communism is a stateless, classless society based on the self-organization of workers and communities. The state is not the vehicle for achieving that society. It is one of the institutions that reproduces hierarchy and domination.
Marx certainly argued that the working class must overthrow capitalism and that there would be a transitional period after the revolution. But he also praised examples like the Paris Commune precisely because they dismantled the centralized state rather than strengthening it. His critique of alienation and exploitation was ultimately aimed at human emancipation, not at creating a new bureaucratic ruling class.
Marxism-Leninism departs from this in several fundamental ways. It replaces the self-emancipation of the working class with the rule of a centralized party claiming to act on its behalf. It builds an increasingly powerful state instead of dismantling state power. It substitutes workplace and community self-management with centralized planning directed from above. In practice, workers remained wage laborers under managers appointed by the state rather than collectively controlling production themselves.
Calling those societies "socialist" depends entirely on defining state ownership as socialism. A definition that is rejected by communism concepts. If workers do not directly control production and political power remains concentrated in a party-state, then capitalism has not been abolished in any meaningful sense. The employer has simply become the state.
As for being "the world's largest Marxist ideology," popularity does not settle theoretical questions. Christianity is the world's largest religion, but that does not resolve debates about theology. Likewise, the historical success of Marxism-Leninism in building states does not prove that it fulfilled Marx's emancipatory project or achieved communism.
So Marxism-Leninism's model of socialism is fundamentally different from the Marx's critique points toward: the direct self-emancipation of workers without a ruling party or a permanent state.
I think you're responding to an argument I didn't actually make.
I never claimed that administration, coordination, or delegation are incompatible with communism. Every complex society requires administration. The question is how administrative power is organized, who exercises it, and how accountable it is. There is a fundamental difference between delegates who are directly accountable, recallable, and subordinate to workers' assemblies, and a centralized party-state whose decisions flow downward.
I also agree that Marx was not an anarchist. My argument isn't that Marx secretly agreed with Bakunin. It's that Marx's project centered on the self-emancipation of the working class, and there are multiple traditions that claim to continue that project. Marxism-Leninism is one of them, but it is not the only one.
Where we fundamentally disagree is over the meaning of social ownership. You treat state ownership under a party-state as equivalent to collective ownership. I don't. Nor do many other Marxists, including council communists, left communists, and libertarian Marxists. This is a long-standing debate within the socialist movement, not simply a misunderstanding of Marx.
Regarding the Paris Commune, Marx certainly criticized specific strategic mistakes, such as failing to act decisively against Versailles. But he also celebrated the Commune because it broke the existing bureaucratic-military state rather than simply taking it over. That is precisely why he described it as "the political form at last discovered" for working-class emancipation. The lesson isn't simply "build a stronger state"; it's that the old state apparatus cannot be used as an instrument of emancipation.
Finally, theory cannot be separated from historical practice. If the vanguard is merely an organized section of the working class, then why did Marxist-Leninist states consistently suppress independent workers' councils, autonomous unions, opposition socialist parties, and grassroots initiatives whenever they conflicted with the party? That historical pattern deserves explanation. It cannot simply be dismissed by saying that administrators are still proletarians in an abstract sense.
So my disagreement isn't based on reading Marx as an anarchist. It's based on the belief that the self-emancipation of the working class requires institutions in which workers exercise power directly, rather than through a party that claims to permanently embody their interests. That's a debate within the socialist tradition itself, not a rejection of Marx.