was the case of Western European countries during the post-war consensus and of France during the period of dirigisme after World War II.[12] Other examples include the economies of Denmark, Norway and Sweden which have almost equal mixtures of private and state ownership. These countries have enough state ownership and regulation to be legitimately labeled forms of democratic state capitalism. Theoretically, a system that has complete state ownership of the economy but is democratic would be called democratic state capitalism. Systems where an authoritarian state has full control of the economy are called authoritarian state capitalist systems. An existing example of this type of system would be North Korea. Another would be that of authoritarian capitalist states such as China since the economic reforms, Hungary under Viktor Orbán, Russia under Vladimir Putin, Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew and Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as well as military dictatorships during the Cold War and fascist regimes such as Nazi Germany.[13][14][15][16]

State capitalism has also come to be used sometimes interchangeably with state monopoly capitalism to describe a system where the state intervenes in the economy to protect and advance the interests of big business and large-scale businesses. Noam Chomsky, a libertarian socialist, applies the term state capitalism to the economy of the United States, where large enterprises that are deemed "too big to fail" receive publicly funded government bailouts that mitigate the firms' assumption of risk and undermine market laws, and where private production is largely funded by the state at public expense, but private owners reap the profits.[17][18][19] This practice is in contrast with the ideals of both socialism and laissez-faire capitalism.[20]

There are various theories and critiques of state capitalism, some of which existed before the October Revolution. The common themes among them identify that the workers do not meaningfully control the means of production and that capitalist social relations and production for profit still occur within state capitalism, fundamentally retaining the capitalist mode of production. In Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (1880), Friedrich Engels argued that state ownership does not do away with capitalism by itself, but rather would be the final stage of capitalism, consisting of ownership and management of large-scale production and communication by the bourgeois state. He argued that the tools for ending capitalism are found in state capitalism.[21]

Origins and early usage
Friedrich Engels, who argued that state ownership does not do away with capitalism by itself

In the Anti-Duhring (1877), Friedrich Engels described state ownership, i.e. state capitalism, as follows:

If the crisis revealed the incapacity of the bourgeoisie any longer to control the modern productive forces, the conversion of the great organizations for production and communication into joint-stock companies and state property shows that for this purpose the bourgeoisie can be dispensed with. All the social functions of the capitalists are now carried out by salaried employees. The capitalist has no longer hany social activity save the pocketing of revenues, the clipping of coupons, and gambling on the stock exchange, where the different capitalists fleece each other of their capital. Just as at first the capitalist mode of production displaced the workers, so now it displaces the capitalists, relegating them to the superfluous population even if not in the first instance to the industrial reserve army.[22]

Engels argued that the tools for ending capitalism are found in state capitalism, further writing:

But neither the conversion into joint stock companies nor into state property deprives the productive forces of their character as capital. In the case of joint-stock companies this is obvious. And the modern state, too, is only the organization with which bourgeois society provides itself in order to maintain the general external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against encroachments either by the workers or by individual capitalists. The modern state, whatever its form, is then the state of the capitalists, the ideal collective body of all the capitalists. The more productive forces it takes over as its property, the more it becomes the real collective body of the capitalists, the more citizens it exploits. The workers remain wage-earners, proletarians. The capitalist relationship isn't abolished; it is rather pushed to the extreme. But at this extreme it is transformed into its opposite. State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but it contains within itself the formal means, the key to the solution.[22]

Mikhail Bakunin, who criticized state socialism as state capitalism, predicting that if the Marxists were successful in seizing power, they would create a party dictatorship
Wilhelm Liebknecht, who stated: "Nobody has combated State Socialism more than we German Socialists"

In Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (1880), Engels described state capitalism as a new form or variant of capitalism.[21] The term state capitalism was first used by Wilhelm Liebknecht in 1896 who said: "Nobody has combated State Socialism more than we German Socialists; nobody has shown more distinctively than I, that State Socialism is really State capitalism".[23]

It has been suggested that the concept of state capitalism can be traced back to Mikhail Bakunin's critique during the First International of the potential for state exploitation under Marxist-inspired socialism, or to Jan Waclav Machajski's argument in The Intellectual Worker (1905) that socialism was a movement of the intelligentsia as a class, resulting in a new type of society he termed state capitalism.[24][25][26][27] For anarchists, state socialism is equivalent to state capitalism, hence oppressive and merely a shift from private capitalists to the state being the sole employer and capitalist.[28]

In Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism and Imperialism and World Economy, both Vladimir Lenin and Nikolai Bukharin, respectively, had similarly identified the growth of state capitalism as one of the main features of capitalism in its imperialist epoch.[29][30] In The State and Revolution, Lenin wrote that "the erroneous bourgeois reformist assertion that monopoly capitalism or state-monopoly capitalism is no longer capitalism, but can now be called "state socialism" and so on, is very common".[31] During World War I, using Lenin's idea that tsarism was taking a Prussian path to capitalism, the Bolshevik Nikolai Bukharin identified a new stage in the development of capitalism in which all sectors of national production and all important social institutions had become managed by the state—he termed this new stage state capitalism.[32] After the October Revolution, Lenin used the term state capitalism positively. In spring 1918, during a brief period of economic liberalism prior to the introduction of war communism and again during the New Economic Policy (NEP) of 1921, Lenin justified the introduction of state capitalism controlled politically by the dictatorship of the proletariat to further central control and develop the productive forces,[33] making the following point:[34]

