That’s definitely debatable. Marx was far from clueless about the benefits of capitalism. We need to recognize Marx was not against leadership. He was simply for democracy. He was intentionally vague in his prescriptions, and increasingly so in the academic work his legacy is built on. It’s more accurate to say he simply accepted the challenges of democratic means of production instead of denying them, because he thought the latter as immoral and ultimately harmful to society, due to the resulting deterioration of what he called modes of production.

He was a proponent of technology, celebrated innovation, and fully acknowledged that capitalism systemically enouraged their existence. He even wrote about the importance of capitalism to art.

Marx lived in a time and place of agregious social malpractice in the name of capitalism. His conceptions did not lack nuance, but they did evoke urgency. And rightfully so.