Thank you for your response. I feel embarrassed by the oppositional way that I worded my question, and grateful for the volume and quality of responses from people in this community. I am reading their comments and following links, and I will do more research on prolewiki. I am part of a socialist group where I live, and I am reading through introductory works by Marx and others at the moment.
What I really appreciate about this experience is that I was not silenced or ignored, though some degree of that would have been warranted, but rather that I was met with educated responses and open dialogue
Thank you. That helps a lot and you did an excellent job of explaining things and organizing your response in a way that was easy to follow