Talk:State socialism

trotskyists in my opinion never use the term state socialism for stalinist systems, because they never considered that there was something like socialism established. the "classic terms" invented by trotsky and the early fourth international are "deformed workers state" or "degenerated workers state", the less "orthodox" fourth international and its most important theoretian ernest mandel (unified secretariat) adopted the term (non- or postcapitalist) "transitional society"; both means, that there is an unstable form, not a new mode of production which offers two alternatives: proletarian revolution against the stalinist bureaucracy or the restauration of private capitalism. there is also a trotskyist current (inspired by max shachtman) which prefers the analysis, that the soviet union, china, etc. were/are countries, where "bureaucratic collectivism" a new mode of production with a new bureaucratic ruling class was established. trotskyist theories on state capitalism don't differ very much in there analysis of stalinist society, some of them (the theory of tony cliff, long-time god of the british swp) stress, that the arms race with the capitalist introduces the law of value throug the back door, other state-cap theories focus more on remaining capitalist elements, for example wage labour