I'm not sure I follow your point. The Leninist aspects of Marxism-Leninism are mostly Lenin's analysis of imperialism, the heights of which capitalism had not quite reached in Marx's time, and in practical organizational theory. Marxism-Leninism posits that we should create a working class party, study the given conditions of the country we are in (history, contradictions, class struggle) in order to correctly identify the key issues to organize around. In doing so, the working class needs to gradually choose the vanguard party, meaning a vanguard party that fails to do so is no vanguard. Only then, when the conditions of revolution appear, can the vanguard direct the great quantity of the working class to achieve a qualitative change in society, into socialism.

Marxism-Leninism is based on practical struggle, based on reality, on the material world. The point of philosophy is to change the world for the better, not simply understand it. Education is merely one aspect of Marxist-Leninist praxis, used to create more effective revolutionaries, but is by no means the only.

"Tankie" is just a pejorative for those that uphold socialist countries as legitimate, and oppose the US empire. Communists are not anywhere close to MAGA, and pretending they are is sophistry.

Yep, Marxism is communist.