Even in the 19th century you didn't need to be a prophet to ponder what will happen when machinery finally becomes fully automated, and what the process of arriving to this state might look like.
Indeed this is the main question of Marx's work.
Indeed this is the main question of Marx's work.
His ideas are built around an industrial working class, which may vanish completely as an economic unit within the next few decades. In previous eras, there was a need for the rulong class to have a market and a human workforce.