To the Glory of Karl Marx: His Theory Has Been Fulfilled, and Therefore Exhausted

This essay argues that, in many versions of Marxism, the central narrative – the development of society through productive forces – has been displaced by a moralizing critique of the "evil" of private property. It contends that Karl Marx’s theory has been fulfilled through historical evolution: modern welfare states represent the realization of socialism, having resolved capitalism’s fundamental contradiction – the social character of production versus private appropriation – through institutionalized redistribution. The collapse of the USSR is interpreted not as a failure of socialism, but as a consequence of ideological rigidity that stifled productive forces – entirely consistent with Marx’s own materialist criterion. Looking forward, the essay identifies the principal contradiction of our epoch as that between rising human consumption and planetary constraints. Grounded in the concept of the “Jobless Society,” it proposes that introduction of a Universal Basic Income constitutes an evolutionary threshold, after which we may speak of genuine communism: a society where freedom from the necessity to work is institutionalized. By redefining capitalism, socialism, and communism in terms of achieved freedoms rather than ownership models, the essay offers a reinterpretation in which Marx was right, and therefore his program exhausted.