Reality tells us that state capitalism would be a step forward. If in a small space of time we could achieve state capitalism, that would be a victory.[35][36]

Lenin argued the state should temporarily run the economy which would eventually be taken over by workers.[37] To Lenin, state capitalism did not mean the state would run most of the economy, but that state capitalism would be one of five elements of the economy:[38]

State capitalism would be a step forward as compared with the present state of affairs in our Soviet Republic. If in approximately six months' time state capitalism became established in our Republic, this would be a great success and a sure guarantee that within a year socialism will have gained a permanently firm hold.[38]

Use by the left

Socialists

As a term and concept, state capitalism has been used by various socialists, including anarchists, Marxists and Leninists.

Anarchists
Emma Goldman and Murray Bookchin, two prominent anarchists who argued that the Soviet Union was state capitalist and criticized the Bolsheviks for it

Perhaps the earliest critique of the Soviet Union as state capitalist was formulated by the Russian anarchists as documented in Paul Avrich's work on Russian anarchism.[39]

The Russian anarchists' claim would become standard in anarchist works. Of the Soviet Union, the prominent anarchist Emma Goldman wrote an article from 1935 titled "There Is No Communism in Russia" in which she argued:

Such a condition of affairs may be called state capitalism, but it would be fantastic to consider it in any sense Communistic [...] Soviet Russia, it must now be obvious, is an absolute despotism politically and the crassest form of state capitalism economically.[40]

When speaking about Marxism, Murray Bookchin said the following:

Marxism, in fact, becomes ideology. It is assimilated by the most advanced forms of state capitalist movement — notably Russia. By an incredible irony of history, Marxian 'socialism' turns out to be in large part the very state capitalism that Marx failed to anticipate in the dialectic of capitalism. The proletariat, instead of developing into a revolutionary class within the womb of capitalism, turns out to be an organ within the body of bourgeois society [...] Lenin sensed this and described 'socialism' as 'nothing but state capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole people'. This is an extraordinary statement if one thinks out its implications, and a mouthful of contradictions.[41]

While speaking about Leninism, the authors of An Anarchist FAQ say:

Rather than present an effective and efficient means of achieving revolution, the Leninist model is elitist, hierarchical and highly inefficient in achieving a socialist society. At best, these parties play a harmful role in the class struggle by alienating activists and militants with their organisational principles and manipulative tactics within popular structures and groups. At worse, these parties can seize power and create a new form of class society (a state capitalist one) in which the working class is oppressed by new bosses (namely, the party hierarchy and its appointees).[42]

Russian communist left
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Another early analysis of the Soviet Union as state capitalist came from various groups advocating left communism. One major tendency of the 1918 Russian communist left criticised the re-employment of authoritarian capitalist relations and methods of production.

As Valerian Osinsky in particular argued, "one-man management" (rather than the democratic factory committees workers had established and Lenin abolished)[43] and the other impositions of capitalist discipline would stifle the active participation of workers in the organisation of production. Taylorism converted workers into the appendages of machines and piece work imposed individualist rather than collective rewards in production so instilling petty bourgeois values into workers.

In sum, these measures were seen as the re-transformation of proletarians within production from collective subject back into the atomised objects of capital. The working class, it was argued, had to participate consciously in economic as well as political administration. In 1918, this tendency within the left communists emphasized that the problem with capitalist production was that it treated workers as objects. Its transcendence lay in the workers' conscious creativity and participation, which is reminiscent of Marx's critique of alienation.[44]

These criticisms were revived on the left of the Russian Communist Party after the 10th Congress in 1921, which introduced the New Economic Policy (NEP). Many members of the Workers' Opposition and the Decists (both later banned) and two new underground left communist groups, Gavril Myasnikov's Workers' Group and the Workers' Truth group, developed the idea that Russia was becoming a state capitalist society governed by a new bureaucratic class.[24][45] The most developed version of this idea was in a 1931 booklet by Myasnikov.[46]

Mensheviks and orthodox Marxists
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Immediately after the Russian Revolution, many Western Marxists questioned whether socialism was possible in Russia. Specifically, Karl Kautsky said:

It is only the old feudal large landed property which exists no longer. Conditions in Russia were ripe for its abolition but they were not ripe for the abolition of capitalism. Capitalism is now once again celebrating a resurrection, but in forms that are more oppressive and harrowing for the proletariat than of old.

Instead of assuming higher industrialised forms, private capitalism has assumed the most wretched and shabby forms of black marketeering and money speculation. Industrial capitalism has developed to become state capitalism. Formerly state officials and officials from private capital were critical, often very hostile towards each other.

