This is essentially one of the same points Marx made. Capitalism is often really good at dealing with shortages but it will also perpetually create its own unless kept in check by countervailing forces.
Didn't Marx think that Capitalism would end once we were near or at post-scarcity? Seems we'll never be there, because capital will just find ways to artificially create scarcity.
Marx would certainly be surprised that we have so much more abundance than he dreamed of, while ordinary people still say "the economy must continue to grow". He expected people to demand basic food and shelter in such a society.
He would look at our weak but non-zero safety nets and say, "You can do so much better," and note that if they didn't exist then Capitalism would have ended a long time ago.
So I don't know what he'd predict from here. We're in a semi stable state, looking at a potentially more stable one but very afraid of it and even more afraid of upsetting the status quo. But if things got worse -- and they keep threatening to -- that would turn the semi stable state real unstable real quick.
I doubt he'd be too surprised at the state of modern day America.
He might be surprised at the extraordinary high level of false consciousness given the relative freedom of access to information (belief in the American dream, etc.) but he likely wouldnt look at it and think "there's a country on the verge of communism" just because of the high level of material wealth.
I don't think he'd be surprised at America either.
He wrote about America at some length, and accurately pointed out that America's ties to Europe would only last as long as there was free land west of the original colonies to take and give to its growing population, after which America would develop a factory working proletariat just as Europe had after the decline of feudalism, and then be far less welcoming of European immigrants as it sought to preserve the wealth the existing residents had built for themselves. In that respect his theory was proven true. Capital, not any sort of continental or feudal allegiance or concern for the future, would be the driving ideology.
"Money, then, appears as this distorting power both against the individual and against the bonds of society, etc., which claim to be entities in themselves. It transforms fidelity into infidelity, love into hate, hate into love, virtue into vice, vice into virtue, servant into master, master into servant, idiocy into intelligence, and intelligence into idiocy.
Since money, as the existing and active concept of value, confounds and confuses all things, it is the general confounding and confusing of all things – the world upside-down – the confounding and confusing of all natural and human qualities."
-- Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, "The Power of Money"
No, he though capitalism would end because of its "internal contradictions" which, in his opinion, led to an ever growing divergence between the haves and have-nots.
In a post-scarcity world capitalism would make no sense, because there would be no need for an economy, since everything would be infinitely abundant.
