By Nikos Mottas
There was a time when capitalism could plausibly present itself as progress.
In the era of the great bourgeois revolutions—of the French Revolution and the American Revolution—and throughout the upheavals of 1848, the rising bourgeoisie shattered feudal bonds, dissolved hereditary privilege, and dismantled archaic hierarchies that had long obstructed productive development. Against feudal particularism and static social relations, capitalism was historically revolutionary. It unified national markets, accelerated scientific discovery, expanded industry, and proclaimed equality before the law—however limited and formal that equality ultimately proved to be.
Marx and Engels never denied this. In The Communist Manifesto, they openly acknowledged the immense historical dynamism of the bourgeoisie. Historical materialism does not romanticize the past, nor does it mechanically condemn every previous stage of development. It recognizes that each mode of production emerges as a necessary historical force, develops the productive forces, and transforms social life on a vast scale.
But historical materialism also insists on something far more decisive—and far more unsettling for the defenders of the present order: no social system founded upon antagonistic class interests remains progressive indefinitely. When the relations of production that once unleashed development begin to constrain it, when expansion turns into domination and dynamism into monopoly, a system enters its epoch of decline.
The question, therefore, is not whether capitalism once played a revolutionary role. It did. The question is: what role does it play now?
By the late nineteenth century, capitalism had already undergone a qualitative transformation. Competition gave way to concentration. Small producers were absorbed by trusts and cartels. Industrial capital fused with banking capital. Markets ceased to be arenas of dispersed exchange and became territories dominated by monopolies and finance. Capital did not merely seek profit; it sought global command. The export of goods was increasingly overshadowed by the export of capital itself.
This transformation was not theoretical—it was historical. The First World War was not a tragic misunderstanding among nations; it was the violent redivision of a world already partitioned by imperial powers. The Second World War followed, even more catastrophic, as rival blocs fought to reorganize markets and spheres of influence. Tens of millions perished not because humanity suddenly lost its reason, but because inter-imperialist rivalry is embedded in a system driven by competitive accumulation.
After 1945, this logic did not disappear. It adapted. Proxy wars, regime-change operations, sanctions, interventions cloaked in the language of democracy and security—all became instruments for maintaining geopolitical and economic dominance: Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Ukraine and elsewhere. If capitalism is a “success,” why does it require permanent militarization in order to periodically reorganize itself through devastation?
The world’s largest capitalist economies continue to allocate colossal resources to military budgets while declaring social needs fiscally unsustainable. This is not accidental mismanagement. It reflects structural priorities.
Unable to provide a serious and non-cynical explanation, defenders of this increasingly barbaric system shift ground. They point to technological innovation, digital networks, artificial intelligence, unprecedented productive capacity. And here one must be precise: the productive forces humanity has developed under capitalism are indeed extraordinary. But productive capacity is not synonymous with rational social organization.
We live in a world that produces more than enough food to eliminate hunger, yet hundreds of millions remain food insecure. We live in a world with millions of vacant housing units alongside expanding homelessness. The issue is not technical scarcity; it is the subordination of need to profitability. In capitalism, distribution follows purchasing power, not human necessity. This is not ideological exaggeration. It is visible reality.
The 2008 financial crisis offered a moment of clarity. Financial institutions inflated speculative bubbles, collapsed under their own leverage, and were rescued by unprecedented public intervention. Trillions were mobilized in days to stabilize banks. Meanwhile, workers lost homes, pensions, and employment. Losses were socialized; profits remained private. A system that repeatedly destabilizes itself and then relies on collective rescue cannot credibly claim structural efficiency.
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed similar fault lines. Healthcare systems weakened by decades of cost-cutting struggled to respond. Supply chains optimized for profit proved fragile. Pharmaceutical corporations defended patent monopolies while vast regions of the world waited for access to life-saving vaccines. The technical means existed; the social coordination did not. Profit logic stood above universal access. If this is rationality, it is rational only within the narrow calculus of accumulation.
Meanwhile, wealth concentration has reached levels historically unprecedented in peacetime. A minute fraction of the global population controls resources exceeding the combined wealth of billions. This is not the distortion of an otherwise fair system. It is the outcome of accumulation itself. Capital centralizes. Ownership narrows. Economic power translates into political influence. Electoral systems become dependent on financing flows. Media consolidates. Policy gravitates toward those who command investment and credit.
Formal democratic procedures remain, but substantive control increasingly aligns with concentrated capital.
