That's not quite right, there are several things Marx offerred that could be tested.
Such as, the most capitalist countries would be the first to fall to communism. Except they didn't the only countries that have ever fallen to communism were Monarchies ruled by an absolute divine monarch.
Or after a revolution, the institutions of religion and the state would wither away. Which Russia is getting close to going back to a sort of Theocratic-Facism, and the CCP may not be quite yet ready to dissolve.
I could bust out my old copy of the communist manifesto to check any more predictions he made, but at the end of the day Marx did offer falsifiable theories, it's just that it turns out anywhere Marxism could be falsified it was. If only he hadn't tied it to something as concrete and objective as economics and instead something more relative and cultural.....
> the only countries that have ever fallen to communism were Monarchies ruled by an absolute divine monarch.
If anyone is wondering why US/corporate empire spent so much blood & treasure, political capital, and moral high ground on sabotage & slaughter in places like Vietnam, Guatemala, and Indonesia - here's the answer. It was due to mortal fear that one of these third world socialist/communist popular movements might actually succeed. (That and plain old short-term business interests)
See: The Jakarta Method, The Devils Chessboard, The Brothers, etc.
> Such as, the most capitalist countries would be the first to fall to communism
He has so far been right in that, insofar as there is any progress in that direction, in that the progress from the capitalism Marx wrote about to the modern mixed economy in the advanced economies is an evolution toward communism implementing several of the elements of the program Marx laid out for the early stages of such a transition. The Leninist attempt to bypass market capitalism on the road to communism consistently, everywhere attempted, either got stuck in state capitalism durably, got stuck there until collapsing totally, or migrated from there toward market capitalism, failing entirely to bypass it on the road to communism.
Marx was talking about where progress toward communism would happen, not where people calling themselves Communists would succeed in taking power and fail to make any more progress toward acheiving communism than, in the best cases, getting a bit closer to where thr capitalist economies of Marx’s time were starting from.
- Why are you mentioning Russia? You do realize they've been capitalist for 30 years now, and that it's transformation to a more fascist state happened in those decades?
- Do you think Cuba was a monarchy, ruled by king Batista, before it fell to communism?
> anywhere Marxism could be falsified it was
Ironically, this is a falsifiable statement. One of the key predictions of Marx is that under capitalism, wealth and property would be concentrated in an increasingly smaller group over time. I would not consider that one as having been falsified.
> I could bust out my old copy of the communist manifesto to check any more predictions he made
That's not a great source for predictions, tbh. It's more of a pamphlet aimed at workers, not so much a theoretical analysis of capitalism or communism. In all fairness though, the books you'd have to read for those predictions are super long and dry, and honestly who has time for that?
Such as, the most capitalist countries would be the first to fall to communism. Except they didn't the only countries that have ever fallen to communism were Monarchies ruled by an absolute divine monarch.
Or after a revolution, the institutions of religion and the state would wither away. Which Russia is getting close to going back to a sort of Theocratic-Facism, and the CCP may not be quite yet ready to dissolve.
I could bust out my old copy of the communist manifesto to check any more predictions he made, but at the end of the day Marx did offer falsifiable theories, it's just that it turns out anywhere Marxism could be falsified it was. If only he hadn't tied it to something as concrete and objective as economics and instead something more relative and cultural.....