> CB: Doesn't it make sense, in terms of reality, to anticipate that there
> will be a transitional phase and society between capitalism and
> communism ?
Of course, and that is what Marx and Engels wrote about in the dictatorship of the proletariat: a political transition to bring about communism.
> Secondly, one practical reason there must be a socialist state is that as
> long as there are capitalist states, the revolutionary countries
> must have a
> state to defend themseleves from the capitalist states, as the first
> historic experiences with building socialism have proven in spades.
A "socialist state" is an oxymoron used to disguise a dictatorship over the proletariat. Even Lenin realised, some of the time, that socialism in one country could not be viable in a capitalist world.
What the "historic experiences with building socialism have proven" is that they furthered the development of wage labour, capital, commodity production and the state, which resulted in the exploitation of the working class by the party bureaucracy as the exploiting class.
-- Lew