At the same time, finance has expanded beyond its earlier function of facilitating production. Speculation, derivatives, stock buybacks, debt instruments, and rent extraction dominate profit strategies. Housing becomes an asset class; education becomes a liability; data becomes a commodity harvested from everyday life. This is not capitalism in its vigorous adolescence building infrastructure and industry. It is capitalism in maturity extracting value wherever it can.
The ecological crisis brings the contradiction into sharp relief. Capitalism requires perpetual growth. Growth is not policy preference; it is systemic necessity. Yet infinite accumulation confronts a finite biosphere. Climate change, environmental degradation, biodiversity loss—these are not incidental failures of regulation but structural consequences of production organized for competitive profit. Even when technological alternatives exist, their deployment is constrained by return on investment calculations. A system that cannot prioritize planetary stability over quarterly earnings cannot claim historical viability.
None of this denies capitalism’s historical achievements. It industrialized societies and dissolved feudal stagnation. But historical materialism does not grant eternal mandates. When relations of production become fetters upon the productive forces, when crisis recurs as structural pattern rather than anomaly, when inequality widens despite abundance, when war remains a constant possibility rather than a distant memory, the verdict becomes difficult to evade.
If success means durable peace, the record of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries refutes it.
If success means the eradication of poverty in a world of abundance, lived reality refutes it.
If success means democratic control over collective destiny, concentrated economic power refutes it.
If success means sustainable coexistence with nature, the accelerating climate emergency refutes it.
Capitalism once broke the chains of feudalism. Today it preserves its own chains through ideology, normalization of inequality, and the quiet acceptance of recurring crisis as inevitable. The defenders of the system conflate the creative capacity of human labor with the social relations that appropriate it. They mistake technological brilliance for moral legitimacy.
But the central contradiction grows increasingly visible: production is social; appropriation is private. Millions cooperate across continents to generate wealth; a minority accumulates it. As productive forces become more integrated and global, the tension intensifies.
So where is the so-called success of capitalism?
If it exists, it is reflected in stock indices and corporate balance sheets, not in the security and dignity of the majority. It is visible in expanding military arsenals, not in universal social guarantees. It is measurable in wealth concentration, not in equality.
Capitalism fulfilled a historical function. It revolutionized production and reshaped the world. But historical functions are not permanent virtues. When a system’s internal contradictions cease to be temporary disturbances and become defining features, when crisis, inequality, militarization, and ecological strain are no longer exceptions but structural norms, the narrative of “success” becomes ideological rather than empirical.
Under the light of material reality and common sense, the myth dissolves. What remains is a historically exhausted system sustained by entrenched power rather than universal benefit.
And no system in history whose contradictions become this visible has proven immune to transformation.
But historical materialism also insists on something far more decisive—and far more unsettling for the defenders of the present order: no social system founded upon antagonistic class interests remains progressive indefinitely. When the relations of production that once unleashed development begin to constrain it, when expansion turns into domination and dynamism into monopoly, a system enters its epoch of decline.
The question, therefore, is not whether capitalism once played a revolutionary role. It did. The question is: what role does it play now?
By the late nineteenth century, capitalism had already undergone a qualitative transformation. Competition gave way to concentration. Small producers were absorbed by trusts and cartels. Industrial capital fused with banking capital. Markets ceased to be arenas of dispersed exchange and became territories dominated by monopolies and finance. Capital did not merely seek profit; it sought global command. The export of goods was increasingly overshadowed by the export of capital itself.
This transformation was not theoretical—it was historical. The First World War was not a tragic misunderstanding among nations; it was the violent redivision of a world already partitioned by imperial powers. The Second World War followed, even more catastrophic, as rival blocs fought to reorganize markets and spheres of influence. Tens of millions perished not because humanity suddenly lost its reason, but because inter-imperialist rivalry is embedded in a system driven by competitive accumulation.
After 1945, this logic did not disappear. It adapted. Proxy wars, regime-change operations, sanctions, interventions cloaked in the language of democracy and security—all became instruments for maintaining geopolitical and economic dominance: Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Ukraine and elsewhere. If capitalism is a “success,” why does it require permanent militarization in order to periodically reorganize itself through devastation?
The world’s largest capitalist economies continue to allocate colossal resources to military budgets while declaring social needs fiscally unsustainable. This is not accidental mismanagement. It reflects structural priorities.
Unable to provide a serious and non-cynical explanation, defenders of this increasingly barbaric system shift ground. They point to technological innovation, digital networks, artificial intelligence, unprecedented productive capacity. And here one must be precise: the productive forces humanity has developed under capitalism are indeed extraordinary. But productive capacity is not synonymous with rational social organization.
