Communism, as classically defined by its practitioners. was a system intended to have several characteristics:
1) I was intended to be a classless society
2) The “means of production” was to be publicly owned.
3) “Social goods” (items of consumption, education, vacations, etc.) were to be provided without cost irrespective of social class.
4) Private property (at least of land, structures, and the like) was eliminated.
5) Private employment, both wage and barter, was to be eliminated.
6) In most of its forms, it was hostile to religion.
Probably the best “Modern” example would be someplace like Cuba, during its more purist stages.
Often, communist ideology became fused with various sort of indigenous authoritarian and/or totalitarian traditions and/or system and with “Cults of Personality”, but at least lip service was generally paid to most or all of the principles above.
Communism can be usefully distinguished from a variety of other leftist ideologies, of which the most influential as mature ideologies were probably the various sorts of European Socialism as practiced post WWII, for example the various experiments with nationalism of industry in the UK.
Obviously, “communism” (or “Marxist-Leninism”) as practiced in the USSR or China were very different economic and political systems from “Democratic Socialism” as practiced in Europe or from Modern European Welfare States, or from whatever you want to call the “Democratic Multi-National State Capitalism” practiced in today’s USA, and it’s misleading and confusing to refuse to recognize that these were and are different sorts of systems and try to subsume some of these very different systems under the same name.
It’s even more confusing and inaccurate to describe any aspect of our current system as “communism” or even very “communistic” as a Marxist would understand either term.
For instance, Social Security is somewhat “redistributionist”: lower wage earners will receive a somewhat higher proportion of their contributions as benefits compared to higher wage earners.
But is SS “communism”?
Redistribution is a characteristic of communism, but not all redistributionist systems are communism (in fact, most are not).
Instead, SS is probably most characteristic of “Social Democracy” as practiced in Western Europe, and if you think that’s the same thing as “communism”, you might ask people living in Cuba if they think they are living under the same system as the US or the Netherlands.
And for it to make sense to complain about communism” in the US you would have to be advocating the overthrow of the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” (or more likely, the overthrow of some sort of dictatorship based on a cult of personality) or re-legalizing private ownership of property, or the like.
Fortunately, we’re not.
And IMO, it’s best to use such terms as “communism” in their generally accepted meanings, and if necessary to construct new terms if you are describing novel aspects of a system.
The reality of communism, or collectivism, by whatever name it is called, is that the majority of wealth gets redistributed into the hands of a few, and poverty get redistributed to the masses. The forms of government used as the tools to accomplish this task may vary, and do.