A political thinker should be read for insight, rather than doctrine. I believe that Karl Marx had two valid insights, and that he was mistaken about everything else.I have been around a long time, and once was 10 miles from the Berlin Wall, where it kept free people out and enslaved people to the government in. I never saw any free person climbing over the wall to get into East Germany, but almost daily saw people not only facing rabid dogs, but machine guns, in their attempt to leave Marxism.
Just because a slime ball Marxists doesnt call him/her/it self a Marxist, doesnt mean that they arent...
Communism was unpopular in Eastern Europe because nationalism worked against it. Communism was popular in Vietnam, because nationalism worked with it. That is why the United States lost the War in Vietnam.