[XinordiX]

I'm not a Communist, but Marx would say that union labor is a poor example because the union workers are still not owners. They really are not properly incentivized to work any harder.

The refutation of the USSR and Communist China and old Communist bloc nations as failed "Communist" systems is that they were agricultural societies that went Communist without developing an industrial system. Marx' "revolution" is more accurately seen as an "evolution" from agriculture to industrial to communist. Without that interim step, the people aren't empowered enough to have a stake in the system, and it becomes just as dis-incentivized as any other. Those were essentially regime changes within the structure of the old Monarchist system.

Actually the developed Western World is closer to the what Marx had in mind, but we've managed to stave off the disproportion of weath that results in the revolution that leads to true Communism. Disproportionate distribution of wealth is key here.