Although I don't think a one party "transitional" government is essential to communism itself

I’m not sure what version of communism you’re working with here. A transitional government is essential to any stated form of communism that attempts to achieve what communism purports to: a government-less society that can somehow manage an egalitarian economy. This is a fairytale. Economies always have to reckon with greed as a factor, and our best-constructed systems for doing so are government regulation by a government that is democratically elected. Do we have a corruption-proof system of government that can do that yet? Fuck, no. But democratic governments are much more equipped to do so than governments that rely on systemic oppression of alternative ideas, which communism is. Capitalism needs caps, that’s undeniable, but communism does not provide said caps, it merely provides a system that is duly equipped to do via government authority what capitalism does via the free market. Neither are aceptable forms of economic management.