Mini Thread on why Marxism doesn't mean a nanny state & why the USSR wasn't Marxist:
I would begin by addressing the communist manifesto. The manifesto was written when both M & E were in their late twenties and most of their political thoughts were...not as developed

Marx himself states that the development of political theories must change according to historic events of significance. To Marx, this event was the Paris Commune. I won’t be addressing the commune here for brevity. What the PC led to Marx & Engels doing was basically saying that

...the measures they laid out in CM were antiquated. What does this mean in short? They understood that a centralized govt was a bad idea and the true instrument for the revolution was the local self-government. Marx himself states in the following http://shorturl.at/twM01  ...

that “the functions of the state would be reduced to a few functions for general national purposes.“
Coming now to Lenin/Stalin & what happened in the USSR: The first question that should come to mind is whether Lenin was completely antithetical in his positions to Marx?

The answer to that is no. He largely agreed with Marx however his theory differed in that he thought that he could establish socialism/communism in one country, the reason for which is complex but for brevity's sake, it relates to the rise of fascism in Europe at the time.

Establishing S in 1 country is something that both M & E vehemently disagreed with as they theorized Communism to be an international movement. Lenin proposed the vanguard party which I will write a separate thread about if people want it. It devolved into the "state" under Lenin

The hooliganism of Stalin enters here. From presenting Lenin correctly to consolidate power to then misrepresenting what L proposed to become a totalitarian, Stalin’s choices stemmed from a thirst for power & to me at least, an exploitation of the fascist zeitgeist of Europe then

I would like to write more but think it would be better to just let questions flow in from this point on for this thread specifically.

This is (probably) the first of many threads.

Also, thread was pretty stream of consciousness so it doesn't have the editorial quality(or diagrams) that I would have preferred. Sorry