Interesting story actually that showed me how much it can't work

I was part of community maker space that had hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of machines and tools that members could use for a paid subscription. It was completely self run and non profit. Pretty close to a communist type organisation.

Initially it worked well and everyone got along. There was a core group of guys who maintained the equipment and kept it all running. Most did it as part of the community spirit but over time a lot of members of that core group started arguing that because they were putting in time doing all that extra work, they should get more privileges to the tools or have more of say in the admin side of things. That was the start of the friction. Then there were fights between members who put in extra effort to cleaning the work space and those that didn't at all (or were messy). Then there were assholes who were bringing in their friends for free access. It was actually really fascinating to watch the community self fracture into "classes" of members.

Eventually that core group of maintenance guys just dropped off. If they were volunteering all their time and not getting anything out of it (and their efforts barely recognised) why bother? Eventually the space just became run down and poorly maintained and members dropped off. Everything was auctioned and the space was sold last year to a developer.

As the old saying goes "Communism is the perfect system, the problem is there are no perfect people".

Not exactly the same but Ukrainian anarcho-communists, which is the closest thing to the actual ideal of communism people tried to implement, controlled a population of about 7.5 million people at their height. It only lasted for a few years because of Bolshevik invasion, so it's impossible to say what would have been if they weren't conquered. Still, in those few years, the areas did see more prosperity and freedom than most of the rest of the former Russian Empire.

Now, as I said, this also wasn't real communism as described by Marx. Communism is a utopian ideal to be worked towards. My point is that genuine steps can be made to create a more libertarian and equal society, and the concept shouldn't just be thrown away because the ideal seems impossible to us today.

probably because governing a large group involves at least a minimal hierarchical structure which immediately leads to some people having more power and this power being desired by others