Here are two short references that may help you.
This first one left me dumbfounded, I was not prepared to be a communist.
This second one I found many years earlier, it let me know that I was not on an impossible journey.
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/624?msg=welcome_stranger
http://www.abelard.org/e-f-russell.php
I agree, tanstaafl, if we want consumer goods we have to build the machines that make them possible.
That requires work.
I do not agree that crapitalism is in any way optimal for these endeavors, and in fact, I find it to be counter productive.
Absent crapitalism 100's of millions of people wouldn't have died at the hand of gov't in the last century.
These workers could have contributed to the whole of humanity, rather than to the coffers of the few criminals that kill us to control us.
Good luck finding well fed, housed, clothed, and educated people to wage wars for the crapitalust's bottom line.
Absent the matrix/paradigm already forced upon us as children, and justified(poorly) to us by (seemingly) rational arguments, we would not be as warlike.
We would quickly learn that sharing is caring and begin to populate the planets.
Have you read Origins of Virtue or The Better Angles of Our Nature?
I find that to be a hard argument to justify. If I read the links you supplied above, will I find justification for such a claim? IMO, it's not logical to lay war at the feet of capitalism. That would be a gross misrepresentation of history and the values and motives of humanity (which, I believe, are changing over time).
I think the more people we get up Maslow's Hierarchy, the more we will realize this vision. I also think economic freedom (and yes, that includes the accumulation of capital, investment, and R&D with the intention of creating profit) has contributed greatly to the improvement of humanity. Example:
I think David Graeber's critique of Steven Pinker's book was a good one. Graeber points out that a lot of coercion has been institutionalized and normalized so that it no longer looks like violence. There's systems of violence all around us, we just don't recognize them for what they are anymore. There's been a sublimation of violence, but its still there. They've just dressed up the violence and perfected it--they've perfected violence to the point that physical force is rarely necessary since they can intimidate people into conformity through culture, social pressure, and such. Look at public schools. Forcing kids into these little prisons against their will, where they will be indoctrinated, and their parents are forced to send them there. It's sublimated violence, but the coercive apparatus of the modern State has been so perfected that people conform out of fear or confusion as to alternative options. Kids stand for the pledge of allegiance, everyone at a ball game stands for the national anthem, and they do so out of social pressure--even if they don't believe in the State and don't want to stand, they will do so because they rightfully fear the reaction of the crowd around them if they were to resist. People "voluntarily" pay their taxes. They voluntarily purchase car insurance, get a license before driving, etc. They voluntarily obey a lot of laws (anti-drug laws, anti-homeless laws) most of the time because there is a certain understanding that bad things will happen if you don't obey. Nevertheless, all of this is still predicated on violence. They've just removed the obvious physical violence and replaced it by structures, institutions, and customs that involve violence or the threat of violence on a large enough scale to thoroughly intimidate most people into doing what they want without having to use physical force most of the time.
Are you saying that Boeing and Dynecorp are not crapitalistic or warlike?
If you read the links above you will have an alternative viewpoint not brought to you by those that will kill you to control you.
I have not read those books, yet.