Consequently the working man found that his advantage lay with one or the other in turn. Today the state bureaucracy and capitalist bureaucracy are merged into one—that is the upshot of the great socialist revolution brought about by the Bolsheviks. It constitutes the most oppressive of all despotisms that Russia has ever had to suffer.[47]

After 1929, exiled Mensheviks such as Fyodor Dan began to argue that Stalin's Russia constituted a state capitalist society.[48] In the United Kingdom, the orthodox Marxist group the Socialist Party of Great Britain independently developed a similar doctrine. Although initially beginning with the idea that Soviet capitalism differed little from western capitalism, they later began to argue that the bureaucracy held its productive property in common, much like the Catholic Church's.[49] As John O'Neill notes:

Whatever other merits or problems their theories had, in arguing that the Russian revolution was from the outset a capitalist revolution they avoided the ad hoc and post hoc nature of more recent Maoist- and Trotskyist-inspired accounts of state capitalism, which start from the assumption that the Bolshevik revolution inaugurated a socialist economy that at some later stage degenerated into capitalism.[50]

Writing in the Menshevik journal Socialist Courier on 25 April 25, Rudolf Hilferding rejected the concept of state capitalism, noting that as practiced in the Soviet Union it lacked the dynamic aspects of capitalism such as a market which set prices or a set of entrepreneurs and investors which allocated capital. According to Hilferding, state capitalism was not a form of capitalism, but rather a form of totalitarianism.[51]

Shachtmanite Trotskyists
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Leon Trotsky stated that the term state capitalism "originally arose to designate the phenomena which arise when a bourgeois state takes direct charge of the means of transport or of industrial enterprises" and is therefore a "partial negation" of capitalism.[52]

However, Trotsky rejected that description of the Soviet Union, claiming instead that it was a degenerated workers' state. After World War II, most Trotskyists accepted an analysis of the Soviet bloc countries as being deformed workers' states. However, alternative opinions of the Trotskyist tradition have developed the theory of state capitalism as a new class theory to explain what they regard as the essentially non-socialist nature of the Soviet Union, Cuba, China and other self-proclaimed socialist states.

The discussion goes back to internal debates in the Left Opposition during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Ante Ciliga, a member of the Left Opposition imprisoned at Verkhne-Uralsk in the 1930s, described the evolution of many within the Left Opposition to a theory of state capitalism influenced by Gavril Myasnikov's Workers Group and other left communist factions.[24][53][54]

On release and returning to activity in the International Left Opposition, Ciliga "was one of the first, after 1936, to raise the theory [of state capitalism] in Trotskyist circles".[24] George Orwell, who was an anti-Stalinist leftist like Ciliga, used the term in his Homage to Catalonia (1938).

After 1940, dissident Trotskyists developed more theoretically sophisticated accounts of state capitalism. One influential formulation has been that of the Johnson–Forest Tendency of C. L. R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya who formulated her theory in the early 1940s on the basis of a study of the first three Five Year Plans alongside readings of Marx's early humanist writings. Their political evolution would lead them away from Trotskyism.[55]

Another is that of Tony Cliff, associated with the International Socialist Tendency and the British Socialist Workers Party (SWP), dating back to the late 1940s. Unlike Johnson-Forest, Cliff formulated a theory of state capitalism that would enable his group to remain Trotskyists, albeit heterodox ones.[56] A relatively recent text by Stephen Resnick and Richard D. Wolff, Class Theory and History, explores what they term state capitalism in the former Soviet Union, continuing a theme that has been debated within Trotskyist theory for most of the past century.

Other left-wing theories regarding Soviet-style societies include bureaucratic collectivism, deformed workers' states, degenerated workers' states and new class.

Left communists and council communists

The left communist and council communist traditions outside Russia consider the Soviet system as state capitalist. Otto Rühle, a major German left communist, developed this idea from the 1920s and it was later articulated by Dutch council communist Anton Pannekoek in "State Capitalism and Dictatorship" (1936).[57]

Maoists and anti-revisionists

From 1956 to the late 1970s, the Communist Party of China and their Maoist or anti-revisionist adherents around the world often described the Soviet Union as state capitalist, essentially using the accepted Marxist definition, albeit on a different basis and in reference to a different span of time from either the Trotskyists or the left-communists. Specifically, the Maoists and their descendants use the term state capitalism as part of their description of the style and politics of Nikita Khrushchev and his successors as well as to similar leaders and policies in other self-styled "socialist" states.[58] This was involved in the ideological Sino–Soviet split.

After Mao Zedong's death, amidst the supporters of the Cultural Revolution and the Gang of Four, most extended the state capitalist formulation to China itself and ceased to support the Communist Party of China which likewise distanced itself from these former fraternal groups. The related theory of Hoxhaism was developed in 1978, largely by Socialist Albanian President Enver Hoxha, who insisted that Mao himself had pursued state capitalist and revisionist economic policies.[59]

Most current communist groups descended from the Maoist ideological tradition still adopt the description of both China and the Soviet Union as being state capitalist from a certain point in their history onwards—most commonly, the Soviet Union from 1956 to its collapse in 1991 and China from 1976 to the present. Maoists and anti-revisionists also sometimes use the term social imperialism to describe socialist states that they consider to be actually capitalist in essence—their phrase, "socialist in words, imperialist in deeds" denotes this.

