Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution and On the Morrow of the Social Revolution - tr. John Bertram Askew (1903).djvu/91

Rh those of articles of luxury. The demand for necessaries fluctuates comparatively little; it is tolerably steady. Day in, day out, people require the same quantity of flour, bread, meat, vegetables; year in, year out, the demand for boots and clothes varies insignificantly. But other articles of consumption partake of the nature of dispensable luxuries, the use or possession of which is pleasant, but not imperative, and the demand for them varies. Here the demand is far more subject to the whim. But if we examine the thing closer, we find that these whims. arise less with; the purchasing individuals than with the industry itself. Thus, for example, the changes in fashion arise less from changes in the taste of the public, and far more from the needs of the producers, who make the old, already sold goods appear no longer fit for further use, in order thus to induce the consumers to buy new goods. The latest, the new articles must, therefore, be strikingly different from the old. Along with the restlessness which lies in the nature of the modern method of production, these endeavours on the part of the producers are the main cause of the quick changes of fashion. It is they who first produce the new fashions, and then force them on the public.

The fluctuations in the sale of articles of, consumption, especially of articles of luxury, are however, to a yet greater degree, caused by changes in the incomes of the consumers rather than by changes in their tastes. The former changes again, so long as they do not remain isolated but extend widely throughout the community and thus considerably influence the consumption, arise from the alternations between prosperity and crisis, from the oscillation between a strong demand for labour and the increase of unemployment. But if we examine whence these oscillations spring, we shall find that they arise in the sphere of the production of the means of production. It is generally known and recognised that it is principally the iron industry to-day which causes the crises.

Thus the alternations between prosperity and crisis and consequently the great fluctuations in the consumption of articles of consumption, is produced in the field of the production of means of production, in that field where, as we have seen, the concentration of concerns and the organisation of industry is to-day so far developed as to render the organisation of production and circulation possible at the earliest. Steadiness in the production of the means of production will bring with it steadiness in the demand for articles of consumption, which it will then be easily possible to fix statistically without compulsorily regulating the consumption.

To a proletarian régime, however, only one kind of interruption in the circulation could prove dangerous, so far as it arises from production—under-production, not over-production. To-day, it is the latter which is the principal cause of crises, since the greatest difficulty to-day is the sale of the articles, the market for the products. The purchase on the other hand, the acquiring of products which one needs, causes, as a rule, little anxiety, at least to those