V. I.   Lenin

NOTEBOOK “β”

(“BETA”)

Dr. S. Tschierschky. Cartel and Trust (A Comparative Study of Their Nature and Significance), G\"ottingen, 1903 (p. 129).

(Little of value. Bourgeois prattle in favour of cartels—German, our own, toned down—against trusts)....

A most commonplace petty-bourgeois, this author. A “practitioner” was employed by syndicates and cartels.

p. 12, par. 1. The American rectified spirit trust closed down 68 of the 80 factories it had bought up.

|| 1/3 million workers p. 13: The United States Steel Corporation has “almost one-third of a million workers”.

||| last 1/3 or 1/4 of the 19th century p. 19—cartels and trusts developed “since the last third or quarter of the nineteenth century”.

p. 31—one weaver in the United States looks after 16 looms (Northrop looms, an improvement of 1895).

||| ha-ha! p. 56—...“The idea of the cartel is no more than the application to modern industrial production of the modified co-operative idea”....

“Conclusions”

| characteristic! (rather cowardly!) ...“On the basis of my investigations up now, I  have no doubt that the trust embodies the advantages, but to a still greater extent the disadvantages, of capitalist large-scale industry, in the sense of an unceasing and reckless urge to go forward, whereas the policy of the cartel   | much more strives to bridle and to distribute. If the world market were dominated by great national trusts, it would experience far-reaching struggles over prices and sales, carried to the sharpest extremes.... In this connection, the cartels can and should be as much concerned for !!! not accelerate!!! ||| technical and economic progress as free competition is; perhaps they will not accelerate it precipitately as the trusts” (128).[2]

Notes

[1] See present edition, Vol. 22, p. 203.—Ed.

[2] See present edition, Vol. 22, p. 216.—Ed.