The historical record does show that many self-described communist or centrally planned economies performed poorly and then moved toward market reforms: the IMF notes that transition from socialist ownership and central planning to a market economy was a major, difficult process, and the NBER found that output declined in virtually all transition economies before recovery, with stabilization and structural reforms contributing to growth. But that does not prove the universal claim that communism could *never* work in any form, because the public evidence is not capable of ruling out every possible communist or commune-like arrangement, and there are functioning collective/cooperative examples such as kibbutzim that the OECD describes as communities with common ownership and joint operation. So the claim is too absolute for the evidence to establish. Sources: IMF Occasional Paper No. 184, "Growth Experience in Transition Countries, 1990-98" (https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/nft/op/184/index.htm); NBER Working Paper 7664, "The Transition Economies After Ten Years" (https://www.nber.org/papers/w7664); OECD Review of Agricultural Policies: Israel 2010 (https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2010/06/oecd-review-of-agricultural-policies-israel-2010_g1ghbf3a/9789264079397-en.pdf); Oxford Bibliographies in Jewish Studies, "The Kibbutz" (https://academic.oup.com/reference/62376/reference-article-abstract/554968788).