There are two types of Marxists in the world. (I am putting it very schematically.) These two types are: a) Marxists who are against capitalism because it is a system based on exploitation (surplus value extraction) and b) Marxists who oppose capitalism because it can not produce "growth" (ie, capital accumulation), particularly in the Third World. For the latter type of Marxists, it is absolutely necessary to deny there is "growth" under capitalism, particularly in the Third World. This view is inevitably combined with permanent gloating over "growth" under socialism, since socialism alone can produce "growth".
Ulhas
^^^^^ CB: Also, capitalism produces gigantic wars and W'sMD, particularly nuclear weapons. A slogan of the Russian Rev was "Peace". For this reason alone, it is worth getting rid of capitalism.
Also, now capitalism is producing dangerous levels environmental degradation.
On what Marxists think about capitalism and growth, Marx and Engels said:
"The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization or rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground -- what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labor? "
It's not that Marxists don't think that capitalism can "grow" countries. It is that the history of raw capitalist systems suggests trying to develop growth without all the wellknown negative sideeffects of capitalist growth. Why not learn from errors & make improvements ? In the twentieth century the imperialist capitalists have used war and economic blockades to thwart efforts to develop such socialist forms of economic growth that don't have the negative , capitalist sideeffects.
Capitalism is a doubleedged sword. Marxists say we can do better.