The concentrative adhesive
forces are everywhere driving the competing masses of capital to seek
safety, and escape waste and destruction, by welding themselves into
still larger masses, renouncing the competition with one another in
order to compete more successfully with other large bodies. Thus,
wherever these forces are in free operation, the number of competing
firms is continually growing less; the surviving competitors have
crushed or absorbed their weaker rivals, and have grown big by feeding
on their carcases.
But the struggle between these few big survivors becomes more fierce
than ever. Fitted out with enormous capital, provided with the latest,
most complex, and most expensive machinery, producing with a reckless
disregard for one another or the wants of the consuming public,
advertising on a prodigious scale in order to force new markets, or
steal the markets of one another, they are constantly driven to lower
their prices in order to effect sales; profits are driven to a minimum;
all the business energy at their command is absorbed by the strain of
the fight; any unforeseen fluctuations in the market brings on a crisis,
ruins the weaker combatants, and causes heavy losses all round. In
trades where the concentrative process has proceeded furthest this
warfare is naturally fiercest. But as the number of competing units
grows smaller, arbitration or union becomes more feasible. Close and
successful united action among a large number of scattered competitors
of different scales of importance, such as exist during the earlier
stage of capitalism, would be impossible.
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