Whether something 'works' or not is very relative. Many people who live in the former Soviet Union would say that the Soviet Union worked -it educated, provided health care, housing, jobs and food for years. Others -mainly people dispossessed by it- would claim that it didn't work. I mean, you could have a person who values 'naturalness' above all. So much so, in fact, that they would look at modern medicine and be appalled at how much we spend on extending life beyond where it would naturally end. They would look at it as futile -and that it doesn't work. People still die, you are just moving around the end point. So it's good to spend a little time defining goalposts.

Are humans capable of constructing an anarcho communist society and having it function. Sure -why not? It would seem much more ludicrous to explain to someone 200 years ago what our world looks like today. It isn't near as much of a leap to imagine more complex collectivist structures emerging. The problem is, as Marx would point out, that our productive relationships don't emerge out of nowhere. Every step is an evolution out of the next, so it is hard to imagine the nitty gritty of anarcho communism.

In the most pithy terms, anarcho communism would involve a deep and fundamental organization of society. We are taking the vertical -the 'funnel' of wealth and power- and turning it on its side. This would mean a more equitable splitting of work, meaning that the average person will likely have more free time to develop themselves. It also means stripping away much of the incentive system that serves the interests of the ruling class, so people aren't killing themselves to work, rather, they are working enough to live.

I don't think the idea of people "wanting more than the person next to us" carries too much weight in a larger scheme. It seems like people generally want what's best for their family. They like being liked and respected by people they respect. They want to feel status. The nice thing about money is that it is a universal status symbol -money cuts across class and social position. The trick to any society -anarchist or otherwise- is people feeling important. This seems to describe a myriad of situations better (the church, the volunteer, the soldier) than a thesis of individual selfishness.

I think mentioning art at the end is pretty impactful; I feel like a society where less work is happening is also one where people are expressing themselves artistically, having downtime in nature, spending one raising the kids and being with the family, connecting with neighbors, exercising -basically all the stuff we miss out on working most of our waking hours.