A socialist-oriented state seeks to reach socialism by non-capitalist development. As a term, it is substantially different from the concept of the national-democratic state. The singular difference is that the socialist-oriented state was divided into two stages, firstly into a national-democratic socialist-oriented state and secondly into a people's democratic socialist-oriented state. Countries belonging to the national-democratic socialist-oriented state category were also categorised as national-democratic states. Examples of national-democratic socialist-oriented states are Algeria ruled by the National Liberation Front, Ba'athist Iraq and Socialist Burma. In contrast, people's democratic socialist-oriented states had to be guided by Marxism–Leninism and accept the universal truths of Marxism–Leninism and reject other notions of socialism such as African socialism.