Page:Karl Kautsky - The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) - tr. William Edward Bohn (1910).djvu/140

 and expropriates those who fall behind, it will be the power of attraction which the more highly developed forms of production exercise upon the less developed ones.

A development of this sort is not only painless, it proceeds much more rapidly than that brought out by the spur of competition. Today, when the introduction of new and higher forms of production is impossible without ruining and expropriating the owners of industries carried on under inferior forms, and without inflicting suffering and privation upon the large masses of workers who have become through this means superfluous, every economic progress is doggedly resisted. We see on all sides instances of the tenacity with which producers cling to antiquated forms of production, and of their desperate efforts to preserve them. Never yet was any system of production known so revolutionary as the present one; never did any revolutionize so completely within the space of a hundred years all human activities. And yet how many ancient ruins of antiquated, out-lived forms of production still exist!

Just as soon as the fear disappears of being thrown into the proletariat if an independent industry is abandoned; just as soon as the present prejudices against large production disappear because of the advantages which the social ownership of large production will bestow upon all; just as soon as it is possible for everyone to share these advantages, only fools will strive to preserve antiquated forms of production.

What capitalist large production has not