I actually just thought of a functional modern commune (from the old days). Monasteries.
Those of us who are monastics lives a simple, disciplined life focused on God. All aspects of monastic life are structured to allow us to make faith the focus of our lives. We order our lives in such a way that we can focus our energy on being open to God’s re-creating, transformative power. We live simply, in community, sharing all our resources and creating structured, consistent time for prayer and contemplation.
So there are healthy communes out there, but if you're under the age of 45, don't go running off to join one. When you're young, you know so little about yourself. At your age, I was going through a communist kick and naturally, communes sounded awesome (What you're describing is essentially Christian Socialism).
As I got older, however, I realized that unless I was strong enough to set up the structure myself - I would never be the right kind of person that was strong enough to live in such a structure. Instead, I came to the following conclusion. If I believed in a certain lifestyle as an important aspect of my ethics, I should reflect that lifestyle with my actions. Then the system wouldn't fail because of others, it would fail because my ideas were wrong (giving me valuable insights) or because I failed to live up to my own ethics (always accept that you may be a hypocrite).
So if I felt communism was important, nothing stops me from creating a business and then splitting the profits evenly among all of my employees (treating myself as just another employee). In fact, as long as I can make the money to pull it off, nothing stops me from creating my vision of paradise for all of my employees.
You could also try living together with friends. In my own life, working hard to buy a house (while the market is low) so that my friends and I would never have to pay rent while enjoying each-others company has always been a personal dream of mine. That's also a kind of commune, and given that it's shared with people you hopefully love, it's far more likely to succeed... but not guaranteed (I already realize that I'm going to have to prepare for A) different lifestyles and B) drama). You're not isolated in such a living style either - you just share many of the different costs of living to make room for the more enjoyable aspects of life for all of you (Your parents used it all the time, it's five living for piratically the price of one). You also build dependency upon one another, which builds trust and love and other fond wonderful emotions - but you have to love them too to ever hope to gain these rare treasures.
Finally - if that doesn't work - many people start families, using the love of their husbands/wives/children as the foundation for their own little commune. After all, whether we realize it or not, the homes we grew up in as children are still communal environments, where multiple people share the same household.