The Labour Revolution (Routledge Revivals) by Karl Kautsky

Author:Karl Kautsky [Kautsky, Karl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Philosophy, Communism; Post-Communism & Socialism, History & Theory, Labor & Industrial Relations, Political Ideologies, Political Science, Business & Economics, Political, General
ISBN: 9781136663741
Google: tfazAAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 17765668
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2011-05-16T00:00:00+00:00

VI

BUREAUCRACY

IN applying the principle of socialization, we will not therefore commence with the circulation process, but with the process of production, where the class antagonism between Capital and Labour, which forms the most powerful driving force of socialization, is concentrated.

The first volume of Marx's Capital, which deals with the process of production, has exercised the most profound historical influence, whereas the second volume, which investigates the circulation process, has only been studied by a few experts.

Production in present-day society, however, is an infinitely varied process. At the time of the Middle Class Revolution, peasant holdings still formed the great majority of the productive undertakings of all countries. It is true that a certain division of labour existed in the towns, but this had not progressed very far.

Division of labour is now the rule in every calling and enterprise, and it grows with the extension of the world market. Every speciality has its peculiar methods, its special technical and economic conditions, which also create particular forms of organization in the business.

The capitalist mode of production has become the dominant, but it is by no means the sole type of enterprise. Numerous pre-capitalist types of business are still in existence, especially in agriculture. Even industrial capitalism itself, which changes so rapidly, exhibits various forms of development, from the smallest home industry, organized and exploited by an agent, to the giant concern whose prototype is the American Steel Trust.

And to these variations in the stages of economic development are to be added variations in technique, which require one set of forms and conditions of organization for the heavy metals industry, and another for the textile industry, another for the chemical industry, and another for printing, etc.

Consequently, not all branches of production and not all undertakings are equally ripe for immediate socialization, which will have to begin where conditions are most favourable. Fortified by the experience there acquired, socialization will gradually extend its influence to more complicated and difficult provinces. Its starting-points will vary considerably, and different forms will have to be adopted in the different branches of production. With growing experience, new forms will be added to the forms which we are able to foresee to-day, for life always proves richer than the most luxuriant imagination. The reflection of life in our minds is always an abstraction, a simplification. This is true of the reflection of the present in which we have our being; how much more true of the picture we are able to sketch of the future with the assistance of a few indications.

This has often been overlooked in our own ranks, as well as by our opponents, and there has grown up the conception of a socialist system of production marked by extreme uniformity. All businesses are to be transformed into State undertakings, like the post office and the railways, and directed by the official bureaucracy. Production has also been organized upon these lines in the Soviet State.

Now one may cherish the most various ideas concerning socialist production, but one

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