s ideas. Capitalism itself was creating the forces that would supplant it. The massive industrial plants necessitated an even greater work force with a growing sense of class interest. The competitive nature that capitalism inherited would inevitably bully a rising number of enterprises out of business. It was there, where a form of monopoly capitalism would emerge, abusive of both workers and consumers. Resulting from increasing savage competition, more businesses would fail, which would consequently lead to more cases of unemployment. Frustrations and anger would develop; workers would then overthrow the system that had been abusive for such a long period: “The knell of private property has sounded. The expropriators will be expropriated.” The proletariat would gain power and temporarily practice the “dictatorship of the proletariat” to solidify its rule. Once this has occurred, the state would disintegrate to nothing. The history of class war would end and the ideal society would prevail with proletariat coming to power. Ironically, Marx, who spent his life writing about the nature and history of social change, envisaged a time when change would cease, when history, as it were, would stop. While many protested the evils of industrialism, Marx described economic change in dramatic terms as a stage that was necessary for humankind to traverse on toward liberation. The suffering of the worker was not without purpose; rather, it was a significant process, part of the drama that would finally bring forth human emancipation. Marx accepted industrialism and perceived it as part of the path that history was destined to choose, unlike some of the utopians who deplored it. In studying economics and history, Marx became convinced that the coming of socialism was not only desirable, but more importantly it was inevitable. The laws of history dictated that capitalism would collapse, having created within itself the means o...
