I mean...what? Marx didn't mention state control? Marx analysed state control in several contexts. He said that communist society was "stateless" so yes he did mention state control under communism in the manifesto. He analysed the "bourgeois" state, and how it compared with feudal kingdoms and states.

The Marxist formulation of the state is that it is a historical/social mechanism to manage class antagonisms. The state in a capitalist country is a capitalist state, which functions to keep the capitalists in power and divide/repress the workers, so the workers can be exploited by the capitalists. So, according to Marx, the state does in fact have to be seized by a mass worker party, smashed, and then replaced with a worker's state.

This would be a transitional stage before communism. Some people call it "socialism." This definitely had been tried, with different kinds of successes and failures in different places at different times.

This is all extremely abstract, and dependent on the time and place where it is "tried". If you "tried communism," as in creating a stateless, classless, moneyless society, according to Marx, it would definitely fail. That is not how theory of change works under Marxism, kind of how you describe "evolve naturally with neighbour working with neighbour and community working with community." Except according to Marx, this change doesn't come about only by people working together, although that will undoubtably be a huge part of it, and such an important part of it I can't fault you for it.

But what will bring about socialism, the transitional phase where the workers have control of a "state," and use it to suppress the capitalists ability to exploit workers for their own profits, will be working together to smash capitalism, liberate as many people as possible -- more people every day from oppressive conditions, institute new forms of real democracy and consent, and defend this revolution from anyone who tries to take power from the masses for themselves. That practical activity is communism. So communism can be tried in our society, in that Marxism isn't just a theory but a theory in practice.

But trying to force a capitalist society into a fully communist society will always fail. And any attempts to do so, even in the name of Marxism, are not Marxist. Marxism rejects prefigurative politics. In fact I don't really think of Marxism as a way of predicting the future, but rather, as a way of seeing what is actually happening in our society so we can take action to change it.

I think you can.

I think what happened was exactly what will always happen when people try real communism.

Like any political system it will be brought down by the aspects of human nature it misunderstands or misrepresents.