Personally I have not read the works of Marx/Engels and I have never seen first-hand any examples of their theories put into practice, so I simply cannot make any comment upon the efficacy of this system. I think we all need to remember that unless we have experienced something for ourselves then we are only relying on second-hand reports to form our opinions and those reports tend to reflect the attitude and opinions of the reporter. You could even say that for a normal person it is extremely difficult to understand or even comprehend all the details of events that are happening around them. After all, how many of us fully understand the true causes of the recent global financial crisis and all the underlying detail that led to that event? Or how many of us fully understand the way that crisis has affected our economies and the long-term repercussions of that event? And that is only a single event which, if viewed in isolation, could be said to prove the failings of the capitalist system as a whole.