Page:Karl Kautsky - The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) - tr. William Edward Bohn (1910).djvu/65

 hand-weaver; over and above that, how tremendous are today the buildings, power engines, looms, etc., necessary to carry on the industry.

There is still another thing to be considered. The only outlays of the capitalist who a hundred years ago employed a spinner were for wages and raw material, there was not then any fixed capital, for the cost of the spinning-wheel was too trifling to consider. He turned his capital over quickly, say every three months; as a result of this, he needed, to start with, only one-quarter of the capital which he used during the whole year. Today the capital invested in a spinning-mill for machinery and buildings is enormous. Even though the time within which the capitalist could get back the sum he pays out in wages and for raw materials were now the same as it was a hundred years ago, the time which it now takes him to get back the rest of his capital, which a hundred years ago he hardly needed, has become a very long one.

A number of circumstances work in the opposite direction. Among these the most important are the recently developed system of credit and the decline in the value of products, the latter of which is the inevitable result of the increase in the productivity of labor. But neither of these causes is sufficient to counteract the effect of the others. In all branches of production, in some slowly, in others rapidly, the quantity of capital necessary for production grows perceptibly from year to year.

Let it be assumed that the capital necessary for a certain industry a hundred years ago was $100,