No, Marxism does not expressly advocate for a cult of personality, yet it seemed to always happen in communist nations. This is just what happens with a far left authoritarian government (again this is what i was referring to when i said "communism" in my initial comment, not anarcho syndicalism, anarcho communism, or any other libertarian variants of that nature. ) whether it's at the behest of the dictator or not. The government poses itself as the supreme power and source of all morality, taking the place of religion whether the government likes it or not. I was aware that Stalin was not an advocate of his very own cult of personality, but the intentions of these dictators when it came to cults of personality was not part of the argument, although it does further prove my point that religious statism is inevitable with far left authoritarian communism. I don't believe Mao was particularly fond of the cult of personality either, but the Chinese people still saw him as someone to worship. When you take away relgion from the people, their not going to stop being religious. They are going to worship what they believe to be powerful, and in a far left authoritarian communist society, that is always the government. As for Wikipedia, is any of information in those articles false? If you can prove that any of that information is untrue then i will agree with you that it is not an acceptable source, until then, it is as credible as any other source that you would deem "scholarly." I'm sure that some people had some communist ideals before Marx (you could possibly lump Jesus in there as well) but Marx is the inventor of the official ideology of communism. The Communist Manifesto is the doctrine that dictators like Stalin and Mao based their oppressive governments on. Sure they exploited it and violated its true intention but this is the inevitability of Marxism and all other forms of authoritarian communism. They become exactly what they had revolutions to remove, just with different phony ideals.