A state that prioritizes capitalist profit over worker interests is worse for the people?? Who could've seen this coming :0

The capitalist takeover of the former USSR is one of the greatest tragedies of the last few decades. Both for those countries, and for the global socialist movement. The modern capitalist Russia has no reason to support and fund socialist movements like they used to (like in Palestine, Vietnam, DPRK, Cuba, Bangladesh etc)

That's an amazing set of references to throw my way. Thank-you. I'll read through them in a while. My assertion was based on talking to real people: I'm only just not-Russian myself.

I don't really think you've captured communism: Cuba isn't. China has been moving away from communism for decades. Russia rejected the Communists for the Bolsheviks shortly after the revolution. There's a huge difference between socialism and communism.

The West is in somewhat of a hard time. There's a left shift going on since my golden days (as Gen X). Young people (Gen Z) rightly feel hard done by and the social mobility seems to have been damaged. It feels like the sodding seventies again here in Blighty ( I hadn't even become a teenager when they ended but remember the mood and despair. Candles lighting the supermarket visits. Dead bodies of the unburied and the rats).