No surprise. Capitalism celebrates greed as a virtue. Part of its appeal is novelty, such as the Next Great Camera that we all wait anxiously for and slobber over.

"bourgeois prostitutes"! Not bad, VK.

You can't better and shorter describe things shown in film than Lenin did:

Capital, created by the labour of the worker, crushes the worker, ruining small proprietors and creating an army of unemployed.

so, I looked around the Web to see exactly what true communism would be like.

Well, it is good.

I'm not talking about Soviet Communism, but "real" communism as Marx envisioned it.

But it was very brief look :-)

What I discovered was that Marx avoided articulating a clear vision, probably to avoid making himself a target for criticism.

If you look some more you'll find that Marx and Lenin told about exactly this point, I mean no detailed step by step daily plans on how to build communism, but presence of clear principles.

1.communal ownership of production,

Let's use common and clear terms. No private ownership of means of production.

1. no capitalists (everyone would work), and

This is not actually new point. And no, not everyone would work, people in old age, invalids, people with various serious illness do not. Main principle from where it follows - "from each according to his capacity, to each according to his work".

1. full access to public goods such as health care.

And it is consequence. As if you have people not being oppressed and acting in their interests you instantly see them improving education, healthcare, etc.

Implied would be the elimination of enforcers such as police and soldiers, since everyone would work shorter hours and willingly join in.

This is good that you noticed this part. Yet you made some errors in conclusions, as is much more deep thing. See final part of reply.

The state is a special organization of force: it is an organization of violence for the suppression of some class. What class must the proletariat suppress? Naturally, only the exploiting class, i.e., the bourgeoisie.

V. Lenin

In short, it is complex thing. State in full force is necessary until you have capitalists around you also.

But there are a lot of untested and probably incorrect assumptions in the communist scheme, such as Capital as the origin of racism and other ugly social divisions, and the glaring omission of sexual politics as a driving force for social division.

Well, no one ever called just capital as origin of racism, as racism existed in each class society. Origin of racism is the economic interests of ruling classes. And most funny thing is that due to last 30 years developments after counterrevolutions even bourgeoisie researches almost stopped to disagree with it. As you can't hide simple facts.

As for sexual as mainsteam stuff, it is all same simple thing. It arises due to normal economic interests and, frequently, from idea to distract oppressed classes, guide their attention to something safe to ruling class.

To save you some time in your ventures I'll provide you pretty clear general things:

There is no Russian, English, French, German, Italian socialism, as much as there is no Chinese socialism. There is only one Marxist-Leninist socialism. It is another thing, that in the building of socialism it is necessary to take into consideration the specific features of a particular country. Socialism is a science, necessarily having, like all science, certain general laws, and one just needs to ignore them and the building of socialism is destined to failure.

What are these general laws of building of socialism.

1. Above all it is the dictatorship of the proletariat the workers’ and peasants’ State, a particular form of the union of these classes under the obligatory leadership of the most revolutionary class in history the class of workers. Only this class is capable of building socialism and suppressing the resistance of the exploiters and petty bourgeoisie.
2. Socialised property of the main instruments and means of production. Expropriation of all the large factories and their management by the state.
3. Nationalisation of all capitalist banks, the merging of all of them into a single state bank and strict regulation of its functioning by the state.
4. The scientific and planned conduct of the national economy from a single center. Obligatory use of the following principle in the building of socialism: from each according to his capacity, to each according to his work, distribution of the material good depending upon the quality and quantity of the work of each person.
5. Obligatory domination of Marxist-Leninist ideology.
6. Creation of armed forces that would allow the defense of the accomplishments of the revolution and always remember that any revolution is worth anything only if it is capable of defending itself.
7. Ruthless armed suppression of counter revolutionaries and the foreign agents.

These, in short, are the main laws of socialism as a science, requiring that we relate to them as such.

