Modern Economics

On page 172, the editors talk about how Marx's theories seem to have come out so wrong for the western world after being so accurate for China and Russia. China and Russia, notice, had communism rise up early in the 20th century, while it is still delayed in the west. What is the reason for this? Technology. We have been living in the information era. We are no longer a society that depends on the physical production of goods because we need many more services provided. We need someone to do our taxes and to cut our hair and take care of our pets. This is the reason that China is flourishing so much under communism these days. Since "there are now large numbers of white-collar workers such as office staff, government employees, medical staff, teachers, and lawyers" (171) here in America, all of our labor demands go to China. China is then the perfect habitat for production, because of communism, and they do what used to be slave work, for an incredibly low price. When the editor says that "Marx should have paid more attention to slavery" (172), I think he should have said that  Marx should have paid attention to the labor that slaves provide, not the slaves themselves. Through technology, we now have more needs than simply those of manufactured goods and harvested agriculture. Although those maintain their status as important goods, we are able to have them produced in China at a low cost. Until this changes, I don't see communism making its way to the United States because the labor market here with all the office workers and so on cannot be regulated in a way that physical, manufacturing labor can be.