. . . but misses that its origin is in the most intimate unit of small scale experience of all, the nuclear family. Once you extrapolate much beyond that level ("Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother." -- Mark 3:34f.) it's not going to last long.
Megan McArdle, here:
[C]ommunism has never successfully worked above the level of a small group; it’s trying to manage transactions with strangers on the logic of small-group reciprocal altruism. Those small groups have a lot of social mechanisms, from shaming to threat of exile, to prevent people from cheating. When you try to scale it up to millions of strangers, it collapses into destitution or bloody tyranny.
And all that believed were together, and had all things common. ... And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common. ... And one of them named Ag'abus stood up and foretold by the Spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world; and this took place* in the days of Claudius. And the disciples determined, every one according to his ability, to send relief to the brethren who lived in Judea; and they did so, sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul.
-- Acts 2:44; 4:32; 11:28ff.
*probably sometime between AD 44 and 48
