Indeed, Marx was attracted to the intellectual rigor of Smith and Ricardo, who to his mind, up to a point, accurately described the evolution of capitalism. As we all know, Marx viewed capitalism as a transition to the inevitable emergence of communism.
Unlike Marx, the Fabian socialists who emerged in the last decades of the nineteenth century advocated evolution rather than revolution to a more collectivized economy. Indeed, many of the restraints on laissez-faire advanced by the Fabians and other reformers were eventually enacted into law.