END OF GERMAN CAPITALISM
industry. The capitalist economic system is governed by the laws
of the market whpse analysis was given by Marx, and the
auton–
omy
of those laws constitutes the determining characteristic of
the capitalist system of production.
However, what a government economy does is precisely to
abolish the autonomy of the economic laws;
it
is not a market
economy, but an economy for use. What is produced, and how it
is produced, is no longer determined by the price but by the State
planning commission which fixes the character and extent of pro–
duction. To outward appearance, prices and wages still exist, but
their function has changed entirely. They no longer determine
the march of production. That is directed by the central govern–
ment, which alone fixes both prices and wage scales. Prices and
wages are now only instruments of distribution determining for
every one his share in the sum total of what the central govern–
ment allots to the population. They have now become the techni–
cal means of distribution, a method which is simpler than would
be a direct order stipulating the amounts of the various products
(which have ceased to be 'commodities') to be received by each
individual. The prices have become symbols of distribution, but
they are no longer the regulators of the nation's economy. While
the form has been maintained, the function has been completely
changed.
213
Now it is true that in this passage Hilferding is concerned
mainly with the Soviet economy, which he believes to be 'totali–
taran' and not 'State capitalist.' (Hilferding, in fact, denies the
theoretical possibility of the existence of
State
capitalism.)
It
is
also true that in Germany you still have private property, at least
in
form, whereas in the Soviet Union you have instead collectivized
property (again, however, I must insist, 'at least in form'). This
difference, however, is not very important because (1) private
ownership of the means of production is not an exclusive feature
of the capitalist system (since in the slave states of antiquity you
also had private ownership, to name only one example), but rather,
as Marx, Trotsky and Hilferding all agree, production for the
market
is the distinguishing feature; and (2) in any case, in Ger–
many
private property exists in form only, not in reality, since the
State determines what use the 'owner' shall make of his 'property'
-as must be the case once the State has brought under its totali–
tarian control the very foundation-stone of capitalist property rela–
tions, namely, the market.
