Just wrote this somewhere else. Maybe this is where it belongs: Good impulse to read theory, but 150y/o theory is not where I’d advice people to start. At least the german originals of what you recomend there are fairly hard to read. Plus they lack the development of marxist theory that happened since then. For example Gramscis thoughts or critical theory are so freakin important for marxism to be applicable to this society being far more diverse than good’ol working class in the factory vs. Monopoly man capitalists. I’m sure there is updated marxism and introductions available in english. (Dunno, Harvey maybe? Mayo?)
Also “how to conduct yourself as a leftist” sound strict af and kinda deterministic.
Plus there is no need to give stalin’s voice that kind of space.
If they come up with a Gramsci quote they could have read some. Using the concepts central to his work like Hegemony or common sense they could have provided a far better analyses of whats going on.
But yeah, why not leave it at a fancy quote, maybe rock a che guevara t-shirt for a day and not overcome your senso comune