Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/156

 The proletarian can only accomplish this regulation of the circulation of products by the abolition of private property in industry, and it not only can do this but it must do it if the process of production is to proceed under its direction and its regime is to be permanent. It must fix the height of production of each individual social productive plant according to the basis calculated upon the existing productive power (laborers and means of production) and of the existing needs, and see to it that each productive plant has not only the necessary laborers but also the necessary means of production and that the necessary products are delivered to the consumers.

Is not this task however insoluble in the great modern States? It would presuppose that in Germany the State is to become the director of production of two million productive plants and to act as medium for the circulation of this product, which will come to it partially in the form of means of production and partially as means of consumption to be distributed to sixty million consumers, of which each one has a special and changing need. The task appears overwhelming if one does not proceed from the point of view of regulating the necessities of humanity from above according to a very simple pattern and assigning to each one, barrack fashion, his portion, which would mean the lowering of modern civilization to a much lower