Dispirited Communism

Communism is a religion. Fanatical egalitarianism. Nurture fundamentalism. Nature denialism. Worship of the sin of envy. Communist countries are theocracies.
As with all places and periods, those at the top are cynical; the religion is geared to roughly the 100 IQ and you don't get to the top by being stupid. For the non-stupid it's an excuse to steal everything that's not nailed down and to bring a pry bar for getting nails out. 

Communism is based in Sophism. 

Sophism is a culture of upper-class scholars who attempt (and historically succeed) to rule through lies. The use the techniques of philosophy, but bend them toward investigating how to mislead. The most easily mislead are the stupid-and-envious, so Sophists argue that society ought to be run on behalf of the envious. Having successfully so argued, the Sophists can steal things purportedly to appease the envious, but give less than half to the envious and the alleged beneficiaries won't notice. (Further, by pretending to rule on behalf of someone else, they deflect accusations of selfishness.) As long as their jealousy is appeased by attacking their betters, they can be strung along indefinitely. 

Sophists must pretend to be poor. They are better and must avoid being noticed as such. That's your manipulating procedural outcomes and your top-out-of-sight class. That's why Stalin called himself a mere secretary. Responsibility must be laundered.

Christianity is fairly Sophisticated, but has some redeeming features. You can see that maybe they were getting at something, at times. Communism has no redeeming features. It dies to less than ten minutes of thought by anyone even vaguely competent. Even the envious have difficulty truly believing it, but kto kogo so they pretend as hard as they can.

Because full communism is death, any communist that lives long enough to make the news must have compromised their communism. They act as a dispirited communist, which is properly known as a Fascist. 

Sophists are aware you're apt to get high on your own supply, and thus hire Fascists to do their lying for them. The Sophists are the top-out-of-sight class, who have Fascists to manipulate procedural outcomes on their behalf. 

Fascists believe fervently in communism, but also believe the sinful world is too strong to overcome. They don't for a second doubt the envious deserve to have all their demands met, but despair at ever being able to meet them. (What with that causing mass starvation and 90% population loss.)

P.S. Recently the upper, more-cynical Fascists have been figuring out that the envious are so stupid and vulnerable to sophistry that they can openly own a half-dozen houses and it just doesn't matter. BLM will turn out to smash small business as many times as they're asked to. 

P.P.S. I suppose everyone hated Hitler because he wasn't sponsored by a Sophist. A free Fascist radicaling around. Trump too. Unsponsored Fascism. 

P.P.P.S. Democracy is Feminine Fascism, but is it inherently feminine? Does it have something to do with limiting the communist agenda by (pretending to) steal and re-distribute only political power? ("A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury." Or, until the voters realize it's communism.)