“Communism bad”
“Why?”
200 year old tropes so ancient they were debunked by Marx himself
Of course, you go through the motions of explaining the most basic political concepts that could be grasped by skimming the cliff notes for literally any Marxist works
“Friedrich Engels? Is he like the president of Germany or something?”
It’s like a kindergartener trying to teach you calculus.
I’ll just mention it is not even about reading Marx’s actual works; it is not really necessary to read all the volumes of Capital. It is about the method of inquiry and intellectual honesty.
If you want to know Marx, then reading any modern Marxist economic text is sufficient (for example, Michael Roberts’ Marx 200); other texts like the Communist Manifesto are not even that long, and I’m sure Lenin’s Imperialism has already been distilled down by other Marxists somewhere. There are also YT etc…
The point, though, is intellectual honesty, and as you said, you don’t learn a theory by first going to read what the critics have to say. Sure, that may be, and arguably even should be, part of the inquiry, but they make no effort to actually understand the Marxist point of view; they don’t seek Marxist sources. They take the conclusion as granted to them on a silver platter.