> But I think he made it extremely clear that the ruling class will never
> allow themselves to be summarily expropriated without fighting back
> militarily.
Marx didn't quite say that -- the point of the Brumaire was that the French ruling classes of the day would rather destroy the formal trappings of democracy (limited as they were) than share even a smidgeon of power with workers. But he also pointed to the Factory reform acts in Britain as harbingers of a future socialism.
In today's transnational capitalism, there's a huge state sector which regularly taxes, regulates and otherwise expropriates giant chunks of the social surplus. There are also powerful media and information commons, which are no longer under the control of one-party states, the US Empire, or giant corporations.
-- DRR