I also feel like the problem with starting with Marx and getting into socialism as a government type is that Marx was an economist writing about economic forces while a lot of his work has been coopted into political theory.

Which makes discussions on government structure hard with a lot of leftists because once you remove discussing the economics of a society, having a discussion on political freedoms only becomes very problematic.

For instance, I saw some English speaking communists discussing a Chinese analysis of their government, which the analysis states that the Chinese government isn’t a democracy. It is true, China would describe itself as a technocracy, with trained political leaders in charge who are shielded from disruptive democratic whims. However, you could see the issue of them accepting that political power should be held only by elites.