I think it is a mistake to see socialism as a step on the path to Marxist-Leninism. The former exists quite comfortably with democratic institutions. Well-educated and capable people in European governments and parliaments debate ways and means of accomplishing identified needs of society and even more or less deliver on these promises more or less well. Americans have a problem that there should be more self reliance, but it is a difference in degree.
Marxist-Leninists are first and foremost about power and control of the collective. They are totalitarian in approach. The Swedes and Danes do not have gulags. Virtually every M-L state has had its political prisons and death squads. They deliver for themselves and their peers, their fellow thugs. They really have little intent of delivering any more on a social aim than they absolutely have to to maintain their control of the collective.
My feeling is that Obama is (at heart) more of a Marxist than a Socialist. I’m sure his biggest lament is that he can’t rule by decree. The long term goal is to reduce the American populace to a gaggle of dependent, dumbed down clients who will rubber stamp anything Obama wants in exchange for free stuff (or at least the promise of free stuff). No wonder that Chavez is the modern day role model for so many in this Administration.