I had often heard people talking about Marx, without ever being interested enough to read it myself. All I knew was he was keen on collective ownership, which as everyone knows, doesn't work. However, my favorite historian, Eric Hobsbawm, was socialist is his thinking and made the entirely valid point is that you cannot understand the 20th century without understanding Socialism. He also points out that many of things we take for granted, such as equal rights for all people regardless of gender, race or religion as well as anti-imperialism were all originally ideas originally championed by Socialism.

When I was very young, everything was about the Cold War and the Soviet Union. Every movie, (War Games, Red Dawn, Rocky 4, Rambo III etc) and every Olympics (1980 Western boycott of Moscow games, and USSR boycott of the 1984 LA Games) was an extension of the Cold War. Then suddenly in 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, and in a few short years Communism had disappeared. No one really studied Socialism or Marxism anymore, as its theories had been thoroughly discredited. My brother had also warned me off reading the Communist Manifesto with this warning, "Marx's historical analysis is so perceptive, so you think his policy prescriptions must be right, but they were of course totally wrong." In politics, as in finance, great historical analysis does not guarantee good future results.

Why did Socialism come to dominate the 20th century? Before the Great Depression, Marx argued that capitalism would destroy itself. His observation was that the pursuit of profits would drive capitalists to grow production, while looking to keep costs (and most importantly wages) as low as possible. Rising production, but falling demand from falling wages was unsustainable. At some point, this would lead to depression, as you would see prices fall across the board.