When I was 16...

...the cold war was still on. I was even offered a job in Electronic Warfare that would have entailed learning Russian, but do I speak Russian...do I 'eckers like. So a couple of years later I was sat a very posh table being waited upon, and post dinner talk commenced. It was prior to the fall of the Berlin wall, and yet the conversation was about the fall of the Soviet Union. People at the table obviously knew something was coming. I listened, then summed up the conversation under discussion thus 'Well if you want them never to return to communism the best way is when they fall to let them fall hard, so they blame their own system.' Heads turned toward me and a voice said 'Exactly'. I remember the first time I read Das Capital, I bought it with money I was given for my eighteenth birthday, was always struck by the quality of the critique and the comprehensive nature of the book. Still to this day, while not being a Marxist (rather Marxian) I find that I am informed by Marxist critique. So...'From each according to their ability, to each according to their need'. Something all my grandparents would have indoctrinated me with even if they didn't force Marx down my throat.