Page:Karl Kautsky - The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) - tr. William Edward Bohn (1910).djvu/87

 the principal mission of the trust is not to check it, but to shift its evil consequences from the shoulders of capitalists upon those of workmen and consumers.

But let it be assumed that eventually the leading industries have been successfully organized into well-disciplined, international trusts. What would be the result? Competition among capitalists would be removed in one direction only. The more completely competition disappears among the producers in one branch of industry, the greater becomes the antagonism between them and the producers of other commodities, who, as consumers, need the products of the trust, in short, complete international trustification would cause the capitalist class to be divided no longer into competing individuals, but into hostile groups, who would wage war to the knife against one another.

Only when all trusts are joined into one and the whole machinery of production of all capitalist nations is concentrated in a few hands, that is, when private property in the means of production has virtually come to an end, can the trust abolish the crisis. On the contrary, from a certain stage on in industrial development, the crisis is inevitable so long as private property in the means of production continues.

Along with the periodical crises and their permanent manifestations, along with the recurring