Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution and On the Morrow of the Social Revolution - tr. John Bertram Askew (1903).djvu/95

Rh industry production on a small scale prevails almost exclusively (more than 97 per cent. of the entire number of concerns), and production on a large scale (concerns with more than 50 workers) is as yet totally unknown:—

If one overlooks the artists, barbers, chimney-sweeps, violin-makers, and for my part also the flayers, then the field where small industry exists without, competition from the large industry is reduced almost to nil.

Still, one may concede yet a certain future for the small industry, above all in those branches which work directly for human consumption, since machinery, as is well-known, only produces mass-products, while many purchasers prefer to have their personal taste considered. It would even be quite possible that under a proletarian régime the number of small industrial concerns would increase, since, as the standard of life of the masses rises, the demand for hand-products might well become greater; artistic handicraft might well receive a new impetus. Certainly, we cannot hope to see the picture of the future sketched out by William Morris realised, where, amidst a delightful Utopia, machinery plays no part. Machines will remain supreme in the process of production. They will never again yield this position to hand-work. It is not, however, impossible that hand-work should again increase in various artistic trades, and even conquer new fields. Still, if it to-day frequently merely drags on its existence as a product of extreme misery, as sweating industry, it could, in a Socialist society, only exist as a costly luxury, which, owing to the general rise of well-being, might well find a further extension. The foundation of the process of production will continue to be large industry worked by machinery. The small industries in question will, at most, exist as islands in a sea of great social establishments.