Under communism, there is no such thing as private property. All property is communally owned, and each person receives a portion based on what they need. A strong central government—the state—controls all aspects of economic production, and provides citizens with their basic necessities, including food, housing, medical care and education.

I think that article is inaccurate. I've always seen communism described as a state-less society.

I wouldn't be using the online version of the history channel. Also communism has no state and therefore no single centralised government.

It sounds great on paper but it seems to rely too much on hoping everyone from the ground up isn't going to get greedy and skim or give themselves and friends a special deal. Humans aren't selfless. Even Gene Roddenberry gave up hope on his idea of a future, socialist humanity, because he realized humans are too selfish to establish a system like that. We should still try though. Better than then we have now

That's a decent write-up, but has some issues like:

"[China, Cuba, North Korea, Laos and Vietnam] can be classified as communist because in all of them, the central government controls all aspects of the economic and political system. "

Uh... in every country the central government controls all aspects of the economic and political system. In a standard western democracy like say the UK, the government passes laws which regulate the economic and political system. They may choose to be hands-off when it comes to certain things, but ultimately they're in control. At any point a law can be change, or a court decision can be changed so that what was once hands-off is now regulated.

What would it even look like for a country to not fully control all aspects of the economic and political system? IMO that only happens in a failed state when the government simply lacks the power to enforce laws. The difference between China and the USA is just a matter of degree. In China there are more regulations in general, and there are more state-owned enterprises.

Also, Social Democracy describes the US. It's again a matter of degree. Yes in the Nordic countries there are more state-owned things, and more public benefits. But, in the US, even though ambulances are mostly private and for-profit, fire trucks are not. Privately owned toll roads exist, but they're rare. The government pays for and runs schools. Potholes are filled by government employees. Mass transit is almost always city-owned. And, instead of the Pinkertons, cities use police forces where everyone's a government employee. There are a lot of things that could be privatized in the US, but almost nobody actually wants everything to be a privately-owned for profit capitalist enterprise.

And socialism in pure form sounds like utopia

Sorry mate, that argument is already 200 years old. There's a difference between utopian socialism (English Owenists or Russian Socialist Revolutionaries were good examples of this), and scientific socialism. Engels wrote an essay about it called, well, "Socialism: utopian and scientific" around 150+ years ago. Tl;dr: Marxists aren't utopians, as proven by the success of the Russian Revolution or the Cuban Revolution in establishing long-lasting, stable political systems, with a total and complete absence of exploitation of the surplus value of workers by a capitalist class.

The only problem with implementing it is a lack of genuine compliance from the first few generations. If they can be compelled to contribute, to get it all stable and done and show why it's good, then their children will reap the rewards of that success. That's why some socialists see a driven party in it for the long haul to be necessary to get there.

Besides, your comment is literally against rule 3. I'm reporting you.