国家资本主义是一种典型由国家力量主导的资本主义制度，国有、国有控股、国营为主导的资本形式。

《中国人民政治协商会议共同纲领》对“国家资本主义”的定义是：“国家资本与私人资本合作的经济为国家资本主义性质的经济。在必要和可能的条件下，应鼓励私人资本向国家资本主义方向发展，例如为国家企业加工，或与国家合营，或用租借形式经营国家的企业，开发国家的富源等。”

国家资本主义是一种不严格的超级垄断资本主义。主要表现为资本集中和生产集中，垄断组织在主要产业部门乃至整个经济生活中具有支配地位，而国家资本主义的垄断组织主体即国家。但是这种垄断资本主义具有较强的民族性，不能组成有效的国际垄断组织，甚至和别国的垄断组织（包括国际垄断组织）都具有相当强烈的竞争，在争夺原材料和销售市场，进行资本输出的同时，必然导致政治、经济、甚至军事上和其他垄断组织控制的国家冲突。

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 ***************** constitutes a form of state capitalism and/or that the Soviet Union failed in its goal to establish socialism, but rather established state capitalism.