Ask Lemmygrad

Lenin was very serious about staying true to Marx, to the point of quoting entire pages to be sure he's not taking things out of context. His work is Marx's thought applied to economical and political developments Marx couldn't have foreseen, but it's in no way revisionist. I think this is why Stalin called it "Marxism-Leninism", to make sure it's clear this is Marxism.

Still you have "orthodox Marxists" who will claim ML is not really Marxism but I think if it was called just "Leninism" it would've been even easier for them to claim Leninism isn't even Marxism.

Stalin coined the term Marxism-Leninism. Marxism-Leninism was already in practice in Lenin's time, though Lenin didn't say his application of Marx's theories was Leninist, the same way Marx didn't call himself a Marxist. It was only after the fact that Stalin synthesized Marxism-Leninism by combining Lenin's and Marx's theories. In the same way, people didn't call themselves Hegelians or Darwinians when Hegel and Darwin were alive.

Marx and Lenin focused on different things. The primary focus of Marx was on economic theory while Lenin's primary focus was on how to organize an effective revolution. This is an excellent take on the subject incidentally

https://web.archive.org/web/20200410214430/https://twitter.com/existentialcoms/status/1248728086834601984

You can't just say Leninist because people might think you're a Beatles fan

Not at all, Lenin is so important complement to Marxism that you cannot ignore him.

Lenin's contributions include the understanding of imperialism, a more systematic approach towards understanding national liberation movements, his contributions to revolutionary praxis, the theory and practice of the dictatorship of the proletariat, many contributions of political tactics and strategy, tactics of revolutionary organization, his philosophy of organization (democratic centralism), his contributions towards a systematic dialectical materialist understanding...

Lenin's contributions far exceed any other Marxist in terms of revolutionary praxis. So Marxism is the philosophical worldview which instructs our understanding of the capitalist system, while Leninism is the body of work detailing strategy and tactics towards revolutionary action. So yes, Marxism-Leninism is an appropriate description of the current state of Marxist development.

Lenin led the foundation of the world's first socialist republic. In doing so he, in part, expanded on and deviated from Marx's original conceptualisation of capitalism and socialist organising.

I wouldn’t know: I’m a GNU Marxist.

Because Lenin’s works fundamentally builds off of Marx’s foundational writings, and other communists such as Stalin thought it would be incredibly disrespectful to sweep Marx under the rug and attribute all of Marxism-Leninism to Lenin alone.

Leninists were, at a time, what trotskyists called themselves in opposition to "Stalinists", where as Stalin outlined the philosophy of "Marxism-Leninism" so it's defined in that old polemic I believe. Don't hear Leninism too often anymore though. I think Marxism is emphasized mostly because of how he able to outline dialectical materialism as opposed to his other socialist/communist contemporaries, and even if we say Marx was more incorrect than those who came after him he's still foundational or at least inspirational to a lot of the work that came after him. Mao built on Lenin's theories in incredibly important ways as well but calling myself a Maoist has different connotations like Leninist might have, and ppl generally accept MZT as part of ML so it's been an effective way of communicating the contemporary communist position (siding with Stalin over Trotsky, Sino over Soviet, MZT over Maoism).

Considering the many great communists that have existed, even those who never took inspiration from Marx, or who saw his work as accurate and useful but not central to their communist thought (Frantz Fanon comes to mind, never feeling a need to call himself a Marxist) I generally prefer a simple "communist" as it gives a bit less eurocentrism and doesn't pay special attention to anyone in a movement that belongs to the masses. However, "Marxism" as a name for the eternal science of dialectical materialism and it's application is very effective as a means of communicating this school of thought and valuable contribution he made in outlining it, where as terms like "Leninism" "Maoist" "Hoxhaist" "Marxism-Leninism" "Dengist" often refer to a specific polemic outlined by an influencial figure in the overall movement as opposed to the quality of the named people's contributions to this science or its application.

From my understanding of the contemporary use of the term, a "Leninist" is someone who believes that the political party is the way for the proletariat to organise itself and exercise its will, the party acts as a vanguard. This is in contrast to some "left communists" who think that the working class can spontaneously organise itself, without the leadership of a vanguard party. But then you have some other left communists, like Bordiga and the ICP who are "Leninists" because they believe the international proletariat should organise itself in a world-encompassing communist party. So Bordiga cannot be considered a "Marxist-Leninist" (socialism in one country, socialism with *-characteristics), but is a "Leninist" (working class should be organised into a communist party).