To be fair, it probably also works in practice, but by very definition post-scarcity is a necessary precondition. And that is still an ongoing effort that has never been realized. Granted, the UN has declared food to have achieved post-scarcity status so clear progress is being made, but we still have more work to do.
I've lived the first 14 years of my life under the Romanian communist dictatorship so no.
Let's put it this way. If it's the property of the people it's not everyone's in practice, it's no one's. So you're free to slack, cheat and steal from your "property of the people", you're cheating "no one".
> post-scarcity is a necessary precondition
There is no post scarcity. The goalposts for scarcity just move up.
> I've lived the first 14 years of my life under the Romanian communist dictatorship so no.
That doesn't make any sense. Communism's defining feature is that there is no longer a state. How can you recognize Romania, and especially a Romanian dictatorship, without there being a state?
Perhaps you're confusing communism with rule by the Communist Party?
- Communism is a work of science fiction that imagines what life is like in a post-scarcity world – indeed, science fiction that some people would like to see become reality. Star Trek is a more modern adaptation on the same basic idea, which you may be more familiar with.
- The Communist Party is a political group that, at least on paper, is focused on achieving post-scarcity through capturing the means of production. It was once theorized in a certain Manifesto about Communism that post-scarcity would not be achievable through capitalism as the capitalists would set up barriers to seeing it through, and that the way to protect against that was the bring the means of production into social hands. Hence why the Communist Party is so-named.
But that would be like saying that democracy doesn't work because you don't like what the political party known as the Democrats are doing in the USA. Or that workers don't work because you don't like what the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi) did.
> There is no post scarcity. The goalposts for scarcity just move up.
Perhaps. But it remains that communism cannot exist without having achieved post-scarcity. How could it?
Yes. Communism's key attributes are that it is classless, stateless, and moneyless.
> Who takes all the resources and allocates them "according to each person's need" then?
We'd need to know more about how post-scarcity is achieved in order to answer that question. Star Trek says the replicator is responsible, although that seems unlikely outside of the imagined Star Trek universe. Based on what we can see today, I'd guess robots. But this is all speculative as we don't really know what post-scarcity truly looks like, or if it is achievable at all.
> Communism predates the idea of post scarcity by a hundred years or more AFAIK.
Are you referring to what is oft referred to as primitive communism?
Although I find it hard to believe that humans have ever not thought about post-scarcity. It seems like the first thought/dream anyone would have when first faced with scarcity constraints.
Yeah and communism also works in theory :)