The
Necessary
Stage

Karl Marx thought capitalism was a necessary stage — the engine that must first produce material abundance before a post-scarcity society is possible. A century and a half later, the world's most enthusiastic capitalists have begun describing, in public and on the record, an imminent future of near-costless goods, optional work, and irrelevant money. They do not cite him. The script, however, is his — and the supporting cast, from a Marxist Labour peer to The Economist's editor-in-chief, keeps wandering on stage to say the quiet part aloud.

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