They themselves can assume the most varied forms of property in their means of production and use the most various methods by way of disposing of their products. They can become branches of a large State or municipal concern, getting their materials and tools from the latter and delivering to it their products; they could also work for private customers or the open market, &c. As to-day, so, too, in the future, the worker can work under the most varied forms of industry one after the other. A dressmaker can at one time work in a national factory, at another make a dress for a private customer at home, then again make for another customer a dress in the latter's house, and finally with a few fellow-working women found a productive society on co-operative principles which would make dresses to order or for stock.
In this, as in all other respects, there could prevail the greatest variety and adaptability. Nothing is more erroneous than to imagine a Socialist society as a, simple, cut-and-dried piece of machinery, which, once set in motion, must always go on in the same monotonous way.
The most varied kinds of property in the means of production—State, municipal, co-operative (distributive), co-operative (productive), private—could exist side by side in a Socialist society. Also, the most varied forms of concerns—bureaucratic, trade union, co-operative, individual; the most varied modes of paying for labour—fixed salary, time wages, piece wages, participation in all the economies in raw material, machinery, &c.; participation in the results of more intensive work; the most varied forms of the circulation of the products—by delivery contracts; by sale from the national, the municipal, or the co-operative stores, or from those of the producers themselves, &c. The same variety of the economic machinery as exists to-day would be quite possible in a Socialist society. Only the hurry and the bustle, the fighting and the struggling, the extermination and the ruin of the present-day struggle for life will be eliminated, just as the antagonism between the exploiter and the exploited will disappear.
Chapter VIII.—Intellectual Production.
Thus far we have discussed the most important economic problems and the means for their solution. It would be very tempting to pursue the subject further in the same way, and to examine what problems the domestic economy, the international relations, the relations between town and country, &c., would bring with them, since they would all be most deeply affected by the
