Marx is a thinker like anything else, the human mind thinks in abstracts which is both a blessing and a curse regardless of how educated the person is.
Which is a problem.
There are no terms used to describe how devotional to Marx many "Marxists" are.
Fucking Hitler read Marx you know that right? Two distinct sources state he did, and obviously he did, it was the 1900s, if he wanted to get political he would have to do so eventually, and he almost always went into a autistic rage at "Bolshevism" more than he name dropped Marx, as well as appropriated his terminology but most people would never say he was a Marxist.
Marx himself was most critical of all other socialists. to the point where I don't think he would have ever stopped finding anything wrong with the current state of affairs.
In this however, almost 80% of what modern socialists espouse is actually something he'd call them fucking retards for. There was a book posted here, the title was so abstract I can't even recall it, but I read it, it had citations down to the letters he shared when I read it, and he shit talked every single concept trying to make socialism feasible in his time. You can argue he was trying to tweak it but chances are he was against a lot of those things and more in line with doing away with it for a more decentralized, cashless communism. It's a whole thing.
Third and in relation to the above, there is a giant trove of shit Engels and Marx both said that just would not fly today, it's either going to be seen as insane, reactionary even, or just outdated in relation to places that no longer exist, knowledge that was just wrong, and the more we figure out to be fact with new scientific measurements the more it all comes into question. How come even the most hardcore orthodox Marxists kneel and say "Yeah Marx was wrong and a fucking retard actually."
So what makes a Marxist?
The answer is nothing, we have a tendency to group people together, and before you know it people think they're part of the gang, and that all it takes is agreeing with dialectics or class struggle to be Marxian, or believe in a DOTP.
If Marx came back today he would shit himself and throw a tantrum going "No! I'm the only Marxist! You fucking uyghurs have besmirched my name! Me I am the only one! How dare you turn my works into this!"
He would then be lynched by a angry mob and decapitated in public, his head now used as a football by them would be smiling as death
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