Vietnam is ruled by a Marxist-Leninist party. One-party rule, vanguardist, officially Marxist, ruling allegedly for the benefit of the workers. Similar to contemporary China, Cuba, or the late USSR. What term would you prefer, if not (Marxist-)Leninist, to describe this type of state?
If you look at modern day Vietnam and say “ah yes, this is a Marxist-Leninist state” then I am sorry but you are very naive or dishonest. Presumably the same literal interpretation isn’t extended to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and I sincerely hope by now that you don’t think the Chinese Communist Party govern anything other than a state-capitalist country.
I don’t know what to call these countries, but selectively taking these states descriptions of themselves at face value is very silly indeed, and doesn’t really contribute much to the conversation. In my experience, the “X is communist/socialist/leninist/whatever” is most often deployed online as shorthand to indicate to (and then naively repeated by) credulous, sheltered or otherwise ignorant Americans that the country in question is bad and that even if it’s imperfect the USA is still #1, baby.
Marxist-Leninist, Communist. It's what they were always described as. There's historical context here. You have offered no objection to the use of the term "Leninist" other than it being what these states describe themselves as. What's wrong with that? Does "Leninist" have some other competing meaning that would be confusing? (Like with the "Democratic" of the DPRK?) Accepting self-terminology does not endorse it. Or everyone who called the USSR Communist back in the day was accepting that they were, in fact, on the way to communism. (That's not usually what someone means when they called these states communist, and such people aren't usually being naive or dishonest either. Nice dichotomy, by the way.) Would you have preferred capital-C Communist? That's basically a synonym for Marxist-Leninist.
I mean I’m mostly objecting to dismissing it as just something that happens in “Leninist” countries. No interaction with the story, no attempt to understand it - just the same old “ah that’s what happens in the nasty foreign places we don’t like” that is just as wrong as it is boring. We’re talking about a property tycoon for god’s sake, that really should make you pause and question your understanding of the situation.
