Interesting. It sounds like communism is a better system for planning and building infrastructure while capitalism is a better system for using and living within infrastructure.
The reason why urban planning is worse in Poland than it used to be is because there was no focus on zoning laws and planning was neglected for many years. Mind you, this is not accidental in any way: there was (and is) a concerted effort to prevent new zoning laws, or at least delay them as much as possible.
Nevertheless, these "communist" economies were absolutely based off currency; the workers earned wages in money, which they could then accumulate or spend. The ruble was just as "money" as the U.S. dollar was. An economy based on labour (whatever that means) would likely not use money, but labour vouchers instead, which are non-trasnferrable and therefore cannot function as money-capital.
If you bought a car, drove home, and sold it immediately - you would earn more than 100% on that transaction. But nobody did that, because everybody had money and only about half of the families had cars.
Each year you had the right to by 2 pairs of "winter shoes" shoes per person. You bought them no matter if it was the correct size of style, because you later bartered them for the stuff you need. Same with other "rare" stuff like coats or exotic fruits. Most people in Poland seen oranges and bananas once a year on christmas.
Lowest level manual workers earned half or 1/3rd of what a chairman of a big state company would earn. But the low level manual worker knew nobody important, so he waited for 20 years to buy a shitty socialist car, while the state company chairman got a western-made car after a few weeks of waiting.
It wasn't because of the price - it was because he knew people and could give them favors.
I have asthma, during communism my parents got the modern drugs for it mailed every few months from the family in Canada, because no amount of money could buy them in Poland in 80s. They only had outdated drugs for asthma that had awful side effects.
Fiat 126p (which was outdated in 70s in Italy) was produced in Poland till 2000. It took 26 seconds to accelerate to 100 km/h, and in case you had an accident in it going over 50 km/h everybody inside died. It was awful, awful car. But it was what was available, so people took it.
My parents build a house in 80s, and money weren't an issue. They took 30 years mortgage and paid it all off in 1991 thanks to my father going for 4 months to Austria to work on a farm. But the availaibility of materials in 80s was the real bottleneck. We had roof made from asbestos (it was called "eternit"), and while people knew it wasn't the best thing to use - nobody cared because that was what you could get. People stockpiled it on their backyards in case they will want to build a house for their children.
So yeah - the important currency wasn't the money, it was favors and coupons allowing you to buy stuff for your money.
We brought oranges from Italy for the trip. We didn't think it was going to be a great gift for them. They hadn't managed to get oranges that year.
It was literally another world for us 18 years old naive kids from a western country.
A love story with Poland started that day, which brought me to endless travels around the country and learning the language.
I never needed to stay in a Hotel. Always at friends.
Most welcoming people on earth.
Due to shortages many basic products were rationed and you simply couldn't buy them with cash. Having more money didn't make a difference unless you had the right rationing stamps (or connections to a high-ranking party official). This lead to a whole secondary market of people trading stamps with each other (e.g. cigarette stamps for meat stamps). When it comes to accumulation, periods of hyper-inflation and lack of investment opportunities made this much harder. Moreover, currency exchange rate was controlled by the government, which led to illegal underground currency trading.
This is based on experiences from Poland, but I'm sure many other communist countries had similar issues.
The fundamental character of money stayed the same, even if there were restrictions on it, as did the capitalist character of money paid through predominant wage labour. The state still collected taxes (perhaps at a different stage in the production process, though) in money. China also has currency controls, but the renmbini is just as much currency as the US dollar is.
Just as a crime exists in a country (albeit with practical restrictions, i.e. you get thrown in prison), money has existed in every modern country, even the so-called "socialist" ones, with some other restrictions.
The character wasn't the same, because money was not enough to buy you things. You needed special coupons to buy things, and coupons were distributed by the government using various systems.
So you could have enough savings to buy a new car/fuel/washing mashine or even meat, but unless you had a coupon the money gave you nothing.
For that reason for example used cars were sold for above their original price. You could buy a car for an amount, drive it for a few years, and sell it for a higher price than originally - but you wouldn't be able to buy a new one unless you had a coupon for a new one.
The same with fuel or meat. You could have a ton of savings, but unless you have a coupon, you wouldn't be able to buy meat or fuel to that car.
The coupons were distributed by the government through government companies.