In the realm of predictions, Marx is often held to a higher standard than other theorists – since socialist revolution and communism have not developed in the industrial capitalist countries, the failure of this prediction is often considered to demonstrate the incorrectness of his views. But Marx tended to make more predictions than other theorists and many of his predictions concerning the future of capitalism have occurred while others have not.

Some of the of predictions that have taken place are as follows:

• Increased concentration and centralization of capital, with capitalism expanding to take over more and more parts of the economy. Growth of monopolies, large corporations, and complex organizational structures.

• Globalization. This is often considered to be a contemporary development, but Marx described and analyzed its beginnings in the middle ages and its expansion as industrial capitalism became established and increasingly spread its influence across the globe. Marx expected this trend to continue and contemporary developments demonstrate this.

• Cycles of expansion and contraction. Expansion of capitalist economies has not been a smooth process but is characterized by periods of overenthusiastic and speculative expansion, with rising profits and wages. Marx predicted that this would not continue but there would be periodic declines, with bankruptcies, declining production, unemployment, and poverty. These ups and downs have characterized capitalism ever since the time of Marx.

At the same time, some of Marx’s predictions have not taken place:

• Increasing poverty of the working class. Marx expected the working class to become increasingly impoverished. There are tendencies in this direction and employers attempt to reduce wages, but workers have been able to increase their wages in certain periods and these wages are above minimum subsistence level. Workers have done this through trade unions and through pressuring the state to improve working and living conditions – labour legislation, social welfare and health programs, and other government policies and programs that have improved lives of workers and citizens.

• Socialism and communism. Marx argued that capital creates its own gravediggers – the proletariat. Marx expected this class to expand, create revolution, establish a dictatorship of the proletariat, and start to build a communist society. He expected this to occur first in the most highly developed capitalist, industrial countries. In fact, social reforms have occurred, especially in the wealthier countries. These reforms, along, increasing segmentation of the working class, and development of new social movements have meant that political change has proceeded in other directions. Elements of socialism exist in each of these countries and the richer countries are often referred to as mixed economies.

• Growth of capitalism. While Marx expected capitalism to expand and he understood the adaptability of capitalism to new conditions, he appears to have expected capitalism to collapse before too long. In fact, capitalism has proved its adaptability and has created new means of expanding itself – through development of new technologies (petroleum, digital technologies), new forms of organization (corporations and multinational enterprises), colonialism and imperialism, and new markets.

Other developments are mixed:

• Increasing division into two classes (bourgeoisie and proletariat) and decline of other classes. In fact, there has been increasing divisions within the classes of workers who must sell their labour power to live. In addition, new social movements – feminism, ethnic and racial struggles, gay and lesbian groups – have cut across class lines. While there has not been a tendency toward an expansion in the traditional classes of petty bourgeoisie, landlords, and peasantry or farmers, developments have taken place within the majority of the population that segment workers into different groups, with seemingly different interests.

• Workplace and wages. Tendencies toward declining wages and working conditions have been countered by the growth of trade unions and social reforms.

• Rate of profit. This has sometimes declined (as in the 1930s) but there have been periods when capital has found new sources of increasing profitability (after the second world war).

• Work and labour. While Marx had much to say about this, he did not extensively examine work outside jobs and the wage-labour relationship. As a result, his analysis of social reproduction, household work, population, and socialization is incomplete or misleading. He did not consider the unpaid work of women, children, and others in the workplace to be productive. For Marx, social structure almost entirely results from the wage labour relationship. This analysis has been shown incomplete by feminists and others.

Alienation. While Marx did not directly analyze this issue in his later writings, the concept of alienation has proved to be very useful in analyzing labour processes and other parts of society. Marx’s emphasis on the material roots of alienation (in work, in social relations, in organization of society) is a useful counter to the view that alienation results from personal problems or individual maladjustment. The later writings of Marx on capitalism also contain detailed analyses of the manner that work processes dehumanize workers and extract surplus value from workers.

Labour theory of value. While economists generally consider the labour theory of value outmoded or incomplete, it still provides a useful way of thinking about how value is created in human societies – by using human labour productively and creatively. Marx’s view of exploitation is still a useful way to consider how the workplace is organized and profits created.

Classes and class struggle. Marx considered these to be the driving force of human history. While other social movements (race, gender, sexuality) are also decisive, any analysis of the dynamics of capitalism has to include class as a key concept and class struggle as a decisive social relationship.

Division of Labour. Unlike Durkheim, Marx did not consider the division of labour in capitalism to create harmonies of interest and organic solidarity. Rather, Marx considered "the division of labor as one expression of society’s problem, while Durkheim saw it as the solution to the problem." (Adams and Sydie, p. 161)

Cycles. As noted above, Marx made contributions to the analysis of economic cycles, and was the first political economist to attempt to analyse these and see them as integral to the structure and development of capitalism.

Globalization. Much of the Marxian analysis of the importance and influence of markets – how they dominate society and how they expand to new geographic regions, new products, new populations – is useful in examining the roots and effects of contemporary globaliztion.

Labour process. Marx’s description of the labour process, with employers controlling jobs and their structure, location, and processes, and workers being required to work, having little control over work, and being exploited, provides a good way of examining the labour process in contemporary society. The division of the working day into necessary and surplus labour time, with struggle between employer and worker, helps understand work processes today.

The methods used by Marx differ from those of many sociologists. Key features of his methodological approach are the following:

Dialectical method. Marx used and developed the Hegelian dialectical approach. While it is difficult to understand all aspects of this method and attempts to apply it may confuse, the concept of struggle and contradictory forces is a key to understanding social relationships. Writers using a Marxian approach look for inequalities, exploitation, and oppression, and the struggles and contradictions that result from this. While harmonies and solidarity also exist in society, many social relationships, ideas, and aspects of social structure are contradictory and a dialectic approach can help understand or explain these.

Materialism and human labour. While Marx may have underestimated the independence of ideas and consciousness from their material roots, the emphasis on the material roots of society, social structure, labour processes, and culture improve our understanding of these. Key to understanding social relationships are the organization of work and labour (both paid and unpaid), our connections with the natural world (environmental issues), and who gains and who loses from these.

Historical-theoretical method. In many ways, ideas and methodological approaches from the Enlightenment were well worked out by Marx. Marx combined the use of reason with careful observation of the social world – the study of history and the society around him. As he constructed his analysis of alienation and theory of value, he developed theoretical models using abstraction (concepts such as value, exploitation), these models also explained the historical developoment of capitalist society.

Many of the ideas of Marx have been widely applied in other sociological approaches. Look for ways that later writers incorporate ideas and concepts from Marx, argue against these, or combine a Marxian approach with other approaches.

Last edited October 14, 2002

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