ion would complete this quickly, often at one
stroke, while _confiscation through taxation permits the
disappearance of capitalists' property through a long-drawn-out
process, proceeding in the exact degree in which the new order is
established and its benevolent influence made perceptible._

"Confiscation in this way loses its harshness and becomes more
acceptable and less painful.

"The more peaceable the conquest of political power by the
proletariat, and the more firmly organized and enlightened it is,
the more we can expect that the primitive forms of confiscation
will be softened." (My italics.)[295]

Nor are any of the more influential Socialists anxious to make a clean
sweep of private enterprise in industry. It is only the more important
and fundamental industries, those which underlie all the processes of
manufacturing, or furnish the sheer necessities of the people, that must
necessarily be directly controlled by a Socialist society. "It may be
granted," says Kautsky, "that small establishments will have a definite
position in the future in many branches of industry that produce
directly for human consumption, for machines manufacture essentially
only products in bulk, while many purchasers desire that their personal
taste shall be considered. It is easily possible that under a
proletarian regime the number of small businesses may increase as the
well-being of the masses increases." Of such industries Kautsky says
that they can produce for private customers or even for the open market.
As to-day, he insists, so also in the future, it will be open to the
working people to employ themselves either in public or private
industry.

"A seamstress, for example," he says, "can occupy herself for a
time in a national factory, and at another time make dresses for
private customers at home, then again she can sew for another
customer in her own house, and finally she may, with a few
comrades, unite in a cooeperative for the manufacture of clothing
for sale.

"The most manifold forms of property in the means of
production--national, municipal, cooeperatives of consumption and
production and private industry can exist beside each other in a
Socialist society--the most diverse forms of industrial
organization, bureaucratic, trades union, cooeperative and
individual; the most diverse forms of remunerative