Anyone who implies communism means any amount of dictatorship at all, is just lying.
I understand you are mostly talking about what Marx & Engels referred to as “primitive communism,” but you are not being honest here.
While Marx also spoke about a future (utopian) highest stage of communism where the state itself disappeared, he also clearly said that getting there would require that the working class, organized by a “communist party,” would first have to establish a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Indeed, he said this was one of the main beliefs that distinguished “communists” from various forms of non-revolutionary democratic, reformist or utopian socialists.
In my opinion, old Marxist definitions or mere empty or nostalgic use of “names” should not be the decisive factor in discussing the nature of modern political groups.
Many so-called “communist parties” today explicitly oppose any notion of establishing a dictatorship (and many “capitalist” parties or groups are fully capable of openly supporting dictatorship). After breaking with the USSR, “Euro-communism” was mostly a reformist and democratic movement of many such parties. In different regions like China, South America, South Africa or Russia, the “communist,” “socialist” and even “social democratic” monikers have different cultural resonance than they do in the U.S.A. — though in general “communists” are widely despised today by serious
democrats almost everywhere.
For a very long time the “CPUSA” has
not been a revolutionary communist party. I would argue that the self-described “Leninist” Steve Bannon is far more “revolutionary” and “pro-dictatorship” than today’s reformist CP. In actual fact, many U.S. rightwing ultra-nationalist MAGA extremists have adopted and distorted many of the old critiques of the U.S. “Establishment” that leftists, particular “infantile leftists,” once put forward.
For those interested in history, it might be useful to note that even Karl Marx and F. Engels at one point thought that socialism might arise in very democratic and advanced societies through voting (they was talking about the U.S. then)
without revolution.
In general “Marxism” uniquely concentrated many new ways to look at and criticize the capitalist world of the late 19th century, but of course it turned out to be a failed ideology — “a God that failed” — and trying to put it into practice by establishing some kind of “dictatorship of the masses” led to many horrors.
