Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution and On the Morrow of the Social Revolution - tr. John Bertram Askew (1903).djvu/90

26 of articles for consumption and for production, has however, each of them quite a different character. The production of the articles of production is the domain of gigantic concerns, as the iron industry, mining, &c. These have already attained to-day a very high degree of organisation in the shape of employers' association, trusts, rings, &c. Also among the purchasers of these articles of production the employers' association are already widely developed. Here very frequently it is not the individual employer who deals with the individual employer, but employers' associations with each other, branches of industry with branches of industry. And even where the organisation of the employers is less advanced, still it is more often than not the case in this sphere of production that but a comparatively few producers confront but a comparatively few consumers. For the consumer is here not an individual, but an entire concern. In the spinning and weaving machine-making for example, there were in 1895 1,152 establishments with 17,047 workers; of those, however, 774 establishments, with only 1,474 workers, can hardly be taken into account. Of the large factories there were only 73, employing 10,355 hands. As against these, there were 200,000 textile mills (not merely spinning and weaving factories), whose numbers, however, as we have seen, could be reduced to a few thousand, perhaps hundreds. On one side there remain, after concentration has taken place in the best organised works, perhaps 50 machine-making establishments; on the other 2,000 spinning and weaving factories. Is it so very impossible for the former to come to terms with the latter as to the supply of machines, and so to regulate their production?

With this comparatively small number of producers and consumers, it is easily conceivable that in the sphere of production of the means of production the production for the open market is already to-day steadily decreasing, while production for order—that is, regulated, pre-arranged production and circulation—grows.

Of quite a different character is the production of articles of consumption. Though here, too, we find gigantic concerns (sugar refineries, breweries, &c.), still in this domain, generally speaking, petty industry is the rule. Here it is still frequently a question of accommodating itself to the individual tastes and needs of the customer, and a small concern can do that better than a big one. The number of workshops here is large, and cannot be reduced so easily as in the case of the production of the means of production. Here prevails also production for the open market, the latter itself being, owing to the large number of consumers, far more difficult to survey than in the production for production. The number of employers' associations here is smaller. The organisation of production and circulation in the articles of consumption will accordingly offer greater difficulties than in those of production.

But here, too, we have to distinguish two kinds of production—namely, the production of the necessary articles of consumption, and