Capitalism progressed from water and wind power to steam for motive power, but communists, from the outset, plumped for electricity. German author Liebknecht [1901], writing in the 1890s, described having met Karl Marx in the 1850s after he had seen a model electric train. Marx enthused that just as steam had created capitalism, electric power would create a new economic and social order. Liebknecht remarked sardonically that in the ensuing forty-five years there had been no signs of electricity taking over yet. The trains were still steam, and the few electric tramcars were of no significance.

Looking back from the twenty-first century, Marx appears to have had the more acute sense of the promise of electric power. You have to take the long view when looking at the development of technology.

• Paul Cockshott, How The World Works