this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2025
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So when the communist party came into power after the Bolshevik revolution, Wilson went to the League of Nations to negotiate a common embargo of the Soviet project, essentially sanctioning Russia the way we might sanction a nation for humanitarian wrongdoing.
This is to say Wilson was afraid of it actually working, which would jeopardize the industrial moguls who were already running the US.
This is also to say, the Soviet Union was doing a communism in hostile circumstances, much the way European monarchs pressured France to raise a new king after the revolution (leading to Napoleon's rise to power, the Levée en masse (general conscription) and the War of the First Coalition (or as is modernly known, Napoleon Kicks European Butt For A While ).
Historians can't really say, but the fact the red scare started with Wilson (and not after WWII) might have influenced events, including the corruption of the party and the rise of Stalin as an autocrat.
Also according to Prof. Larry Lessig, Boss Tweed in the 1850s worked to make sure the ownership class called all the shots in the United States, eventually driving us to Hoover and the Great Depression. FDR's New Deal (very much resented by the industrialists) was a last chance for Capitalism, which then got a boost because WWII commanded high levels of production and distracted us with a foreign enemy. Then the cold war.
So communism was really unlucky and didn't get a fair shake in the Soviet Union, and US free market capitalism got especially lucky in the 20th century, and we don't really know if either one can be held together for more than a century or two. EU capitalism is wavering, thanks to pressure from the far right, and neoliberalism failing to serve the public.
In the meantime, check out what's going on in Cuba, which isn't perfect, but is interesting.
Putting aside it is a baseless speculation, how is a system that falls into authoritarianism under a little bit of pressure a good system? If it wasn't capitalists, wouldn't it be something else? Drought? Covid?
Looks at present day US and UK
Still multitudes better than soviet union at any time and period.
One authoritarian-devolved state being better than another is not the flex you think it is...
It devolved because people take democracy for granted. And unlike USSR, it can heal without falling apart if people start acting like citizen (I don't have high hopes btw).
My goodness, what nonsense...
It devolved into authoritarianism because Stalin - an authoritarian brute - took over. Lenin even stated in his diaries that Stalin taking over "would be a catastrophe".
It devolved into autherianism as soon as bolsheviks took over, and that was right at the beginning. Stalin was a catastrophe because he was more wicked than the rest of them, but it doesn't mean that whatever Lenin was doing wasn't authoritarian project.
So, now you're saying that they never actually tried communism, because it was authoritarianism from the get go?
I mean, I appreciate the correction, but it only strengthens my point.
It devolved into it in the first years of tries and failures, which was under Lenin's rule.
You need to make up your mind. Was it right away, or after some time?
But, regardless, you're still proving my point - the people who attempted "communism" where autocrats who wanted power more than they wanted communism. And my second point that those who are good at leading a revolution and putting the existing system to the torch are not necessarily great at building something in peace.