Like a degenerated workers' state, a deformed workers' state cannot be said to be a state that is transitioning to socialism.

There are various terms used by Trotskyists to define such states, such as "degenerated workers' state" and "deformed workers' state", "state capitalist" or "bureaucratic collectivist".

Others, such as the Freedom Socialist Party, say that the People's Republic of China has gone too far on the road of capitalist restoration to be considered a deformed workers' state.

Within Marxist theory, Lenin's concept of the labor aristocracy and his description of imperialism, and-separately, but not necessarily unrelatedly-Trotsky's theories regarding the deformed workers' state, offer several explanations as to why the world revolution has not occurred to the present day.

While the Trotskyists argued that Cuba was a deformed workers' state, the supporters of the SWP argued that Cuban Revolution was a full worker's revolution and that the Cuban state was a genuine worker's state.

The term deformed workers' state was coined by Trotskyists of the Fourth International to describe those states, like the Soviet satellite states of Eastern Europe as well as China, which are or were based upon collectivised means of production, but in which the working class never held direct political power.