Marx goes on: There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny.: The basic fact of modern life , as Marx experienced it, is that this life is radically contradictory at its base:



On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of human history had ever suspected.

On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors of the latter times of the Roman Empire.

In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary. Machinery, gifted with the wonderful power of shortening and fructifying human labor, we behold starving and overworking it.

The new-fangled sources of wealth, by some weird spell, are turned into sources of want.

The victories of art seem bought by the loss of character. At the same pace that mankind masters nature, man seems to become enslaved to other men or to his own infamy. Even the pure light of science seems unable to shine but on the dark background of ignorance.

All our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life, and stultifying human life into a material force.

(excerpt from All That Is Solid Melts into Air by Marshall Berman)

... as their workforce... and then throwing them out of work. Building factories, in order to tear them down.

The list of such things is endless; in fact this duality seems to define capitalism more than anything else.

Toothpaste for everyone but not enough to eat...