Page:Karl Kautsky - The Road to Power - tr. A. M. Simons (1909).pdf/104

 not affect other wares and which introduce an element of permanence into money wages greater than exists in regard to other goods.

Wages follow price movements, but slowly and only to a certain degree. The possessor of labor power gains more in declines of price and loses more with rising prices than buyers of other products. His standpoint in the goods market is in antagonism to that of the sellers. In spite of the fact that he produces all and consumes but a portion of his product, his standpoint is that of the consumer and not that of the producer. His product does not belong to him, but to his exploiters, the capitalists.

It is the capitalist who appears upon the market as a producer and seller with the product of the labor of the wage worker. The laborer appears there only as the buyer of the means of life.

In consequence of these facts the laborers are placed in antagonism to the sellers and also to the farmers in so far as they are sellers. It is not alone on the question of the tariff on agricultural products, but on many other points, for example, the attempt to raise the price of milk, that the farmers and the laborers stand in sharp antagonism.

The farmers, in so far as they employ wage workers, are embittered by the attempts to raise wages and improve the conditions of the industrial workers. The time of industrial prosperity and the strengthening of the unions and their victories was also the time of insufficient labor in agriculture. Not only the hired men and the hired girls, but even the children of the farmers, were drawn away to industry in ever increasing swarms, seeking to escape the barbaric conditions of life in agriculture. Naturally the accursed Socialists were blamed for this lack of labor power in the country.

So it has happened that increasing sections of those classes of the population that formerly constituted the