text: Back in my misspent youth, I was a Marxist. I have actually read Capital, which is Marx's major work. I took an historiography class in graduate school, and wrote my paper on The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, in which Marx set out his ideas about history. (Engel's The German Peasant's War expanded on Marx's ideas.) I suspect that, if you are like most American conservatives, you may have heard of Capital, but you have never read it, and you are probably unaware of the other two.
  
  I am indebted to my religious history professor, Dr Bense, for showing me the good points and the bad points of Marx (basically, Marx explained very well how Europe went from merchantilism to capitalism, and what the problems of capitalism were. He failed when it came to "so what do we do about these problems?" -- As Marx's Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach says, "Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.")
  
  No, TC, I know Marx. I doubt that you do.