Marx praised capitalism to the skies. Probably no one has ever praised capitalism more beautifully than Marx. However, capitalism does have a significant downside, and Marx did not shy away from that. Ultimately, Marx felt that downside of capitalism outweighed its upside, and that in the long run, capitalism was just not sustainable. Here in the 21st Century, we are experiencing ample signs that Marx was right. Automation and computers are replacing so many human jobs that soon there will be a massive jobs shortage. There will be hundreds of millions of people out of work with no prospects because few new jobs are created in an era of computerization and mechanization.
If a capitalist can replace a human worker with a computer or machine, he will often do just that. Why? Because by doing that, he increases his profits. But as you can see, at some point, this runs into a wall. So many jobs would have been replaced that you would end up with massive unemployment. People without jobs are not workers. Workers work in order to obtain money. Money is then used to buy the products created by capitalists. Getting rid of a worker and replacing him with a machine means that you just got rid of not only a worker but a customer. If people are not workers and have no jobs, they have no money to buy the capitalist’s products. So the profits of the capitalist fall due to lack of demand.
Capitalism creates this same problem in a different way. Capitalists are always trying everything they can to lower the wages of workers. Massive 3rd World immigration, illegal immigration, outsourcing and hiring of Hindu 1-B scabs is all about paying your workers less money. If you pay your workers less money (or hire no workers as in the case of outsourcing) then they have less money to buy your stuff (if you outsource, then workers have no money to buy your stuff because your workers are all in a foreign country where they cannot even buy your products.
Capitalism prospers when customers have a lot of spending money in their pockets. Mechanization, computerization and all of the italicized job replacement and wage lowering schemes above all serve to diminish, often radically, the amount of spending money that customers have available to spend. That means fewer customers and those customers you do have will be fewer and will not be able to buy as much of your stuff.
There is a third way that capitalism does the same thing. Unregulated capitalism always results in the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.
All of these things create the same thing – fewer and fewer customers with less and less cash to buy the products of the capitalists. This is exactly what is driving the current economic crash in the West. Marx said the rich would keep getting richer and the poor would keep getting poorer until the system would not work anymore. What is happening in the West is exactly what Marx said would happen – capitalism is failing under the weight of its own contradictions and downsides exactly as he said it would.
