CONSEQUENTLY, IN A STATE OF INCREASING PRODUCTION, WE OBSERVE AN INCREASED CONSUMPTION OF LUXURIES AFTER EVERY CRISIS. Production continues to increase in the same relations until the laborers are again unable to purchase what is produced for them, when goods are again heaped up, and we have the anomaly of magazines full of commodities for which there are no purchasers, although there are plenty who desire them. Those for whom they were destined have not the means of purchasing them; and this entails also distress upon others, those who handle these commodities, as well as upon a large part of the rest of society, owing to the close relations existing between different members of the social body. Equilibrium is finally restored by an increased consumption of luxuries. So long as economic life is not regulated these processes will never cease to repeat themselves. Poverty and commercial panics can be banished only by arrangements which guarantee to laborers a share in the national product, which increases _pari passu_ with increasing production. How is this to be done? I cannot, in this place, give the details, which must be sought in Rodbertus’s writings, particularly in his “Normal Arbeitstag.” I will sketch the outlines of his plan. The state must interfere. An estimate must be made of the value of the national product, and of the share which laborers receive at the time of the valuation. We will assume that all the products of society during a year can be produced by four millions of hours of the labor of an average man. The value of the yearly production equals four millions of hours. Let us suppose that the laborers receive the product of one million hours. They are given in exchange for this receipts, a kind of paper money, the unit of which is one hour. All that is produced finds its way first into magazines, and laborers and others, on presenting labor-time money, receive its value in goods. If the productivity of labor doubles, an hour will secure double the amount of goods. This is the solution, then, of the problem of securing for the laborers a fixed share of production and an amount of goods which increases with increased production.