Page:Karl Kautsky - The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) - tr. William Edward Bohn (1910).djvu/91

 become ever shorter; the length of the crises ever longer.

Hence the quantity of the means of production that either cannot be turned to sufficient use or is forced to remain wholly unused, is on the increase; the quantity of wealth that goes to waste is greater and greater; the quantity of labor power compelled to lie idle is ever more appalling. Under this last head belong not only the swarms of unemployed who are rapidly growing into a threatening social danger; under it must also be numbered, first, that ever-increasing crew of social parasites who, finding all avenues of productive work closed to them, try to eke out a miserable existence through a variety of occupations, most of which are wholly superfluous and not a few injurious to society—such as middlemen, saloonkeepers, agents, drummers, etc.; second, that stupendous mass of humanity of all degrees that may be designated as, "the slums," such as the cheats and swindlers of high and low grade, the criminals and prostitutes, together with their innumerable dependents; third, the swarms of those who fasten upon the possessing classes in the capacity of personal servants; finally, there is the great body of soldiers, for the steady increase of armies during the last twenty years would not have been possible without the overproduction which has set free so large a part of the world's labor-power.

The capitalist system begins to suffocate in its own surplus; it becomes constantly less able to endure the full unfolding of the productive powers which it has created. Constantly more