In his interview with PBS on their documentary on the history of socialism, Heaven on Earth, former-Trotskyite Christoper Hitchens explains the appeal of Marxism — and how Marx recognized the power of capitalism:
The enormous dynamic and creative, as well as destructive energy of capitalism which is written up with more praise and more respect by Marx and Engels in the 1848 Communist Manifesto than probably by anyone since. I mean I don’t think anyone has ever said so precisely and with such awed admiration how great capitalism is, how inventive, how innovative, how dynamic, how much force of creativity it unleashes.Well, implied in this is the view that for the first time ever in history there might actually be enough to go around. That this would be possible, that machines could replace drudgery and in the end obviate the need for exploitation at all. So, that the struggle would be not of man against man, but of man to master nature, and that this was not utopian because the actual wealth was there, being created before their eyes. That’s why the socialist movement took off, as a vindication of materialism in the minds of the working class. They could see from the mansions and the empires and the great ships and railways that there was no need for them to be poor, there was no need for them to go on making things they were too poor to buy.
So to close that gap in perception was the project. And of course to leave behind such remnants of feudalism that had survived into the capitalist system, such as the monarchy, the nation-state, the church, rubbishy cobwebs from the mental attic of prehistory. As I say it now — what a brilliant idea.