The old idea that occurred in the Soviet Union was not the only possible outcome. That idea was for a vanguard party to take control of the country and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat. Unfortunately, this dictatorship was exactly that... it concentrated power in the hands of a small minority and lead to tremendous abuses. However, it also lead to obscenely rapid industrialization in one of the poorest most besieged countries in the world. Russia, post WW1 and WW2 was not a happy place having lost millions of soldiers to invasions by Germany, Japan, the US, and others. It is an open question what would have happened had they not been besieged. However, that is counterfactual, and there were large abuses, especially in the Ukraine.
Other countries, like China, have produced significant abuses, but notably they are also rising economic powers. They are no longer strictly communist, but nor are they totally capitalist. China recently announced a plan to eliminate poverty within its borders (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/31/world/asia/xi-jinping-pov...). While you might say that they won't be able to do it, that would fly in the face of their 6+% (!) GDP growth. Can you imagine a US politician ever making a statement like that? Not since FDR have we seen anything like it. The closest we had was MLK's Poor People's Campaign in the late 60s.
The new hip idea is for power to remain mostly decentralized to prevent this outcome. Hence, worker coops. If more stakeholders participate in decisions, hopefully fewer truly awful ones will occur.
I could go on, but there is a lively debate going on right now that much of the US public is asleep to having been lulled into a zombie like state by Carter, Regan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump. It's acceptable to think about the shape of the new world that is coming and have a hand in shaping it. Otherwise the same old, frankly evil, behaviors will continue until something unimaginably terrible happens like a nuclear war or the seas and changing weather sweep our civilization away.