While capital concentrates in the hands of a tiny elite, poised to cross the trillion‑dollar threshold, an unprecedented redistribution of wealth is taking place in favour of the chosen few. In the meantime, the working class is being fed culture wars and political divisions, ensuring that it remains blind to what truly matters.
The moment demands a serious re-examination of The Communist Manifesto, viewed through the lens of contemporary challenges: aging populations, the devaluation of labour, and the accelerating displacement of workers by foreign competition and artificial intelligence. Capitalism’s longstanding promise—that innovation and consumption would resolve societal ills—has so far failed to materialize. Now, with the arrival of transformative AI technologies, the faith-based narrative that capitalism will heal all ills assumes an almost theological status, elevating market forces to the role of new deities.
One can only imagine the engaging and eye-opening commentary that would emerge if Karl Marx and Adam Smith, from an American perspective, were present to witness this perfect storm. Their insights would likely expose how these converging forces—demographic shifts, technological disruption, and unchecked capital accumulation—are being weaponized against the working class on a global scale.
America is not the Greatest Country!
The situation reminds me of the journalist from the HBO series “The Newsroom” in the context of contemporary American challenges. The journalist refused to give the politically correct answer during a discussion of a panel of experts before a college audience regarding if America was the greatest country in the world.
The other panelists gave generic, politically correct answers about diversity and freedom, but the one journalist refused to toe the line. He lists statistical shortcomings in areas like literacy, math, and life expectancy to argue his point, noting that America used to build great things, and do the right thing, but it is no longer the greatest.
I was recently reading that approximately 40 million people are receiving food stamps in the US and thirty million are without health insurance, and the country has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the developed world, and the highest incarceration rate on earth, an opioid crisis that has killed over half a million people and counting, a housing market so broken that working people cannot afford to live in the cities they work in, an education system that buries young people in debt before they earn their first dollar, and infrastructure that is literally collapsing.
Not only is the quality of life declining, but life expectancy is going backwards, while the country is run by a political system so thoroughly bought and sold by concentrated wealth that the laws it produces bear almost no relationship to what the public actually wants or needs. It is worth noting that the working class has not seen meaningful real wage growth in thirty years, and is suffering from a mental health crisis so severe that it is seen as normal.
A Reckoning with Persistent Challenges
The United States, after 250 years of nationhood, despite its unparalleled power, resources, and theoretical capacity as the most advanced society in human history, is confronting a series of unresolved domestic difficulties that Karl Marx would have cited as proof of what he predicted was to come.
The new reality for the housing market is that many working-class people can no longer afford homes or even flats in the cities and places where they are employed and end up having to live with parents, friends, or sleep in their cars, which was not the case in living memory. It is even illegal in some places to sleep in your car.
As for those seeking upward mobility and a better life, the system of public and private education is overpriced and ineffective, which leaves large numbers of young graduates burdened with substantial debt before entering the workforce. They earn degrees that have become almost useless. They end up as virtual wage slaves to pay off student debt for most of their productive life and until the end of life. Many are even unable to find a job that pays enough to cover anything but living, and forget the loans.
Money and power float to the top in a political system heavily influenced by concentrated wealth, and insider trading that brings forth legislation that has anything but public needs in mind and caters to the rich, giving them impunity before the law.
And then, in spite of claims of preventing the import of drugs by the Trump administration, the ongoing opioid crisis, blowing up boats on the high seas, or “defensively” attacking Venezuela (successfully thanks to bribery) or Iran (rather disastrously) or funding and leading proxy wars against Russia, and, soon to come, China, the US wastes huge, almost uncountable, amounts of taxpayer money on needless wars of choice that only further impoverish the public while enriching the ruling classes.
Karl Marx’s Verdict on America at 250:
“I Told You So” on Capitalism’s Inevitable Contradictions
I can only guess how Marx would weigh in on the sobering assessment of the United States on its 250th anniversary, as it is no longer vogue to discuss such things in the intellectual shadow of Karl Marx. The German philosopher and economist, co-author of The Communist Manifesto, would likely view contemporary American society as a textbook validation of his predictions regarding capitalist development.
Marx would argue that the nation’s profound domestic challenges exemplify the systemic contradictions inherent in capitalism: the relentless accumulation of capital by a small bourgeoisie class of insiders, e.g., the bankers and gangsters, at the expense of the proletariat, leading to alienation, exploitation, and eventual crisis.
Then economic plight for most tells it all: stagnant or declining wages for many workers over decades, mental health challenges, gun violence, and climate policy tensions—would strike Marx as evidence of the “macerations” of the working class.
Marx would interpret these as manifestations of class warfare waged from above. In his framework, the bourgeoisie—today’s billionaires and corporate elites—control the means of production and the state apparatus, enacting policies that prioritize profit over public welfare and the collective public good.
He would describe concentrated wealth’s influence on legislation as the predictable dominance of the ruling class, where laws reflect capital’s interests rather than the proletariat’s needs. Real wage stagnation for broad segments of the working class, despite overall economic growth and productivity gains, aligns with his theory of surplus value extraction: workers produce more value than they receive in compensation.
A modern Marxist reading might extend this to “false consciousness,” wherein cultural and political divisions—identity politics, partisan conflicts, or scapegoating of immigrants and minorities—distract the working class, the unwashed masses, from unified action against Capital. The notion of “tricking the working class into blaming each other” echoes Marx’s warnings about ideological superstructures that obscure material realities.
Automation, artificial intelligence, and the exploitation of the global labor market could be considered further devaluing “surplus” labour, rendering segments of the population economically redundant under capitalism and no longer needed, or only on an as needed basis, dirt cheap and without benefits such as medical insurance or pensions.
Marx would likely concur that wealth polarization represents an intensification of capitalist tendencies toward monopoly and inequality, potentially presaging revolutionary conditions. He might urge a contemporary revisit of The Communist Manifesto, updating its call for proletarian internationalism to address globalization, financialization, and technological disruption.
Marx, ever the materialist, would caution against such distractions we are faced with as the priority problems, insisting that systemic critique must rest on economic analysis rather than speculation. He would view symbolic celebrations, such as a wrestling arena on the White House lawn amid unresolved crises, as bourgeois spectacle designed to pacify the masses—echoing his critique of religion and culture as “opiates of the people.”
From Marx’s perspective, America’s challenges at 250 years affirm his diagnosis: capitalism generates immense productive forces but also acute social contradictions that it cannot ultimately resolve without its own transcendence. Whether this leads to revolutionary change or reformist adaptation remains a question for empirical history, not inevitability.
The one clip is worth revisiting in the wake of the speeding up of the rich getting richer and the poor poorer, or they just die! And if anyone is not improving their lot in this life, then it is their own fault—end of story.
Today, as this is being sent off, I’m listening to Catherine Austin Fitz. I really like her. I think she has a lot of insight into the financial world and how money flows. She said something today: “See the plan, change the game.” Obviously she’s referring to big money’s designs on how to control the world through digital currency and population control. She said Trump is absolutely being manipulated. There was no need to go into Iran, other than to destabilize that region. They are/were somewhat financially independent and may come out all the better at the end of the day.
And in closing, we must remember the work of Lincoln Steffens, the American muckraking journalist, who described in detail how a businessman should never be a politician, Shame of the Cities, a piece of forgotten American literature that should be read and reread in the face of today’s reality.
He believed private wealth and public office often corrupt each other because business incentives (profit, leverage, and consolidation) are fundamentally different from civic obligations (representation, accountability, and the public good).
Henry Kamens, columnist and expert on Central Asia and the Caucasus
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