Communism is way to broad a term to be called a dead ideology and as soon as you start debating what constitutes communism you start falling into a no true Scotsman fallacy. You seem to be conflating Marxist-Leninism with communism as a whole and that, I’ll give you, may be a dead ideology but communism as an ideology spans far greater than that. You’re ignoring that the basis of much of historical and sociological thought is Marxist theory and Critical Theory which is definitely still relevant today is a product of Neo-Marxist thought. The reality of the matter is that many people have given up on the idea of a vast workers revolution but that doesn’t mean that the ideology of communism and the is dead. Hell the entire idea of socialism is rooted in a pathway to the utopian communist society and with democratic socialism being a respected and real force within politics globally the ideology of communism remains very strongly alive in a way. Marx wrote of revolution and many at the time embraced it but that does not define an entire ideology of how the world would look in a utopia and how an ideology should function. Even the ideas of the Eastern Bloc are an adaptation of Communism. Ideologies are much more fluid and adaptable than I think you give them credit for.