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You've gotten a bunch of solid answers already, but I just want to chime in with some food for thought.

In my view, Marxism is itself a form of religion. Instead of having faith in a higher power, a Marxist chooses to have faith in an ideological system that lacks definitive evidence of its accuracy or applicability to human societies. It certainly sounds much more plausible and rational to our ears than traditional religions with their paradoxical and seemingly arbitrary assertions, but it nonetheless requires some degree of faith.

The specific interpretation of historical events and human social behavior that Marx asserts is by no means certain, and requires that you have faith that Marx was correct in a majority of his arguments.

The doctrine of Marxism was famously critiqued by Karl Popper due to his belief that it was unfalsifiable, and thus unfit to be described as a scientific theory. I'll quote a relevant passage from the Wikipedia article here

In his early years Popper was impressed by Marxism, whether of Communists or socialists. An event that happened in 1919 had a profound effect on him: During a riot, caused by the Communists, the police shot several unarmed people, including some of Popper's friends, when they tried to free party comrades from prison. The riot had, in fact, been part of a plan by which leaders of the Communist party with connections to Béla Kun tried to take power by a coup; Popper did not know about this at that time. However, he knew that the riot instigators were swayed by the Marxist doctrine that class struggle would produce vastly more dead men than the inevitable revolution brought about as quickly as possible, and so had no scruples to put the life of the rioters at risk to achieve their selfish goal of becoming the future leaders of the working class. This was the start of his later criticism of historicism. Popper began to reject Marxist historicism, which he associated with questionable means, and later socialism, which he associated with placing equality before freedom (to the possible disadvantage of equality).

I must admit that my Marxist and socialist leanings have been significantly shaken during my time on Lemmy, where it appears that the tankie servers tend to reproduce the very same flaws that have been evident in the majority of communist and socialist nation states that have existed thus far. Namely, a lack of free discourse, a refusal to question and debate, and a blind focus on ideological purity to the extent that truth and pragmatism become secondary or entirely irrelevant concerns. One begins to question whether such tendencies are not in fact a perversion, as they are so often framed, but instead an inevitable outcome of strict adherence to Marxist doctrine.

I realize that many will probably argue that tankies do not represent Marxist beliefs accurately, but it seems to me that as Marxist thought becomes more dominant within any particular group or society, that specific brand of Marxism seems to overwhelm and outcompete more libertarian varieties.

Circling back to the original question, this is perhaps not dissimilar to the discrepancy between Christianity as originally conceived in the New Testament and the subsequent manifestation of Christianity as an organized religion in the real world, which seems to bear little resemblance to the teachings of Christ.

It's almost like no matter how noble the abstract thoughts and philosophies might be, human beings will find a way to misinterpret them and repurpose them in service of horrific and selfish actions.