Marx's Critique of Capitalism

I consider Marx's philosophy of history ludicrous... frankly I think history considers Marx's philosophy of history ludicrous.  In my philosophy chapter on social and political philosophy, I boiled down his critique of capitalism to two points:

• capitalism leads to the oppression of its workers
• capitalism is inherently unstable and leads to crisis/economic failure

My gambit is that while there is potential truths to these critiques, capitalism does not have to lead in these directions if proper safeguards are put into place.

So it seems to me that governments with capitalistic systems have put two kinds of safeguards into place: 1) regulations that protect the rights of workers and 2) regulations that ensure the stability of the capitalistic system.  In the former category are things like child labor laws, minimum wage laws, and so forth.  In the latter category are anti-trust laws, FDIC, automatic market shut downs, etc.<

What I find ironic--and dangerous--about the rise to power of influences like those of Rand Paul (whose ideas are heterodox within the economist expert community), is that they in effect want to undue the very protections that evolved in the capitalist system in response to the real problems it brought in the late 1800s and early 1900s. We already experimented with this approach and the consequences weren't so hot.  The best economic period for most Americans was these last 60 years after so many of these protections were put in place.