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Notes -
This didn't really apply to countries where Marxist-Leninist parties were actually mass movements. The anglo countries where Marxism remained fairly fringe, perhaps, but in France/Italy/Finland where Communist parties regularly polled 20%+ their support came in great numbers from the working class, as can be seen, for instance, when looking at electoral numbers at ward level (corresponding specifically to working-class districts in cities etc.) Once M-L parties got established, their leadership tended to come from the working class as well, as I recounted here.
At least for the Finnish party, about which I've read a fair bit, up until the 60s the party had remarcably low currency among the intellectuals, academics and journalists, and what "gentleman Marxists" there were were often targets of suspicion for revisionism. Until there was a turn towards the New Left in the 60s one didn't see university-educated people in the Communist Party in great numbers, and this New Left turn ended up launching a process that led to the party essentially dropping Marxism-Leninism, first de facto and de jure. (A part of this New Left class later turned towards orthodox Marxism-Leninism but that's another story.)
The whole debate about whether wokeness is Marxist or anti-Marxist or whatever is basically impossible until we have a firmer definition of wokeness than what we currently do. As far as I've seen, most definition of wokeness are essentially "progressivism expect too much for me" or "progressivism expect authoritarian". The first one is always necessarily subjective, and authoritarian progressivism is hardly something invented by Marx, as evinced most famously by the process of the French Revolution.
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