Yeah, the classical mode of production was worse than what we have today. Slavery was worse than feudalism. Feudalism was worse than capitalism. Objectively speaking, for almost all of humanity, capitalism has brought about massive improvements in many aspects of life compared to previous modes of production^[Mind you, this does depend on when you start counting for much of the colonized world; I'm not counting the period of primitive accumulation under colonialism as capitalism, despite the fact that capitalism couldn't have come to, say, Latin America, without the Spanish and Portuguese colonial period having accumulated capital in the hands of the future bourgeoisie. A similar point also applies to Asia and Africa].

The point isn't that capitalism is uniquely bad. When it's not crashing and burning, capitalism is very good at creating wealth. The problem is that liberals today often assume that because capitalism is better than the systems that came before it, it means it is the best possible system, and will never be replaced. We know, due to the contradictions at the foundation of capitalism, that it inevitably will destroy itself.