This thesis argues that the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels have been wildly misinterpreted and mischaracterized in the contemporary field of political theory. By comparing Marx and Engels’s original writings with multiple contemporary Marxist perspectives, I find that contemporary Marxist theory bears little resemblance to that of Marx and Engels. I prove that the popular characterizations of Marxism as teleological and Marx as an idealist are incorrect, finding that most critics neglect to consider the possibility of a scientific, non-teleological determinism. In place of the contradictory interpretations proposed by contemporary theorists, I illuminate several overlooked elements of Marx’s work and present a more accurate model for understanding communism. With it, I make the case that Marxism is not teleological or prophetic, but has also not been disproven by history. Unless they are someday proven wrong, Marx and Engels’s work alone stands as a coherent and factual scientific analysis of the current mode of production—and is the only way out of it.