• Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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    9 hours ago

    He didn’t predict it, but he did begin to analyze imperialism, which is why it has lasted longer than he thought it would, and which Lenin continued on. Capitalism in Marx’s age was far worse for the average laborer than the current western labor aristocracy feels. Child workers were packed like sardines into tiny rooms and forced to work over 10 hours a day, Capital Volume I describes this vividly. However, Marx only lived to see the beginnings of imperialism, which Lenin observed, and watched the imperial core export suffering to the global south and bribe its proletariat into complacency with the spoils. That’s why Imperialism, the Current Highest Stage of Capitalism is listed in the meme alongside Capital.

    Further, Lenin did not live to see the consolidation of the world’s competing imperialist power into one unified international dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, helmed by the US Empire, with subservient vassal states. This happened post-World War II, and the decay in this “super-imperialism” is what is driving present conditions forward.