well his original philosophy was quite simplistic and he never expected his ideology to be mass adopted by revolutionaries. remember the communist manifesto is only 40 pages long and is just "workers overthrowing the capitalists" so consider his ideology like a template ideology that can be modified. that's why there's no state that practices just marxism, but instead marxist-leninism, marxist-maoism, stalinism, etc.
Karl Marx's manifesto need not be a prescriptive guide and how-to manual. The onus falls, not on Karl Marx, but to proponents of his fundamental philosophies who wish to apply prescriptive methodologies (typically their own) on societies to explain why this is supposed to work. If you can do that, there is some universe in which communism works. Then -
and only then - can the goal move to transitional implementation i.e., weaning societies off of their current systems and gradually morphing them into the instance of the ideal that would (in theory) be as close to the true ideal as possible. No aberrant and destructive disruptions in the status quo would be necessary i.e., no revolutions and bloodshed required.
It's not justifiable to say, "I don't know, mang, let's try this shit out and see what happens. YOLO," and do one of these:
you have to crack a few eggs to make an omelette. look at the transition from monarchy to democracy. establishing true democracy was not bloodless and there were a lot of trials and errors that lead to mass deaths. imagine if we stopped after weimar germany and said "democracy doesn't work." though it's still tragic how much people died
You actually don't. This is a common misconception in systems theory where the thought is that in order to change the system you need rapid and forceful changes (the opposite is illustrated with the ship of Theseus thought experiment). The reality is that minor perturbations are enough to move the needle to shift the equilibrium point just enough, and then alter the underlying principles or directives. We see this in practice with the concept of the Overton window and how it has shifted greatly over the past generation or two. Twenty years ago, for example, the idea of "transgender reassignment surgery" was a completely alien concept to the average person, whereas today that's a thing your boomer granddad has probably heard about on the MSM. I don't recall there being a bloody revolution to enact transgender policies, unless we're counting the tens and thousands of festering axe wounds KEK.
Now, granted, changing the cultural morals and political views of a tiny subset of the population is a microcosm when compared to the behemoth of upending the entire way of living for every single individual in society and group therein, but it does demonstrate the proof of concept for large-scale social engineering.
because as I stated earlier eventually we will reach a point where the wealth gap rises due to industrialization and automation. therefore we will have no choice but to overthrow the capitalists and re-establish a model that is more equally distributive
This is incorrect and not the answer I was hoping to hear. You should have given it some more thought. Trust me when I say that, when you do, you will not be a communist any longer. This is part of the reason why it's so incredibly difficult to get this right as a proponent of communism. I don't want to say brainwashed, because that could be taken as a pejorative (it isn't in this case), but I'll say you're still starry-eyed with respect to this political and social ideology.
No matter, I'll ask others.
the strongest anti-communist argument I've heard and is repeated a lot is mentioning that communism doesn't work because the soviet union and its satelite states tried it in the past but failed. the truth is the command economy was never socialist because the workers did not have any control but the government did. the government wasn't even democratic so all property being public only gave control to bureaucrats rather than workers. what happened was after the revolution, lenin and his comrades did not think things through and thought expanding state control would be "socialist" since the government represents the people. obviously the government does not always act in the interests of workers so this isn't really true.
after WWII USSR made gains that transformed them into a superpower. so the bureaucrats including stalin only symbolically declared themselves as socialists but it was really just russian imperialism. they invaded and installed puppet leaders in other countries to be loyal to the russia state, not workers.
"but you're just saying it's not true socialism?"
correct. not sure what's so controversial about saying it. lenin did not think things through, stalin was a russian imperialist larping as communist, and the puppet leaders did not care about workers. that is not to say that all forms of socialism have been tried and failed, if all companies were owned by workers aka market socialism then we could call that proper socialism.
The strongest argument against communism that you've heard is one where a "no true Scotsman" rebuttal is considered a valid response?
Oh man. I'm going to stop myself right here.
I'll end with this:
Communism will be remembered as a failed philosophy, made obsolete and then relegated to the obscurities of historical academic study and annals of the late 19th century, most of the 20th century and some early parts of the 21st century. It will be taken as seriously by thinkers and everyday people alike then the way in which alchemy is today by natural scientists.