Well, Capitalism has existed among most human societies for thousands of years, for example in India extreme Capitalism for the last 3000 years. "Western Capitalism" is just a modernized version with MBA degrees, stock markets, health insurance, mutual fund etc.
In fact, capitalism appeared with what is referred to as civilization; at the same time as money, work (as in remunerated work and employer-employee relationship), ownership and property, professions, education, science and separation of knowledge into separate branches and disciplines.
So did the entity called state, so did society (prior to civilization, humans organized in communities, not societies) along with social hierarchy and, according to Marx, religion as well.
Personally, I may to some extent consider reflecting on the first point (capitalism) as the basis for sort of a critique of civilization sui generis, relative to the question of whether man did not in fact live a more authentic life in pre-civilizational times, ie during most of their existence (by a very large margin) as homo sapiens sapiens. Essentially due to being non-alienated by wage bondage, ie living the way he is supposed to, as opposed to civilized and thus alienated life, which according to Marx runs counter to human nature.
But of course I must take issue with Marx's rejection of the second and third items - state and religion, as mere super-structures of Capital.
Nonetheless, Marx's contribution to the realm of ideas is not particularly easy to counter nor does it lack basic structure (even though to himself, he contributed strictly nothing at all, but only formalized what he claimed every alienated human being is aware of deep in their guts). His ideas reach far beyond the simple "myth of the good savage", and anyone seeking to debunk them will need to accomplish some very serious cognitive work. Which in some ways can be disconcerting if one isn't really on the same page.
Another interesting fact to note is that many if not most of those who speak about Marx didn't actually read his works, neither his major one (I don't blame them, given how voluminous the latter is), nor his secondary ones (including his correspondence with Engels, which is pretty important to study). Hence the many misconceptions about "Marxian" thought (since he himself categorically rejected any notion of "Marxism").
Basically, what Marx believed in or rather, what he believed is bound to be the destiny of mankind, is a return to the pre-civilizational, communist community, consecutive to an inevitable proletarian revolution brought about by material dialectics (and every person is a proletarian, to simplify, except for the capitalists and perhaps the non-conscious lumpenproletariat in a certain way).
In other words: no more state, no more remunerated work, no more wages, no more ownership of the means of production, no more property, no more money, no more schools and universities, no more organized religion, no more hierarchy. Just like all our ancestors used to live, no matter our origins - some slightly longer (Germanic peoples, Native Americans, etc), and some less so.
A look at Roman texts describing the lifestyle of Germanic tribes at the time when the latter crushingly defeated the Roman legions is quite instructive, insofar as it precisely reflects Marx's vision of the communist community.
Which by the way, also implies that the former Soviet states were nowhere communist. The concepts of communism and state are intrinsically antinomic. Marx would doubtlessly have denounced them, along with their pretense that socialism is the first step in a transition from capitalism to communism. To Marx, these would have represented yet another dialectically determined manifestation of Capital, and would have been akin to state capitalism.
