The undergrad professor (John Gurley) who introduced me to economics was a Marxist. I later took his Marxist econ class, and my copy of Das Kapital was almost pure yellow as I highlighted the hell out of it, struggling to understand what it meant.
The above lecture would have cleared up some of my confusion. It focuses on three of Marx's ideas:
1. The enemy of being is having.
2. From each according to his or her ability; to each according to his or her needs.
3. The point of philosophy is to change the world.
This was actually pretty interesting, if long. It is always interesting how people ignore what behaviorism teaches about animals, including humans. We like to be rewarded and not equally to everyone else. One size will never fit all people - there will always be those who want to be rewarded more for doing more. I found it amusing that Marx refers to music and arts and so forth for man to be his "true self" (whatever that means), yet he also wants to stamp out any individual thought that would lead to such creativity.
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