[vidarh]

A lot of people also has the misconception that Marx "hated" capitalism. But half the first chapter of the Communist Manifesto is Marx being a total capitalism fanboy, arguing that capitalism has brought about advances never previously seen, and championing capitalism as eroding xenophobia because it interferes with the need for trade.

He first then goes on, as you say, from a "this is how this system operates" to "here's an alternative system".

To Marx, capitalism was both a necessary stage and a positive step, just in his view not some final utopia.

Arguably, one of Marx' biggest failing was that he severely over-estimated how quickly capitalism would saturate the world markets and get to a stage where growth is only possible through the reduction of labour costs, as his prediction of capitalism failing was predicated on that.