At a party, we bring food or drink according to our ability, and eat and drink according to our needs… JUST LIKE COMMUNISM.

The activities of the party are determined collectively by the partygoers… JUST LIKE COMMUNISM.

To prevent parties from failing… JUST LIKE COMMUNISM, we must reorganize them along more capitalistic lines. I recommend that, from now on, all parties should forgo free food and drink in favor of vending machines and several competing cash bars. Only the highest bidders will have the right to offer people fun things to do. Partygoers who fail to meet the two-drink minimum will be deemed loiterers, troublemakers, and impediments to commerce, and will be thrown out immediately by a private security service.

In the end of the quote the author quckly brushes of the whole idea about worker ownership as something that belongs in utopian communities. Well, then I work in one of those utopian communities. In our consultancy company we all own a part of the company, like many thousands of others in this field of work. That goes for many in the software industry as well. There are also others very successful companies like mondragon of Spain and Semco in Brazil. Many of them are high performing companies. In fact, when I facilitated a leadership workshop for a large international metals comapny, the CEO said that he wanted his workers to behave and think like they owned the comapny. His assumptions was that as owners they would make better decision and perform better. (I think that when the other brushes it off like he or she does, reflects either bias or lack of reflection/ knowledge.)
I do know if a workers ownership principles would work on a national or mulitnational scale. I know however, that it works in many companies. If that is communism, really depends on how you define it. That is why I think you need to carefully define communism/ marxism (without bias) before you can answer your questions.
Your question about why communism failed, is matter of controversy, and to most people, it could not ever succeed. Here is what I believe:
communism failed because it removed all sense of responsibility. When the state owns it, nobody does and you get something called “the tragedy of the commons” It became a dehumanising ideology. In addition to becoming a state owned system, they also got stuck with central planning. Central planning was the fad of the early 20th century all over Europe and that became a central tenet of the Soviet system. Many believed central planning to be more efficient and we see the reminiscient of that in many large mulitnational companies of today(Many of them even operate with 5 year plans.) and are probably equally bureaucratic. Central planning, state (no) ownership, complete corruption and dictatorship sounds like a complete disaster to me. If these are the root causes, I am not sure. Some people just argue that a) marxism is an evil ideology or b) marxism is utopian because people are inherently selfish. (I leave this for a later discussion while currently reading a book about the evolution of the moral mind)
How we can make sure that this does not happen to the agile community?
First of all, the means of production in software development lays in the the creative ability of the people. It will be difficult to centralise the ownership of the minds. However, it could happen by some strange patent or copyright laws. (example: we have taught you how to program in this environment and you are not allowed to practice those skills outside the company – or something similar)
Second, we need to make sure that a system do not evolve into a dictatorship and that there are true feedback mechanisms in place to correct that. (If a product manager stops listening to the programmers or the customers)
Thirdly, I am not sure if agile constitute a system of central planning. It is certainly much more flexible. However, the product manager decides what to do, which in a sense could constitute central planning. However, in our society, the product has to stand the test of the market, and if they do not make the right decisions they will be out of a job. And if they do not trust the programmers, they will deliver poorly and inefficient. Hopefully, the company will see this and take action. However, in both cases you rely on well functioning feedback mechanisms.
In all, agile needs to make sure that it does not evolve into the perverted form of marxism (which I do not think it will) If agile is the ideal form of marxism depends on the definition of both terms. However, at any rate that would be a hard sell, and would probably alienate a lot of people to agile.