Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/158

 and to formulate more clearly the loose relations.

This problem is considerably restricted by the fact already discussed that the concentration of production in the most perfect productive plants has already perceptibly decreased the number of industries. Of the 2,146,972 businesses which constituted the industry of the German Empire in 1895 there were only 17,941 great businesses having more than 50 laborers (and these contained three million laborers out of the total number of eight million industrial workers). To be sure I do not assert that only these great industries will be retained in activity. To attempt to give absolutely exact figures of a future condition would be absurd. All the numbers herewith printed have simply the purpose of illustrating the problems which arise and not of narrowly setting forth how things will be formulated in reality. The relation of two million industrial plants to 18,000 great industries shows that the number of industrial plants would be perceptibly decreased under a proletarian regime.

But the difficulties of the organization of production and circulation can be diminished in other directions as well as by a decrease in the number of plants. Production can be divided into two great fields; those in which the production is for consumption and those in which production is for production. The production of means of production, thanks to the