Are you saying that we’ve yet to see a long-established communist system in recent history so all examples will be less than representative, since they are tainted by the previous systems…?

To take another paraphrase from Marx, all new societies are stamped with the birthmarks of the societies they arose from. With that in mind, there are longish established societies guided by communist parties trying to develop society in a path where classes and the state (very intertwined), along with money and commodity production, are no longer present. That stateless, moneyless, classless etc. society that describes the communist mode of production, however, has had no examples (pre-historic primitive communist groups notwithstanding).

I believe redtea emphasized the points that he did because a very common error among first world progressives is having an idea of what the socialism should be while ignoring the realities that go into doing socialist construction in a given time or place. This leads to people dismissing previous and existing attempts to build socialism out of hand, abandoning anything that could be learned by their successes and failures, or at best warping those lessons to the point of being un- or even counter- productive.

I can only imagine how muddled my part of the discussion is and I’m sorry for that. I’m basically starting at ground 0 and don’t even really know what to call what I’m looking to learn about yet so I call things by the wrong terminology, making it hard for you guys to help me.

No need to feel worried. Most people here started out just as (or even more) ignorant on the subject. This ignorance and misinformation is deliberately cultivated by the capitalist superstructure to preempt attempts to wrest power from the capitalists. Your OP and responses read as being in good faith and not taking anti-communist assertions at face value, so I think you’re already out to a good start.