Is failed communist countries count as communist?

Communist countries, by definition, cannot exist since communism is a stateless, moneyless and classless society. What does exist and has existed however, are socialist countries with communist parties. Marx theorized that communism could only be achieved with a socialist transitionary phase, and once the whole world was in that phase, could society become communist. 

However, I do think that practically all socialist countries so far have failed in one way or another. Some were far too authoritarian, like the USSR and North Korea, which led to the government just replacing the capitalist class, and others eventually bent to the will of capitalist countries by liberalizing, like China. There were also a few communist leaders, such as Thomas Sankara and Salvador Allende that were in power only briefly, and in that time arguably improved the state they governed, but were overthrown by (often CIA-backed) coups that made those places capitalist again before it would have been possible to draw any conclusions. In my opinion, the most successful country led by a communist party so far has been Cuba.

So yea communism has proven to be rather unreliable, but so has capitalism, so I kinda ended up at democratic (and kinda libertarian) socialismm