Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution and On the Morrow of the Social Revolution - tr. John Bertram Askew (1903).djvu/78

14 it will also endeavour to make the places of work more hygienic and attractive, and eliminate as much as possible from the processes of labour their unpleasant and repulsive aspects. That is all but a continuation of the endeavours which make themselves felt even to-day, in the shape of laws for the protection of labour. But greater progress in all these directions presupposes structural and technical alterations which do not admit of being carried out in a day. It will scarcely be possible to make the work in the factories and in the mines instantly very attractive. Besides the attractiveness of the work itself, therefore, will have to be brought into play some additional powers of attraction, namely, that of the wages.

I speak here of wages. What, it will be asked, will wages still exist in the new society? Are we not going to abolish wage-labour and money? How can we talk of wages? These objections would be valid if the revolution at once proceeded to abolish money. That, however, I consider impossible. Money is the simplest means as yet known, which renders it possible, in a mechanism so complicated as the modern system of production, with its enormously-minute sub-divisipn of labour, to arrange for the smooth circulation of products and their distribution among the individual members of society; it is the means which enables everyone to satisfy his needs according to his individual taste (naturally within the limits of his economic power).

As a medium of circulation money will remain indispensable so long as nothing better is found. Certainly some of its functions—so far, at least, as economic relations within national limits are concerned—will be lost to it, above all that of measure of value. A few remarks on Value may perhaps not bfe out of place here, since they will also render clearer what is to come later on.

Nothing can be more erroneous than the view that it is incumbent on a Socialist society to realise completely the law of value, and to see that only equal values exchange with one another. Rather is the law of value peculiar only to a society based on production of commodities.

Production of commodities is that mode of production in which, under a highly developed division of labour, producers independent of each other produce for one another. But no system of production can exist without a certain definitive proportionality of productions. The amount of labour, which society commands, is limited, and it can only satisfy its needs and carry on production if, in every branch of production, there is an amount of labour engaged which corresponds to the given state of productivity. In a communist society the work is arranged systematically, that is, labour is distributed between the different branches of production, according to a settled plan. Under a production of commodities, this regulation is effected by the law of value. The value of every commodity is determined, not by the amount of labour actually spent on it, but by the socially necessary time of labour. We will