Karl Marx also claimed that every capitalist system would grow poorer over time as workers were "exploited," and that every socialist system would grow richer.Marx was much better at predicting socio-economic upheaval than he was at formulating a utopian alternative. Heck, even Adam Smith warned us of the same consequences.
Excerpted and condensed from: Adam Smith: The Wealth of Nations, Book 4, Chapter 2
The case in which it may sometimes be a matter of deliberation, how far, or in what manner, it is proper to restore the free importation of foreign goods, after it has been for some time interrupted, is, when particular manufactures, by means of high duties or prohibitions upon all foreign goods which can come into competition with them, have been so far extended as to employ a great multitude of hands. Humanity may in this case require that the freedom of trade should be restored only by slow gradations, and with a good deal of reserve and circumspection. Were those high duties and prohibitions taken away all at once, cheaper foreign goods of the same kind might be poured so fast into the home market as to deprive all at once many thousands of our people of their ordinary employment and means of subsistence. The disorder which this would occasion might no doubt be very considerable....
"Marx was much better at predicting socio-economic upheaval than he was at formulating a utopian alternative."
No.
Simply, no.
Marx's core innovation over **all** other socialists before him was that he criticized and attacked all utopian visions of socialism. He said that pushing for utopia was unrealistic, and that expending energy and efforts for an unrealistic goal was therefore counterproductive, and therefor an **obstacle** to incrementally implementing socialism worldwide.
Likewise, Marx's core weakness was that he claimed that capitalism would fail in every instance where it was tried, making the working class poorer and poorer each year, leading to the working class rising up and overthrowing every form of government that embraced capitalism. Marx further weakened his argument by claiming that socialism, if it did not pursue unrealistic utopian visions, would make the working class richer and richer, but this claim pales in comparison to Marx's claim about capitalism, and Adam Smith duly kicked his ideological butt on this issue.