The Socialism of to-day

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 835096955

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-28834

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Laveleye, Émile de

Title:: The Socialism of to-day

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: Field & Tuer

Year of publication:: 1884

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (XLIV, 331 S.)

Collection:: Economics Books

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66 THE SOCIALISM OF TO-DAY. locality, and, at the end of the year, the profits would be distributed as a dividend. Risk and the chances of loss would disappear, because manufacture, instead of producing haphazard, would proceed on a combined principle in response to known wants. What a contrast there is to-day between the admirable order which reigns in every factory, and the anarchy which desolates the industrial world ! In each factory, the master sees that nothing useless is made ; in order to make fifty four-wheeled waggons only two hundred tires are prepared. But if it is a question of supplying the general demand, which is unknown, each manufacturer produces according to guess, and then tries to sell his whole stock in competition with others. There follow, of course, monetary and commercial crises from over production, and thus equilibrium is restored. This is secured, however, only at the cost of immense losses to the masters, and of stoppages of work, yet more disastrous to the operatives. These crises, this suffering, would be avoided if, the demand being known, by means of statistics, the various associations would come to a mutual understanding in order to meet it. The activity of the various branches of production would be regulated with as much precision as are the different kinds of work in one of our present factories. Already there are great metal foundries in which a whole series of technical operations is performed, linked together into one organic whole, which extracts the ore and the coal from the ground, and turns out completely finished locomotives, ships, and machines of all kinds. Krupp’s works in Germany, those of Le Creusot in France, and of Seraing in Belgium are examples of these admirable combinations, I his is the system which should be extended to the whole community. Then the productive capital and all the instruments of production would belong permanently to the different societies grouped in trade corporations. Newly invented methods of production would become the property of the societies, private individuals, as such, not having the working of them. On the other hand, all articles of consumption, or their price, would be divided among those who had contributed to produce them, exactly as

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