Page:Karl Kautsky - From Handicraft to Capitalism - tr. H. J. Neumann (1907).djvu/16

 to handicraft. The machine makes this superiority completely crushing.

Handicraft survives only in those industries where it is not yet a question of production on a large scale, but one of petty production for a market still limited.

But the machine has not only changed industry but also the means of transit. Steamers and railways reduce more and more the freights on goods, establish further communication between the remotest and most secluded places and the centres of industry, and extend from day to day the markets for each of these centres. Only in this way is the full development of the machine in industry possible. The tremendous increase of production caused by the introduction of machinery demands also a proportionate increase in the disposal of the products.

In the same measure in which the means of transit are extended and perfected, in the same measure in which the market for particular industries is widened, by that same degree is the scope of handicraft getting limited. The number of trades and places where handicraft is still able to exist is already inconsiderable and diminishing perceptibly. The factory prevails and the days of handicraft are passing away.

But what holds good with handicraft applies also, if not in equal measure, to peasant farming. Wherever agriculture, whether on a small or large scale, has become production of commodities, production for sale, not for use, the large enterprise even if not more capable possesses from the beginning the same advantage over the petty enterprise which the capitalist has over the handicraftsman, namely, a better understanding and control of the market. The large landowner or his tenant possessed of capital is able to make the enterprise more fruitful than the peasant, and is also in the position to use better implements and tools, better breeding and working cattle, better manure, better com for sowing, etc. The technical and commercial supremacy of agriculture on a large scale in Europe has during the last two decades been somewhat restricted owing to the agricultural competition from abroad, which proved a greater hardship to European agriculture on a large scale than to petty agricultural enterprise, firstly because it expressed itself principally in the raising of corn, a branch of agriculture in which the technical supremacy of the large enterprise over petty agriculture is most pronounced. In the large enterprise corn growing prevails, and this suffers most through the competition of the bonanza farms of America. Secondly, the large enterprise suffers more through foreign competition because it produces more with a view to the market, whilst the petty enterprise consumes a great portion of its own product, and is thus less dependent upon the market than the large enterprise.

But these favourable conditions for petty enterprise can be only temporary. Foreign competition does not remain restricted to corn growing; it extends also to the development of cattle raising, and production for self consumption with the peasant declines and becomes absorbed by the production of commodities, the production for sale.

It is principally the development of the railway and taxation system, which favours the extension of the production of commodities in agriculture. Through the railways the peasant obtains communication with the markets of the world. The taxes force him to go to the market, as he is unable to pay them without selling a certain quantity of his products. The higher the taxes, the more the peasant depends upon the market, the more his production becomes production of commodities, and the more he is affected by the competition of the large enterprise. To no class of our population is the increase of the taxes so disastrous as to the petty peasant.