Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/139

 this the manufacture of suspenders will be unprofitable and the number of labor powers devoted to it will decrease and flow again to the manufacture of trousers which has become so extraordinarily profitable.

It is in this manner that the law of value under free competition regulates production. It is not the best conceivable way to regulate production but it is the only one possible with private property in the means of production. With social property in the means of production we shall have instead social regulation of production and the necessity of regulating production by the exchange of equal values will cease. Therewith also will disappear the necessity of money as a measure of value. In place of metallic money we can easily have token money. The price of products themselves can now be determined independent of their value. Meanwhile the amount of labor time embodied will always have an important bearing in determining its value and it is probable that the inherited price would be approximated.

While labor gives value and price to the product and labor must be paid with money there will be wages. In spite of this it would be false if one were to speak of a continuation of the present wage system as is done by many Fabians who say that the object of socialism is not to abolish the wage system but rather to make it universal. That is only superficially correct. As a matter of fact wages under the