AtD translation: "trains of history" and "multiples"

[Mike Jing]

P557.7-14   “Everywhere one finds a spectrum of need, from bludgeons and
machetes to submarines and poison gases—trains of history not fully run,
Chinese tongs, Balkan komitadji, African vigilantes, each with its
attendant population of widows-to-be, often in geographies barely sketched
in pencil on the back of some envelope or waybill. One glance at any
government budget anywhere in the world tells the story—the money is always
in place, already allocated, the motive everywhere is fear, the more
immediate the fear, the higher the multiples.”

What kind of "multiples" are we talking about exactly? I assume it has to
do with profits, but more details will be welcome.

The wiki says "Karl Marx, in Das Kapital, referred to wars as the 'express
trains of history' ", but I couldn't find such reference in either the
English or the Chinese edition of Das Kapital. However, in his Class
Struggles in France 1848 to 1850, Marx did say "Revolutions are the
locomotives of history", a quote known to many Chinese who lived through
the Mao era. Can anyone confirm or deny the claim in the wiki?