many vows, has long ceased to exist. It has died of old age. It was only possible in the epoch in which the means of production were limited, and in which exchange only took place within very narrow limits. With the birth of the great industry this just proportion disappeared, and production was fatally constrained to pass in a perpetual succession, through the vicissitudes of prosperity, depression, crisis, stagnation, new prosperity, and so on in succession.
Those who, like Sismondi, would return to the just proportion of production, while conserving the existing bases of society, are reactionary, since, to be consistent, they must also desire to re-establish all the other conditions of past times.
What was it which maintained production in just proportion, or nearly so? It was the demand which governed the supply which preceded it. Production followed consumption step by step. The great industry, forced by the very instruments of which it disposed to produce on an ever-increasing scale, could not wait for the demand. Production preceded consumption, the supply forced the demand.
In existing society, in the industry based on individual exchanges, the anarchy of production, which is the source of so much misery, is at the same time the source of all progress.
Thus of two things, one:
Either you would have the just proportions of past centuries, with the means of production of our epoch, in which case you are at once a reactionary and a utopian;
Or, you would have progress without anarchy: In which case, in order to conserve productive forces, you must abandon individual exchanges.
Individual exchanges accord only with the small