Use by liberal economists
Murray Rothbard, who advanced a right-libertarian analysis of state capitalism

Murray Rothbard, an anarcho-capitalist philosopher, used the term state capitalism interchangeably with the term state monopoly capitalism and used it to describe a partnership of government and big business in which the state intervenes on behalf of large capitalists against the interests of consumers.[60][61]

Ludwig von Mises, who described state capitalism as a form of state socialism

Rothbard distinguished it from laissez-faire capitalism, where big business is not protected from market forces. This usage dates from the 1960s, when Harry Elmer Barnes described the post-New Deal economy of the United States as "state capitalism". More recently, Andrei Illarionov, former economic adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, resigned in December 2005, protesting Russia's "embracement of state capitalism".[62]

The term state capitalism is not used by classical liberals to describe the public ownership of the means of production. The explanation why is given by the Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises, who argued:

The socialist movement takes great pains to circulate frequently new labels for its ideally constructed state. Each worn-out label is replaced by another which raises hopes of an ultimate solution of the insoluble basic problem of Socialism — until it becomes obvious that nothing has been changed but the name. The most recent slogan is "State Capitalism." It is not commonly realized that this covers nothing more than what used to be called Planned Economy and State Socialism, and that State Capitalism, Planned Economy, and State Socialism diverge only in non-essentials from the "classic" ideal of egalitarian Socialism.[63]

Use by Italian Fascists
Benito Mussolini, who claimed that the modern phase of capitalism is state socialism "turned on its head"

On economic issues, Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini claimed in 1933 that were Fascism to follow the modern phase of capitalism, its path would "lead inexorably into state capitalism, which is nothing more nor less than state socialism turned on its head. In either event, [whether the outcome be state capitalism or state socialism] the result is the bureaucratization of the economic activities of the nation".[64]

Mussolini claimed that capitalism had degenerated in three stages, starting with dynamic or heroic capitalism (1830–1870), followed by static capitalism (1870–1914) and then reaching its final form of decadent capitalism, also known as supercapitalism beginning in 1914.[65]

Mussolini denounced supercapitalism for causing the "standardization of humankind" and for causing excessive consumption.[66] Mussolini claimed that at this stage of supercapitalism "[it] is then that a capitalist enterprise, when difficulties arise, throws itself like a dead weight into the state's arms. It is then that state intervention begins and becomes more necessary. It is then that those who once ignored the state now seek it out anxiously".[67] Due to the inability of businesses to operate properly when facing economic difficulties, Mussolini claimed that this proved that state intervention into the economy was necessary to stabilize the economy.[67]

Mussolini claimed that dynamic or heroic capitalism and the bourgeoisie could be prevented from degenerating into static capitalism and then supercapitalism only if the concept of economic individualism were abandoned and if state supervision of the economy was introduced.[68] Private enterprise would control production, but it would be supervised by the state.[69] Italian Fascism presented the economic system of corporatism as the solution that would preserve private enterprise and property while allowing the state to intervene in the economy when private enterprise failed.[68]

In Western countries

An alternate definition is that state capitalism is a close relationship between the government and private capitalism such as one in which the private capitalists produce for a guaranteed market. An example of this would be the military–industrial complex in which autonomous entrepreneurial firms produce for lucrative government contracts and are not subject to the discipline of competitive markets.

Both the Trotskyist definition and this one derive from discussion among Marxists at the beginning of the 20th century, most notably Nikolai Bukharin, who in his book Imperialism and World Economy thought that advanced, imperialist countries exhibited the latter definition and considered (and rejected) the possibility that they could arrive at the former.

State capitalism is practised by a variety of Western countries with respect to certain strategic resources important for national security. These may involve private investment as well. For example, a government may own or even monopolize oil production or transport infrastructure to ensure availability in the case of war. Examples include Neste, Equinor and OMV.

There are limits according to arguments that state capitalism exists to ensure that wealth creation does not threaten the ruling elite's political power, which remains unthreatened by tight connections between the government and the industries while state capitalist fears of capitalism's creative destruction, of the threat of revolution and of any significant changes in the system result in the persistence of industries that have outlived their economic usefulness and an inefficient economic environment that is ill-equipped to inspire innovation.

In European studies

Several European scholars and political economists have used the term to describe one of the three major varieties of capitalism that prevail in the modern context of the European Union. This approach is mainly influenced by Schmidt's (2002) article on The Futures of European Capitalism, in which she divides modern European capitalism in three groups, namely market, managed and state. Here, state capitalism refers to a system where high coordination between the state, large companies and labour unions ensures economic growth and development in a quasi-corporatist model.

The author cites France and to a lesser extent Italy as the prime examples of modern European state capitalism.[70] A general theory of capitalist forms, whereby state capitalism is a particular case, was developed by Ernesto Screpanti, who argued that Soviet-type economies of the 20th century used state capitalism to sustain processes of primitive accumulation.[71] In their historical analysis of the Soviet Union, Marxist economists Richard D. Wolff and Stephen Resnick identify state capitalism as the dominant class system throughout the history of the Soviet Union.[72]

State monopoly capitalism

The theory of state monopoly capitalism was initially a neo-Stalinist doctrine popularised after World War II. Lenin had claimed in 1916 that World War I had transformed laissez-faire capitalism into monopoly capitalism, but he did not publish any extensive theory about the topic. The term refers to an environment where the state intervenes in the economy to protect large monopolistic or oligopolistic businesses from competition by smaller firms.[73]

The main principle of the ideology is that big business, having achieved a monopoly or cartel position in most markets of importance, fuses with the government apparatus. A kind of financial oligarchy or conglomerate therefore results, whereby government officials aim to provide the social and legal framework within which giant corporations can operate most effectively. This is a close partnership between big business and government and it is argued that the aim is to integrate labour-unions completely in that partnership.

