No, I believe that you're curious. :) I always was, too (I used to be really conservative).

First of all, it's important to know what communism is. Technically, communism is anarchy- there is no state at all. It is fairly idealistic, and I realize probably not possible, but still something that we should strive for. But I digress.

Communism does not require any regulation of social freedoms, such as freedom of speech. These are very important and should never be infringed upon. The big difference with communism is in the economics. According to the Communist Manifesto (by Karl Marx) there is a period of socialism before communism. This is where the government has total control over the economy. This is fair, as opposed to capitalism, because it truly gives people the ability to do what they want. It all comes back to whether or not one considers money "speech." I don't think that people who are born poor have the same opportunities as someone who is born rich. The same is the case for those who are born stupid. There really isn't much that can be done to change their intelligence. As a result, they fail. Communism (and socialism) remove this be equally distributing the wealth among all members of society. Everyone has enough to survive and flourish. The difference is that poor people aren't starving and the wealthy don't have mounds of cash just laying around.

As for past communist nations, as I've already described, they weren't truly communist. True communism has never existed. The states you're thinking of, likely the USSR and Cuba, among others, are socialism gone awry. They claim to be socialist, and in many ways they are, but they restrict social freedoms (such as speech) that are unrelated to socialism. I despise Stalin and Mao as much as the next man. They were evil people. As I mentioned earlier, I think that communism is probably unattainable. That being said, we should progress as close to it was we can. This means increasing government control over the market and decreasing its control over social freedoms. This allows us to maximize everyone's welfare. I hope this helped answer some questions for you. :) Just out of curiosity, how would you describe your political orientation?