It always surprises me when people say that Communism is dead. It’s as if they think political philosophies are created in mid-air with no reference points to human communities whatsoever. If nothing else we should always remember every political philosophy ever enunciated has been an answer to a real or perceived problem.
So to know if a way of thinking is forever gone you need to be sure that the reasons for it have gone too. Reading Marx you will see that he was writing in a world filled with the most profound poverty and he was discussing the boom and bust cycles of capitalism. He was discussing ways in which both could be eradicated from human society. Interestingly he was discussing how industrialized societies like England, France and America could eradicate them by growing out of capitalism into a better organized system of production than one which relies heavily upon human greed and ego.
People today who are demanding fairness, who argue against entrenched power-brokers who keep the status quo because that is what enriches them, who see the financial system murders the poor around the world every year by not having the free distribution of food to the starving, are all setting the foundations of a new flow of communist ideas.
Just as tyranny is never far from democratic countries, so communist ideals will flow back into the world this century.