You could live under Stalinist police-State capitalism, as opposed to the lower stage of communism. Failure to abolish the wage system, was precisely what Marx was criticising the Social Democrats of the Gotha Programme for i.e. attempting to run capitalism as opposed to overthrowing it and what he was slamming Proudhon for in his 'equality of wages" scheme, enforceable only by employing the most brutal methods of party dictatorship, and this from an anarchist.
The "real world" was what was supposed to be changed as a result of the Russian Revolution, because the "real world" was class ruled, slavish, submissive and sadistically dominated by the few who controlled the wealth produced under the wage system. The 'real (capitalist) world' was supposed to be supplanted by a free association of producers using the means of production for themselves to create use values based on their needs. It didn't happen. And a lot of the reason why it didn't happen is directly connected to the wages system, a social relation of Capital, in this case a generalised Capital as opposed to private Capital.
The transitional measures meant to push the USSR towards communism, taken by the people who ended up leading/controlling the CPSU State dictatorship, have been proven over the course of the 20th Century to be faulty. Furthermore, these methods, including at their core, the setting up of a State controlled wages system, have been more or less copied by every M-L dictatorship since the October Revolution. Ergo, the failure of 'actually existing socialism' to achieve communism; instead, transitioning to full blown capitalism.
Just a thought
Political action, be it the election of a "left" government or the "revolutionary" seizure of power by such an animal, can never deliver any substantial or long term benefit to the worker.
Any monopoly - either of wealth or of power - will inevitably establish interests opposed to those who actually create the wealth; those who, through passivity, allow the alienation of their power to rulers and to those who arrogate for themselves the role of speaking for us.
The state will never "wither away" but will always and with each passing year grow stronger; the divisions between it and the worker ever greater. Unless, that is, a movement from below (social and industrial rather than political) resists its incursions upon individuals and upon our class. Unless that resistance is organised and that organisation is effective. Which is just what we have to do now under capitalism.
Emancipation can only come from the workers themselves and nobody, however noble or disinterested their intentions can do it for us. It would be silly to think otherwise.
Is Marxism-Leninism scientific? Course not - otherwise they would have tried it on animals first.