If we genuinely can’t tell if any State is truly working towards communism, then wouldn’t it be better to not call any State socialist until they acheive at least some concrete aspect of socialism, like abolition of wage labor, abolition of private property, or direct worker control of the economy? This would at least avoid the risk of erroneously calling a State controlled by opportunists and revisionists “socialist” and lending the revisionists some credibility.

I fully support China, Cuba, Vietnam, and Korea in their struggle against the US and in their attempts to acheive communism, but it seems more accurate to say they are State-capitalist nations led by communist parties (which is obviously far superior to neo-liberal capitalist nations led by captialist parties). This isn’t to imply that they’re working toward communism the wrong way or anything, just recognizing that they haven’t yet acheived it despite their stated intentions.

Or perhaps you just define the word “socialist” to mean “any nation or group that claims to be working towards communism” and we’re just arguing definitions? That would seem to be an overly narrow and unhelpful definition to me, but I could see it.