Before anyone can discuss capitalism intelligently, they must divorce the notion of consumerism from capitalism. Almost all critics of capitalism are in fact making a straw-man out of it, and that straw-man is consumerism. They believe they defeat capitalism while only really defeating consumerism, a much easier feat.
These two notions are not the same thing. Capitalism is little more than the belief in private property and the right to buy and sell with the aim of making a profit. All the negative things that we hear about it from liberals are just fleas on a dog; they do not define the dog, but they do damage it. To claim capitalism is bad because some people with lots of money made through it influence our society unjustly is not a strictly correct claim. This would be “crony capitalism,” a bastard son of capitalism, but not capitalism itself.
Consumerism is like one of those bastard sons, because it divides society into a few producers and many, many consumers; consumers which are good for nothing but consuming. That does not at all sound like our stripped down definition of capitalism.
But I did say consumerism was like a bastard son of capitalism and this is partly true, but I can make a case for it in communism as well later. For instance, I think it is self-evident to most that most Americans are just consumers, whether it be product, entertainment, or whatever, and the few big producers make billions off of this system. These consuming Americans either produce nothing at all, or so little as to be worth nothing in comparison with the rest of the economy. In our case, the capitalists are indeed profitting greatly by consumerism, but it is not through capitalism per se, it is through consumerism per se.
This can be shown by a thought experiment. Imagine a communist society where everything is state-owned and operated. Unless everyone in this society is producing sufficiently to affect this communist economy, then there will be a consumer class of people. The only difference here is that you would be buying from the state instead of Apple or Procter & Gamble.
Consumerism is not a by-product of either system or the system itself, it is an infestation of sorts that can affect any type of economy. Before we begin to discuss capitalism, either dissenting or assenting, we need to be absolutely certain what we are talking about so we do not end up making straw-men. Capitalism does not equal consumerism.