Since Marx was mainly interested in transforming the capitalist system, his work helped better understand the next crisis of capitalism and use it to move to a more viable system focused on people, not on profit. Marx proved the doom of capitalism based on the general laws of historical materialism developed by him. He was convinced that the capitalist system would cope worse with ensuring continuous prosperity and happy life because of the internal contradictions tearing it apart. In his writings, it is possible to find various proofs of this initial weakness of capitalism. Four of them can be distinguished:
- The creative potential of capitalism is limited; therefore, having reached the end, a technological crisis will inevitably come. It is possible to say that the result of capitalism will be a marginal decline in productivity, which will mark its collapse.
- A time stage will probably come when another, more efficient, and productive system appears, replacing capitalism with more advantages and prospects. It makes it possible to achieve a development trajectory, albeit not optimal, but excluding stagnation.
- Some significant macroeconomic imbalances characterize the capitalist system. There will be considerable unemployment, which will lead to malfunctions and disruptions in the commodity markets. There will be a significant imbalance, and demand will decrease due to the lack of coordination of market relations or their low efficiency.
- Human discoveries and technological progress lead to the fact that material forces are endowed with intellectual potential, and human lives, on the contrary, are reduced to a simple material-replaceable force.
Thus, capitalism’s discrepancy between high productivity and insufficient attention to genuine needs is a crucial contradiction.