I'm not trying to be facetious, or funny, or argumentative, bigjohn, but have you read Marx?

Here's a link to a very quick synopsis of the Communist Manifesto:

http://www.indepthinfo.com/communist-manifesto/synopsis.shtml

The Communist Manifesto itself is pretty easy reading as political philosophy goes. It leaves out all of the historical and philosophical rationale of Marx's other works and just presents the communist agenda as concisely as they could.

To analyze everything in terms of class conflict, rich vs. poor, IS Marxist philosophy.

To a great extent, it has permeated modern American thinking, affecting peoples' notions of what is "fair" and "unfair". I don't think most of us know it, though. I hear Marx in Disney movies, from Dan Rather, the local news, sitcoms, editorials, letters to the editor, etc... every day.