https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Piketty is the most mainstream modern option.

Even Marx would not have proposed communism in Russia or many of the other countries where it has been tried. He recognized capitalism as vital stepping stone. You need to build the economy through capitalism first.

Their ideas were not really tried on any large scale; Lenin’s ideas (which superficially resembles Marx & Engels’ and claim continuity with them, but reject key components, including, most critically, the foundational one of building off a pre-existing advanced capitalist society) were widely tried, and people hostile to Marx and Engels’ ideas frequently attempt to conflate that with a trial of Marx and Engels’ ideas.