The problem is not state socialism, it’s the authoritarian side of it. Tankies promote authoritarian views similar to fascists but with a different economics view (not even that different some times), hence they prefer the dictatorships like USSR (in these days even Putin, which is idiotic), North Korea, China; over what they perceive as imperialist, the USA (I agree on calling it imperialistic and disliking it, but not on considering it worse than dictatorships).
I’m a communist which likes state socialism, but what is and was present in those dictatorship (ignoring the authoritarian side which I despise) is state capitalism.
Not really, communism is about owning the produce of your work, that can be achieved in different ways, one for example (the main one) is by democratising the work place, which at the moment is run in a feudal and authoritarian manner. Where you work and your employer owns what you do, similar to how the feudal system would function.
In this case communism would be more democratic than our current system.