This study will examine the reasons why communism is embraced in some nations (such as Russia, China and Cuba) and rejected in the United States, which instead embraced constitutional democracy. The study will argue that the choice of communism or democracy depends in large part on the political structure of each nation before it made its choice for communism or democracy. Each nation's political choice is in large part a response to--and a rejection of--the previously existing political reality.
Democracy in the United States was in part a rejection of the British monarchy. Cuba's choice of communism was in part a rejection of the corrupt dictatorship of Batista. In addition, the political and economic history of each nation plays an important part in its choice of democracy or communism. The United States was a relatively wealthy nation with social and political stability, aside from its differences with Britain. Its leaders wanted more freedom than the colonies had experienced, which democracy would make ensure.
Democracy has been maintained in the United States for over two hundred years in large part because it has worked successfully. Russia, a poor nation torn internally by conflicts over the repressive and absolutist czar, chose communism as a radical solution to severe social, economic and political problems. Russia, like Cuba and China after their revolutions, was simply in too much turmoil to attempt the kind of democracy attempted in the United States. Unlike democracy in the United States, communism in the Soviet Union failed to meet the basic economic needs of the people or to provide social and political stability and as a result it has been rejected and replaced by democracy.
The two approaches to politics (and economics) are ideals. Democracy in the United States hardly lives up to that ideal image any more than capitalism lives up to the ideal principles of the free market and individual initiative. How...