Marx is the Boogie Man no one actually knows about but fear his name when its invoked.

Marx is more a symbol than anything else. People feel entitled to have an opinion on him without having read a single word he wrote. Darwin is the same way. Marx's theory of surplus value is still important and has applications to capitalism as well as communism.

The Communist Manifesto is interesting because it's not so much a call for reform as it is a description of inevitability. Marx believed in the Hegelian dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. His view wasn't so much that communism was desirable, but that it was an inevitable development in the chain from feudalism to industrial capitalism and finally communism.

I like Erickson