State monopoly capitalist (stamocap) theory aims to define the final historical stage of capitalism following monopoly capitalism, consistent with Lenin's definition of the characteristics of imperialism in his short pamphlet of the same name. Occasionally the stamocap concept also appears in neo-Trotskyist theories of state capitalism as well as in libertarian anti-state theories. The analysis made is usually identical in its main features, but very different political conclusions are drawn from it.

Political implications

Ever since monopoly capital took over the world, it has kept the greater part of humanity in poverty, dividing all the profits among the group of the most powerful countries. The standard of living in those countries is based on the extreme poverty of our countries.

— Che Guevara, 1965[74]

The strategic political implication of stamocap theory towards the end of the Joseph Stalin era and afterwards was that the labour movement should form a people's democratic alliance under the leadership of the communist party with the progressive middle classes and small business against the state and big business (called monopoly for short). Sometimes this alliance was also called the anti-monopoly alliance.

Neo-Trotskyist theory

In neo-Trotskyist theory, such an alliance was rejected as being based either on a false strategy of popular fronts, or on political opportunism, said to be incompatible either with a permanent revolution or with the principle of independent working class political action.

The state in Soviet-type societies was redefined by the neo-Trotskyists as being also state-monopoly capitalist. There was no difference between the West and the East in this regard. Consequently, some kind of anti-bureaucratic revolution was said to be required, but different Trotskyist groups quarreled about what form such a revolution would need to take, or could take.

Some Trotskyists believed the anti-bureaucratic revolution would happen spontaneously, inevitably and naturally, others believed it needed to be organised—the aim being to establish a society owned and operated by the working class. According to the neo-Trotskyists, the communist party could not play its leading role because it did not represent the interests of the working class.

Criticism

When Varga introduced the theory, orthodox Stalinist economists attacked it as incompatible with the doctrine that state planning was a feature only of socialism and that "under capitalism anarchy of production reigns".[75]

Critics of the stamocap theory (e.g. Ernest Mandel and Leo Kofler) claimed the following:

  • Stamocap theory wrongly implied that the state could somehow overrule inter-capitalist competition, the laws of motion of capitalism and market forces generally, supposedly cancelling out the operation of the law of value.
  • Stamocap theory lacked any sophisticated account of the class basis of the state and the real linkages between governments and elites. It postulated a monolithic structure of domination which in reality did not exist in that way.
  • Stamocap theory failed to explain the rise of neoliberal ideology in the business class, which claims precisely that an important social goal should be a reduction of the state's influence in the economy.
  • Stamocap theory failed to show clearly what the difference was between a socialist state and a bourgeois state, except that in a socialist state the communist party, or rather its central committee, played the leading political role. In that case, the class-content of the state itself was defined purely in terms of the policy of the ruling political party or its central committee.
  • WALL-E has the "Buy n' Large" corporation, which acted as the de facto and possibly de jure government in the decades before and after the evacuation of Earth.
  • The Druuge, an alien race in Star Control, are governed by the Crimson Corporation which owns the Druuge home planet and everything on it. All Druuge are employees and/or shareholders of this corporation and Druuge who lose their jobs are immediately executed for stealing the planet's air, owned by the company, by breathing it.

Current forms in the 21st century

State capitalism is distinguished from capitalist mixed economies where the state intervenes in markets to correct market failures or to establish social regulation or social welfare provisions in the following way: the state operates businesses for the purpose of accumulating capital and directing investment in the framework of either a free market or a mixed-market economy. In such a system, governmental functions and public services are often organized as corporations, companies or business enterprises.

Mainland China

Many analysts assert that China is one of the main examples of state capitalism in the 21st century.[76][77][78] In his book The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations, political scientist Ian Bremmer describes China as the primary driver for the rise of state capitalism as a challenge to the free market economies of the developed world, particularly in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2007–2008.[79] Bremmer draws a broad definition of state capitalism as such:[80]

In this system, governments use various kinds of state-owned companies to manage the exploitation of resources that they consider the state's crown jewels and to create and maintain large numbers of jobs. They use select privately owned companies to dominate certain economic sectors. They use so-called sovereign wealth funds to invest their extra cash in ways that maximize the state's profits. In all three cases, the state is using markets to create wealth that can be directed as political officials see fit. And in all three cases, the ultimate motive is not economic (maximizing growth) but political (maximizing the state's power and the leadership's chances of survival). This is a form of capitalism but one in which the state acts as the dominant economic player and uses markets primarily for political gain.

