Indeed, its why Australia's main conservative party (middle right) are called The Liberals

Yes, historically that is the case. Semantics drift over time, though. Even though both liberals and conservatives are classical liberals, only one actually still uses the liberal label. When you don't acknowledge semantic drift, you alienate others because they can't follow what you're saying. If you want to destroy capitalism, you need to make the circle of people bigger, not shoulder people out before they begin.

Phrased another way, you want to move the Overton window leftwards, not contribute to it shrinking to the right.

No, that's neoliberalism. Which is a misnomer, because actual liberalism emerged from the humanist tradition and was a political philosophy, not an economic one. It's where we got ideas like human rights, and rules that restrict governments' abilities to oppress their citizens.

Neoliberalism misapplies the idea of "freedom" the same way anarcho-capitalists do. But I don't think anyone here would argue that all anarchists are anarcho-capitalists.

By your definition the billionaires and the politicians they back would be unsuccessful political actors as they're making the quality of life worse for most people. I'd say they are very successful political actors, and that is the problem.

In my opinion politics is "war without bloodshed". It is a means by which a group can accomplish certain goals that another group opposes.

One side could have a goal of improving the quality of life for the poor while the other could have a goal of improving it for the rich. Politics is what both sides do to try and accomplish there goals.

Political theory is like military theory in the sense that it lays out strategies to defeat the opposition and accomplish those goals. While a military theory is proven correct by winning a battle, a political theory can be proven correct by winning an election.

Politics is a means, not an end. The end/goal is determined by ideology , class position, self interest, racism etc.

Precisely. He's genius at certain things, but just because of that, doesn't mean the other things he does are good or legitimate.

Communist manifesto was highly accessible, so are many popular texts that espouse simplistic and idealistic theories about the world, politics or not. That doesn't mean they are accurate, useful, or pragmatic today, or even at the time of their conception.

Agreed that the issue with Marxists generally is their limited understanding of Marx and their vast over use and generalization of his theories, but that's not exclusive to Marxists. Lots of followers of theories are complete morons and turn critique and insight into blind belief and rhetoric around which they then justify violence in the name of.

Marx 'positive' theory makes many social and psychological assumptions that are just... obviously untrue esp in regard to modern theorizing. At it's heart he replies on a modification of the 'noble savage' myth, that there is some 'true' or 'natural' state of individual human living that is being 'oppressed' by 'society' and his political system will 'liberate' us from it... which when you start to think about that you see how ridiculous that is. But that conception was deeply popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, because everyone was still queuing off of Hobbes. Modern (post WW2) political theories don't really by so much into any 'state of nature'. Their idealizing is more of a calculus assuming society already must and will forever exist.

I am not too familiar with modern marxists re-workings of his theories to try and fit 'reality' but from what I've seen they still heavily borrow a lot of his assumptions about human nature being one way and 'society/capitalism' 'corrupting' it. They treat his work and their theories more like as if it were religious revelation, rather than taking a more pragmatic approach or one based in the more modern economic and social science understandings we have, maybe of which are only a generation or two old.