Absolutely it could work. The problem is how you get there.
Marx-Leninism (or Bolshevism) came about because there was an understanding, possibly accurate, in socialist thought that Communism could not be achieved under the rules of liberal democracy, because reactionary forces would work within the democratic system to prevent the rise of socialism (as you've seen in the long back and forth struggle in the western democracies which are still no closer to eliminating massive inequality).
The problem is that if democracy is bad for achieving equality, dictatorship is so much worse, and Marx-Leninist dictatorship is no exception.
Communism failed for economic reasons, but the economics were bad because the politics were bad. Bolshevik/Maoist/Hoxhaist/Juche economics were designed first and foremost to serve the political power of the party hierarchy. Stalin's Collectivization and Industrialization plans were built to reinforce the power of the party and the power of his faction of the party in particular, by crushing nascent independence in the peasant class and reducing the power of rural areas in exchange for urban areas and industrial towns where the Bolsheviks had tighter control. Communism destroyed lives because the goal of ever moving to Communism was lost and the goal of perpetuating the Party took the fore.
George Orwell, himself a socialist, had a good grasp of this. 1984 showed a world where Socialism had come to mean "party power for its own sake" and where every aspect of the world had been rebuilt to perpetuate the power of the Parties of the different countries. Animal Farm showed a world where the Revolution was launched on the idea of equality but where the revolutionary vanguard class (the pigs) became a new class of feudal lords. This was a natural consequence of Bolshevism.
So why did they choose such a destructive and evil path? It could be partly that the kind of people who were attracted to revolutionary socialism in these countries were simply not benevolent people, hard men who would be harsh rulers and would take advantage of a system that gave them absolute power. But there was rhetoric behind it, there was a *necessity* to it, and it was because they believed that democracy with the participation of the exploiter classes would make the process of equality impossible.
Full Communism, in a kind of anarcho-syndicalist vision, would work based on how we know systems succeed. Successful countries are countries that empower more and larger parts of their population (like how England that had an effective parliament in 1600 grew to be a world leader while Spain who had a weak and toothless parliament in 1600 declined, or how the parts of the Americas that had slavery are poorer than the parts of the Americas who never had slavery). Anarcho-syndicalism is basically optimum empowerment: personal property but no private property. Every sector of society governs itself, and great prosperity would be unleashed under that.
Capitalism works because it creates incentives, it says you can work to accumulate capital, apply that capital smartly, and prosper knowing you'll reap the rewards of your capital investment and your work. But people who have only their work and no capital along with that are left behind inevitably (see Thomas Piketty's Capital for why: the rise of the middle class in the west in the 40s/50s/60s was a historical aberration created by labor shortages and capital destruction caused by World War II, and its slow division into haves and have nots since then is a return to form).
Now imagine if you were able to keep *all* of the returns of your work, except what might need to be redistributed to the less fortunate and to supply other public goods. It takes the incentivizing power of capitalism and extends it to *everyone*. Work more: get more, whatever your access to capital. Capital would be created by collective action.
But how do you get there in a world where reactionary forces don't want to surrender the fruits of their exploitation democratically? Through a long slow process of incrementalism? Through revolutionary action that *doesn't* fall to an Animal Farm style new aristocracy by ???
That's the big question.
