Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, "events have followed Marx's closer predictions almost uncannily: globalisation, privatisation, deregulation, the undermining of democracy, the triumph of a capitalist discourse (railway 'customers' rather than 'passengers'), the decline of socialist ideology, and a succession of capitalist crises, each worse than the last – but none of them as yet showing any sign of being the last. Come back Karl; all is forgiven. You were right. (Up to 'the revolution', that is.)"
Even notorious fartsack Thomas Friedman admits in The World is Flat that he is "in awe at how incisively Marx detailed the forces that were flattening the world during the rise of the Industrial Revolution, and how much he foreshadowed the way these same forces would keep flattening the world right up to the present."
Marx was the first to describe "globalization," and if Friedman can acknowledge that, I hope we all can.
Yeah, people who say that Marx was wrong because communism fell overlook the broader contributions he made. One area where he is less known than in politics or economics is in technological determinism, where he was a major predecessor of theory around what we now refer to as "disruptive innovation" (he did predict that the caste system in India would not co-exist with the railroad, but no one is an oracle I suppose)
Indeed Marx wasn't that bad.
His successors on the other hand......
I love this website.