I thought it might be a good idea to look at WIkipedia's definition of Communism...
In political and social sciences, communism is the philosophical, social, political, and economic ideology and movement whose ultimate goal is the establishment of the communist society, which is a socioeconomic order structured upon the common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes, money, and the state.
Yep, like I said I am very familiar with it. I'm also familiar with history, and I've debated with a lot of Communists who have often had this book or that which they wanted me to read. Sometimes they'd thankfully link a PDF so I actually could read it when it was still relevant to the discussion.
The definition of Communism seems to be a moving target depending upon who you are talking to, or who wrote it.
That was at the heart of my post. People think differently. I do know of small examples where it did work. I don't know of any LASTING examples though. They lasted for awhile, but were relatively small numbers like you said.
I do have ideas why it likely doesn't scale well even when everyone voluntarily agrees to it, but that'd be for another post. That I think is simply due to the complexity of the system increasing exponentially as it becomes larger and thus central planning, and determining quotas, etc no longer is able to realistically predict needs due to the complexity. Think of it as though as it scales entropy tends to have a bit more impact on the system.
Speculation on my part.