[gregor]

A lot of communist countries were doing bad because:
1. they were doing already bad before they became communist countries
2. they were (are) being opposed by other countries instead of doing normal trade with them for example. Cuba is still under sanctions. who knows how life would be like there if there weren't any sanctions...

another thing is that Stalinism in Russia was not really communism. as one already pointed out communism is also supposed to be democratic. In fact i think here it was more democratic than now. because groups, such community boards and local communites had quite a lot of decision making on them. and therefore the whole life was run a bit more democratic in that way. the problme offcourse is if someone appears whihc believes that government should be removed in any way possible. they were locked up.

but it was not different in USA for example. they locked up or killed allegged communists and also they still put you to jail if you make threats to the country or government. not really democratic is it?

Also as one pointed out here the problem really is that to make it work you would need majority of countries or better all of them having it. which is a hard thing to do and have.
there is also the problme of revoltion. which is violent (supposed to be?) and after which the peoplel that took power during it don't step down or form a propper government. so it often remains dictatorship.

The funny thing i noticed here is that same people are in power. ok a couple of new ones arrived. but basically the opposition (so called right wing) to previous government is basically people that were in power during communism, but didn't get high enough and were dissapointed over communism because of that. and the sad part is that there was a reason why they couldn't get any higher - they are incompetent.