Statism

Also found in: Dictionary, Financial, Wikipedia.

Related to Statism: socialism

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Statism

a school of political thought that treats the state as the highest product and goal of social development.

The principles of statism can be traced historically through many political doctrines. During the precapitalist period, they were used primarily as a substantiation and defense of absolutism; for example, Hobbes made use of statist notions in his doctrine of the state. Hegel asserted that the state is an end in itself and the highest of all goals. In bourgeois societies, it was originally believed that the state should have a limited role in the life of a country, and statism was a primarily antiliberal and anti-democratic doctrine propounded by reactionary sociopolitical forces demanding strong state power. The most extreme form of statism is fascism’s “total state.”

Anticommunists demagogically call the socialist system statist because of the important role that the state plays in socialist societies. In actuality the socialist state is not opposed to society or the individual; on the contrary, its objective is the creation of real opportunities for the comprehensive development of the individual. Its highest goal is the building of a communist society that has a communist form of social self-government.

Mentioned in ?

References in periodicals archive ?

However, since the second government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2009, the meaning of Statism shifted as institutions increasingly have become part of the conflict.

Palestinian question absent from Israeli poll debate

As more and more Americans come to understand them, they will see that statism does not have the moral high ground.

Mark Pellegrino on the American Capitalist Party

Her argument is both coherent and persuasive, but most of all, manages to make sense of the debates between ideal and non-ideal theory, statism and cosmopolitanism, sufficientarianism and global egalitarianism, without oversimplifying the arguments offered by different camps.

Lea Ypi: Global Justice & Avant-Garde Political Agency

Maurice Clements, a spokesman for the Ralph Smeed Foundation, the ultra-libertarian group that owns the billboard boasting the slogan, 'Making Statism Unpopular' - admitted to the Idaho Statesman that the provocative content is 'a technique of trying to make a point, and maybe it was poorly done'.

Outrage over billboard comparing Obama with 'The Dark Knight Rises' shooter

He said: "The mutual taking of responsibility pushes back that passive welfarism, a passive statism, some people call it, that is the state is the provider and solver of problems.

Welfare worries; Archbishop warns against reliance on the state

A mutual taking of responsibility pushed back at a 'passive welfarism and a passive statism, an assumption that the state is a provider of solutions, a solver of problems, he said.

Archbishop hits out at 'culture of dependency'

Back on the Road to Serfdom: The Resurgence of Statism gathers ten scholars who write about how the evolving road to statism is being fostered in by the explosion of government growth.

Back on the Road to Serfdom

In the end, the triumph of statism at the very moment when some hoped a new form of internationalism would be announced is not surprising.

Face the Nations

Kosanke proves, via empirical evidence, that the abolition of property rights destroys and corrupts order and must be prevented by rejecting statism.

Review of Kosanke's Instead of Politics

By tracing important changes in how Shakespeare's soldiers conceive of their formal and ethical responsibilities, Riccomini's essay offers a new way to understand the passage from feudalism to statism.

Dear Readers

DHAKA, Nov 15, 2010 (TUR) -- Turkish Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged Bangladeshi administration to bring transparency to public tenders and abandon statism for development.

(DIP)ERDOGAN URGES BANGLASDESH TO BRING TRANSPARENCY TO PUBLIC TENDERS AND ABONDON STATISM FOR DEVELOPMENT