This may be asking for a lot, but if I could, what is your opinion on Marxism?

Roflcopter.

So - b_b recommended Richard Pipes. I read Communism: A History. It paralleled nicely with the story of Communism as presented in The Dead Hand and Postwar. That story is as follows:

Marxism-Leninism was a sham. It was a pseudointellectual kleptocracy masquerading as economic theory and was, effectively, the economic and political equivalent of Lysenkoism. The October Revolution did not bring in a new wealth of ideas, it destroyed the Romanov dynasty and replaced it with Stalin, whose actions and behaviors weren't dissimilar.

The Soviet Union fell for two reasons: first, that the system was really and truly running out of steam and the detriment of collectivization would have crashed and burned the economy within 20 years anyway. Second, Gorbachev was the first Soviet premier that wasn't a direct part of Stalin's circle and the first "true believer" in Communism. As such, he worked to eliminate the corruption inherent in the Soviet system so that Communism could truly flourish; unfortunately it was the corruption that was keeping the system running so left to its own devices, Communism imploded.

John Lewis Gaddis observed in The Cold War: A New History that the 20th century was essentially about two economic systems grinding each other to nibs - on the one side, capitalism as exemplified by the United States; on the other, socialism as exemplified by the Soviet Union. He further observed that the most successful countries of the 20th century (and 21st) tend to pick somewhere in the middle, as with France, Sweden, etc.

All things in moderation, essentially - but socialism ain't Marxism, not by a long shot.