Following on Bremmer, Aligica, and Tarko[81] further develop the theory that state capitalism in countries like modern day China and Russia is an example of a rent-seeking society. They argue that following the realization that the centrally planned socialist systems could not effectively compete with capitalist economies, formerly Communist Party political elites are trying to engineer a limited form of economic liberalization that increases efficiency while still allowing them to maintain political control and power.

In his article "We're All State Capitalists Now", British historian and Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University Niall Ferguson warns against "an unhelpful oversimplification to divide the world into 'market capitalist' and 'state capitalist' camps. The reality is that most countries are arranged along a spectrum where both the intent and the extent of state intervention in the economy vary".[80] He then notes:[80]

The real contest of our time is not between a state-capitalist China and a market-capitalist America, with Europe somewhere in the middle. It is a contest that goes on within all three regions as we all struggle to strike the right balance between the economic institutions that generate wealth and the political institutions that regulate and redistribute it.

In the common program set up by the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in 1949, in effect the country's interim constitution, state capitalism meant an economic system of corporatism. It provided as follows:[82]

Whenever necessary and possible, private capital shall be encouraged to develop in the direction of state capitalism.

Analysis of the Chinese model by the economists Julan Du and Chenggang Xu finds that the contemporary economic system of the People's Republic of China represents a state capitalist system as opposed to a market socialist system. The reason for this categorization is the existence of financial markets in the Chinese economic system, which are absent in the market socialist literature and in the classic models of market socialism; and that state profits are retained by enterprises rather than being equitably distributed among the population in a basic income/social dividend or similar scheme, which are major features in the market socialist literature. They conclude that China is neither a form of market socialism nor a stable form of capitalism.[83]

Taiwan

Taiwan's economy has been classified as a state capitalist system influenced by its Leninist model of political control, a legacy which still lingers in the decision-making process. Taiwan's economy includes a number of state-owned enterprises, but the Taiwanese state's role in the economy shifted from that of an entrepreneur to a minority investor in companies alongside the democratization agenda of the late 1980s.[84]

Some Taiwanese economists refer to Taiwan's economy model as party-state capitalism.

Norway

The government of Norway has ownership stakes in many of the country's largest publicly listed companies, owning 37% of the Oslo stockmarket[85] and operates the country's largest non-listed companies including Statoil and Statkraft. The government also operates a sovereign wealth fund, the Government Pension Fund of Norway, whose partial objective is to prepare Norway for a post-oil future.[85]

Modern Norwegian state capitalism has its origins in public ownership of the country's oil reserves and in the country's post-World War II social democratic reforms.

Singapore

Singapore's government owns controlling shares in many government-linked companies and directs investment through sovereign wealth funds, an arrangement commonly cited as state capitalism.[86] Singapore has attracted some of the world's most powerful corporations through business friendly legislation and through the encouragement of Western style corporatism, with close cooperation between the state and corporations. Singapore's large holdings of government-linked companies and the state's close cooperation with business are defining aspects of Singapore's economic model.

