Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution and On the Morrow of the Social Revolution - tr. John Bertram Askew (1903).djvu/82

18 will have to be set up as well as an invalid and old age insurance for all incapacitated workers, &c.

Thus we see that not much will remain for the raising of the wages from the present income of the capitalists, even if capital were confiscated at a stroke—still less if we were to compensate the capitalists. It will, consequently, be necessary in order to be able to raise the wages, to raise at the same time the production far above its present level.

Not only the maintenance of the production, but also its increase will constitute one of the most urgent problems of the social revolution. The victorious proletariat must speed up production as fast as possible if it is to meet the enormous demands which the new régime will be called upon to satisfy.

There are various means of increasing production within a short time. Two of them, the most important, have already now become of great value. Both have been applied with success by the American Trusts, from which we could in general learn much for the methods of the Social Revolution. They show us how the productivity of labour can be raised at a stroke. This is done by simply concentrating the entire production in the best, in the most successful undertakings, and closing all those which are not up to date. The Sugar Trust, for instance, for the last few years has only been working a quarter of all the concerns which it owned, and in this quarter of the entire number of its concerns it has produced as much as was formerly produced in all put together. Also the Whisky Trust has acquired 80 big distilleries, and of these 80 it has at once closed 68. It has proceeded only with the remaining twelve and in these twelve it has produced more than in the 80 before. a a similar way will also proceed a proletarian régime, and that the more easily as it will not be impeded by considerations of private property. Where the individual undertakings represent private property, the elimination of the unfit can only proceed slowly by way of free competition. The Trusts could only get rid of this sort of businesses at once by abolishing private property in them and concentrating them all in one hand. The methods which the Trusts can only apply to a relatively small field of production, a proletarian régime will be able to extend over the entire field of social production, since it will abolish capitalist private property in its entirety.

But its methods of raising the rate of productivity, by the elimination of the more backward undertakings, will not only