Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/162

 wares. The new and modern goods must accordingly be very strikingly distinguished from the old. Next to the restlessness which lies in the very nature of the modern manner of production, this strife of the producer is the main cause of the rapid changes of fashion. It is this which first produces the new fashions and then makes them necessary to the public.

The variations in demand for articles of consumption, especially of luxuries, are influenced much more by the variations in the income of the consumers than by variations in taste. These last variations again, so far as they do not remain isolated but really have a wide extension through society, so as to perceptibly influence consumption, arise from the contrast between prosperity and crises, from the contrast between the strong demand for labor and the increase of enforced idleness. When, however, we investigate the source of these variations we find that they spring from the field of the production of the means of production. It is universally known and recognized that to-day it is the iron industry especially which gives rise to crises.

The alternation between prosperity and crises and therewith the great variations in the demand for articles of consumption also arises out of the sphere of the production of the means of production. In the other sphere, as we have already seen, the concentration of industry and the organization of production is already so far