Capital creates capitalists, who collectively form a capitalist class, and the ideas that the operation of capital engenders become the dominant ideas that infuse the state, creating a capitalist state, which defends the interests of capital. Capital then destroys the role of the capitalists in production, forcing them into the role of money-lending capitalists, owners of fictitious capital. The social function of the capitalist is taken on by a specific type of worker, the day to day manager, as the capital itself is collectivised, and becomes socialised capital. This socialised capital, is a transitional form of property between capitalism and socialism. But, the capitalists, now, as owners of fictitious capital continue to exert control over this capital they no longer own, because their continued political power enables them to establish company law to that effect and to appoint executives to act on their behalf. But, no matter what the judicial reality, the economic reality is that the interests of fictitious capital (interest-bearing capital) are antagonistic to the interests of real productive-capital, and because the latter is dominant (it is only productive-capital that produces surplus value/profit without which payments of interest are impossible) it is the interests of the real capital that must always win out over the interests of fictitious capital.
The class struggle is a struggle between different types of property that assumes the phenomenal form of a struggle between different social classes, only because these social classes are comprised of the individuals that are the personification of these contending forms of property. The progressive form of property is now the socialised capital, as a transitional form. It is the collective property of the working-class, including that portion of the working-class that now comprises the professional managers, or “functioning capitalists”. This is most clear in the case of the worker owned cooperatives. Taken as a whole, this large-scale, socialised capital, together with all of the planning and regulation that goes with a modern capitalist economy, provides everything that is materially required for the construction of Socialism. What is missing is the direct, democratic control over this capital, and over the state by the working-class.
The workers could not establish such control until such time that capitalism had created the material conditions for such large-scale, socialised capital to begin with. That was, as Marx describes it, the “historic mission of capital”, to accumulate, concentrate and centralise the previously scattered means of production. Moreover, capitalism needed to develop to a certain level, before the workers could undertake this function, because capitalism must first forge a unified working-class on a large scale, and must develop the productive forces to such a degree that this working-class itself is educated and cultured so as to be able to take on all of these functions of a ruling-class, including immediately, being able to exercise such a role in the democratic control over production. Capitalism must develop to a stage, whereby, the working-day can be shortened, allowing the workers to educate themselves, and to have the time to devote to involvement in this day to day democracy. This is part of what Marx calls The Civilising Mission of Capital.
Indeed, because Socialism is only conceivable at an international level, capitalism had to develop to a stage whereby it had created a global economy and global market, where capital itself becomes multinational, and a system of global rules for the operation and accumulation of capital are established (imperialism) founded upon the dominance of industrial capital. It means that an international working-class is created, able, then, to construct Socialism as an international system.
For Socialism, democratic control of the means of production is required, but such democratic control is itself only feasible on the basis of a high degree of development of the productive forces and of the working-class, by capital.
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