Page:Karl Kautsky - The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) - tr. William Edward Bohn (1910).djvu/57

 industry are private property; their owner can do with them as he pleases.

The farther large production develops, the larger every single industry becomes, the better is the order to which the economic activity of each is reduced, and the more accurate and well-considered is the plan upon which each is carried on, down to the smallest details. The joint operation of the various industries is, however, left to the blind force of free competition. It is at the expense of a prodigious waste of power and of materials and under stress of constantly increasing economic crises that free competition keeps the industrial mechanism in motion. The process goes on, not by putting every one in his place, but by crushing everyone who stands in the way. This is what is called "the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence." The fact is, however, that competition crushes, not so much the truly unfit, as those who happen to stand in the wrong place, and who lack either the special qualifications or, what is more important, the capital to survive. But competition is no longer satisfied with crushing those who are unequal to the "struggle for existence." The destruction of every one of these draws in its wake the ruin of numberless others who were economically connected with the bankrupt concern—wage-earners, creditors, etc.

"Every man is the architect of his own fortune." So runs a favorite proverb, This proverb is an heirloom from the days of small production, when the fate of every single bread-winner, at most that of his family also, depended upon his