The Unhealth of Nations

Though the etymological roots of 'health' and 'wealth' are similar, i. e. 'wholeness' and 'well-being', respectively, their usages have diverged to connote a distinction between 'internal' and 'external' goods.  Thus, there has become no contradiction entailed in either the concept of a 'poor but healthy' person, or that of one who is 'rich but ill'.  Similarly, qua biological unit, a collective can possess bountiful external goods, while being beset by internal strife.  Accordingly, a subtitle of Das Kapital could be 'The Unhealth of Nations'.  For, with the advantage of decades of hindsight, Marx discovers an analytical flaw in Smith's model--that private property qua means of production breeds antagonism between those who own it, and those whose labor transforms it into profitable products.  So, his cure for that illness--the collectivization of such property, can be distinguished from his projection of the means to that end--a communist revolution, which he conceives as inevitable.  The failure of the latter has tended to overshadow any soundness of the his initial diagnosis.