My first post to the mailing list...
Reading all the discussions back and forth over "Communist state" and "Communist government" (but not participating in them), I'd note that the current mailing list understanding of what was supposed to be accomplished by the former article is in error.
The idea of the Communist state page, as I understand it, is that there is a particular type of governmental system called a "Communist state", practiced in the USSR, its satellites, the PRC, etc. etc. This governmental system is characterized by certain things, such as the entwining of the state with the Communist party, and the embrace of Marxist-Leninist ideology. Political scientists use the term "Communist state" to refer to this type of governmental system. I believe this is the argument that was put forth by jtd, 172, and others (although they should correct me if I'm mischaracterizing them).
They felt, further, that this article was an inappropriate place to discuss other aspects of communism in practice, seeing as those could go in articles about Communism, or something else (Communist government was a makeshift solution, from what I recall), while the state definition could *only* go in Communist state. As such, the type-of-government discussion would get cluttered by being filled with lots of discussion of all the bad things communists have done, which could be discussed at numerous other articles.
I'm not sure that I agree with this fully - the term "Communist state" is susceptible to more gradations of meaning than "Constitutional monarchy", or what not. But it's a fairly reasonable opinion, in my view. Furthermore, what it is not is a distinction between the communist state in theory and the communist state in practice. Both "Communist state" and "Communist government" deal with communism in practice, just in different ways. In particular, Communist state would deal with the practice of Communism in regards to the structure of the form of government. (The theory of how a communist state should function would be rather different, at least for Marxist-Leninists, who viewed what political scientists call a "Communist state" as a stop-gap on the way to true communism)
That's all for now
John Kenney