The legendary Wobbly Fred Thompson used to tell a story about his introduction to Marxism. One day when he was thirteen, he read in the local New Brunswick newspaper that Canada was having a good harvest. This was great news, he thought. He went into the kitchen to tell his mother that the family would soon have enough to eat. But it wasn’t that simple. 

“There’s something called economics,” his brother told him.

Thompson decided he’d better learn about this “economics.” Some weeks later, he went to a meeting of the Socialist Party of Canada and liked what he heard. He came home with some pamphlets and books from a socialist publisher in Chicago to learn more about Marxism, and Thompson was launched on a lifetime of struggle against a society that produces poverty alongside plenty.