The idea that we are living in the era of late-stage capitalism has recently gained traction on the Left, particularly among Millennials and Gen Z. The evocative phrase paints a picture of a crumbling economic system, ravaged by mounting social tensions, teetering towards a Marxist revolution.

Karl Marx believed that capitalism was unsustainable and prone to collapse, soon to be replaced by his favoured system of communism, in which goods and services would be distributed by a “dictatorship of the proletariat” on the basis of need, rather than bought and sold in the marketplace.  But while capitalism has some tendencies towards inner turbulence, it is quite resilient, having survived in various forms for 177 years since Karl Marx published his treatise The Communist Manifesto advocating and predicting its overthrow.

The term “late-stage capitalism” originally gained prominence in the 1970s, when the Marxist sociologist Ernest Mandel used it to describe a new globalised phase of capitalism marked by the dominance of multinational corporations, financial speculation, and mass consumerism. We have been waiting for this “late-stage” to pass for half a century now—and yet it has not passed.