Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/473

 artisan production is this: Either the need is awaited before production—as, for example, a tailor waits for my order before he makes me a coat, a locksmith before he makes me a lock; or even if some goods are manufactured to be sold ready-made, on the whole this ready-made business is limited to a minimum of what is definitely known from experience to be the needs of the immediate locality and its nearest neighborhood-as, for instance, a tinsmith makes up a certain number of lamps, knowing that the local demand will soon dispose of them.

The characteristics of a community producing chiefly in this manner are poverty, or at least only a moderate prosperity, but, to offset this, a certain definiteness and steadiness of all relations.

Now, on the other hand, through the incessant and complete action and reaction which I have been describing to you, there had appeared in the community a totally different kind of work, and therefore of all relations of life. There had already appeared the germ of the same characteristic which today marks, in a differently developed but enormously extended manner, the production of the community. In the tremendous development which it has today this characteristic, in contrast to that previously described, can be indicated as follows: Whereas, formerly, need preceded production, made it a consequence of itself, determined it, and formed a criterion and well-known standard for it—production and supply now go in advance of the demand and try to develop it. Production is no longer for the locality, no longer for the well-known need of neighboring markets, but for the world-market. Production goes on for remote regions and for a general market, for all continents, for an actually unknown and not definitely calculated need; and in order that the product may arouse need a weapon is supplied it—cheapness. Cheapness is the weapon of a product, with which, on the one hand, it obtains customers, and, on the other, drives from the field other goods of the same nature, which are