Karl Marx made four big predictions about the future of capitalism - and on each, history delivered the exact opposite .
Marx predicted the disappearance of the middle class, with society polarising into a tiny group of capitalists and a massive, impoverished working class. Instead, the middle class exploded. Most people in developed nations today are middle class.
He claimed the working class would become progressively poorer (“increasing immiseration”). But workers in capitalist countries instead became dramatically richer, with real wages, living standards, life expectancy and consumption all rising sharply.
He believed capitalism would lead to ever-worsening crises and its own inevitable collapse. Capitalism, of course, has proven extraordinarily resilient, lifting billions out of poverty worldwide.
He expected socialist revolution to break out first in the most advanced capitalist nations, specifically Britain, Germany and USA. Revolutions instead occurred in backward, agrarian societies like Russia, China, and Cuba.
Marx got all this so wrong because he fundamentally misunderstood the dynamic and creative power of free markets. Far from impoverishing the masses, capitalism has produced the greatest rise in living standards in human history. The “proletariat” he wrote about now owns homes, cars, smartphones and enjoy vast improvements in health and education that previous generations could barely imagine.
The empirical failure of Marx’s predictions is one of the most complete in intellectual history. But sadly, his ideas continue to influence politics and academia long after reality disproved them.