Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism
There are various theories and critiques of state capitalism, some of which existed before the October Revolution. The common themes among them identify that the workers do not meaningfully control the means of production and that capitalist social relations and production for profit still occur within state capitalism, fundamentally retaining the capitalist mode of production. In ' (1880), Friedrich Engels argued that state ownership does not do away with capitalism by itself, but rather would be the final stage of capitalism, consisting of ownership and management of large-scale production and communication by the bourgeois state. He argued that the tools for ending capitalism are found in state capitalism. In "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism" (1916), Lenin claimed that World War I had transformed "laissez-faire" capitalism into the monopolist state capitalism.