Indeed. Karl Marx's entire point of Das Kapital was that *every* capitalist society would get progressively poorer each year, until things got so bad that the workers all rebelled and overthrew the "ruling classes."
But Marx has a poor historical track record. Socialist nations such as North Korea and Cuba have faired rather poorly compared to their capitalistic neighbors in South Korea and the U.S., for instance.
So I'd take Marx with a grain of salt. If he said it, it's probably wrong.
But Marx has a poor historical track record. Socialist nations such as North Korea and Cuba have faired rather poorly compared to their capitalistic neighbors in South Korea and the U.S., for instance.
So I'd take Marx with a grain of salt. If he said it, it's probably wrong.
What Marx did not anticipate was the social welfare state.
Marx lived in an age of limited wars and small, professional armies. After the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 there was a continent wide shift to huge conscript armies comprising practically every male between 18 and 45 and an ever costlier arms race, particularly naval (between 1870 and 1914 naval military technology zoomed from ironclads to armored cruisers to pre-dreadnoughts to dreadnoughts. all very expensive.). This meant that the security of the state now depended on the loyalty of poor people who would now be asked to die for it. So there was a sound national security reason for insuring the loyalty of the working class with social welfare measures.
After the collapse of communism, MNC's frankly don't think they need nation states anymore. Wars in any case are back to being fought by small, professional armies instead of masses of conscript riflemen. So they can act like the "suck it up, loser" capitalism of Marx's time and freely "immiserate the masses".