You’re arguing against a straw man based on imprecise definition of terms. When people say X country wasn’t “real socialism,” they’re using a narrow definition of the word, i.e. workers’ ownership and democratic control over the means of production vs. public or collective ownership of the means of production, which is the broad definition you are working with.

The latter has existed. The former hasn’t except for during very brief periods of time at a few points in history, namely Russia prior to the implementation of “war communism” and one-man management, revolutionary Spain before Franco crushed the republic, and Rojava now.

All the countries that we usually call “Communist” operated on a top-down Leninist model, wherein the means of production was controlled by state bureaucrats not by the workers themselves. So even if we allow that the USSR was “real socialism” in the broad sense, it is not equal to a repudiation of the narrower definition of socialism.

Democratic self-management from below, where it exists within the present capitalist system, does in fact work very well, ex. the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation in Spain and Semco in Brazil. On a national scale, those countries that have greater worker participation in economic decision-making—Nordic countries and Germany—have a much higher standard of living and vibrant economies.

Harping on the failures of the USSR or any other Communist country is just a cynical way to foreclose on any possibility of improving our present system by saying it is better than any alternative when all alternatives haven’t been tried yet.