I can see your point if viewing communism as a purely abstract movement instead of actually set of policies

There's a lot of ground in between these two extremes. Communism cannot be an actual set of policies yet, but it's much more than an abstract movement

I resist rhetoric in the absence of policy because it is just lip service

As well you should, but the policies of the USSR, China, and every other communist experiment were very concrete and still not communism. They are concrete policy experiments to bring about the conditions of the liberation of the working classes

In other words, the proof is in the pudding (aka policy).

I would say the pudding is the outcomes, not the policies

In this regard communism has never failed

It's just the sort of thing that doesn't fail. It's like saying science fails or doesn't fail. It's not a thing science does. Science is a doctrine, not a project with a concrete objective. Communism is a doctrine, not a project with a concrete objective

I would caution this same type of thinking though as it could be used to justify any movement

We're not justifying movements because they've never failed. That would be silly. We justify movements because of our scientific analysis of human society, the correctness of their policies insofar as our analysis understands things, and then based on the outcomes. And based on the outcomes, we update our scientific analysis. That's how we justify it

it isn’t the policy after all, but a collection of rhetoric waiting for the “right” implementation

There's a huge difference between an analysis and "rhetoric", and no one is waiting for the "right" implementation. Communists explicitly reject the possibility of such a thing. Every single revolutionary movement will have a unique implementation. There is no abstract "correct" implementation to be found. We bring about the conditions of our liberation on the basis of our analysis, our policies, and our behaviors being commensurate with reality and we fail to bring about the conditions on the basis of our failure to understand that reality and to propagate behaviors commensurate with it

It is not the spirit or even policies that make them fail, but the human element and our collective culture

It's our behaviors, which are shaped by material conditions. That's why communist policies are inclusive of the full spectrum of social possibilities, because we cannot compartmentalize our policies from our social and collective behaviors. They inform each other dialectically. What you're articulating is the sort of liberal/idealist concept of governance - if we have good policies everything will be fine. That's not how communists see the world. Our collective culture is inclusive of our policies and our policies must always account accurately for not only the current culture but how that culture will change

As far as what degree is needed or not needed for socialism, it is debatable. As you pointed out we have never experienced it in a real life example, unless you are counting the imperfect attempt at policies by olgiarchies pretending to be whatever propaganda resonates with their ruling class

That's not exactly what I said. We have absolutely experienced central planning in real life. The USSR is the maximalist example. And we learned from it. There were major problems with central planning that had nothing to do with the decay of the revolutionary state into the oligarchy of liberalism

But before the USSR degenerated, it was not an oligarchy and they used central planning to great effect in ending famine, raising the standard of living, and defeating the fascist military axis

And as I said, China is not an oligarchy and while they do have a market, they heavily use central planning for exactly what the communist analysis indicates it is needed for - bringing about the conditions of the liberation of the working class

The non-ruling class is, for the most part, irrelevant as seen in all past and current systems

This is not at all true. Under capitalism, the ruling class is the bourgeoisie, or the owners. The non-ruling class is the workers. Under capitalism, the workers are not irrelevant at all. They must be appeased, they must be pacified, and they must be enlisted in cross-class collaboration. All policies under capitalism are evaluated on the basis of how it will affect the appeasement, pacification, and collaboration of the working class

In a socialist state, the ruling class is the working class and the owning class is absolutely not irrelevant. Policies must be evaluated as to how they ensure the owning class does not gain influence over the state, how the constant pressure of corruption and international trade relations and foreign policy push for the owning class to grow that influence, and what must be done to curtail that influence constantly

The non-ruling class has never been irrelevant, under any system

If you are a small elite group of people calling the shots you are an olgiarchy

Then literally every representative democracy in the history of the world has always been an oligarchy. You can't run a country of 500M with 250M people being government decision makers. The question is what makes them "elite". Did you know that in the USSR every single official was subject to recall at any time? Did you know that in order to hold office in China you actually have to study and pass competency exams and that the current elected leader, Xi Xinping, failed his entrance exams multiple times and was not allowed to participate in politics until he passed? These projects did not have hereditary leadership. They did not have leadership on the basis of wealth. There are more members of the Communist Party of China than there are people who vote in elections in the USA. And the Communist Party of China is constantly engaging in outreach to all citizens all over the country and adapting its policies to the needs of the people.

Again, I don't think we disagree about oligarchy in the degeneration of the USSR, but the idea that every communist country is an oligarchy is a propaganda narrative of the oligarchs in the US and UK

China, for instance, ticks off more boxes of fascism than even the US

It really doesn't. Just look at criminal justice and it's obvious. The USA rate of criminal justice supervision (prison, parole, probation) is almost 13x bigger than China's. The recidivism rate of the USA is at least 4x worse than China's.

Then there's the nature of fascism, which is a reactionary formation of liberal capitalism defending against the threat of working class organizing. There's a reason why fascism emerged after the Bolshevik revolution. China is not this. In fact, China today is the result of a peasant revolt, that focused entirely on meeting the needs of the peasants. There is an unbroken line of history from the peasant revolt to the present today. There are grandparents in China that remember harvesting rice in a subsistence living under the fascist KMT (or even Japanese) and today are using self-driving electric cars to get to and from their multi-generational home. Same peasant. Same government.

You need to reevaluate your assessment that China is somehow more fascist than the USA. Remember, the USA is the model that Germany built the Third Reich from, and when it was clear they would lose, the USA saved 10k Nazis from justice, and when they formed NATO they staffed NATO high command with Nazis, and they organized a covert operation through NATO (Gladio) to recruit, organized, fund, arm, and train nazis and neo-nazis all over Europe. The atrocities that the Third Reich committed were all things they lifted from France, England, Spain, Portugal, and The Dutch, including gas chambers, slavery, mass displacement, apartheid, etc

I am not convinced their prior policies were effective considering the millions of Chinese that died from starvation

You're not convinced because you haven't done the reading. Even shitty a.i. slop is capable of seeing this. You don't understand that the millions who died of starvation during the 4 Pests campaign was an extreme peak of famine-related deaths that were happening in China literally every 2 - 3 years prior to the revolution. And you likely don't have a mental model of the time involved. Yes, lots of people were poor and dying when the revolution took place. Yes, even more died when the revolution tried to fix it with ineffective policies based on incorrect analysis. But all of that happened in the very early phases. Capitalist reforms didn't start in China until 1978. The revolution happened in 1949. I know that based on how we normally think of history that has to mean that if there was a major famine before Deng's "opening up" that clearly everything was horrible prior to 1978. That's just not the case. The 4 Pests campaign that caused those millions of death was in the middle of those years. They spent a decade improving the quality of life for the masses, and then they tried to solve their famine problem and fucked it up beyond conscience. And then they recovered, and continued to improve people's lives. It's wild because it just doesn't compute, but the reality is that in both the USSR and China, they achieved mass poverty alleviation in less than 30 years while it took liberal democracies between 100 and 150 years to get anywhere near it.

Saying this to a dead person (that their policies were effective for ending poverty) is nonsensical

It's not, but you're not being expansive here. You mean to say telling someone who died from poverty, not just anyone. No one, literally no one anywhere, says the 4 Pests campaign was a correct policy. I think what's happening here is you're assuming that "policies for ending poverty" are a monolith called "communism" and either they were "right" or "wrong". The reality is that communist projects design and implement tens of thousands of policies.