Indeed Lenin is quoted as saying “Now we are repeating what was approved by the Central EC two years ago . . . Namely, that the Soviet Socialist Democracy (sic!) is in no way inconsistent with the rule and dictatorship of one person; that the will of a class is at best realised by a Dictator who sometimes will accomplish more by himself and is frequently more needed” (Lenin: Collected Works, Vol. 17, p. 89. First Russian Edition).

Lenin’s short article The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism (1913) is a concise explanation of the basics of Marxism (www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/mar/x01.htm).
But by 1918 the dictatorship of the proletariat had become for Lenin “the very essence of Marx’s teaching” (The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, 1918, http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/index.htm).
It is noticeable however that Lenin’s Three Sources article contained no mention of the phrase or Lenin’s particular conception of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

And on the same site , why not read Paresh Chattopadhyay’s Manifesto of Emancipation , on Marx approach in the Gotha programme to the transitional period – which is far removed from any Leninist or Trotskyist idea of “workers state” .
http://marxmyths.org/paresh-chattopadhyay/article.htm

And as for Lenin , was this not what he said:-
“If Socialism can only be realized when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least five hundred years”

but from What is to be Done :-

“The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc. The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical and economic theories that were elaborated by the educated representatives of the propertied classes, the intellectuals” (Foreign Languages Publishing House edition, Moscow, pp. 50-51).
“Class political consciousness can be brought to the workers only from without, that is, only from outside of the economic struggle, from outside of the sphere of relations between workers and employers” (Lenin’s emphasis, p.133).
“The spontaneous working class movement by itself is able to create (and inevitably creates) only trade unionism, and working class trade unionist politics are precisely working class bourgeois politics” (pp. 159-60) .

Is it irrelevant when we still possess political parties that claim to be socialist advocating the cul de sac of the “workers state”

I think a lot of us, myself included, have been mired down in the current system for so long that it’s hard for us to even conceive of what a truly fair arrangement would look like. That’s something we need to work on, yes, but not (I hope) reason enough to start throwing people out of the movement — and I don’t even know where I’d go to actually work a BJC.

” I have yet to meet a Marxist who doesn’t, deep down, think that working people need to be led in their own best interest.
Maybe you could sell that stuff to the working class 100 years ago.”

What are trying to say? That 100 years ago the working people were dumb but now are smart? I’d say, if anything, they are DUMBER, or else they would not have so easily relinquished the gains made over the past century (PAID overtime, the there 8s, etc).
It all seems muddled to me projecting only a diffuse,dull and throbbing ache at the thought of the word “marxist.”