Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution and On the Morrow of the Social Revolution - tr. John Bertram Askew (1903).djvu/88

24 consequence lack the means to buy new raw material, to pay wages, &c. But a crisis can also arise when too little is produced of some commodities, as was the case, e.g., during the English cotton crisis which was caused by the Civil War in America, when the growth of cotton greatly decreased.

The crises are the worst curse of the modern method of production. To remove them is one of the most important problems of a proletarian régime. That, however, can only be done by a regulated scheme of production and circulation, that is, of reproduction.

The object of Socialism is usually taken to be the organisation of production. But already capitalism performs a portion of this task, in that it substituessubstitutes [sic] for many petty concerns, independent of each other, the organisation of production on a large scale, in large factories, sometimes employing thousands of hands. The trusts even go so far as to organise entire branches of industry. But what only a proletarian government can effect, is the regulation according to a definite plan of the circulation of the products, of the interconnection between one concern and another, between the producers and the consumers, taking the latter term in the widest sense, embracing not only personal, but also productive comsumptionconsumption [sic]. The weaver, for instance, uses yarn, that is productive consumption; on the other hand, he eats a piece of bread, that is personal consumption.

It is the proletariat, and only the proletariat, who can bring about this regulation of the circulation of the products by the abolition of private property in industrial concerns; and not only can, but it must, carry it out if the process of production under its control is to go on, if its government is to subsist. It will have to fix the extent of the production of every single social factory in accordance with the amount of the existing labour power (workers and means of production) and the given demand. Then it will have to provide that each of these factories gets not only the requisite number of workers, but also the means of production which it needs. Finally, it will have to see that the ready products are delivered to the consumers.

But is it possible to accomplish all that, in a modern great community? Let any one imagine in Germany the State acting as manager of production in two million factories and as intermediary for the circulation of their products. It has to re-deliver a portion of the latter to the factories themselves as means of production, and another portion to hand over as means of consumption to sixty million consumers, each of whom has its own particular and changing needs! The task seems crushing, unless one is going to regulate the needs of mankind by authority, according to a fixed and cut-and-dried scheme, to reduce them to a minimum and to apportion each his share out barrack-like fashion—in other words, to reduce modern civilised life to a much deeper level. Are we then after all ready to stoop to a barrack or convict-prison community?