Page:Karl Kautsky - The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) - tr. William Edward Bohn (1910).djvu/74

 ideas. On the other hand, the capitalist whose business is large enough to yield him $100,000 annually, may, even though he were to spend upon himself five times as much as the previous one, add annually $60,000, i. e., three-fifths of his profits, to his previous capital. While the small capitalists are compelled to struggle harder and harder for their existence, the large accumulations in the hands of the large capitalists swell faster and faster and within a short time reach immense proportions.

To summarize: The growth of large establishments, the rapid increase of large fortunes, the steady decrease in the number of establishments, the steady concentration of different concerns in one hand,—all these make it evident that the tendency of the capitalist system of production is to concentrate in the hands of an ever smaller number the instruments of production, which have become the monopoly of the capitalist class. The final result must be the concentration of all the instruments of production in the hands of one person or one stock company, to be used as private property and be disposed of at will; the whole machinery of production will be turned into a gigantic concern subject to a single master. The private ownership of the means of production leads, under the capitalist system, to its own destruction! Its development takes the ground from under itself. The moment the wage-workers constitute the bulk of the consumers, the products in which the surplus lies locked up become unsalable, that is, valueless.

In point of fact, a state of things such as here