What does it mean for workers to collectively own means of production? Am I supposed to own only the laboratory I work at or everything everywhere? What if I decide to change a place of employment? Why doesn't owning it though the intermediary of the state and your representative in the communist party qualify?
I guess this is where the line between socialism and communism comes. USSR claimed they were going to build communism (classless moneyless society, etc.) at some future point. As far as I understand the party considered late USSR to be a socialist country, not just a capitalist country run by a communist party.
One of the major ideological splits between the CPC (Communist Party of China) and RCP (Russian Communist Party) was that the RCP considered their country 'ready for socialism' while the CPC considered themselves 'in the accumulation stage, moving towards early stage socialism'. The irony of course was that both ended up moving towards deregulation in order to accomplish those ideological goals, but the CPC managed to hold onto the organs of military and state through the politburo, which was a demonstratively better idea, which Russia has, adopted again (though without as many democratic organs as the CPC or the now politically defunct RCP) in order to curb the influence of the international bourgeois.
The political makeup continues to be in flux, but going towards a more nationalistic populism, the only force that, atm, can compete with the interests of international capital. This is fine atm, as allowing unchecked exploitation and empire only increases human misery, but the end goal must be an organization of the international proletariat. But we are a loooooooong way away from that. In that line, expecting existing Communist parties to forsake the general welfare of their people in order to pursue permanent revolution' is foolhardy at best. I think the time of the periphery is coming, sooner than people realize, but it will take a much different form that the communist revolutions of the 1910's. My only wish is it to be dialectical, both less hopeful, and hopefully, more successful.
GOOD take imo