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.
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".
"What Marx did not anticipate was the social welfare state. ...
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"."
So Marx was right back then, save for the welfare state, and he is right again today in your opinion?!
Oh man, the CPUSA can't wait to hear from you!
But don't be surprised. Most of what passes for so called "conservatives" who want to ban offshore outsourcing are simply Marxist platitudes rehashed with modern buzzwords.
That Marx has been disproven by Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations) and the last two straight centuries of capitalistic prosperity is apparently lost on such people.
Capitalism, however, will sort out offshore outsourcing if the government stays out of it.
For one thing, trial lawyers are going to eat CEO's alive over the outsourcing of data to third world cultures that simply can *not* implement the levels of data security that we can implement here.
For another, the Dollar will continue to fall in its foreign exchange value until such time as outsourcing makes far less economic sense than today.