Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution and On the Morrow of the Social Revolution - tr. John Bertram Askew (1903).djvu/92

28 lucky people who have the wherewithal in the pocket. Under a proletarian régime this state of affairs will be reversed. The distribution of the goods will not present much difficulty. It will not be a case of private persons producing to sell to other private people, but of the community producing for its own requirements. Crises could then only arise, if insufficient is produced to meet the needs in articles either of consumption or of production. If, on the contrary, too much is produced in this or that line, or even generally, it will certainly mean a waste of labour, consequently a loss to the community, but it will not stop the progress of production and of consumption. That too little is not produced anywhere, in any branch of industry, will be the main object of care of the new régime. It will, also, of course, take every care that labour is not wasted in needless production, since every waste of that kind would lead, apart from everything else, to a needless lengthening of the hours of labour.

We have seen that the proletarian régime will, for the most part, quickly extinguish the petty concern where it represents an imperfect stage of development, be it in industry or in distribution.

The efforts just discussed, the organisation of circulation, will, too, lead to the greatest elimination of the small middlemen, partly through co-operative storey, partly through communal undertakings. It certainly facilitates the task of surveying and organising the process of production, if the latter is carried on not for a large number of customers, but for a small number of organisations.

Besides the distribution, the direct production of articles of consumption for local needs will, too, fall to co-operative societies and municipalities, as will, for example, bread, dairy produce, vegetables, provision of dwellings.

Yet it is scarcely possible to assume that in this way all private small concerns will disappear. Above all we cannot expect that in agriculture. No doubt those farming concerns which already to-day constitute capitalist concerns, will break down before the new system of wages and become State, municipal, or co-operative concerns. In addition to these, many of our smaller peasant proprietors will give up their existence and go as workers into the large industrial or agricultural concerns, which will secure them a decent living. Still one may assume that a number of peasants