Re:Studying the demise of historic civilisations
by tomt2323 on Wednesday March 06, 2019 @01:29PM
(#19321264)
The two situations really aren't comparable as it's more likely that the entirety of the Americas would've been pulled into a unified communist state like the Russian revolutionaries were hoping would happen with the European communist uprisings that were happening at the same time (and quelled by fascist backlash in Germany, Italy, and Spain). At the same time, it's entirely possible that the Axis would've conquered most of Europe and something equivalent to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact would've held without the ideological conflict there. It is possible the anti-Slavic racism would've still pushed Hitler to try to exterminate large parts of Germany, but it may have been a harder sell to the German public than it was when coupled with the threat of communism.
If you're asking the broader question of whither the (self-proclaimed) state capitalist countries that came out of the retrenchment when those revolutions failed, I think there's still an answer there. They developed differently, used their resources, and prioritized different things than more liberal capitalist ones in ways that you can make some broad claims about. But they did so in a context, as did the liberal and non-aligned/miscellaneous blocs.
Take the Russian communist revolution of 1917. Had Lenin been an American and the coup/revolution been american... Do you think that by the late 20th century, the US and Soviet Union's positions would have been reversed?
I don't think we can really answer that, but to me, "yes" feels like an old fashioned answer. I don't think a founding philosophy or constitution (or anything really) has such a deterministic effect. I'm more in the "one-damned thing after another" camp.