But, this change in material conditions, and of the social relations that arise upon it, do not automatically translate into corresponding ideological, political and legal forms. That requires that the classes involved themselves become aware of their actual position in society. So, for example, the fact that such a social revolution has already occurred, and transformed the dominant sections of capital into socialised capital, into the capital of the associated producers, is not at all immediately grasped by those producers, other than when it occurs in the form of the worker owned cooperative. Elsewhere, the illusion continues that the capital is the property of the money-lending capitalists, who actually, now, own only the certificates obtained for having loaned that money-capital, i.e. their share certificates and bonds. Because the workers do not immediately grasp the reality that, as associated producers, they are now the collective owners of this socialised capital, they do not begin to wage a class struggle on that basis, a political struggle to ensure that they have the control of that capital.
“This is the abolition of the capitalist mode of production within the capitalist mode of production itself, and hence a self-dissolving contradiction, which prima facie represents a mere phase of transition to a new form of production. It manifests itself as such a contradiction in its effects. It establishes a monopoly in certain spheres and thereby requires state interference. It reproduces a new financial aristocracy, a new variety of parasites in the shape of promoters, speculators and simply nominal directors; a whole system of swindling and cheating by means of corporation promotion, stock issuance, and stock speculation. It is private production without the control of private property.”
(ibid)
In the absence of the workers realising that they are now the collective owners of this socialised capital, the money-lending capitalists utilise their own political power. They frame company law so as to give them control over property they no longer own. They establish laws of corporate governance that allow them to appoint these “nominal directors” and executives to act on their behalf rather than the interest of the company. None of this was prediction, but a description of existing reality.
“Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production. No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.”
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