Karl Marx once wrote about the abuse of the worker by the capitalist system and the use of labor pools as capital. Fast forward a 100 + years and where do we find labor as capital being exploited to its extreme? China, one of the few "Communist" countries left in the world, is also the greatest manufacturing power by virtue not of its raw materials, coal, steel etc, but by virtue of its incredibly large and for the most part docile labor supply.
It is indeed ironic, and yet it would not surprise Marx at all for he never envisioned a Communist society in the agrarian peasant society that was China until quite recently. So just to go out on a limb, the next communist revolution seems due in none other than the Communist controlled, labor rich, state capitalist system know as China. It is an irony that would have made Marx smile sadly.
As one reads of Apple factories springing up overnight and labor abuses that would never be allowed in the West, one recalls George Orwell's simple yet elegant treatise, Animal Farm where t he pigs sit down with the farmers and feast while the animals toil to supply the party.
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