 And as we witness the denouement of capitalism, Karl Marx is vindicated as the system's most prescient and important critic. In a preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx wrote, "...no social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have been developed, and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself."