Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/149

 which we have called three billion, one billion is applied to wages and the second to the purchase of raw materials, machines, etc., and the third to the profit of capital. Now under the new regime six billion would be produced. Of this two would be applied to raw materials, machines and such like. One would serve for compensation to the expropriated capitalists and the completion of the previously mentioned social activity. This would leave three billion for wages. This would permit a tripling of wages. And all this without any new plans or new machinery, but simply through the closing of the little industries and transference of their laborers to the large ones. We simply need to do on a large scale what the trusts are doing on a small. It is only the private ownership of the means of production that hinders the development of modern production.

This method develops still another side. Our critics are very ready to tell us that for a long time it will be impossible to socialize production because the number of existing productive establishments is much too great and it will take too long a time for competition to crush out all the little industries and therewith create a possibility of socialist production. If the number of all the industrial plants in the German empire amounts to 2½ million and those of the textile alone to over 200,000, how could one possibly manage such a number of industries nationally?