"Other people have money and I don't, so I'm going to redefine money as that which I have, and then I will have money and other people won't."
I thought it was ridiculous too when I first heard about it, and then I realized that "other people have money and I don't" is perhaps the strongest motivation in history. The American, French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions all stemmed from that, as did WW2 and the Holocaust, as did the conquest of the Americas, as did the settlement of the American West.
That's mostly wrong, if you take another look at it.
The American revolution was rich aristocrats shaking off the power that the British ones had over them.
The Russian revolution (October 1917) was a military coup that the Bolsheviks pulled off by subverting enough of an army tired of war - the democratic February revolution hadn't taken Russia out of WWI.
The French revolution was a religious one - the encyclopedists had found a revelation, and by gosh they were going to islam the rest of the world with it.
French Revolution was also a way for the "bourgeoisie" (the riches, basically) to get the power that was still held by the aristocracy. So, actually people that had lots of money and thought they deserved to have more power.
I thought it was ridiculous too when I first heard about it, and then I realized that "other people have money and I don't" is perhaps the strongest motivation in history. The American, French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions all stemmed from that, as did WW2 and the Holocaust, as did the conquest of the Americas, as did the settlement of the American West.