 Marx warned that capitalism had built within it the seeds of its own destruction. There would come a day when capitalism would exhaust its potential and collapse. He didn't know when that day would come. Marx, as Meghnad Desai, the economist, labor politician in the UK, wrote, was an astronomer of history, not an astrologer. Marx was keenly aware of capitalism's ability to innovate and adapt, but he also knew that capitalist expansion was not eternally sustainable.