Never been big on Socialism/Communism debates, because McCarthy's ghost follows me most places I go. Nevertheless, I share this academical tidbit:
After lecture a week or so back, I was chatting with my Anthropology prof about Egalitarianism and Communism. Egalitarianism, if you don't know it, is a form of social governance where people share resources like food and goods, as well as labor with each other. It's basically what first let human cultures support specialists, like farmers or weavers. It works in small societies, particularly with tribal and kin-based societies, because everyone is held personally accountable for everything they contribute, and the community can asses that member's worth to the society as a whole.
You run into problems applying Egalitarianism to a large group, because people can hide that they contribute little to nothing to their kin, and take advantage of the system. This is why codified laws and different forms of governance came into being as populations grew larger and larger. Marx was fascinated with Egalitarianism, and thinking about why this fundamental and simple form of governance didn't work at large... and his Communism was in many ways an attempt to bring Egalitarianism to State-Level societies.
It's never been properly executed, because every "Communist" country has gotten stuck in the transitional phase, which is little more than a Dictatorship... and it would take a strongly idealistic Dictator to relinquish that sort of power. We can't really say that Communism, or any form of State-Level Egalitarianism absolutely couldn't work based on the precedent of "it not working before," because frankly, there has never been a "Communist" government. On the same coin, no more do we have any evidence that it would work.
I'd like to see the experiment attempted again by a strongly idealistic leader at some point, in a smaller state-level society... if just for intellectual curiosity, and a chance to observe the unique problems such a nation would face, and how they would be confronted.