Italy where it is distrusted and feared, and others like the UK where it is largely
ignored by the public.
State Capitalism
State capitalism was a phrase coined byLenin, and used by him to describe the
nature ofBolshevikeconomic policy during the brief period between the
Russian Revolution and the creation of theNew Economic Policy (NEP).
What he meant by it was that Russia had not fully experienced the transfor-
mation from feudal to capitalist society, whichMarxhad seen as a necessary
stage in social progress, and which he saw as being carried out by the
bourgeoisie. This point was generally accepted by all parts of the Russian
left, but the moderateMenshevikparty and their centrist allies felt that it
meant the revolution should go no further than the abolition of Tsarist
feudalism, and that truesocialismwould have to wait for the ultimate
breakdown of bourgeoiscapitalism. Instead, Lenin argued, the building of a
developed industrial infrastructure could be carried out directly by the state
under the control of the leaders of the proletarian revolution. This still implied
a period, perhaps a lengthy one, before the ‘withering away of the state’ and the
arrival of true egalitarian socialism, but at least one where exploitation was
minimal and socialist goals expressly sought. Even after Lenin had dropped the
idea (or the phrase, at least) it continued in common left-wing parlance. Later
in the 20th century it was used, usually pejoratively, by Western left-wing
groups anxious to stress the irrelevance of comparisons with Soviet policies in
criticisms ofMarxism, because the Soviet Union was not practisingcom-
munismbut ‘merely’ state capitalism.
State of Nature
The state of nature is a powerful concept in many brands of political theory, but
especiallysocial contract theory and its modern versions such as that
developed by JohnRawls. The state of nature is an imaginative reconstruction
of how human life and interpersonal relations might have been before the
creation of organized political society. Theoretically such an image is used to
deduce what the major drawbacks of living in a pre-political environment
would be, and thereby to decide what rules for organized political life would
recommend themselves to those in a position to make such a choice. Naturally
much depends on the original description of how people unconstrained by
political authority behave. Taking a very pessimistic view of human nature, as
did ThomasHobbes, then the recommendations for the best form of political
organization are going to be very different from those given by a political
theorist like JohnLocke, who thinks that people would be able to co-operate
State Capitalism