(anyone who thinks the USSR was anything else than a dictatorship and thinks that is what true Socialism is supposed to look like doesn't have a clue)
Refreshing to know that someone else appriciates this!!
Interesting scenario
Old Wombat!
Although a little later in terms of your timeline,
I not long ago read
The Untold History of the United States by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick. It quoted Vice President Henry A. Wallace stating that both powers/ideologies (Capitalism and Communism) should be allowed to openly compete with one another (so without enacting Truman's 'Containment' policy.)
So, if Wallace's notion was used, then I'm thinking that countries/governments might swing to and from capitalism to communism visa versa.....and as
GTX correctly states, there's a very big difference between communism and socialism, so the United States might not be as quick to brand every country that wanted independence from their colonial master - aka nationalism, as 'Communists' and as part of the fear toting 'Domino Effect'. Hence we probably wouldn't see as many of the atrocious CIA/MI5/KGB lead/sponsored/delivered Putsch/Coup Detat! Maybe we'd see more countries consolidating their natural resources for their own national benifits - namely thier own economies, without British, French, Dutch and American interventions underbrush guise of 'communism' threat, as opposed to the threat to British, French, Dutch and American corporate investment and profits.
I'm thinking in such an environment, we'd probably most likely see more Yugoslavia/Romania-types who were at ease using mixes of both Western and Eastern weapons systems/platforms because of their actual cost and capability vs political affiliation and sponsorship....
Maybe also as a consequence of such competitive arrangement, the likes of the atrocious political opertunistic engineered strategies like the
Red Scare and
Red Baiting makes better non belligerent societies of some countries.....
Just ideas mate.... 😉
MAD