Karl Marx’s critiques of capitalism died in the 1980s with the fall of the USSR and the move in China towards a more free-market economy, or so it’s been said. Marx’s predictions about capitalism are alive and well today, however, and not in the way you might expect. It's not in the “radical” left and their socialist plots; it’s not hiding away in the Scandinavian nations; and it’s not even in a supposed "Chinese push for world dominance". Rather, Marx's theories, almost unchanged from their original conception, are alive today in every major capitalist nation.
Marx theorized about the inherent instability of the capitalist society and posited that it would collapse from inward pressure. The rich would get so rich that in order to continue getting richer they would cannibalize other rich people and find new ways to oppress the poor. To avoid this oppression of the working class, Marx posited an alternative system, communism, whose goal was to protect the workers by giving them back the means of production. None of this should be new to us--this is basic Marxian philosophy and it would appear to have been defeated when the capitalist system trumped the communist system during the fall of the USSR.
The issue with this idea is that the conditions in which Marx originally predicted the fall of capitalism and the situation during the Cold War are worlds apart. Marx was writing during the industrial revolution in England, which was characterized by rapid urbanization, large wealth inequality and highly protectionist trade policies. This last characteristic is the most important for this topic.
When the 1900s rolled around and the capitalist powers survived not one, but two world wars, the world's trade policies began to shift drastically. Globalism took center stage. Organizations like NATO and treaties like the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (which would later become the WTO) drastically reduced trade barriers around the world and opened up the world markets. While England and other European nations were not truly isolated economies during Marx's time, they were greatly limited in terms of their scope.
This is one of the reasons colonialism spread out from Europe for a second time and with arguably more vigor in the mid to late 1800's. European economies needed a source of cheap raw materials and a place to export the finished goods that still kept gold within the sovereign's power. Because of the smaller setting, wealth amassed in a small number of hands much more quickly, resulting in rapid oppression of workers. You cannot blame Marx for believing the revolution was at hand. Many of England’s workers were living in slums and working dirty jobs for almost no pay.
Two things happened after that, though, that meant Marx would be wrong about the uprisings. First was the second wave of colonialism that began late in the second half of the 19th century. Marx would die in 1883, and second-wave colonialism didn't begin in earnest until the 1860s, getting into full swing when Marx had fewer than ten years left to live. Because colonial endeavors take large levels of investment, it would have been reasonable to expect the return on investment to take a few years. After that, there would be new markets and new opportunities for money to be made. This would take the pressure off of workers in European countries, as evidenced by the British labor unions such as the Knights of Labor and the National Labor Union, which grew in influence and power in the mid-1880s. The large capitalists now had new markets and land to exploit, meaning they were more likely to allow rights to workers at home since those workers could help keep them in power.
The second movement, the aforementioned mass globalization, nearly repeats the effects of the first. This process helped move the industrialized nations into what are now classified as service-centered economies. The focus involved using the cheap labor of foreign countries, especially in Asia, and utilizing the intellectual capacity of major North American and European players. This system encouraged rich nations to better their populace by providing them with advanced education and higher standards of living. Foreign capital allowed lower-income countries to industrialize using savings they could not produce at home.
For now, this structure benefits both rich countries and poor countries. Rich countries can produce goods cheaply in foreign economies, while developing nations receive jobs they wouldn't have otherwise and are aided in industrialization. This is just the story of globalization. How much longer, though, will this structure benefit the rich nations and corporations? How much longer will it be beneficial for companies to encourage increasing standards of living instead of stagnating them or actively working to lower them? There is nowhere left to colonize, and there are no new regional markets to open up. We are right back where we started with Marx; the only difference is now his theory is working itself out on a much larger stage. Will developing countries band together to overthrow the rich nations, or are they too disjointed, with too many different ideologies and goals to make resistance effective? I do not consider myself a Marxist, and I'm not convinced that communism is an effective system. At the same time, I do believe there is cause for concern. If capitalist countries cannot rectify the wants of corporations for cheap labor and our desire for developing countries to continue to grow we may just prove Marx right about the self-destructive nature of capitalism. In contrast to that, the beauty of capitalism is that it is not bound by what it was when Marx was writing. Capitalism avoided Marx's fears once, it can do it again.