In the 70s Marxist (USA only?) community there was a debate on one side that said Marx made no moralistic judgments re: capitalism.
This position was represented by folks like Cornell's Allen Wood. The idea was that the capitalist mode of production was one historical mode of production whose escalating logic of contradictions would do it in, plain and simple, whether capitalism was morally sound or not. This fatalistic position seems to be Comrade Cox's position.
Ziyad Husami at U. of Penn. responded that Marx indeed found much morally offensive about capitalism, as evidenced by his choice of language ("theft," "tyranny," "letters of blood and fire," "swindling," "defrauding," "cheating," etc. regarding how bosses treat the working class) in describing the damn system.
That it is still being debated in 2008 is depressing, but Carrol Cox is not exactly up with the times, as he's admitted himself:
http://www.kvltpunk.com/coxshaft.html
-B.
James Heartfield wrote:
"In any event, I thought this "Was Marx a moralist?" debate was a 1970s thing, like ABBA, and had been solved -- in Husami's favor, and not Carrol's. Carrol's is a position that lost out definitely. "