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Marx and Engels on Revolution

Talking Politics: HISTORY OF IDEAS

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The Transformational Power of Capitalism

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels are awestruck by capitalism. They say it has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. And they see this extraordinary transformational power as a kind of magic. So imagine what capitalism could do if you got rid of the capitalists. But one of its inevitable cyclical features is that it will keep running into crisis. The crisis is caused by the fact that it is more powerful than the people who run it are able to deal with. It is too powerful for them. This form of exploitation outruns itself.

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