Also, there no reason why you couldn't implement more and more communist policies without engaging in actual dictatorship. Most people recognize this about socialism (since we already have many policies which are essentially socialist in nature) but then go on to refuse to believe it about communism.
Not to repeat myself but Marx and (especially) Engels would disagree with you about being able to create a Communist system without the dictatorship of the Proletariat. If you are saying that Marx and Engels were wrong about some very fundamental concepts about how to implement Communism, (like the necessity of the dictatorship of the Proletariat because human nature means you could NEVER eliminate a class-based society without it) that undermines a lot of the whole basis of Communism. If Socialism can be achieved through an alternate path than what Marx and Engels laid out, then there really is no need for Communism at all.
Lenin's view of how to achieve Communism is relevant, and can't just be dismissed as self-serving because his concept of Marxism-Leninism predates the Bolshevik revolution. Lenin thought your could achieve Communism while skipping the Capitalist stage. (ie you could achieve mass industrialization in a proto-Communist state. And Stalin kind of proved him right for sufficiently broad definitions of success as long as you willing to put up with a full on authoritarian terror state instead of a capitalist one.) But no matter how you rolled the dice, Lenin didn't think you could skip the dictatorship of the Proletariat. It's a feature not a bug in Communism.