The Capitalist Dynamic of State Capitalist Economies

Oceans of ink have been spilt on behalf of those who hold power in the state capitalist countries in order to explain and justify the various features of the societies which they control, and in order to portray those societies as fundamentally different from private capitalism. Despite the mutual hostility and distrust of a number of state capitalist countries, which have led on occasions to charges of a ‘reversion to capitalism’, there is a marked similarity in the image of ‘socialism’ which all these countries project as a supposed alternative to private capitalism. Each state capitalist country claims to be socialist, on the principal grounds that the major means of production within its boundaries have been nationalised or collectivised. Nationalisation and collectivisation are said to have laid the basis for satisfying the population’s material and intellectual needs, and also for eradicating class exploitation and national oppression. With the important exception of Yugoslavia, the state capitalist countries also assert that nationalisation enables the planned development of production to occur, so that the crises and unemployment, which are inseparable from private capitalism, are thereby eliminated.