And I doubt that things could have turned out very differently, that the Chesterton's Fence of older values, notably mourned even by Orwell, would have protected against all possible disasters in the face of technological change.

I agree with this, the traditionalists where not equipped for the technological change that took place. Of the various offshoots that tried to grapple with it Soviet Communism wasn't really that disastrous. It didn't result in a break down into the bleak dystopia of North Korea or the barbarism of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge.

I think it plausible that mild fascism (think Franco) in conjunction with monarchy would have worked better for Russia.

(Regarding modern history, I would further argue that the leftward radicalization effectively stopped in 1968, that the "60s' revolution" ended up a kind of counter-revolution in disguise - but that's a difficult subject for another day.)

I would be very interested in this take on recent history, please write up a email if you feel it wouldn't be productive to discuss it here.

In particular, it seems to me that Soviet imperialism and Mao's radical reforms, for all their unnecessary evils and wilful stupidity, led to far more net human welfare - never mind the gain in more nebulous things like "Human development"! - than their actual, really present alternatives at the time: America's pre-war relative non-interventionism; Chang Kai-Shek's conterfactual rule in China (read up on him!) and so on.

I'm not so sure. Right wing capitalist authoritarianism, the sort of outcome I think the Kuomintang could have provided has a good track record of development in East Asian states. I'm not suggesting China would have been a Tawian(!) or Singapore, it was too large and in the early years too chaotic for that. I do think they would have been far wealthier and I think it would probably be more democratic today than the PCR (not that I would necessarily approve of that). Though again a West allied China may have gone to war with the Soviet Union which would have been a disaster.

Also check out the strong socialist elements in the original ideology and practice of the party. Had it gone in that direction again, I can't see them doing worse than Mao.

It might be true that they could have lost grip of the country and see it descent into the hands of various warlords, which might have meant decades of trouble for China. The almost unified China under the PRC would obviously beat that out.

To be fair though Mao's revolution was basically a Chinese peasants revolt installing a new dynasty in some Marxist drag. Hardly exceptional in Chinese history, the more surprising part was that Mao was dethroned with relatively little bloodshed.

Frankly, the absolute worst disaster that resulted from "World Communism" was probably the premature and devastating so-called decolonization - and America even at its most right-wing always disapproved of European colonialism anyway.

Moldbug makes the case that was mostly America's doing. It is quite plausible Communism isn't to blame for it. Indeed by providing a opponent ready to spread to new states in Africa and Asia it may have made the Anglo elites more careful and measured in their decolonialization mania than they would have otherwise been.

But I disagree, I think the opportunity costs for Eastern Europe and East Asian in particular are pretty high.