Sophia,

Gard hasn't said that Brits are "being indoctrinated". He's said that Marxism has been more popular in the UK and other European nations than it has in the US (or has been quicker in being accepted, overtly or subtley), and that perhaps this is because the US didn't have that feudal system which already had the lower classes (rightly) resenting the landed gentry. Gard has said that Marx was wiley and successful in supplanting the hatred for the feudal lords by replacing them with business owners. Although there is a real and important distinction between them (business owners have to work for customers to come their way, and they have to offer customers something they want -- while landed gentry are titled lords and get their stuff through bloodlines and aggression), Marx's ideas struck a chord with people who already disliked the "haves", and he was able to latch onto supposed "class envy", even though markets don't have "classes", in fact, they destroy the old class system.

Marx might not have even intentionally tried to formulate a theory that would so easily fit the hatred of the "haves" that already existed in feudal Europe, but whatever his intent, his ideas have flourished in Europe. The redsitribution of wealth, the welfare state, the regulation of businesses -- all are offshoots of the Marxist ideology, and all are the kinds of things that Europeans from Russia to England have embraced following the dissolution of their feudal systems. In the US, there was never this landed gentry, although there were special interests tied to the old crown and they tried to set up a US government that would favor mercantilism (ie Alexander Hamilton). The populace wasn't as ready for that kind of re-constituted class envy in the form of hatred of business that the Brits and other Europeans embraced. It's NOT indoctrination Gard is discussing, but a noticeable difference in cultural attitudes towards Marxism, and he is speculating as to the reason for the difference. I think his point is valid.

In regards to Marxism I often find that many people are ill educated about Marxism. Many people making assumptions about Marxism having not read Marx & instead rely upon the interpretations that others have made of Marxism. For instance Lenin interpreted & tweaked Marxism to suit his own agenda & more often then not this is the interpretation people judge Marxism by.

Marxism really shouldn’t be associated with communism but with anarchism (specifically Anarcho-syndicalism). Marx concluded that the workers would own the means of production & the state would disappear.