Private Fraser, the dour Scottish coffin maker from Dad’s Army, would be in his element in today’s spiralling economic crisis.

“We’re all doomed!” just about sums up the reaction of the commentariat as once solid banks collapse on a weekly basis.

Certainly, there is no shortage of material for the gravediggers of modern capitalism – from Northern Rock, to Bear Stearns, Freddie Mac, Fannie May, Lehman Brothers, AIG and now HBOS.

There is little sign that the crisis is over – or even at its peak - and there’s a feeling abroad that things are likely to get worse before they get better.

This has all been greeted with an obscene degree of lip-smacking relish by Marxist economists and their fellow travellers in the British press.

No matter that hundreds of thousands may lose their jobs and we’ll all be hit by higher mortgage payments and depleted pensions (unless you’re lucky enough to work in the public sector, of course) – the doom-mongers jubilantly claim the latest events have at last proved them right.

“This is the end of capitalism,” they cry with glee. “The free market model has failed!”

And out of the ashes of the collapsed system will rise a glorious proletarian revolution – or at least increased regulation and control by the state of what socialists call “the commanding heights of the economy”.

Well perhaps, but I can’t help thinking I’ve heard it all before. In fact the theory that cyclical crises in capitalism will eventually lead to its inevitable collapse has been around a long time – ever since Karl Marx first propounded it in Das Kapital in 1867.

As with many fine theories brute reality often finds a way of proving them wrong - and capitalism has shown itself to be remarkably resilient, bouncing back from each crisis to become ever stronger.

Even after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 - a disaster that dwarfs today’s problems - it took the US less than 20 years to rebuild the world’s most powerful economy.

But if this really is the end of capitalism, we should bid it a fond farewell – because it has benefited ordinary people enormously, creating wealth on a previously unimaginable scale and lifting millions out of destitution.

In contrast, wherever a Marxist system has been imposed on the people the invariable results have been repression, murder, famine and economic collapse.

Ask yourself this, where would you rather live – in the US, UK or Germany, or in the socialist paradises that are Zimbabwe or North Korea?

Would your rather be weeping into your Veuve Clicquot in New York, or boiling up a soup of grass clippings in a vain effort to feed your family in Harare?

I suspect the present obsequies for capitalism are premature. No doubt we’re in for a hard few years with a good deal of economic pain.

But eventually people will once again want to develop businesses, build houses and create jobs.

It is this irrepressible creativity of ordinary people that may just ensure capitalism’s survival.