If we look at the description of this transitional, social-democratic regime, under capitalism, as represented by socialised capital, as the transitional form of property, described by Marx and Engels, the class struggle is decisive. It is inevitable that the socialised capital borrows from the methods of the future society, by planning and regulating production and distribution, by seeking to expand the size of the market and the state.
As Marx and Engels describe, in Anti-Duhring, however, all of this is done, still in the interests of capitalists. As owners of fictitious-capital (shares, bonds, property, derivatives) it is done so that the huge amounts of mobilised capital can operate smoothly over the very long time horizons required for a return on fixed capital, and so that the interest/dividends they obtain from lending money is secured. In order for all of this to be turned to the workers' interest, the class struggle is required, so that the associated producers assert their right of control over the socialised capital, as they do in the worker cooperatives. It requires they establish a workers' state to that end, to enforce that right.
But, essentially, that is what is demanded in Manuilsky's description of the revolutionary dictatorship.
“Who did these people learn from? From Victor Chernov. It is precisely he who, in 1905-06, outlined such a Russian Revolution as would be neither bourgeois nor socialist, but democratic, and would gradually be supplemented by socialist elements.” (p 235)
The same vulgarism is the method, today, of the petty-bourgeois socialists who support an abstract, class-neutral “Ukraine”, “Ukrainian state”, “Ukrainian people”, and so on, in order to avoid the reality that they are supporting one corrupt capitalist class camp, in a war against another corrupt capitalist class camp. But, for years their statism also led them to present nationalisation, by that capitalist state, as, in some sense, “socialist”, as the Lassalleans and Fabians do, which, also requires a belief that this state is not a class state, but a “class neutral” state!
“It appears that under democracy, capitalism will grow over into socialism in a series of stages. And the power – will it remain the same in this process or will it change? What class will hold power under the democratic dictatorship and what class under the socialist? If different classes will hold power then they can supplant each other only by a new revolution, and not through the “growing over” of the power of one class into the power of another. On the other hand, if it is assumed that in both periods one and the same class will dominate, that is, the proletariat, then what is the meaning of the democratic dictatorship as against the proletarian? To this there can be no answer. And there will not be. Manuilsky is ordered not to clear up the question but to cover up the traces.” (p 235-6)
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