[wpietri]

Yeah, I'm not sure "communist" was ever a particularly valuable label, in that anything large and nominally communist was more statist or totalitarian oligarchy, just painted red. My understanding is that as envisioned, the state would "wither away", devolving power to the people, but in practice people who like power were quite happy to seize the levers of the government and never let them go. Oopsie!

As an aside, I strongly recommend Iannucci's The Death of Stalin [1], which is in US theaters right now. The material would be horrific in a serious film, but treating it as a black comedy makes it endurable. I enjoyed it much more than I expected, and the cast is first rate.

[1] https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_death_of_stalin/

[Fnoord]

FWIW, 88 metascore on Metacritic [1] is solid, high. Steve Buscemi as Nikita Khrushchev! Can't wait.

[1] http://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-death-of-stalin

[iguy]

The Death of Stalin is great.

The fact that some people once wished the word "communist" to mean something else doesn't matter much. Post-1945 it has had a clear meaning: the empire of Stalin, and its vassals, imitators, and admirers.

"as envisioned" just means some people once told a fairy tale about how nice things would be. The Heaven's Gate cult also "envisioned" riding to paradise on Comet Hale-Bopp.