Reddit mentions of Heaven On Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism (Brief Encounters)

There's a book called Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism that goes deeply into the history of attempts to form socialist and protosocialist societies - from early communes in the English Civil War and Baubeuf's ambitions during the French Revolution all the way to Mao and Pol Pot. The TL;DR after reading it is, about the only successful communist/socialist societies that have ever 'worked' (as in, being economically self-sustaining and producing a surplus) are ones with 1) A fairly small number of members and 2)A strong religious component. The Israeli Kibbutzes, numerous millenarian settlements in the American mid-west and west like the Amana communities worked for several generations, but generally shut down by the third generation as that generation loses religious faith. The Amana communities are interesting in particular - when this happened with them they incorporated all of their previous economic operations and formed a corporation that still makes things like vacuum cleaners today.

no, but if you're into this sort of thing, this was amazing and also this was fabulous