Page:Karl Kautsky - The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) - tr. William Edward Bohn (1910).djvu/102

 him. The individual has always been thrown upon co-operation with others in order to satisfy some of his principal wants; others had to work for him and he. in turn, had to work for others. Individual production for self-consumption has always played a subordinate part; today it hardly deserves mention.

Until the present system of production (production for sale) was developed, co-operative production for common use was the leading form; it is as old as production itself. If any one system of production could be considered better adapted than any other to the nature of man, then co-operative production must be pronounced the natural one. In all probability for every thousand years of production for sale, co-operative production for use numbers tens of thousands. The character, extent and power of co-operative societies have changed along with the instruments and methods of production which they adopted. Nevertheless, whether such a commonwealth was a horde or a tribe or any other form of community, they all had certain essential features in common. Each satisfied its own wants, at least the most vital ones, with the product of its own labor; the instruments of production were the property of the community; its members worked together as free and equal individuals according to some plan inherited or devised, and administered by some power elected by themselves. The product of such co-operative labor was the property of the community and was applied either to the satisfaction of common wants, whether these were occasioned by