First of all, I would like to declare my love for money, my ambition to collect as much money as possible, and my intent to use that money for my own often benevolent purposes.
Now that I got that out of the way....
Money? Money gets me goods and services. The system I live in accepts green paper as legal tender, since it was supposedly backed by gold by the Feds. No longer, but I don't care. Since I can obtain desirable goods and services with these little pieces of paper (a new computer would be nice), I desire to have as much of it as possible. Makes sense, right?
Do I care if it's a mere representation? The Chinese used stamped rocks with holes in the middle. Micronesian islanders used huge stone wheels. Americans use green slips of paper. Cavemen used rocks. Sure, we can all go back to a barter system. It might be annoying as hell, but it would work. Maybe then the fairness of the world would be fulfilled. I doubt it, but some people seem to think so.
Look. Wildly exaggerating the lust for wealth as a criticism of capitalism is completely meaningless. Money is there. It gets you stuff. Go make some money. Who cares where it comes from.
Incidentally, money existed even in forms of government that approached pure socialism. In North Korea before the 90's, China in the 50's, those optimistic eras before the big plunge and disaster that always ends socialism. In China, they were called "coupons", issued by the government, that can buy goods from government stores. Guess what it's backed by? Absolutely nothing, but the word of the government. Which turned out to mean very little.