The biggest mistake is to take any of the theories seriously. Marxists evolved a dense theoretical structure called "Dialectical Materialsim" which in my opinion resulted in stultifying the argument by making it impossible to develop a structure antithetical to itself. Much as Orwell argued in his BRILLIANT appendix / afterword to 1984. Communism as practised in the 20th century was a dictatorship that did much more than enslave whole peoples. It robbed them of their souls.

A Cuban refugeee rather recently said it in a nutshell: "The political depradations in the Capitalist world are not that different than they are in the Communist world- But at least in the Capitalist world they do not make you applaud".

The actual quote is more poetic:

For me, I do not stop wondering at the fact that in the democratic countries, when a person is sentenced to die, he is not first forced to applaud and beg, screaming for such a sentence.

What a privilege, for me, really incredible to put the head quietly in the guillotine, without having to improvise and oblige a speech praising the magnanimity of the cruel one, without before having to become your own cruel one.

That denial of true self, forced upon the citizens inside the totalitarian communist society is the real Cuba. It is the total lack of freedom in all aspects of your exterior and true inner self.