I place communism under the category of democracy. I'm not saying communism has never been tried - rather, the tyranny of it is the epitome of the will of the people, aka democracy.
Kaiser era Germany didn't start ww1 - the Serbians did. Geemany had a treaty obligation to their ally, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and they fulfilled their obligation to their ally when it was attacked. The Austrian Empire was less "empire-y" than it sounds - it was a loose and relatively decentralized state that was mostly just a compromise among monarchs, each with far more autonomy that the so-called "states" in the supposedly freest country on earth now. The Black Hand killed the wrong guy, since the monarchy was trying to reform in favor of cultural autonomy. There's very good reason to believe they were an intelligence operation run by Great Britain, but I'm rusty on details, so I recommend delving into it yourself. At the end of the war, both Germany and Austria tried multiple times to make peace and the "allies" refused. That makes us the aggressors, regardless of how it started.
If you look at Renaissance era Europe, you see a bunch of small republics, mostly in north Italy and the Baltic coastline. The vast majority of wars in that era were between these small republics. Professional soldiering began in north Italy, where they were called "condottiere." Swiss soldiers were involved in all wars in Europe up until recently, and they've been a pioneer in democracy.
More monarchical places were much less interested in wars, or the wars were more about a king restoring the rights in the vassal arrangement. France's appenages were vassals bound by family ties and were notably less violent than the republics to their east. The eastern edge of the holy roman empire had fewer republics and generally settled their disputes at the electoral level of the HRE - princes from Bohemia, Austria, and Brandenburg were usually elected. The republics were ineligible for election because they lacked anyone electable, and as a result they had more to gain by using war to settle disputes.
After the French revolution, France became warlike. Before, it had the power to win wars but rarely engaged in them. Napoleon was a dictator, no doubt, but that's only after winning over the support of the populace, so there's an argument to be made that he was quite Democratic. England's wars grew in frequency and intensity after England gained a Parliament. The corruption between debt paper and Parliament caused England to militarily conquer a quarter of the planet's land. In the US, our democratic ideals did nothing to protect the native Americans from us. In fact, you can see that European monarchs generally abided by the treaties they made with the native Americans, whereas the more democratic America did not.
Back to communism, remember that the core of their system was the "Soviet" or local council. That's what Soviet means - council. They believed they were building democracy. We can look at history and pontificate about it nor being democratic, but that's not what they believed when they were doing it. Communism has no appeal outside the range of democratic ideals.
If you look at economy, what we see is the democratic use of credit to devalue the currency for any and all causes. Monarchies tended to stick to metals for currency. Credit money is effectively enslavement because it steals from savings, which is stored up work. I think its remarkable how quickly the US pivoted from chattel slavery to credit slavery. Its as if democracy literally can't work without slavery.
Why would that be? I say, because democracy is a power sharing arrangement. Sharing power means compromising with the powerful. Oligarchs will never stop pursuing their self interest. Democracy gives a mandate to an elected person to broker power - if they fail to do so, they have a failed state. They **_must_** give benefits to the oligarchs, in which I include all protected classes.
The nature of power is that it is conserved, in much the same way as the conservation of momentum or energy. If one person holds power, a proportional amount must be lost by others. In your city, theres a certain number of people with power, and you can fit it on one page, one name per line. Everyone else is merely competing to enter or remain in a special class. If you get your name on that hypothetical list, it is only at the expense of someone falling off the list. The only thing clever about a democracy is that it hides this reality from the average person. That's beneficial to the powerful people. But because power is shared, your position on the list is precarious. One way to accrue power without violating the Conservation of Power within your frame, is to take it from someone outside your frame. That's why democracies become a conspiracy to make war. It's not an intentional conspiracy (probably) but that's how the incentives align. Because power is conserved. Whatever you feel about power, it itself has its own behavior.
