While I tend to agree that far-left apologists do indeed hide in organizations that lack meaningful performance metrics, the idea that capitalism is the opposite of Marxism is absurd. It continues to astonish me that no one can be bothered to pick up even a basic economic text book and discover what capitalism actually is: merely the application of capital to increase gross factor productivity.

Capitalism is thus entirely separate from market economies, which is why (for example) both China and the former USSR both employed capitalism in order to raise living standards.

Going further, neither market economies nor capitalism have any necessary connection with representative democracy - Singapore is a prime example of total decoupling.

In short, the ludicrous fantasy that capitalism=democracy=freedom serves no one and dramatically reduces the value of any anti-Marxist analysis by failing entirely to understand why so many still fall for the stale and discredited fantasy-land that crusty old would-be communists still proffer to the naive and gullible.