Communism to me begs on its meaning, at least that’s the implication of the question. Whenever someone requests in general terms what communism is to any one, it refers that to nominal meaning, rather than a generic description of , for instance, how it works. Descriptions are more cross interdisciplinary, cultural, and functional. These latter, rely on checking other sources. Therefore,to my mind, it would be inconvenient to assume a communism which is nowadays is other than merely an ideological construction. Ideology and practice are no longer other than approximate confirmation of each other, like let’s say displaying functional and conceptual correlates, mirroring the idea with its application.
The application of an ideology has to be compared with a schematic possibility with its functional equivalent, where verification is more likely start with presentations of examples of what communism entails and re-presenting them in various modes of workable current types of political and social manifest. The ideology in its pure form, is a an ideal model, from which an nominal meaning can be abstracted.
I can not present communism, apart from its previous models, and alternatively, therefore, such a presentation will suffer from an other then present construction. It is therefore a re-construction, a hybrid. Such a hybrid begs its evolutionary prescription, as presented by the hytoric development starting from Hegel, through, Kant, Marx, Engels and so on.
Meaning is not developmental, but so is a topical presentation apart from its development. In that sense, Communism is dead, since it can not presently connect to any former presentation. It is merely a hypothetical re-presentation, using mixtures of different social contracts with their revious uses.
This is why variance is an essential part of what communism is, as can be understood in the manyformed descriptions via how they worked. China has always differed from its Russian Counterpart, and the French Communist Party supported by Sartre, broke away from the International Communism, at a time when reassessment and revision took hold because of the breakdown of political differences among the members of the Internationale. It was an ideology, simply presented , at a time when fractures did not yet appear. With the coming of differences, an exact literal reference to held sources became inapplicable in the present future and the future perfect senses. History had to be re lived, of which Marx had warned, and as such it had to be re-lived point by point in the present tense, having little experimental reference apart from the internationally adopted sense to which early communism could refer.
Therefore, I can not present to you a sense in which communism applies a modicum of my own personal experience, except by which it presents in reference to current nations or academics, still holding on to the idea. That this is a very poor way it can be understood, is evident in the current swirling opinions which hold on to a modicum or relevance. Most will just throw up their hands and declare it unworkable.
It failed even as a social experiment in the 60’s, where most communes disintegrated, or ended in catastrophe. With these arguments in mind, I have really no recourse to insist that the idea had only short, limited appeal for strictly pseudo ideological reasons.