Pedantically: Marx never called himself a Marxist. When he co-wrote (with Engels) the Manifesto, it was to consolidate the contemporary Communist thought into

Pedantically: Marx never called himself a Marxist. When he co-wrote (with Engels) the Manifesto, it was to consolidate the contemporary Communist thought into a distributable, available pamphlet. It would help if more people read the Manifesto, as you obviously have, but other commenters avoided.