the transition from free competition to the socialisation of production. Production becomes social, but appropriation remains private. The social means of production remain the private property of a few. The framework of nominally free competition remains, and the yoke of a few monopolists on the rest of the population becomes a hundred times heavier, burdensome and intolerable.
The German economist, Kestner, has devoted a work to the struggle between the cartels and the "private firms," i.e., between the cartels and the enterprises outside the cartels. He entitled his work: The Constraint to Organisation, although what he should have said was "constraint to submission to associations of monopolists." It is edifying to glance over this book, even if only for the list of the most modern and cultivated means used by the monopolies to constrain the "organisation" of recalcitrant enterprises.
They are as follows:
(1) Depriving of raw materials ("one of the most important means of compelling adhesion to the cartel");
(2) Depriving of labour by the method of "alliances" (i.e., by agreements between the employers and workers to the effect that the latter will only accept work in trustified enterprises);
(3) Depriving of local means of transport;
(4) Closing of trade outlets;
(5) Agreements wit the buyers, to the effect that these latter will enter into commercial relations with the cartels only.
(6) The systematic lowering of prices to ruin
