It's not so much the utopia thing, but what quickly turned from a necessity of keeping capitalist and fascist ideas out became a cornerstone of political life. Legislating atheism as the only legal religion, for example, was a contraversial one among intellectuals, and something most people say is not built into Communism. But there WAS some necessity, in a world where the Catholic Church would rally behind Mussolini.
Unfortunately, the reality is we can only go with what historically happen, not what people hoped would happen in theory. I'm actually an optimist about most government types, except that it's NEVER as easy as clicking on the "change government" button. Building a real Democracy in Iraq is probably not even 1/10th the difficulty as it is to build a real Communism in a corporate economy. Government is a tricky thing.
The beef some people have with implementing "theoretical communism" is the same beef I have with some people implementing "theoretical libertarianism". I actually think the principles of libertarianism intrinsically lead to injustice, and those who preach "less government" allow power to slip into fewer and fewer hands. This is the same argument against communism -- that stiving for a society without exploitation intrinsically requires exploitation. Of course, this debate can't be settled, because we've never seen a true libertarian or communist government.
