Socialist state (communism) in the context of "Unified power"

A socialist state, socialist republic, or socialist country is a sovereign state constitutionally dedicated to the establishment of socialism. This article is about states that refer to themselves as socialist states, and not specifically about communist states that refer to themselves as socialist states. It includes information on liberal democratic states with constitutional references to socialism as well as other state formations that have referred to themselves as socialist.

East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was a country in Central Europe from its formation on 7 October 1949 until its reunification with West Germany (Federal Republic of Germany) on 3 October 1990. Until 1989, it was generally viewed as a communist state and described itself as a socialist workers' and peasants' state. The economy of the country was centrally planned and state-owned. Although the GDR had to pay substantial war reparations to the Soviet Union, its economy became the most successful in the Eastern Bloc.

Before its establishment, the country's territory was administered and occupied by Soviet forces following the Berlin Declaration abolishing German sovereignty in World War II. The Potsdam Agreement established the Soviet-occupied zone, bounded on the east by the Oder–Neiße line. The GDR was dominated by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), a communist party, before being democratized and liberalized amid the revolutions of 1989; this paved the way for East Germany's reunification with West Germany. Unlike the government of West Germany, the SED did not see its state as the successor to the German Reich (1871–1945). In 1974, it abolished the goal of unification in the constitution. The SED-ruled GDR was often described as a Soviet satellite state; historians describe it as an authoritarian regime.

The socialist mode of production, also known as socialism, is a specific historical phase of base and superstructural development and its corresponding set of social relations that emerge from capitalism in the schema of historical materialism within Marxist theory. Communist states that claimed to have established socialist material relations claimed to have established socialist states.

The Marxist definition of socialism is that of production for use-value (i.e., abolition of commodity production, direct satisfaction of human needs, or economic demands), therefore the law of value no longer directs economic activity. Marxist production for use is coordinated through conscious economic planning. According to Marx, distribution of products is based on the principle of "to each according to his needs"; Soviet models often distributed products based on the principle of "to each according to his contribution". Marx characterized the social relations of communism, the first stage of which is now called socialism, by the abolition of class distinctions and the common ownership of the means of production. As classes are abolished, the state withers away. Later self-titled communist states revised this definition of socialism and used the term more loosely as a rough equivalent to the dictatorship of the proletariat.

People's democracy is a Marxist–Leninist theoretical concept that chiefly encompasses two processes: the people's democratic revolution and the people's democratic state. The first process focuses on the establishment of a communist state formation known as the people's democratic state through a people's democratic revolution. The second process deals with how the people's democratic state transitions the society it controls from the capitalist mode of production to the socialist mode of production, transforming the state into a socialist state in the process.

People's democratic theory has also spawned concepts unique to certain communist states. For example, the Chinese Communist Party has developed theories that have the same or similar origins to people's democracy, known as new democracy, the people's democratic dictatorship and whole-process people's democracy.

A people's democratic state is a communist state formation. According to the Marxist–Leninist theory of people's democracy, it purportedly tries to transition society from a capitalist mode of production to a socialist mode of production after a successful people's democratic revolution. This process transforms the people's democratic state into a socialist state.

According to Marxist–Leninist theorists, the people's democratic state is socialist-type state, but not a socialist state itself. The form of government of people's democratic states is unified state power of the supreme state organ of power, under the leadership of the ruling communist party. Despite this, forms of government have not always been identical in different states, with some slight institutional differences.

Yevgeni Alekseyevich Preobrazhensky (Russian: Евге́ний Алексе́евич Преображе́нский, IPA: [jɪvˈɡʲenʲɪj ɐlʲɪkˈsʲejɪvʲɪtɕ prʲɪəbrɐˈʐɛnskʲɪj]; 27 February [O.S. 15 February] 1886 – 13 February 1937) was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, and Marxist economist. His main contribution to Marxist theory is the concept of "primitive socialist accumulation", which holds that industrialization in an underdeveloped and agrarian economy such as Russia's in 1917 must rely on the squeezing of agriculture, for example by the socialist state buying agricultural goods at low prices and selling back industrial goods at high prices.

Preobrazhensky joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in 1903, and after the establishment of Soviet Russia became a party secretary and member of the Central Committee in 1920. During the 1920s, he opposed Joseph Stalin's bureaucratization and centralization of the party and advocacy of "socialism in one country", becoming linked to Leon Trotsky and a leader of the Left Opposition movement. In 1927, he was removed from the party on Stalin's orders, but was re-admitted in 1930 after Stalin had moved towards his favored policies. During Stalin's Great Purge, Preobrazhensky was arrested in 1935 and shot in 1937.