"Albert Einstein. The world as I see it (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

difficulties of the present day, it is the hopeless confusion of opinions
among the experts. What I have to say is nothing new and does not pretend to
be anything more than the opinion of an independent and honest man who,
unburdened by class or national prejudices, desires nothing but the good of
humanity and the most harmonious possible scheme of human existence. If in
what follows I write as if I were clear about certain things and sure of the
truth of what I am saying, this is done merely for the sake of an easier
mode of expression; it does not proceed from unwarranted self-confidence or
a belief in the infallibility of my somewhat simple intellectual conception
of problems which are in reality uncommonly complex.

As I see it, this crisis differs in character from past crises in that
it is based on an entirely new set of conditions, due to rapid progress in
methods of production. Only a fraction of the available human labour in the
world is needed for the production of the total amount of consumption-goods
necessary to life. Under a completely free economic system this fact is
bound to lead to unemployment. For reasons which I do not propose to analyse
here, the majority of people are compelled to work for the minimum wage on
which life can be supported. If two factories produce the same sort of
goods, other things being equal, that one will be able to produce them more
cheaply which employs less workmen-i.e., makes the individual worker work
as long and as hard as human nature permits. From this it follows inevitably
that, with methods of production what they are to-day, only a portion of the
available labour can be used. While unreasonable demands are made on this
portion, the remainder is automatically excluded from the process of
production. This leads to a fall in sales and profits. Businesses go smash,
which further increases unemployment and diminishes confidence in industrial
concerns and therewith public participation in these mediating banks;
finally the banks become insolvent through the sudden withdrawal of deposits
and the wheels of industry therewith come to a complete standstill.

The crisis has also been attributed to other causes which we will now
consider.

(1) Over-production. We have to distinguish between two things
here-real over-production and apparent over-production. By real
overproduction I mean a production so great that it exceeds the demand. This
m4y perhaps apply to motor-cars and wheat in the United States at the
present moment, although even that is doubtful. By "over-production" people
usually mean a condition of things in which more of one particular article
is produced than can, in existing circumstances, be sold, in spite of a
shortage of consumption-goods among consumers. This condition of things I
call apparent over-production. In this case it is not the demand that is
lacking but the consumers' purchasing-power. Such apparent over-production
is only another word for a crisis, and therefore cannot serve as an
explanation of the latter; hence people who try to make over-production
responsible for the crisis are merely juggling with words.

(2) Reparations. The obligation to pay reparations lies heavy on the
debtor nations and their industries, compels them to go in for dumping, and