. She is
steadily decreasing her importations of manufactured articles, and
increasing her importations of raw material, which she then retransports
in the shape of manufactures. During the last year Hongkong, a European
colony, bought over two million marks of Japanese cotton goods. The
Japanese are providing their own markets with goods that formerly were
imported from Europe and the United States. They are also exporting to
Oriental markets, that were formerly provided from western sources. They
are exporting matches and soap; they are manufacturing clothing, felt
hats and hosiery; they have glass-blowing establishments, breweries,
tileries, tan-yards and rope-walks."

The further expansion of Japan's industry steadily reduces importations
from Europe and the United States, and simultaneously places it in
condition to turn up in the world's market as a competitor. Should
China also, as a result of the Japanese-Chinese war, be compelled to
open her immense territory to European culture, then, in view of the
great adaptability and marvelous unpretentiousness of the Chinese
workingman, another competitive power will have risen, more dangerous
than any that the world's market has yet had to reckon with. Truly, the
future of bourgeois society is threatened from all sides with grave
dangers, and there is no way to escape them.

Thus _the crisis becomes permanent and international_. It is a result of
all the markets being overstocked with goods. And yet, still more could
be produced; but the large majority of people suffer want in the
necessaries of life because they have no income wherewith to satisfy
their wants by purchase. They lack clothing, underwear, furniture,
homes, food for the body and mind, and means of enjoyment, all of which
they could consume in large quantities. But all that does not exist to
them. Hundreds of thousands of workingmen are even thrown upon the
sidewalk, and rendered wholly unable to consume because their
labor-power has become "_superfluous_" to the capitalists. Is it not
obvious that our social system suffers of serious ailments? How could
there be any "over-production" when there is no lack of capacity to
consume, i. e., of wants that crave satisfaction? Obviously, it is not
production, in and of itself, that breeds these unhallowed conditions
and contradictions: _it is the system under which production is carried
on, and the product is distributed_.

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