I'm iffy about Lenin too. Marx and Engels wrote about bottom up socialism but Lenin came along and basically said the working class is too stupid for a socialist revolution and opted for top down socialism which led to authoritarian socialism and state capitalism.

Our neolib capitalist society is top down governance which is why I highly oppose everything that isn't bottom up socialism

Yes it cannot be saved because by nature it's contradictory and exploitative, all of the problems are caused by capitalism because without those problems people would be able to question for another system.