I appreciate your list. It makes it easy to reject communism, even at its theoretical best. Achieving those goals by revolution would shed blood, a lot of blood. Marx' analysis of Capital is right on, but his social analysis is incomplete. BTW, the petty bourgeoisie is the foundation for most of what makes life worth living. I'm talking about piano teachers, Little League coaches, and small-time filmmakers such as most of the readers of this site.

Cool, you are so fast and so certain. Just did not make any though to this.

It is limited, wrong thinking of individual living in so called "safe society". As words like conflict, army, revolution scare you. Yet it does not scare you that huge amount of people die preliminary just from lacking work, not having good healthcare, eating horrible food, millions die from overworking and horrible safety as capitalism does not care. Changes scare you. Do not worry, such system you like so much and want to save is even more unstable then you can think of. It'll drop right onto your head and won't say sorry.

BTW, the petty bourgeoisie is the foundation for most of what makes life worth living. I'm talking about piano teachers, Little League coaches, and small-time filmmakers such as most of the readers of this site.

Well, sounds romantic. Yet petty bourgeoisie is constantly shrinking. Marx and Lenin analysis of petty bourgeoisie is spot on, as it tends to lean to bourgeoisie ideology. Piano teacher want to make school so others will work for him. Filmmakers wants to go big budget. Small seller at marketplace dreams about his own shop. PV and you also are good illustration, petty bourgeoisie want to hold to her dreams even if it will lead to suffering of people. And it is strange thing, but almost all time petty bourgeoisie spends doing orders it does not really like much, dreaming of something good future, and being in fear that next day income will vanish.

But to the main points: Marx and Lenin completely ignored sexual politics as a driver of division.

I already answered on this point. It is nothing new, had been thrown by bourgeoisie even in 19th century, after some time they back off and try to distract people again. Do not mix things in your head.

Imagine that cameras were produced by Centralized Planning. Do you think we would ever have had anything like the GH2? What we would have would be worthless junk that no one would want, or priceless cameras made by craftsman in their spare time.

I laughed so loud here. How ruling ideology just pushed things into your brain and make them run backwards to logic.

In socialism we'll have much better cameras, not made by consumer income niches, but for satisfaction of real needs. And this means open designs, no patents, effective modular constructions, universal lens protocol and single mount.

(Under true communism, the work day would be much shorter, so there would be plenty of spare time

You also do not understand that spare time is in communism ideology, as you want to transfer your bourgeoisie understanding to it.

Eventually, the craftsmen would start making them for sale, and the State would have to step in and suppress the activity. An enlightened state would see the value and set up mass production. (And what would happen to the craftsman? Would he get recognition for his work?)

As you try to apply bourgeoisie ideology (and goals) to different social organization you fail miserably. Every modern product is not made by some single craftsmen, it is made by big amount of people, some of them supply parts, some knowledge, some energy, some do transportation. Master does not need to sell anything, nor does it want to. He put his part into product creation and want to make it best possible and see it in big numbers (that only is possible in big state run factories), see joy on people faces as at the moment it fulfills their need (not at the moment they part with money as in your ideal).

Marx was correct that capitalism inflames and preys on that desire. But it is there always, hard-wired into our brains, and communism has no answer to it except violent repression.

Well, following this logic cannibalism is hardwired into our brains and capitalism stops it by violent repression. I just make is better for people to understand all absurdity of statement.

Marx and Lenin, understandably enough, knew nothing of evolutionary psychology, so that their vision is incomplete, naive, and deadly. The real problem is that their brilliance was subordinated to their desire (realized by Lenin) for power. Marx' hatred of Capitalism was so great that he would have countenanced any level of bloodshed to bring it down.

Now you think that you invented some new argument, smart one. It is not, I am so sad to upset you. It is so old, so hard used by bourgeoisie in various forms.

Communism will use all science achievements, do not worry. And young guys with communist ideology and education sometimes in future looking at old archive will smile at this topic. And their teacher will explain them on how some members of petty bourgeoisie clung to any wiles they can invent to keep the lovely chaos around, something they love so much, something where they hope to be big or at least have something for bread tomorrow.