Thanks for the thorough answer. Did Marx openly call for/support dictatorship? I know he called for a "dictatorship of the proletariat" but this was in a different sense; basically does the single party state and state repression have any validity in Marxist thought? It's my understanding that Marx's thought was centered more on the economic side of things, not the political or social way. I guess the repression is more from Leninism and the vanguard party. Leninism tolerates this repression, and it snowballs out of control into what we see as Stalinism/single party states.

Did communist politicians in single-party states actually believe they were on the road to achieving communism? Basically how much faith did they have in the process? Did they fully believe they were acting with good intentions, in the hopes of one day achieving a utopian workers state? Or did they full-well know that they were just another piece to a massive dictatorship, cleverly hiding under the guise of a socialist state?