In practice any countries that tried going the socialist route were immediately sabotaged and undermined by capitalist countries, notably the United States. Whe

In practice any countries that tried going the socialist route were immediately sabotaged and undermined by capitalist countries, notably the United States. When you are threatened from outside, authoritarianism becomes easy to take hold. There were plenty of authoritarian capitalist countries, even those deemed "successful", e.g. modern Singapore or South Korea, Argentina, and others during periods of 20th century. And on the other hand, there are democratic non-authoritarian socialist countries like Bolivia or even Venezuela.