content: you human pile of not-real-communist garbage  I've actually spent some time trying to understand this argument, and while I'm not fully there yet, this is what I have so far: 1) It "wasn't real communism" in all the cases because of some perceived pieces of the communist puzzle missing from what "communist" countries actually did. So, imagine a party calls itself the Nazi Party, and they take over a country. They implement W and X from Hitler's Nazi Germany regime, but they don't implement Y and Z. Instead, half the policies they DO implement are explicitly ones Hitler would not have implemented. Now the question: is that real national socialism, or is it a matter of a party calling themselves National Socialists and doing implementing some NatSoc policies, but aren't truly National Socialists? This seems to be the core of the "not real communism" argument. I don't know for sure without actually asking a real communist face to face but it's what I've pieced together. 2) It's "not real communism" because Marx predicted that "real" communism would arise organically in capitalist-dominated countries like America, since the distribution of wealth would become more and more slanted and naturally lead to a revolution in which people forcibly overthrow the government and enforce collectivism. This has never happened and Marx's prediction of this occurring under certain conditions is considered by some to be "real" communism; having communism used by a party to gain and wield control with an iron fist isn't "true" communism (or something), therefore real communism hasn't come to pass anywhere. Apparently much of modern communist study is based on answering the question "why didn't Marx's prediction occur anywhere?" I'm sure there's probably another angle or two that explains different reasons for using the argument but I figured it'd be enlightening to let people know why it's said.