Nice try Ronny.
What ever... read something from Leo Trotzki.
I want to read into communism as I have a big knowledge gap regarding it.
I'm not solely interested in the philosophical arguments in favor of Communism that make it a charming utopia but a comparison of actual communist societies past and present, where they failed, where they succeeded, how the standard of living changed and how the governments were overthrown. It's important that this comparison must be done from an unbiased point of view.
Can you recommend a good book?
It may look biased, but marxists.org has several documents with first hand accounts of people who visited the ussr, mainly during the 1917 revolution up until the end of the Stalin Era.
It has documents from several viewpoints so you can balance out the perspectives and make up what you will.
https://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/archive/index.htm
a lot of communist societies used Communist theory just as a justification for simple authoritarian rule of the group of party elites
Like the bunch of people even today can gather up and create a cummunist party. Lets just imagine - its 5 guys named Pedro, Jose, Madean, Seger, Tuarum. They are buddies from the past and they decide that they want to become rich. They buy cheap communist flags on Alibaba and declare that they are communists and that society is unjust. They will recruit more people into their party using this communist idea of utopia just like a lure, like a fairy tale of what is possible and promise it to people, but they themselves understand that they themselves never going to build any communism, this party of 5 guys just want to live a rich life of rulling a country and use ideology of communism as justification of their rule.
And i am not saying that its somehow super bad. A lot of ruling elites of countries in the past had even worse justifications. Imagine being born into a country and some group 5 guys rule you because their parents fucked each other for generations and they supposedly have some royal blood. What is worse - bunch of reds lying to you about building a better future, or a bunch of inbred fuckers who think they own you because of some heredetiary fairy tales?
depends on how you define success
if success is building communism, where everything is free and eveyrone equal - then no, but in some countries communist movements succeded in overthrowing the entrenched political elites which like parasites where milking the working class without any respect for their right.
Of course in the process the capitalist elites were replaced with Nomenklatura elite of the party, rulling the country as a separate class of people, while pretending that they destroy the any class distinctions and make everyone equal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomenklatura
But party Nomenklatura elite itself becomes entranched in power and distances itself from people, while lying that disempowered people are in fact rulling the country somehow. Like how the fact is the communist country ruled by workers if workers can't even protest, while party Nomenklatura elites can establish the norm of the work day for a worker? And Nomenklatura can raise salary for itself and reduce the work day for itself. But workers can't. Nomenklatura becomes new parasite class of elites that abuse the worker, while lying that they represent the workers and one blood with it.