Socialist Systems

Attila Agh

Socialist systems are those regimes based on the economic and political theory of socialism, which advocates public ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources. These include states described as socialist, communist, or Marxist, all of which claim to be based on efforts to achieve social justice and equality. The best term for these regimes may be state socialism , which has gained wide currency in the political science literature. In response to the crisis and collapse of state socialism at the end of the 1980s, many analysts have emphasized that the universalistic goals of socialism were not thereby invalidated, since many other currents of socialism, for instance, social democracy, have been vigorously developing around the world. According to the classical Marxist approach, socialism is only the first stage of the postcapitalist society, followed by communism as a second stage in which people receive “according ...

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