Socialism pursued through middle-class alliances yields only state capitalism.

Evidence

For this reason, whoever tries to achieve socialism with the help of the middle classes, and makes power and policy concessions to them on more than a temporary basis, will accomplish, with the best will in the world, only some forms of socialization, but not socialismat best, formal socialism. In the present epoch, that is in reality monopoly capitalism with state-capitalist trimmings, organized politically and economically on a corporate basis. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 572 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Th e strategies, however, diff ered. Whereas the miners with the Sankey Committee and the farmers and builders with their cooperatives or guilds attempted an alliance with the state to overcome the pillars of capitalism, the British and Italian councils declared war on the entire capitalist system— defi ning themselves in opposition to both the state and the private capitalists. Indeed, they abhorred the statism of the more docile reconstructionists, and they refuted the reconstructionist ideal of a transition from war collectivism to a socialist state, including the notion that it would serve as the path to workers’ emancipation. State ownership was understood as “the fi nal word in capitalist domination” and “pregnant with sinister dangers for the workers, who would become state serfs” (Th e Socialist, September 1916, from Hinton 1973, 47). — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 466 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Middle-class concessions yield only formal socialism masking monopoly capitalism — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 572; Radical council workers rejected state socialism as a new form of capitalist domination — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 466

Broader Connections

• Middle-class concessions yield only formal socialism masking monopoly capitalism #corroborates (0.95) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 572
• Radical council workers rejected state socialism as a new form of capitalist domination #exemplifies (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 466