I generally get what you're saying; that when the government seizes the means of production and runs it for the benefit of themselves and their cronies, that's really no different than capitalists owning the means of production, and that isn't how communism is supposed to work. In its true manifestation it would be largely stateless. So you're saying that I'm arguing in bad faith when I attribute the conditions of Cuba or say the former USSR to communism.

However I think its equally bad faith to always resort to that argument any time the outcome of an example of communism is examined. If it was possible to implement an ideologically pure version of communism successfully, someone, somewhere, would have have done it in the past 175 years.

That just sounds like an overwrought way of saying “real communism has never been tried.”

The crazy thing to me in the article was that 3% of the country’s population escaped to the US last year. I’m sure all of the communist apologists are like “this is fine.”