See also

References
  1. Williams, Raymond (1985) [1976]. "Capitalism". Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Oxford paperbacks (revisd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. p. 52. ISBN 9780195204698. Retrieved 26 June 2020 – via Google Books. A new phrase, state-capitalism, has been widely used in mC20, with precedents from eC20, to describe forms of state ownership in which the original conditions of the definition – centralized ownership of the means of production, leading to a system of wage-labour – have not really changed.
  2. Dossani, Sameer (10 February 2009). "Chomsky: Understanding the Crisis — Markets, the State and Hypocrisy". Foreign Policy In Focus. Institute for Policy Studies. Archived from the original on 12 October 2009. Retrieved 26 June 2020.
  3. Binns, Peter (March 1986). "State Capitalism". Education for Socialists. Socialist Party of Great Britain (1). Retrieved 26 June 2020 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
  4. Howard, M. C.; King, J. E. (2001). "'State Capitalism' in the Soviet Union". History of Economics Review. 34 (1): 110–126. doi:10.1080/10370196.2001.11733360. Retrieved 26 June 2020 via – History of Economic Thought Society of Australia.
  5. Epstein, Gady (31 August 2010). "The Winners And Losers In Chinese Capitalism". Forbes. Retrieved 26 June 2020.
  6. "The rise of state capitalism". The Economist. 21 January 2012. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 26 June 2020.
  7. Ferguson, Niall (9 February 2012). "We're All State Capitalists Now". Foreign Policy. Retrieved 28 October 2015.
  8. Araújo, Heriberto; Cardenal, Juan Pablo (1 June 2013). "China's Economic Empire". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 26 June 2020.
  9. Wolff, Richard D. (27 June 2015). "Socialism Means Abolishing the Distinction Between Bosses and Employees". Truthout. Retrieved 28 October 2015.
  10. Coleman, Janet; Conolly, Willam; Miller, David; Ryan, Alan, eds. (1991). The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought (reprinted ed.). Wifey/Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 9780631179443. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  11. Bakunin, Mikhail (1971) [1873]. Statism and Anarchy. "Critique of the Marxist Theory of the State". In Dolgoff, Sam, ed. Bakunin on Anarchy: Selected Works by the Activist-Founder of World Anarchism. London: George Allen and Unwin. ISBN 978-0394717838.
  12. "State capitalism". The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin. Archived from the original on 8 December 2015. Retrieved 26 June 2020.
  13. Bel, Germà Bel (April 2006). "Against the mainstream: Nazi privatization in 1930s Germany" (PDF). Economic History Review. University of Barcelona. Retrieved 23 January 2020.
  14. Gat, Azar (August 2007). "The Return of Authoritarian Great Powers". Foreign Affairs. 86 (4): 59–69. JSTOR 20032415.
  15. Fuchs, Christian (29 June 2017). "The Relevance of Franz L. Neumann's Critical Theory in 2017: Anxiety and Politics in the New Age of Authoritarian Capitalism" (PDF). Retrieved 23 January 2020. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  16. Fuchs, Christian (27 April 2018). "Authoritarian Capitalism, Authoritarian Movements, Authoritarian Communication" (PDF). Retrieved 23 January 2020. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  17. Chomsky, Noam (18 May 2005). "State and Corp. Noam Chomsky interviewed by uncredited interviewer". Znet Germany. Retrieved 26 June 2020 – via Chomsky.info.
  18. Chomsky, Noam (7 April 2011). The State-Corporate Complex: A Threat to Freedom and Survival (Speech). University of Toronto. Retrieved 26 June 2020 – via Chomsky.info.
  19. Chomsky, Noam; Segantini, Tommaso (22 September 2015). "History Doesn't Go In a Straight Line". Jacobin. Retrieved 26 June 2020.
  20. Johnson, Allan G. (2000). The Blackwell Dictionary of Sociology. Blackwell Publishing. p. 306. ISBN 0-631-21681-2. In 2008, the U.S. National Intelligence Council used the term in Global Trends 2025: A World Transformed to describe the development of China, India and Russia.
  21. Engels, Friedrich (1970) [1880]. Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. "Historical Materialism". Marx/Engels Selected Works. 3. Moscow: Progress Publishers. pp. 95–151 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
  22. Engels, Friedrich (1962) [1877]. Anti-Duhring. Foreign Languages Publishing House. pp. 329–330.
  23. Liebknecht, Wilhelm (August 1986). "Our Recent Congress". Justice: 4. Retrieved 26 June 2020 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
  24. Fox, Michael S. (Spring 1991). "Ante Ciliga, Trotskii, and State Capitalism: Theory, Tactics, and Reevaluation during the Purge Era, 1935–1939" (PDF). Slavic Review. Cambridge University Press. 50 (1): 127–143. doi:10.2307/2500604. JSTOR 2500604. Archived from the original on 27 October 2009. Retrieved 26 June 2020 – via GeoCities.CS1 maint: BOT: original-url status unknown (link)
  25. Slavic Review (Spring 1991). Cambridge University Press. 50 (1): 127–143. JSTOR i322594 Published in Croatian translation in Časopis za suvremenu povijest [Journal of Contemporary History] (1994). Zagreb. (3): 427–450.
  26. Gouldner, A. W. (November 1982). "Marx's Last Battle: Bakunin and the First International". Theory and Society. Springer. 11 (6): pp. 853–884. JSTOR 657194 Gouldner argues that Bakunin formulated an original critique of Marxism as "the ideology, not of the working class, but of a new class of scientific intelligentsia—who would corrupt socialism, make themselves a new elite, and impose their rule on the majority" (pp. 860–861).
  27. Shatz, Marshall S. (1989). Jan Waclaw Machajski: A Radical Critic of the Russian Intelligentsia and Socialism. Russian and East European Studies. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. ISBN 978-0822985143. Archived from the original on 26 October 2009. Retrieved 26 October 2009 – via GeoCities.CS1 maint: BOT: original-url status unknown (link) See also Bottomore, T. B. (1961). Elites and Society. London: Watts. p. 54.
  28. McKay, Iain, ed. (2012). "Why is state socialism just state capitalism?". An Anarchist FAQ. II. Stirling: AK Press. ISBN 9781849351225. Archived from the original on 19 December 2009. Retrieved 26 June 2020 – via Infoshop.
  29. Lenin, Vladimir (1948) [1915]. Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. London: Lawrence and Wishart. ISBN 9780141192567.
