This is intended either as a temporary measure, or as a characteristic of socialism in the transition from the capitalist to the socialist mode of production or to a communist society.
[12][13][14][15][16] Academics, political commentators and other scholars tend to distinguish between authoritarian state socialism and democratic state socialism, 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, Sweden and Western social-democracies in general, among others.
Lassalle considered the state an entity independent of class allegiances and an instrument of justice that would therefore be essential for achieving socialism.
In Statism and Anarchy, Mikhail Bakunin identified a statist tendency within the Marxist movement, which he contrasted to libertarian socialism and attributed to Marx's philosophy.
Bakunin predicted that Marx's theory of the transition from capitalism to socialism involving the working class seizing state power in a dictatorship of the proletariat would eventually lead to a usurpation of power by the state apparatus acting in its self-interest, ushering in a new form of capitalism rather than establishing socialism.
[26] The Stalinist theory of socialism in one country was an attempt to legitimise state-directed activity to accelerate the industrialisation of the Soviet Union.
[27] The modern concept of state socialism, when used in reference to Soviet-style economic and political systems, emerged from a deviation in Marxist theory starting with Vladimir Lenin.
In Marxist theory, socialism is projected to emerge in the most developed capitalist economies, where capitalism suffers the greatest internal contradictions and class conflict.
[28] In such systems, the state apparatus is used as an instrument of capital accumulation, forcibly extracting surplus from the working class and peasantry to modernise and industrialise poor countries.
The difference is that the state acts as a public entity and engages in this activity to achieve socialism by re-investing the accumulated capital into society, whether in more healthcare, education, employment or consumer goods.
[30][31][32] Preceding the Bolshevik-led revolution in Russia, many socialist groups such as anarchists, orthodox Marxist currents such as council communism and the Mensheviks, reformists and other democratic and libertarian socialists criticized the idea of using the state to conduct central planning and nationalization of the means of production as a way to establish socialism.
The goals of nationalization were to dispossess large capitalists and consolidate industry so that profit would go toward public finance rather than private fortune.
George Bernard Shaw referred to Fabians as "all Social Democrats, with a common confiction [sic] of the necessity of vesting the organization of industry and the material of production in a State identified with the whole people by complete Democracy".
[36] Robert Blatchford, a member of the Fabian Society and the Independent Labour Party, wrote the work Merrie England (1894) that endorsed municipal socialism.
This method of gradualism implies the utilization of the existing state apparatus and machinery of government to move society toward socialism.
[39] In contrast, Marxism and revolutionary socialism holds that a proletarian revolution is the only practical way to implement fundamental changes in the structure of society.
Socialists who advocate representative democracy believe that after a certain period under socialism, the state will "wither away" because class distinctions cease to exist.
[53][54] Bismarck made the following statement as a justification for his social welfare programs: "Whoever has pensions for his old age is far more easier to handle than one who has no such prospect.
— I don't agree with it; in fact I think the two words contradict one another, and that it is the business of Socialism to destroy the State and put Free Society in its place".
Preceding the Bolshevik-led revolution in Russia, many socialist groups—including reformists, orthodox Marxist currents such as council communism and the Mensheviks, as well as anarchists and other libertarian socialists—criticized the idea of using the state to conduct planning and nationalization of the means of production as a way to establish socialism.