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Originally Posted by demonrail666
That's all perfectly true but then those who blindly attack capitalism as some all-evil political monster don't see it as a progression out of those earlier (with the exception of apparatchiks) modes. Marx, as you know, was a massive believer in the merits of Capitaliism, he just didn't see it as the historical end point that many of those on the Right seem to (Fukuyama's whole 'End of History' thing, for example). Whether Marx was right in suggesting that a full working through of capitalism was crucial to providing the conditions necessary to support a progression into socialism is, of course, massively debatable, and has indeed been debated not just within centrist politics or the Right but even factions within the Left itself.
The problem with things like the anti-capitalist movement seems to be that it has no real vision of anything that might replace capitalism beyond some half-digested anarchism or, more usually, some sort of 'friendlier' capitalism. It's as though the movement itself can't really envisage an end of capitalism so has had to reconcile itself merely with trying to restrain it - 'ye olde Keynesian liberalism', as PBradley mentions already.)
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That's an interesting point. But why exactly should we want to destroy capitalism in favor of something else, rather than creating a "friendlier" version (which in my opinion would be highly regulated and have strong sanctions against lobbying the government in any way)? I consider myself a realist, and capitalism isn't going away anytime soon. The best we can do is make it in people's and companies' interests to have a conscience. And we all know that the only way to do that is with regulation, sanctions and all the other things. I think we have all the tools necessary.
And if someone does come up with a much better idea, then we should use it. But things don't change overnight and there actually ARE benefits to capitalism for a majority of people, which is something anti-capitalist people generally like to pretend isn't true.