I think as Hilaire Belloc pointed out (in "The Servile State"), the Industrial Revolution (and Capitalism) happened because private landlords were kicking peasants off their land, and thus creating a class of people who couldn't afford goods and were desperate for the work that the factories could offer.

I love handcrafted goods. I purchase them when I can. I know smiths who make things by hand.

The problem with factories in China is that if China loans our economy money and then becomes the low-cost supplier, all we end up doing is eventually destroying both economies.

I will never be a Marxist. It seems to me that trying to solve the issues which come from corporations being too powerful by concentrating that power still further in the state is a bad idea. The only way it can work is if workers individually are in control of the means of production, not through the national government. A few quasi-Marxists got this point (Wilhelm Reich, for example), but usually it's the domain of third way folks like Belloc who favor free markets and small businesses.

I'd point out also that if we weren't so productive, maybe the government wouldn't eat up 30% of our GDP.....