The word "capitalism," in our lifetime has two fairly distinct meanings.

One meaning is marxist. Marx popularised the term and he implicitly defined it as an economic-political system and "that which we are fighting against." Most of his writing and communist contemporaries was about corruption and cruelty of this newly described system. In marxist capitalism, when a monopolist bribes a government official this is capitalism par excellence. The premise of the term is that "capital rules," so regulatory capture is assumed

The other meaning is pro-capitalist. These mostly riff on Adam Smith. David Ricardo responded directly to marx and provides some technical ammo. By Ayn Rand, "capitalism" it has a full blown utopian definition like communism. Regulatory capture is seen as a corruption of "true" capitalism.

Anyway... the two frames are highly related to eachother.

Das Kapital was published in full form only in 1883, long after Ricardo's Principles which was published in 1817. Das Kapital spends its entire contents defining and analyzing capitalism and starts from Ricardian economics. Principles is actually a good prerequisite to reading Das Kapital for someone unfamiliar with classical economics.

I generally see people who describes themselves as capitalists in the “good” sense, act in accordance or in support of capitalism in the bad sense. They claim to like “the invisible hand” of the market etc, but don’t complain about monopolistic behavior or ever agree that healthy capitalism and efficient markets require regulation (as Smith, for example, was clear about.)

Hypocrisy is ever present. One thing in common to all ruling communist parties was establishing party members as a full-frills ruling class with their own schools, institutions, culture, etc.

For my own "philosophy," I make a distinction between ideology and idealism. "Ideology" (in my personal lexicon) is to ideology as Orwell's "nationalism" was to nationalism.

An ideal (a capitalist one) is Adam Smith's pin factory or village economy. Maybe Ayn Rand's dissenting heros like Howard Roark or Hank Rearden.

An ideological take is to justify a fb or a google by insisting these are like a Smithian pin factory. Explaining good stuff in those term. Explaining bad stuff in terms of government (looters) involvement. Facebook's profits and market cap are reflective of the immense value that they provide society.

An idealistic take is criticising fb because the aren't like a Smithian pin factory at all. In fact, they prevent such pin factories from existing.

It's notable that an idealistic posture is easier and more common from a dissenting position. A ideological posture tends to be easier and more common in a defensive, incumbent position. That's probably why Ayn Rand reads as idealistic (despite being formulaically ideological) while modern pro-capitalists tend to come off as more ideological. Rosa Luxemburg the idealist vs Leon Trotsky, the ideologue.

IMO, you can't deal in absolutes. FB is easy to pick on because they are so unimpressive technically or operationally. FB could literally be done on 1% of its budget. Google is a mixed bag, because they do have technical achievements. But, what makes google their money is search and adware.

Tesla/Musk are an even more complex example. Musk is as close to a Randian hero as reality can offer. Obvious technical and operational achievements. Real, genuine risk taking. So far so good. The ideal does not appear to be trampled.

But... what happens if recent investors are right? What if Tesla's data is giving them an unassailable edge in self driving cars for a generation. Does that give us a capitalist ideal of innovation, competition and efficiency or a capitalist antipattern of control, monopoly and lock-in?

Reality is complex ideals are simple. Ideology is an attempt to square the circle by insisting on its squareness.