ultimate ideal for a harmonious society: Mill's concept of the stationary state was strongly coloured by these ideals. Mill conjectured that the stationary state of society was not too far away in the future: Contrary to both Smith and Ricardo before him, Mill took an optimistic view on the future stationary state. Mill could not "... regard the stationary state of capital and wealth with the unaffected aversion so generally manifested toward it by political economists of the old school." Instead, Mill attributed many important qualities to this future state, he even believed the state would bring about "... a very considerable improvement on our present condition." According to Mill, the stationary state was at one and the same time inevitable, necessary and desirable: It was inevitable, because the accumulation of capital would bring about a falling rate of profit that would diminish investment opportunities and hamper further accumulation; it was also necessary, because mankind had to learn how to reduce its size and its level of consumption within the boundaries set by nature and by employment opportunities; finally, the stationary state was desirable, as it would ease the introduction of public income redistibution schemes, create more equality and put an end to man's ruthless struggle to get by — instead, the human spirit would be liberated to the benefit of more elevated social and cultural activities, 'the graces of life'. Hence, Mill was able to express all of his liberal ideals for mankind through his concept of the stationary state. It has been argued that Mill essentially made a quality-of-life argument for the stationary state. Main developments in economics since Mill When the influence of John Stuart Mill and his Principles declined, the classical-liberalist period of economic theorising came to an end. By the turn of the 19th century, Marxism and neoclassical economics had emerged to dominate economics. This development led to the exclusion of any concern with natural resource scarcity in economic modelling and analysis: Although a classical economist in his own right, Karl Marx abandoned the earlier concept of a stationary state and replaced it with his own unique vision of historical materialism, according to which human societies pass through several 'modes of production', eventually leading to communism. In each mode of production, man's increasing mastery over nature and the 'productive forces' of society develop to a point where the class conflict bursts into revolutions, followed by