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It's worth noting that almost no traditional anti-capitalist or Communist argument relies on doubting the extensive evidence that widespread lifting from povert

It's worth noting that almost no traditional anti-capitalist or Communist argument relies on doubting the extensive evidence that widespread lifting from poverty is the result of capitalism and even fewer would disagree with the fact that such development has occured under capitalism. Marx famously declared that workers must be "doubly free": firstly free to sell their labour how they like, and secondly freed from the means of production and the products they make. A good deal of research justifiably focuses on what life is actually like and the nature of exploitation in capitalist societies, and especially under neoliberalism. I'd point you to the work of D.K. Foley, Dumenil and Levy, Roberto Veneziani, Naoki Yoshihara, G.A. Cohen and John Roemer on those points.

philwelch 8y ago
Yes, perhaps Marxism was done a disservice by trying to impose it on agrarian, aristocratic civilizations like Russia and China instead of industrialized, capitalist civilizations like Germany and the United States. The history of Soviet industrialization under Stalin almost reads more like a Marxist caricature of industrial capitalism. And it was probably also done a disservice by the fact that when it was imposed on industrialized countries, it was done so at force and after significant devastation and confiscation of any remaining valuable industrial equipment (e.g. East Germany). However, it's also clear that 19th century industrial capitalism never really led to Marxist revolution.