I won't argue about what any particular person may mean when he says "Marxism." If you wish to say that it's any school of thought heavily influenced by Marx' work, that's fine, but then you'll also have to include things like sociology, anthropology, philosophy, literature, history, and psychology as being Marxist. I'd say the far more reasonable definition, the one I was introduced to in a philosophy class, and the one most dictionaries list, would be the ideas of Marx (and, to a lesser extent, the ideas of Engels and Kautsky).

The question you asked was, are there any counter-examples to communism as a political-economic application of Marxism? My answer was, yes, social democracy and the social market economy are examples of political-economic applications of Marxism.

And, I'm afraid I don't know what you mean by mind control. If you're referring to PR or propaganda, then that's everywhere. If you're referring to dissidents being marginalized, then that's everywhere also. None of this is unique to the Eastern Bloc of the Cold War. You can say the methods sometimes differ, but this isn't related to the question at hand.

I'm also not sure what you mean by a highly-engineered economy. If you're referring to the amount of infrastructure necessary, then a great deal of it is necessary for any market system, whether socialized or privatized, to function. If you're talking about regulations, then the same applies. If you're talking about planning, then this is still true. The difference between capitalized markets, socialized markets, or mercantile markets isn't engineering, it's who owns what.