The equation “socialism = statism” is a falsification due to the aberrations of Stalinism and to the inadequate critic moved by Trotskyism against the Russian society and its productive structure, as well as to the mystifications of bourgeoise reformism. On the contrary, according to Marxism, the state machine is a tool of power of the dominant class, i.e. of the bourgeoisie on the proletariat, and for this reason it has to be broken.

The state property, instead of the private property, of the industry does not change the nature of the social relations of production. The state intervention and control in economy doesn’t represent a fracture in the fundamental laws of capitalist economy. Instead, in a certain sense, it is the natural and unavoidable result of its whole historical development. This intervention can be pushed to the point of eliminating the juridical form of the individual private property of the means of production; but this happens without eliminating the fundamental data of the capitalist system of production - i.e. the exploitation of human work through the appropriation of the plusvalue it produces - but, on the contrary, strengthening it.

• leftcom.org Le nazionalizzazioni arma del capitalismo