Page:Karl Kautsky - The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) - tr. William Edward Bohn (1910).djvu/21

 But newly discovered lands and commercial routes did more than bring wealth to the merchants; they opened up a new market for the sea-going nations of Europe, especially England. Handicraft was unable to satisfy the rapidly increasing demands of this market. These demands were on a large scale; production had to proceed on a large scale. That is, the market demanded a form of production which could and would I adapt itself to the demand; in other words, a form absolutely in command of the merchants.

The merchants naturally found it to their interest to satisfy the demand of this new market; and they had the money to purchase the necessary means, raw materials, tools, factories and labor. But where was this last to come from? So long as a man owns tools of his own and can produce with them, he will not sell himself to another. Fortunately for the merchant, rural laborers were being driven from the soil. The landlords wanted their share of the new prosperity, therefore they enlarged their scale of production and demanded a larger proportion of the product. So agricultural laborers were forced to the doors of the new-built factories.

Thus the foundations of capitalist industry were laid by means of expropriation, by means of a revolution as bloody as any in history.

The separation of great masses of workers from the means of production, their transformation into propertyless proletarians, was a condition necessary to capitalist production. Economic development made the change inevitable. But the rising classes were not content to sit by and