THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CAPITALISTIC SOCIAL ORDER

have been produced in excessive quantities. Prices fall, but the stock of goods cannot be cleared. The warehouses are filled with all kinds of products, for which there is no sale; buyers are lacking. Needless to say, there are plenty of hungry workers, but they receive no more than a pittance, and cannot buy anything in excess of their usual purchases. Then calamity ensues. In some particular branch of industry the small and middle-sized undertakings collapse first, and are closed down; next comes the failure of the larger enterprises. But the branch of production thus affected bought commodities from another branch of production; this latter bought from a third. For instance, tailors buy cloth from the cloth makers; these buy wool from the yarn spinners; and so on. The tailors come to grief, and in consequence there are no customers for the cloth makers. Now the cloth makers fail, and their failure reacts upon the firms that supply them with woollen yarn. Factories and workshops everywhere close their doors, tens of thousands of workers are thrown on the streets, unemployment grows to unprecedented proportions, the workers’ life becomes even worse. Yet there are plenty of commodities. The warehouses are bursting with them. This was continually happening before the war. Industry flourishes; the manufacturers’ businesses work at high pressure. Suddenly there is a crash, followed by