[stickfigure]

doesn't seem particularly "communist" in a relevant way

Perhaps in some academic sense. On the other hand, can you name a single national experiment with communism that didn't become authoritarian? There are certainly plenty of ugly examples.

[_delirium]

Oh, that wasn't the angle I was going for; I'm not arguing that "real communism will work" or something. Just that it doesn't seem meaningfully different from "non-communist" authoritarian states, so the label "communist" appears to be a historical anachronism that doesn't add any real information in 2011, versus just calling it a "one-party" or "authoritarian" state. In the 1960s, at least, it added the additional bit of information that the government was attempting to suppress market economics, but that part isn't true anymore.