I agree that Marx should be required reading, although from my perspective it would be to make sure one understands the depths the opponents of capitalism will go to in pursuit of their aims.
One of Marx's major oversights was the role technology plays in the scale of enterprises, which is essentially what Coase wrote about in 'The Nature of the Firm' in the early 20th century. Marx appeared to assume that enterprises would get larger and larger, but didn't seem to understand the problem of 'agency costs'. No wonder that Communist states became police states. It was the only way to ensure that actions were taken in conformance with Communist party dictates regardless of how far from the center of power the individual was.
There was an article in The Atlantic a few years ago called "Karl Marx: Prophet of Globalization" or something like that.
The economics world today seems so driven by PhD dissertations that hardly any professional economist goes out on a limb as far as Marx did, that is for sure. One of the few is Stephen Roach, IMO, which is why I think his work is required reading and even he is not as far-reaching in scope as Marx tried to be. OTOH, would "The Communist Manifesto" have made it into a peer-reviewed econ journal? I doubt it.
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