Page:Karl Kautsky - The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) - tr. William Edward Bohn (1910).djvu/80

 are all present in this illustration. Of course, in reality, the crisis does not manifest itself at such a primitive stage of production. At the first stage of production of merchandise, production for sale, every producer produces more or less for self-consumption; production for sale constitutes in each family but a part of its total industry. The weaver and the miller of the illustration given above are each possessed of a patch of land and some cattle, and they can wait patiently until a purchaser for their commodities turns up. If the worst came to the worst, they could even manage to live without him.

Furthermore, in the first stages of production for sale the market is still small, it can easily be estimated; year in and year out, production and consumption, the whole social life of a community, keep on the even tenor of their way. In the small settlements of the past everyone knew everybody and was well-informed as to his wants and his purchasing capacity. The industrial activity of such places remained substantially the same from year to year; the number of producers, the productivity of labor, the quantity of products, the number of consumers, their wants, the money at their disposal—all of these changed but slowly, and each change was promptly observed and taken into consideration.

All this takes on a different aspect with the appearance of commerce. Under its influence production for self-consumption is crowded ever more to the rear; the individual producers of the goods for sale, and to a greater extent the dealers, are more and more thrown for their