State capitalism is usually described as an economic system in which commercial (i.e.,
for-profit) economic activity is undertaken by the
state, where the
means of production are organized and managed as
state-owned business enterprises (including the processes of
capital accumulation,
wage labor, and centralized management), or where there is otherwise a dominance of
corporatized government agencies (agencies organized along business management practices) or
publicly listed corporations of which the state has controlling shares.
Marxist literature defines state capitalism as a social system combining capitalism—the
wage system of producing and appropriating
surplus value—with ownership or control by a state; by this definition, a state capitalist country is one where the government controls the economy and essentially acts like a single huge
corporation, extracting the surplus value from the workforce in order to invest it in further production. This designation applies regardless of the political aims of the state (even if the state is nominally socialist), and many people argue that the modern
People's Republic of China constitutes a form of state capitalism and/or that the
Soviet Union failed in its goal to establish socialism, but rather established state capitalism.