"Late stage" is, as you say, Marxist terminology that presumes a known end state. You are right to ridicule it, though downvoted you shall be.

I don't see how talking of a late stage of capitalism presumes a known end state. It only requires the assumption that 1) capitalism is not going to be around forever, and 2) we're closer to the point where it's going to be replaced by something else, than we are to the point where it replaced the socioeconomic system that preceded it. You don't have to believe that the following system is necessarily socialism or communism, nor do you have to believe that it's going to be the last such transition.

You don't just need to believe you are past the midpoint: you must believe that you have crossed a threshold where current events and circumstances are precipitating or portending the end. While logically, this could be the belief of anyone who expects any non-capitalist system to be around the corner, it is in fact used primarily by Marxists/socialists/communists. Do you have examples of other groups using the term late-stage capitalism?

> Do you have examples of other groups using the term late-stage capitalism?

Those who don't share marxists' inherent optimism and therefore expect capitalism to eventually turn into neo-feudalism.

Maybe present an argument instead of ridicule. And to encourage this behavior is equally abhorrent.

Why is Marxism a failure to understand the current and future state of economics (and the impacts of technology) but capitalism is immune to this somehow?

I don't see any substance to your post. My response would be that it is easy to see the weakness of the current system, to identify the pressure points and where it will fail, collapse. It is not as easy to see where we are going.

Because one is not good at the latter does not mean the critique of the former is illegitimate.

So can you please contribute something other than incendiary platitudes? You lower the state of discourse on this site.

ETA:

> Of course, they've been predicting this 'late stage' and inevitable 'collapse of capitalism' since the 19th century.

Are you suggesting that perhaps things have not significantly changed in regards to technology and the economy since the 19th century?

In my opinion Banthum has given an accurate description of certain branches of literalist Marxism. The theory has a descriptive part and a predictive/prescriptive part. The descriptive part is about human economic development through various phases up to Industrialization and is fairly accurate with respect to the societies Marx was studying. The predictive part is extrapolating this by adding further stages of Socialism and eventual Communism.

Precisely because Marxism makes predictions, it can fail to understand the current and future state of economics, while capitalism is just an economic system that exists and doesn't have to understand anything (just as Communism would be).

> it is easy to see the weakness of the current system, to identify the pressure points and where it will fail, collapse.

I don't think it is actually that simple. Marx saw the working conditions of coal miners in Germany as a weakness that would lead to an uprising. That revolution never happened and their working conditions improved within the system (unions likely played a part). I'm actually not aware of any Marxist revolution in an already industrialized country. (The Soviet Union and Mao's China famously miscalculated their industrialization plans.)

Today we might identify Automation as the weakness that will lead to a Socialist restructuring of society, with shared ownership of the means of production and all that. But it might all come differently and we could end up in a completely stratified society, without replacing Capitalism.

> Because one is not good at the latter does not mean the critique of the former is illegitimate.

I don't think Banthum was trying to insinuate that, but talking about something that's still happening as "late stage" is a bit presumptuous about your ability to tell the future.

> Are you suggesting that perhaps things have not significantly changed in regards to technology and the economy since the 19th century?

The complete opposite, I would think. Since the various problems plaguing the Capitalist system at the time didn't lead to its downfall and have mostly disappeared, any similar claim needs some very good arguments to explain why it will be different this time.

> a global communist state of society where human nature no longer applies and people are no longer self-interested.

Until 300 generations back, all of human society was "a global communist state of society". Over the past 300 generations, domination by an idle class of heirs over the working people of the world has spread.

How is "a global communist state of society" a place where "human nature no longer applies", when that was the only form of society at all 10,000 years back to the dawn of humanity, whereas the current dominant economic system has only been predominant for the past few centuries, and has endured massive crises, recessions, revolutions, depressions etc.?

Your dreams of noble savagery are ridiculous. Humans in prehistory fought each other just as hard and as viciously as chimps fight each other today.

This will get you banned, not a response.

Rightly. What's to respond to? Name calling? Sounds productive.