Leftism is about more than economics, that’s a particular Marxist obsession. Leftism is broader than that.

How so? I mean there’re a lot of ways to generalize the political spectrum, but an easy and common way is to separate left and right into socialized economies and privatized economies, and then from there those respective government can run from authoritarian to libertarian.

But even if you want to focus on economics alone (which is ridiculously myopic since other political topics obviously have a direct impact on economics)

Yeah, but economic have an even greater direct impact on shaping politics.

workers in the USSR lost control of the means of production almost immediately.

In some ways I would agree with that, but I doubt the majority of workers in the USSR would have made the same claim. We have a the perspective of hindsight and didn’t have to live through the brutality of serfdom in the Russian empire.

State control is not liberation, particularly when that state is repressive and undemocratic

Again, it depends on your definition of leftism, and what you are interpreting. Was the USSR liberating compared to the average lifestyles of most modern western government? No probably not. Was is liberating compared to being serfdom under the Romanov? Yeah, it was a pretty huge upgrade.

And being left of the Tsar doesn’t make you a leftist in the modern context. If that’s the case then Donald Trump is a leftist.

Right, but is the value of evaluating history outside of its historical context?