Libertarianism is the ideological opposite of communism. (Neither system has ever been successful on a large scale; the most successful modern economies have all been a mix of the private and public sectors.) But the political spectrum isn't linear, it's circular. Extreme libertarianism and extreme communism essentially meet each other at the other end, and in practice would be virtually indistinguishable from each other, because in both systems everyone owns everything.
The reason these two extreme ideologies haven't succeeded is that they essentially violate human nature. People want inherently contradictory things: they want freedom to do as they wish, and they want to be told what to do. This contradiction is embodied in the Republican Party, which preaches liberty and freedom while glorifying military and religious authoritarianism. This is why Christians have flocked to the party: they want to be free to be told what to do.
Libertarianism, like communism, is totalitarian, in that it cannot work unless everything is libertarian. You can't be a little libertarian, or a little communist. But these ideologies do have a place in a healthy economic mix. There are some things the government does well, and there are some things the private sector does well. An enlightened socio-economic system knows which is which, and applies different ideologies like ingredients in a recipe: the key is in using them in the right amounts.
For these reasons there will never be a pure libertarian society, just as there has never been a pure communist society in the modern age. Yet libertarianism is used by many of its adherents as an over-simplistic answer to the gnawing societal questions that challenge us. (If we could just achieve this unachievable state, everything would be better.) It’s essentially utopian, evidenced by libertarians who pine for a lost golden age that never existed. I suspect many who call themselves libertarian (as I once did) do so simply as an excuse to do nothing.
