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176
VIOLENCE AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT
direction of production." Commenting himself upon
this statement, he adds in a footnote: "I say 'have to.'
For only when the means of production and distribution
have actually outgrown the form of management by
joint-stock companies, and when, therefore, the taking
them over by the State has become economically inevitable,
only then — even if it is the State of to-day that effects
this— is there an economic advance, the attainment
of another step preliminary to the taking over of all
productive forces by society itself." "This necessity,"
he continues, "for conversion into State property
is felt
first in the great institutions for intercourse and communication—
the post-office, the telegraphs, the railways."
(26)
Here is the entire position in a nutshell. But Engels
says the State will "have to." Thus Engels and Marx
are not stating necessarily what they desire. And it
must not be forgotten that in all such statements both
were outlining only what appeared to them to be a natural
and inevitable evolution. In State ownership they
saw an outcome of the necessary centralization of capital
and its growth into huge monopolies. Society would be
forced to use the power of the State to control, and
eventually to own, these menacing aggregations of capital
in the hands of a few men. Both Marx and Engels
saw clearly enough that State monopoly does not destroy
the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. "The
modern State, no matter what its form, is essentially a
capitalist machine . . . The more it
proceeds to the
taking over of productive forces,
. . . the more citizens
does it exploit. The workers remain wage workers—
proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done
away with. It is rather brought to a head. But, brought
to a head, it topples over. State ownership of the pro-