"Under our system, every voter and officeholder is a man who has demonstrated through voluntary and difficult service that he places the welfare of the group ahead of personal advantage.
Karl Marx
"From those with the most ability, to those with the most need."
The two sound eerily familiar and similar.
I don't see any similarity at all. Heinlein was talking about soldiers defending the civilian populace and protecting their comrades; Marx was talking about "everybody being equal" and involuntary distribution of wealth.
"These kitchen illustrations demolish the Marxian theory of value---the fallacy from which the entire magnificant fraud of communism is derived--- and illustrates the truth of the common sense definition as measured in terms of use . . . nevertheless, the disheveled old mystic of Das Kapital, turgid, tortured, confused, nurotic, unscientific, illogical, this pompus fraud Karl Marx, nevertheless had a glimmer of a very important truth. If he had possesed an analytical mind he might have formulated the first adaquate definition of value . . .and this panet might have been saved endless grief."
***
"...perhaps you can tell the class whether value is a relative or an absolute?"
"An absolute" I guessed.
"Wrong. A value of a thing is always relative to a particular person..."
***
He had been still loong at me and added, "If you boys and girls had to sweat for your toys the way a newly born baby had to struggle to live you would be happier...and much richer. As it is, with some of you, I pity you the poverty of your wealth. You! I've just awarded you the prize for the hundred meter dash. does it make you happy?"
"Uh, I suppose it would."
"No dodging please, you have the prize...you value it, or don't you?"
"You know darn well I placed fourth!"
"Exactly!The prize for first place is worthless to you because you haven't earned it!