It's not an argument about Marx until somebody accuses somebody else of not understanding Marx. It's like the national anthem at baseball games. He didn't pre

It's not an argument about Marx until somebody accuses somebody else of not understanding Marx. It's like the national anthem at baseball games. He didn't predict it. He predicted capital accumulation. The tight relation between technology and capital in Capital is exactly the mistake he's making. You can't explain the increase in output in terms of capital. This is the fundamental insight of Solow's research. With technological advance, the output of the economy becomes larger for the same inputs. Marx had heard of finance, since it existed by the time he was writing, but he didn't understand it. Otherwise he would have understood that profits do not exist solely because of exploitation. People have time preferences, and risk preferences. People would rather get paid today, and would rather avoid risk. Thus, profits are required to fund projects with long-dated payoffs, or are risky. Take away those profits, and you see those projects go largely unfunded. That's why the China that took Marx' advice was one of the poorest in the world, and the China that ignored his advice makes up 15% of world output. The instability of the global financial system is overrated. Look how easily the Fed stepped in this summer and stabilized financial markets.