We live in a world that produces more than enough food to eliminate hunger, yet hundreds of millions remain food insecure. We live in a world with millions of vacant housing units alongside expanding homelessness. The issue is not technical scarcity; it is the subordination of need to profitability. In capitalism, distribution follows purchasing power, not human necessity. This is not ideological exaggeration. It is visible reality.
The 2008 financial crisis offered a moment of clarity. Financial institutions inflated speculative bubbles, collapsed under their own leverage, and were rescued by unprecedented public intervention. Trillions were mobilized in days to stabilize banks. Meanwhile, workers lost homes, pensions, and employment. Losses were socialized; profits remained private. A system that repeatedly destabilizes itself and then relies on collective rescue cannot credibly claim structural efficiency.
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed similar fault lines. Healthcare systems weakened by decades of cost-cutting struggled to respond. Supply chains optimized for profit proved fragile. Pharmaceutical corporations defended patent monopolies while vast regions of the world waited for access to life-saving vaccines. The technical means existed; the social coordination did not. Profit logic stood above universal access. If this is rationality, it is rational only within the narrow calculus of accumulation.
Meanwhile, wealth concentration has reached levels historically unprecedented in peacetime. A minute fraction of the global population controls resources exceeding the combined wealth of billions. This is not the distortion of an otherwise fair system. It is the outcome of accumulation itself. Capital centralizes. Ownership narrows. Economic power translates into political influence. Electoral systems become dependent on financing flows. Media consolidates. Policy gravitates toward those who command investment and credit.
Formal democratic procedures remain, but substantive control increasingly aligns with concentrated capital.
At the same time, finance has expanded beyond its earlier function of facilitating production. Speculation, derivatives, stock buybacks, debt instruments, and rent extraction dominate profit strategies. Housing becomes an asset class; education becomes a liability; data becomes a commodity harvested from everyday life. This is not capitalism in its vigorous adolescence building infrastructure and industry. It is capitalism in maturity extracting value wherever it can.
The ecological crisis brings the contradiction into sharp relief. Capitalism requires perpetual growth. Growth is not policy preference; it is systemic necessity. Yet infinite accumulation confronts a finite biosphere. Climate change, environmental degradation, biodiversity loss—these are not incidental failures of regulation but structural consequences of production organized for competitive profit. Even when technological alternatives exist, their deployment is constrained by return on investment calculations. A system that cannot prioritize planetary stability over quarterly earnings cannot claim historical viability.
None of this denies capitalism’s historical achievements. It industrialized societies and dissolved feudal stagnation. But historical materialism does not grant eternal mandates. When relations of production become fetters upon the productive forces, when crisis recurs as structural pattern rather than anomaly, when inequality widens despite abundance, when war remains a constant possibility rather than a distant memory, the verdict becomes difficult to evade.
If success means durable peace, the record of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries refutes it.
If success means the eradication of poverty in a world of abundance, lived reality refutes it.
If success means democratic control over collective destiny, concentrated economic power refutes it.
If success means sustainable coexistence with nature, the accelerating climate emergency refutes it.
Capitalism once broke the chains of feudalism. Today it preserves its own chains through ideology, normalization of inequality, and the quiet acceptance of recurring crisis as inevitable. The defenders of the system conflate the creative capacity of human labor with the social relations that appropriate it. They mistake technological brilliance for moral legitimacy.
But the central contradiction grows increasingly visible: production is social; appropriation is private. Millions cooperate across continents to generate wealth; a minority accumulates it. As productive forces become more integrated and global, the tension intensifies.
So where is the so-called success of capitalism?
If it exists, it is reflected in stock indices and corporate balance sheets, not in the security and dignity of the majority. It is visible in expanding military arsenals, not in universal social guarantees. It is measurable in wealth concentration, not in equality.
Capitalism fulfilled a historical function. It revolutionized production and reshaped the world. But historical functions are not permanent virtues. When a system’s internal contradictions cease to be temporary disturbances and become defining features, when crisis, inequality, militarization, and ecological strain are no longer exceptions but structural norms, the narrative of “success” becomes ideological rather than empirical.
Under the light of material reality and common sense, the myth dissolves. What remains is a historically exhausted system sustained by entrenched power rather than universal benefit.
And no system in history whose contradictions become this visible has proven immune to transformation.
* Nikos Mottas is the Editor-in-Chief of In Defense of Communism.
