I think the difference is thus: when you're watching a work of fiction, you can only identify with stuff that is familiar, and you assume that the basic stuff is the same e.g. gravity, air, chemistry, etc. unless specifically noted. In almost all cases, I expect human psyche to be the same or very similar.
The elimination of money -- or any equivalent -- only works if people are radically different from what we are today, or have been for as long as we can look back in time. Such a change would make us something else than humans, presumably, so it's hard to suspend disbelief in this case because A) That's not how people act and B) We cannot identify with people who are so radically different.
Now, I have no problem imagining a future society where money is gone. Perhaps it's very, very far in the future, or some major event changed the game, or it has been replaced by something else that provides and incentive to work. But to say that people can't accept it "for some reason" as if that reason was, on the face of it and without even knowing that reason, ridiculous, is jumping to conclusions without proper evidence or proper discourse.
