China, the USSA and Cuba were never communism. They varied between heavy socialism (also a pinical of all high income countries: roads, trains, parks, police, fire, airports) and fascism.
A lot of people who just go on about communists, today, in 2016, seemed to have not learned that much of what we learned about the communists was mostly propaganda; same way the US creates enemies out of "terrorists" today.
Communism is when you and your friends go to a bar and there is no beer, because there was not enough grain produced on command of the central planning committee 4 years ago. Now you and your friends are upset and complain about it, so you get arrested and locked up without trial because you are betraying communist ideals.
""" In political and social sciences, communism (from Latin communis, "common, universal")[1][2] is a social, political, and economic ideology and movement whose ultimate goal is the establishment of the communist society, which is a socioeconomic order structured upon the common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes, money,[3][4] and the state.[5][6] """ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism
And it's not like nobody got locked up in the 50s without a hint of a trial just for the suspicion of being 'communist' and betraying the capitalistic ideals.
Now if one of you gets ill, or decides to slack off then that person will still be supported. If everyone slacks off then the society is f'd.
The initial concept is very theoretical, there are many gaps left.
Buying beer and sharing with friends week after week is a good example of capitalism, as the bar owner is profiting so much from you and your friends buying all this beer.
Communism (of the Marxist variety) would be you and your friends being allocated the same amount of beer by the state, which owns the beer (along with all goods), and deals out the same amount of beer to everyone, regardless of what they do (i.e. what would have corresponded to their class).
I suppose there is another kind of communism where you and your friends live on a commune and some grow hops and some grow barley and some are in charge of fermentation vats and all just relax and drink their beer after a long day. That is, until the tax man cometh...
Marx suggested that communism will only emerge after the failure of capitalism. Every single communist regime has ignored this idea.
While I agree that many countries who have followed communist ideas have done some horrible things, the same can be said for every other system, including the current system we have now.
Furthermore pure capitalism has never really been tried either, because it begins to fail and government intervention is needed very quickly.
Actual communism doesn't really mean dictatorship, I think we might see a comeback of ideas related to communism & command style economies in the future. Especially if we start implementing Strong AI to better manage resources and trade. I could see a future where free market may not exist in the form we have it now, instead there might be a system focused on harm reduction managed by various planning systems, better and more careful resource allocation, etc.
Let's not forget that communist ideas also allowed many countries to industrialize rather quickly.
How is communism going to handle malicious parties, since there's no ownership? How is communism going to handle needs for abstract needs, such as those for services? Marx didn't really think things through. You don't need strong AI, you need the singularity to centrally plan humanity. Until then you need to allow freedom of action for individual actors, i.e. rule of law + market economies.
In my personal opinion, I don't think that if communism ever emerges it will be through forced means as it was before, I think it will occur naturally where Capitalism will simply fail in certain areas and the system will need to change.
For example say in 100 years, climate change causes enormous damage worldwide in various aspects of life. At this point perhaps governments will realize we can't just exploit raw resources, pollute and allow people to do what they want, so new economic systems emerge that utilize central planning and needs based production and distribution as to avoid harm, it will no longer be simply market driven. Just a rough example, of what could happen.
People aren't going to say "I want more loli hentai".
You're talking about dictatorships that called themselves communist. Some were economically communist, but the governance was never as Marx intended.
Marx envisioned a system of 'councils' that would exist in many aspects of society (e.g. for each factory), each would send a representative to a higher level council. This is what 'soviet' refers to. This system was never really implemented.
Economic system and governance are not the same thing. It's conceivable to implement communism using a proper 'soviet' (council) system, or maybe even using a parliamentary democracy. I don't quite believe this would work that well, but calling the belief itself 'unforgivable' is ...simplistic.
Especially considering that many people who believe in communism do so out of a sense of idealism that is much less selfish than capialists; in some sense communist beliefs stem from a sense of empathy that is much more compatible with evangelical values rather than capitalism.