  30. Bukharin, Nikolai (1929) [1917]. Imperialism and World Economy. International Publishers. p. 157 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
  31. Lenin, Vladimir (1964) [1917]. The State and Revolution. "Supplementary Explanations by Engels". Lenin Collected Works. 25. Moscow: Progress Publishers. pp. 381–492 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
  32. Bukharin, Nikolai (1972) [1915]. Imperialism and World Economy. London: Merlin. p. 158. ISBN 978-0850361551.
  33. Aufheben (2015). What Was the USSR?: Towards a Theory of the Deformation of Value Under State Capitalism. Edmont: Thoughtcrime Ink. Archived from the original on 18 March 2004. Retrieved 26 June 2020 – via GeoCities.
  34. Lenin, Vladimir (1972) [1918]. Session of the All-Russia C.E.C. Collected Works. 27 (4th English ed.). Moscow: Progress Publishers. pp. 279–313. Retrieved 26 June 2020 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
  35. Lenin, Vladimir (1972) [1918]. Session of the All-Russia C.E.C. Collected Works. 27 (4th English ed.). Moscow: Progress Publishers. p. 293. Retrieved 26 June 2020 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
  36. Pena, David S. (22 September 2007). "Tasks of Working-Class Governments under the Socialist-oriented Market Economy". Political Affairs. Archived from the original on 5 September 2008. Retrieved 26 June 2020.
  37. Lenin, Vladimir (1964) [1917]. "The Economic Basis of the Withering Away of the State". The State and Revolution. Lenin Collected Works. 25. Moscow: Progress Publishing. pp. 381–492. Retrieved 26 June 2020 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
  38. Lenin, Vladimir (1965) [1921]. The Tax in Kind (The Significance of the New Policy and Its Conditions). Lenin Collected Works. 32. Translated by Sdobnikov, Tury (1st English ed.). Moscow: Progress Publishing. pp. 329–365. Retrieved 26 June 2020 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
  39. Paul Avrich, 1967, The Russian Anarchists, Princeton University Press, chapter 7.
  40. Emma Goldman (1935). "There Is No Communism in Russia". RevoltLib.
  41. Murray Bookchin (1971). "Listen, Marxist!". RevoltLib.
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  49. State capitalism: the wages system under new management / Adam Buick and John Crump. Basingstoke : Macmillan, 1986. ISBN 0-333-36775-8
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  59. Imperialism and the Revolution by Enver Hoxha, 1978.
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  62. Andrei, Illarionov (2006-01-25). "When the state means business". International Herald and Tribune.
  63. Von Mises, Ludwig (1979). Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis. Indianapolis: LibertyClassics. ISBN 0-913966-63-0. Retrieved 31 May 2007.
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  67. Mussolini, Benito; Schnapp, Jeffery Thompson (ed.); Sears, Olivia E. (ed.); Stampino, Maria G. (ed.). "Address to the National Corporative Council (14 November 1933) and Senate Speech on the Bill Establishing the Corporations (abridged; 13 January 1934)". A Primer of Italian Fascism. University of Nebraska Press, 2000. pp. 158.
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  72. Resnick, Stephen & Wolff, Richard (2002) Class Theory and History: Capitalism and Communism in the U.S.S.R. London: Routledge.
  73. Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Thought
  74. At the Afro-Asian Conference in Algeria by Che Guevara, Delivered at the Second Economic Seminar of Afro-Asian Solidarity in Algiers, Algeria - on February 24, 1965
  75. The Case of Eugene Varga Raya Dunayevskaya 1949
  76. Communism Is Dead, But State Capitalism Thrives, by Vahan Janjigian, forbes.com, Mar. 22 2010.
  77. The Winners And Losers In Chinese Capitalism, by Gady Epstein, forbes.com, Aug. 31 2010.
  78. The Economist (2012). "State Capitalism: The Visible Hand". Special Report.
  79. Dyer, Geoff (13 September 2010). "State capitalism: China's 'market-Leninism' has yet to face biggest test". Financial Times.
  80. Ferguson, Niall (10 February 2012). "We're All State Capitalists Now". Foreign Policy.
  81. Aligica, Paul and Vlad Tarko (2012). "State Capitalism and the Rent-SeekingConjecture", Constitutional Political Economy 23(4): 357-379
  82. "Modern History Sourcebook: The Common Program of The Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, 1949". Fordham University. Retrieved 19 January 2019.
  83. Market Socialism or Capitalism? Evidence from Chinese Financial Market Development, by Julan Du and Chenggang Xu. 2005. IEA 2005 Round Table on Market and Socialism.
  84. Dittmer, Lowell (2017). Taiwan and China: Fitful Embrace. University of California Press. p. 118. ISBN 978-0520295988. A decade after Taiwan made its democratic transition, the KMT's Leninist control model has yet to fade from the decision-making process. In short, both China’s and Taiwan's state capitalism have their roots in the Leninist legacy. [...] To be specific, Taiwan's state capitalism has experienced a transformation from 'leviathan as entrepreneur' in the pre-1989 period to 'leviathan as a minority investor' with the agenda of democratization in the late 1980s.
  85. "Norway: The rich cousin – Oil makes Norway different from the rest of the region, but only up to a point". The Economist. 2 February 2013. Retrieved 1 January 2016.
  86. "The True Meaning of the 'Singapore Model': State Capitalism and Urban Planning", by Shatkin, Gavin. Retrieved October 18, 2012, from Association of American Geographers.

Bibliography
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  • Gerd Hardach, Dieter Karras and Ben Fine, A short history of socialist economic thought., pp. 63–68.
  • Bob Jessop, The capitalist state.
  • Charlene Gannage, "E. S. Varga and the Theory of State Monopoly Capitalism", in Review of Radical Political Economics 12(3), Fall 1980, pages 36–49.
  • Johnn Fairley, French Developments in the Theory of State Monopoly Capitalism, in: Science and Society; 44(3), Fall 1980, pages 305–25.
  • Ernest Mandel, Late Capitalism, pp. 515–522.
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  • G. N. Sorvina et al., "The Role of the State in the System of State Monopoly Capitalism", in: The Teaching of Political Economy: A Critique of Non Marxian Theories. Moscow: Progress, 1984, pages 171–179.
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