3. The Optimal Size of Establishments in Manufacturing
The process of manufacture out of raw materials is to a certain extent free from the limitations of space. The working of cotton plantations cannot be concentrated, but the spinning and weaving works may be united. But, here too, it would be rash to derive without further consideration a Law of the Concentration of Establishments from the fact that the larger plant generally proves superior to the smaller.
Section 2: The Concentration of Capital and the Formation of Monopolies as Preliminary Steps to Socialism
Chapter 1. The Problem
1. The Marxian Theory of Concentration
Marx seeks to establish an economic foundation for the thesis that the evolution towards Socialism is inevitable, by demonstrating the progressive concentration of capital. Capitalism has succeeded in depriving the worker of private ownership in the means of production; it has consummated the ‘expropriation of the direct producers’.
2. The Theory of Anti-Monopolistic Policy
The theory of monopoly goes deeper than the Marxian theory of concentration. According to it, free competition, the life blood of a society based on private ownership in the means of production, is weakened by the steady growth of monopoly. The disadvantages bred within the economy by the unlimited rule of private monopolies are, however, so great that society has no choice but to transform private monopoly by socialization into state ownership. However great an evil Socialism might be, it would be less harmful than private monopoly.
It is widely acknowledged that healthcare in the United States is the most expensive in the world. Per capita expenditures are roughly double that of other major economies. Some will argue that you get what you pay for, but the quality of care in the US is usually ranked as mediocre.
Chapter 5. The Materialist Conception of History
1. Thought and Being
It was said by Feuerbach: ‘thought proceeds from being, but not being from thought’.1 This remark, which was intended to express merely the renunciation of Hegelian Idealism, becomes in the famous aphorism, ‘Man is what he eats’ (‘Der Mensch ist was er isst’)
2. Science and Socialism
Abstract thought is independent of the wishes which move the thinker and of the aims for which he strives.1 Only this independence qualifies it as thought. Wishes and purposes regulate action. When it is said that economic life influences thought the facts are reversed.
3. The Psychological Presuppositions of Socialism
According to Marxism, the proletariat in capitalist society necessarily think socialistically. But why is this the case? It is easy to see why the socialist idea could not arise before there was large scale enterprise in industry, transport, and mining. As long as one could look forward to redistributing the actual physical property of the wealthy, it occurred to no one to devise any other way of securing equality of income.
