Nepal is a country where Marxism just about covered all points of the political spectrum outside of the royal family, where Marxists once fought Marxists (cf. John Mage, "Nepal -- An Overview: Introduction to Parvati," <http://www.monthlyreview.org/1105mage.htm>). Since then, Maoists and parliamentary communists managed to set aside the past and overcame the monarchy. Where will they go from here? Nepal stands at a crossroads -- "What we have sensed in the base area of Rolpa and outlined above seems to suggest that there is a social energy that is rearing to go, a potential that can be harnessed for socialist modes of life, failing which this will then assume individualistic, capitalist entrepreneurial forms" (John Mage and Bernard D'Mello, "The Beginnings of a New Democratic Nepal?" <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/md160307.html>) -- and MR is cautiously hopeful.
In Brazil, some people who supported the not so much social democratic as soft-neoliberal Lula not just in the second round _but even in the first round_ in the last elections are Marxists, while a minority of Marxists supported an anti-abortion evangelical Christian woman who ran to the Left of Lula.
In Iraq, the Communist Party of Iraq was repressed by Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist government, then joined it as a member of the National Front (from 1973 to 1979), and then got repressed again before the US invasion, and under the US occupation, it was a member of the US-sponsored Iraqi Governing Council and has since the end of the IGC joined the Iraqi National List of Iyad Allawi.
In India, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), in a state it governs, is taking land from farmers and giving it to multinationals.
China is governed by the Communist Party which is now better at business than most capitalists.
The list goes on and on. Marxism has become adopted and adapted by people over time to justify and rationalize so many different things, and now it covers nearly all points of the political sectrum in this generally capitalist world. Marxism probably can't be adopted to become a religion of fascism (I hope!), but it can be and is a really useful philosophy for capitalism, more often than not today.
> I suppose you could also argue that some Marxists apply the doctrine
> in a catechistic way, which would make it a kind of religion - but
> coming from you, as an apologist for religion, that wouldn't be too
> credible as a critique.
Practice is always more important than doctrine, both in religion and historical materialism. A doctrine, religious or Marxist, in itself does nothing. To think otherwise is idealist, rather than historical materialist. -- Yoshie