State ownership does stand in contradiction to capitalism. State ownership *can* be an aspect of socialism, if the state is used as a tool to supress the law of value. Socialism is a slippery concept, but I would say that you have socialism if there is a definite move in the direction of communism, i.e. the abolition of value form, the state, and social classes.
*****************************
I'd say that as long as you have a State as a governing bureaucracy, you have class dictatorship. It's similar to the unity of wage-labour and Capital. If you have one, you have the other. At least, that's the way I see it.
If as Marx, indicated in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, you can manage a DOP with without falling into wage-labour e.g. SNLT vouchers with proper deductions for social/technical etc. maintenance, you can consider yourself on the way to socialism, which by the way, Marx and Engels and most social revolutionaries of the 19th Century saw as an interchangeable concept with communism. This concept of communism/socialism was lost to most of the worker's movement in the 20th Century. A DOP would be a much freer situation than the current varying, national forms of class dictatorship around the world. To the extent that a DOP is developed within the confines of a political-economy based on wage-labour, to that extent, the society can be seen as progressing towards more freedom from wage-slavery, classes and the State. An example of this might be an ever growing and therefore, powerful class conscious organization like the I.W.W.
Best,
Mike B)
Read "Penguins in Bondage": http://happystiletto.blogspot.com/
--------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!?
Get on board. You're invited to try the new Yahoo! Mail. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20060924/180d7797/attachment.htm>