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The spectre of Marx is haunting capitalism

Marxist Analysis · 2026-05-13

Core Argument

The central thesis is that the capitalist class itself is being forced to acknowledge the validity of Marx's analysis, as the system's internal contradictions become increasingly impossible to ignore. Rob Sewell argues that Mark Carney's warning — that automation-driven job losses could revive Marxism — is not a concession from a radical but a strategic alarm bell from a leading representative of capital. The article claims that capitalism has entered a phase of terminal decline, that the 2008 crisis was not a cyclical downturn but a structural rupture, and that the only logical conclusion is the replacement of capitalism with a planned socialist economy. The argument is pitched as a refutation of reformist illusions: if even the Bank of England governor sees the system unravelling, the left must draw the revolutionary conclusion rather than seeking to patch up an irreparable order.

Theoretical Grounding

The article draws directly on Marx's theory of exploitation and crisis, particularly the distinction between necessary labour (the portion of the working day that reproduces wages) and surplus labour (the source of profit). This is the foundation of the labour theory of value, though the article does not develop the technical apparatus of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Instead, it deploys the simpler but politically sharper concept of underconsumption: workers cannot buy back the full value of what they produce, leading to crises of overproduction. This is a deliberate pedagogical choice — the article is written for a broad audience, not a seminar room.

The piece also invokes the "Engels' Pause" — the historical period during the first industrial revolution when productivity soared but wages stagnated for decades — to frame the current conjuncture as a repetition of that dynamic. This situates the argument within the Marxist tradition's long-standing analysis of technological change under capitalism: machinery does not liberate labour but intensifies exploitation and creates a reserve army of the unemployed.

Politically, the article sits firmly within the Trotskyist tradition's rejection of reformism. The claim that "capitalism cannot be reformed" is not a rhetorical flourish but a settled theoretical position: the system's contradictions are not malfunctions to be corrected but structural features that intensify over time. The conclusion — that a socialist government must "put an end to this failed system once and for all" — reflects the transitional programme's insistence that the working class cannot manage capitalism but must break with it.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article was published in May 2018, a decade after the 2008 financial crisis. It draws on several concrete data points to ground its argument:

  • Mark Carney's speech to the Canada Growth Summit is the central event. Carney explicitly warned that automation could create a "world of surplus labour" and that "Marx and Engels may again become relevant." This is not an isolated comment but a signal that sections of the ruling class recognise the system's fragility.
  • Real wage stagnation: The article cites the Living Wage Foundation's finding that more than one-in-three working parents cannot afford regular meals, two in five fail to pay household bills on time, and zero-hour contracts approach two million workers in Britain.
  • IMF warnings: The article references IMF chief economist Maurice Obstfeld's concern that public optimism is being "eroded" by "long-standing trends of job and wage polarisation."
  • Labour share of income: Paul Ormerod's own data is turned against him — the labour share of national income in advanced economies fell from 56 percent in the mid-1970s to 51 percent by the time of writing.

Geopolitically, the article is focused on Britain, but the argument is explicitly internationalist: the crisis is systemic, not national. The reference to Carney's speech in Canada underscores that this is a global ruling-class anxiety.

Where the Argument Continues

This article is a popular intervention, not a theoretical treatise. It leaves several questions underdeveloped:

  • The mechanism of crisis: The article invokes underconsumption but does not engage with the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, which is the more rigorous Marxist explanation of capitalist crisis. Readers seeking that analysis should turn to The Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall by Alan Woods (marxist.com) and the Against the Stream episode "Crisis and the Rate of Profit."
  • The political strategy: The article concludes with a call for a "socialist Corbyn-led government" to end capitalism, but does not elaborate on the transitional demands or the relationship between a left Labour government and the revolutionary party. This is developed in other IDOM articles on the Labour Party and the Corbyn project, particularly Corbynism and the Crisis of British Capitalism and The Transitional Programme and the Labour Party.
  • Automation and the reserve army: The article raises the question of technological unemployment but does not explore the Marxist distinction between absolute and relative surplus population. For a fuller treatment, see Marxism and the Fourth Industrial Revolution on marxist.com.

Connections

  • Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto: The article explicitly frames the current moment as a repetition of the dynamics Marx described in 1848. Reading the Manifesto alongside this article clarifies the historical arc.
  • Alan Woods, The Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall: The theoretical companion piece that explains the mechanism of crisis more rigorously.
  • Trotsky, The Transitional Programme: The political framework for the conclusion that capitalism cannot be reformed and must be replaced.
  • David Harvey, The Enigma of Capital: A contemporary Marxist analysis of the 2008 crisis that complements the article's focus on overaccumulation and fictitious capital, though Harvey's reformism would be rejected by the RCI.
  • Paul Mason, Postcapitalism: A popular but theoretically flawed attempt to argue that information technology breaks the laws of capitalist value. The article implicitly refutes this by insisting that automation intensifies exploitation rather than transcending it.

Key Quotes

  1. "If this world of surplus labour comes to pass, Marx and Engels may again become relevant." — Mark Carney, quoted in the article, as the ruling class's own admission of crisis.

  2. "If you substitute platforms for textile mills, machine learning for steam engines, Twitter for the telegraph, you have exactly the same dynamics as existed 150 years ago – when Karl Marx was scribbling the Communist Manifesto." — Carney, acknowledging the structural repetition of capitalist development.

  3. "Marx explained how capitalism could not be reformed (as some still believe), due to the laws of capitalism and accumulation. Capitalism is based on the drive for increased profits. Profits, however, can only come from the unpaid labour of the working class."

  4. "The problem is that the workers cannot buy back with their wages the full value of what their labour has produced. The capitalists try to get round this contradiction by investing the surplus value back into production. This allows the system to continue expanding – but only by increasing productive capacity. This eventually leads to a crisis of overproduction, as we saw in 2008."

  5. "Despite all the best efforts of today's economists, they cannot put the capitalist Humpty Dumpty back together again. The system continues to limp along, but only at the expense of the working class."

  6. "Capitalism has to be done away with and replaced with a rationally-planned economy, run not for profit but for need. It must be the task of a socialist Corbyn-led government to put an end to this failed system once and for all."