Page:Karl Kautsky - The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) - tr. William Edward Bohn (1910).djvu/67

 It happens, therefore, that while the exploitation of the working-man tends to rise, the rate of capitalist profit has a tendency to sink. This fact is one of the most remarkable contradictions of the capitalist system of production—a system that bristles with contradictions.

Some there are who have concluded from this sinking of profits that the capitalist system of exploitation will put an end to itself, that capital will eventually yield so little profit that starvation will force the capitalists to look for work. This conclusion would be correct, if, as the rate of profits sank, the quantity of invested capital remained the same. This, however, is by no means the case. The total quantity of capital in all capitalist nations grows at a more rapid pace than the rate of profit declines. The increase of capital is a prerequisite to the sinking of profit, and if a capitalist's investment has increased from one million to two, and from two million to four, his income is not reduced when the rate of profit sinks from 5 per cent to 4, and from 4 to 3.

The decline of the rate of profit, and likewise of interest, in no way implies a reduction of the income of the capitalist class, for the mass of surplus that flows into its hands grows constantly larger; the decline diminishes solely the income of those capitalists who are not able correspondingly to increase their capital. In the course of industrial development, it takes a constantly increasing amount of capital to support its owner with the "dignity of his class." The quantity of capital requisite to free its owner from labor, and to enable him to live on the labor of others,