Editing Socialism (section)

=== The Formation of Joint-Stock Companies ===
Marx & Engels saw in the emergence of joint-stock companies the following:

(1) Tremendous expansion in the scale of production at enterprises which would be other impossible for individual capitalists (read ''development of productive forces''). 

(2) At the same time, capital, which is inherently based on a social mode of production and presupposes a social concentration of means of production and labor-power, now receives the ''form'' ''of'' ''social capital'' (this is what a joint-stock company is, i.e. a public company) in contrast to private capital, and its enterprises appear as ''social enterprises'' ''as opposed to private ones.'' This is the ''abolition of capital as private property within the confines (context) of the capitalist mode of production itself''. 

Marx calls this precisely the abolition of the capitalist mode of production within the capitalist mode of production itself, and hence a self-abolishing contradiction, which presents itself as a mere point of transition to a ''new form of production''.<ref>Capital Volume III (Penguin), p. 569.</ref>