Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/143

 if we were to raise the wages of labor to raise production above its present amount.

It will be one of the imperative tasks of the social revolution not simply to continue but to increase production. The victorious proletariat must extend production rapidly if it is to be able to satisfy the enormous demands that will be made upon the new regime.

There are various means by which production can be increased. Two of the most important of these have already attained great significance. Both have been applied with great results by the trusts of America from which very much can be learned concerning the methods of the social revolution. They show us how at a single stroke the productivity of labor can be increased simply by concentrating the total production in the most perfect industrial plants and throwing all those out of operation which do not attain a definite standard. The Sugar Trust, for example, a few years ago consigned all but about one-fourth of the industrial plants which it possessed to idleness and in this one-fourth it has produced as much as previously in the whole number. The whiskey trust also obtained eighty large distilleries and, at once put out of operation sixty-eight out of the eighty. It is only operating twelve distilleries but in these twelve it produces even more than hitherto in the eighty. A