the class character of the State. The State must not be conceived as constituting a “third power” standing above the classes; from head to foot it is a class organisation. Under the dictatorship of the workers it is a working-class organisation. Under the dominion of the bourgeoisie it is just as definitely an economic organisation as is a trust or a syndicate.
We see, then, that when the bourgeoisie handed over the privately owned syndicates and trusts to the State, it handed them over to its own State, to the robber capitalist State and not to the proletarian State; consequently it had nothing to lose by the change. Is it not precisely the same thing to a manufacturer, whom we may call Schulz or Smith, whether he receives his profits from the counting-house of a syndicate or from a State-bank? Far from losing by the change, the bourgeoisie actually gained. There was a gain because, through the State centralisation of industry, the war machine was enabled to work to better effect, and there was a greater chance of winning the war of rapine.
It is not surprising, therefore, that in nearly all capitalist countries there took place during the war a development of State capitalism in the place of the capitalism of private syndicates or trusts. Germany, for example, gained many successes and was able for a lengthy period to resist attack from enemies of a greatly superior strength, simply because the German bourgeoisie was so successful in the organisation of its State capitalism.
The change to State capitalism was effected in various ways. In most cases a State monopoly of production and trade was instituted. This implied that production and trade were placed wholly in the hands of the bourgeois State. Sometimes the transformation was not effected all at once, but by instalments. This took place when the State merely bought some of the shares of the syndicate or trust.
An enterprise in which this had taken place was half private and half a