Since you did ask, I made an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list after the US election in the hopes of helping those increasingly radicalized along their political journeys! I also wrote a post on how to determine if an overall system is Capitalist or Socialist, from a Marxist perspective.

As a side-note, Socialism is generally seen by Marxists as the intermediate stage between Capitalism and Communism, with Communism as a fully publicly owned, global democratic economy with thorough planning, and Socialism as a society where Private ownership has become subservient to the public sector and now Public ownership is the principle aspect, which is the method of getting to Communism. No country has achieved Communism, which must be global, but many have achieved Socialism.

A bit on "Democratic Socialism," and how it differs from Marxism-Leninism:

Democratic Socialism usually can refer to either something like the Nordic Countries, which would technically better fit the term "Social Democracy* as private ownership of Capital is the principle aspect of their economies, or as Socialism achieved through electoral means, ie public ownership as the principle aspect of their economies.

I say "principle" as no system is "pure," every country has a public and private sector, but the public sector in China and Cuba, for example, has far more power than the Private through having firm control of large firms and key industry, while in the Nordics the public sector is in support of the private. The Nordics also rely on international exploitation in order to fund their safety nets, meaning it isn't a system that could be adopted by just anyone with the same results, it requires winners and losers.

As for how it compares to Marxism-Leninism:

1. Both Democratic Socialism and Marxism-Leninism are democratic. The model of democracy most MLs support, however, usually isn't focused on having many parties, but more direct influence from the workers within government at large. Here's an example from the Soviet Union:

2. Democratic Socialists usually wish to achieve Socialism through elections, while MLs are revolutionary. Just like you can't just ask a billionaire to give you their money, MLs don't believe you can simply ask them to implement a system that dramatically weakens and eventually erases their power when they control the State.

3. Democratic Socialism is generally a far less defined, while Marxism-Leninism has a rich history of testing theory to practice, and changing over time. This is because Marxism-Leninism is almost always going to be the underlying ideology of any country deemed "Communist," such as the PRC, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, DPRK, former USSR, and more. This means MLs are usually more in agreement than disagreement with each other.

And that's enough to go off of, I think! Let me know if you habe any questions, though the reading list is my recommendation for a good place to start. It even has audiobooks for most of the listed works as alternatives, as well as links to epubs or pdfs.

500 word mini-essay on demsoc vs socdem inbound. ETA in 3... 2...