I think you miss Socrates' point. Without a process of examining, a person hasn't established their own values, so has no basis to decide what is worthy or worthless. Similarly, defining success. With someone else's definition, you are a robot programmed by that, and achieving it will likely be hollow at best.
You must decide yourself, for your self, by examining your life, to find an answer that compels you - no other can.
I offer you this, which I think illustrates someone meditating on these issues, including on Marx:
"For the islands I sing and for a few friends; not to foster means
or be midwife to ends.
Not for old Marx and his moon-cold logic - anthill dialectics, neither gay nor tragic.
Not that extravagance Lawrence understood -
golden phoenix flowering from blood.
For Scotland I sing, the Knox-ruined nation,
that poet and saint must rebuild with their passion.
For workers in field and mill and mine
who break earth's bread and crush her wine.
Go, good my songs, be as gay as you can. Weep if you have to, the old tears of man.
Praise tinker and saint, and the rose that takes its fill of
sunlight, though a world breaks."
-from The Storm, by George MacKay Brown