Good questions!

First off, dialectical materialism is the single greatest tool of Marxism. Marx used it when writing Capital, it’s critical to class struggle, it’s why we have historical materialism. Dialectical materialism is a way of thinking about forces and change, and the motions of change in the world. Not to keep sending book recommendations, but Engels’ work Dialectics of Nature goes over the immense applicability of dialectics to everything (though this is a more advanced text IMO, and quite lengthy). Same applies to Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.

Mao’s On Practice & On Contradiction are critical for understanding dialectical materialism because the former goes over the dialectical materialist approach to understanding the unity of theory and practice, and the latter helps us understand the nature of contradiction. Contradiction is what compels movement, in a way, and by identifying imperialism as the primary contradiction, it’s useful for identifying what movements to support in overthrowing that, such as Palestinian liberation.

As for the labor aristocracy, they are ultimately the upper stratum of the proletariat. They are kind of like a subclass, if you will. Petite bourgeois relations push towards individualism and fascism as they fear being proletarianized, but the labor aristocracy are already proletarianized, just bribed by the spoils of imperialism into supporting it, or opposing anything that meaningfully represents an alternative. A good look at class ideology is the incredibly short essay Stalin’s Shoemaker, which traces a worker that finds himself in different occupations and thus his mindset changes until ultimately being proletarianized and naturally adopts a more proletarian mindset.

Your third paragraph is excellent, and Ho Chi Minh’s The Path Which Led me to Leninism describes exactly why so many anti-imperialists come to Marxism-Leninism. Marxism-Leninism’s strong stance on national liberation struggles and effectiveness in leading them is exactly why it is so prevalent. Both Fanon and Rodney are excellent reads, great choices.

One thing about Lenin and the progressive achievements of the USSR under him is that Lenin died very early on, and it was ultimately Stalin that had to take on that task. Sverdlov, the most likely candidate for General Secretary, was dead, and Trotsky distrusted the peasantry and had menshevik tendencies towards splitting and infighting. For all of Stalin’s faults, it was ultimately Stalin that carried on Lenin’s legacy in the midst of siege and incredible turmoil. The CPC rates Stalin and Mao both at 70% good, 30% bad, and I think that can help contextualize that we don’t idolize these figures just because we agree with much of what they wrote and did. There’s also much to critique.

For Mao, the CPC is very negative on the Cultural Revolution and Four Pests Campaign. The Great Leap Forward is more mixed, but the prior two were seen largely as mistakes even if the reasoning for attempting them were solid. Marxist-Leninist-Maoists uphold the Cultural Revolution and believe it universal to successful socialism, they just believe Mao failed. I’m not an MLM though, and neither was Mao, Mao was an ML. Hope that tangent made sense!

I love that you love Parenti, haha. The “Yellow Parenti” speech is honestly responsible for creating countless MLs, as is Blackshirts and Reds. Anna Louise Strong wrote This Soviet World in the 1930s, so it’s a good look at what the early USSR was like, as was Soviet Democracy. A good intro though to some of the history and context of AES are the Prolewiki pages on The USSR and on The PRC before you delve deeper into these.

Awesome work on your journey so far!