Totalitarian nationalism is pretty much the opposite of communism.
Communism is a network of tiny *communes*, based on areas of production, where the workers have direct control over the means of production and the distribution of those resources.
In other words, a near complete abandonment of centralized government.
But, for obvious reasons, such a fragmented system can't survive in competition with other more centralized businesses and governments - on top of the fact that business and manufacturing are now far too interdependent and specialized for such a system to really operate, unlike the age when Marx was talking about this shit.
So no, communism doesn't work... Save maybe on very small scales, like with IT startups, as with the worker owned businesses model - but even then, after you grow to a certain size, you have to abandon it.
Even the USSR just used it as a con. They claimed their totalitarianism was the first step towards true communism, but never even moved an inch towards that supposed goal. But even they never claimed to have achieved communism.
Closest thing we've seen to Marx's actual ideals put into use, rather than just promised to gullible masses, are the early days of:
- Microsoft
- Yahoo
- Google
Where the workers owned the means of production, dictated their use, and decided upon the distribution of profits. Spawning the "worker owned startup" - Marx's wet dream.
Problem is, of course, eventually, your company gets too large to do that. You can't have your warehouse workers having a say in your software design decisions, and the like - thus you switch to the traditional corporate model.
So, communism doesn't work, because eventually shit gets too big to be handled by what equates to anarchic communes. But it's not that it's been tried and failed - no one's been stupid enough to try it on a massive scale, as the unsurmountable problems are immediately obvious.