People who cite 100s of millions of deaths from Communism also fail to recognize the famine that hit the Soviet Union which was responsible for not only the deaths of political dissidents, but also the party loyalists at the time. Stalin was a killer, but this Neo-Nazi game of diminishing Hitler's atrocities by pretending that Stalin was even remotely as barbaric as fascists is utter crap.
I'm not diminishing Hitler's atrocities, but you're diminishing Stalin and Mao's etc. abysmal failures. The famines that hit the USSR and China were greatly caused by the stupid government economic policies in food production and distribution. They had dreams of rapid industrialization and oops! tens of millions dead. One of the main if not THE main failure of the USSR that let to its collapse was the terribly inefficient and corrupt economic policies that stagnated the country since Khrushchev in the 60's:
https://www.history.com/topics/russia/history-of-the-soviet-union#section_8During the 1960s and 1970s, the Communist Party elite rapidly gained wealth and power while millions of average Soviet citizens faced starvation. The Soviet Union’s push to industrialize at any cost resulted in frequent shortages of food and consumer goods. Bread lines were common throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Soviet citizens often did not have access to basic needs, such as clothing or shoes. The divide between the extreme wealth of the Politburo and the poverty of Soviet citizens created a backlash from younger people who refused to adopt Communist Party ideology as their parents had.
Would "democratic Marxism" work, without a centralized economy, but with co-ops or such instead? I have no idea. I used to hold a candle for it in my 20's, not anymore. Everyone (including younger me) says "well that wasn't REAL communism My version will work!". Until I see somewhere in the real world where it works, keep me out of it. Lenin had admirable dreams too but it all went to hell quickly. Same with Mao, N. Korea, and dozens of other countries. We have hardly any reason to have faith in anyone with these big plans that only seem to work on paper.