bourgeoisie is the ruling class and when it nationalises its trusts and syndicates, this nationalisation nowise involves the expropriation of the bourgeoisie. All that happens is that the bourgeoisie takes its goods out of one pocket and puts them into the other. Everything is transferred into the possession of its own State, the masters’ State. The bourgeoisie continues to exploit the working class as heretofore. The working class, as heretofore, works not for itself but for the enemies of its class. Such nationalisation is bourgeois nationalisation. The result of such nationalisation is to produce the social order we considered in Part One under the name of State capitalism. It is a very different matter when nationalisation is effected under the rule of the proletariat. Now the factories, the workshops, the means of transport, and so on, are transferred to the proletarian Power; they do not pass under the control of the organisation of the masters, but under the control of the organisation of the workers. In this case, therefore, there is actually effected the expropriation of the bourgeoisie. The capitalists actually forfeit the foundations of their wealth, their dominion, their energy, and their power. The whole basis of exploitation is destroyed. The proletarian State cannot exploit the proletariat, for the simple reason that it is itself an organisation of the proletariat. A man cannot climb upon his own back. The proletariat cannot exploit its own self. Under State capitalism, the bourgeoisie loses nothing by the fact that the private entrepreneurs have ceased to work separately, and have joined hands to fleece the public. In proletarian nationalisation, obversely, the workers in the separate factories lose nothing by the fact that they are not independent masters in their own factories, by the fact that all the enterprises belong to the working class in its entirety, to the greatest of all workers’ organisations, which is known as the Soviet State.
The expropriation of the bourgeoisie, which was begun immediately after the November revolution, has now been practically completed. Within the confines of Soviet Russia, the entire transport system (railways and waterways) has been nationalised, and from 80 to 90 per