“This not to imply that the reformism of the working classes of the center [Western Europe and North America], which developed in the second half of the nineteenth century and has persisted to the present [1980], is a permanent feature of the global capitalist system. The century and a half in question has been a period of continuing, though uneven, capitalist expansion and rising real standards of living for the workers in the advanced capitalist countries.  If, however, .. the global system has now entered a crisis phase that gives every sign of being irreversible, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that we are entering a new chapter in the history of the metropolitan working classes.  It is of course much too soon to predict that this new phase will see a second transformation of these classes, this time turning them once again into a revolutionary force.  But no Marxist should write off the possibility or renounce the struggle to bring about this outcome.  It is becoming all too clear that the alternative is a descent into barbarism or, given the power of nuclear weapons, the self-destruction of the human race.”

Eminent Marxist economist Paul Sweezy (1981)