Page:Karl Kautsky - The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) - tr. William Edward Bohn (1910).djvu/139

 the only means to ensure its progress beyond a certain point. In socialist society as in society today large industry will develop more and more and increasingly absorb small industry. But here, too, the same conclusion holds good as in the case of the family and marriage. The direction of the evolution remains the same, but socialism removes all the painful and shocking manifestations that under the present system are the accompaniments of the social evolution.

Today the transformation of the small farmer and the small producer from workers in the field of small production to workers in the field of large production means their transformation from property-holders into proletarians. In a socialist society a farmer or artisan who becomes a worker in a large socialized industry will become a sharer in all the advantages of large industry; his condition is plainly bettered. His transition from large to small industry is no more to be compared with the change from a property-holder to a proletarian, but rather to the transformation of a small property-holder into a large property-holder.

Small production is doomed to disappear. Only the socialist system can make it possible for farmers and handicraftmen to become participants in the advantages of large production without sinking into the proletariat. Only under the socialist system can the inevitable downfall of the small producer, industrial and agricultural, result in an improvement of their condition.

The mainspring of economic development will no longer be the competition which grinds down