Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/135

 come into operation through the wages of labor.

I speak here of the wages of labor. What, it will be said, will there be wages in the new society? Shall we not have abolished wage-labor and money? How then can one speak of the wages of labor? These objections would be sound if the social revolution proposed to immediately abolish money. I maintain that this would be impossible. Money is the simplest means known up to the present time which makes it possible in as complicated a mechanism as that of the modern productive process, with its tremendous far-reaching division of labor, to secure the circulation of products and their distribution to the individual members of society. It is the means which makes it possible for each one to satisfy his necessities according to his individual inclination (to be sure within the bounds of his economic power). As a means to such circulation money will be found indispensable until something better is discovered. To be sure many of its functions, especially that of the measure of value, will disappear, at least in internal commerce. A few remarks concerning value will not be out of place here since they relate to what will be of much importance in our future discussion.

There could be no greater error than to consider that one of the tasks of a socialist society is to see that the law of value is brought into perfect operation and that only equivalent values are exchanged. The law of values is