Page:Karl Kautsky - The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) - tr. William Edward Bohn (1910).djvu/86

 of course, those among the large capitalists who survive get a rich booty. For during a crisis two important things take place: first, the expropriation of the "small fry"; second, the concentration of production into fewer hands, and thereby the accumulation of large fortunes.

Few, if any, can tell whether they will survive the crisis. All the horrors of the modern system of production, the uncertainty of a livelihood, want, prostitution and crime, reach at such times alarming proportions. Thousands perish from cold and hunger because they have produced too much clothing, too much food, and too many houses! It is at such seasons that the fact becomes most glaring that the modern productive powers are becoming more and more irreconcilable with the system of production for sale, and that private ownership in the means of production is growing into a greater and greater curse—first, for the class of the propertyless, and then for that of the property holders themselves.

Some political economists have declared that the trust would do away with the crisis. This is false.

The regulation of production by large syndicates or trusts presupposes above all things their control of all branches of industry and the organization of these upon an international basis in all countries over which the capitalist system of production extends. But international trusts are difficult to organize and more difficult to hold together; so it is seldom that a trust becomes powerful enough to regulate international trade and avert a crisis. With regard to