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In terms of "books to read to understand modern culture" Marx is less relevant than Harry Potter.
The Bible is still far and away the most important single book you can read to understand modern culture (including Marxism/socialism, which is a post-Christian ideology).
How does reading the Bible help you understand modern culture, exactly? It can teach you about the values some people profess to believe, it doesn't teach you about what actually happens, about real behaviour in the West. Harry Potter is more relevant.
In the England of King James II people really cared about the Bible, interpreting from the Bible about what the church was supposed to be, they were ready to stake their lives for particular interpretations of that book and the meaning of various rituals. That is not happening today! Nobody is waging war for Christianity in a Western country. They are fighting for oil, for national pride, for security interests, for human rights...
The values most people act on, including woke people, Marxists, and a/antitheists, are downstream of Christianity and the Bible. If you came back to the West after being gone for a few millennia, the questions you would ask (besides "what's a cell phone?" and "does anyone have a Latin-English translator?") would be things like "wait, why can't I buy a sex slave at Wal-mart?"
And the answer to that has nothing to do with cell phones.
It's 2026, the weapons of war are a laptop and a Westlaw subscription.
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Yeah. How many 'marxists' have any real comprehension of the book itself beyond a vague understanding of 'Marx says we should all share everything equally and stop being mean'?
Which of course is far from unique to Marx!
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