I saw this and felt it was important to share with others as it's very well written. This comes from hongtuzi on reddit.

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Why do people support capitalism even though it has historically failed and attempts at communism have been an overwhelming success?

You realize the vast majority of countries on the planet are poor and also capitalist, yes? People say poor countries are poor not because of capitalism but "undemocratic government". Sure, let's agree for the sake of argument that not all the poor capitalist countries are as “democratic” as the wealthy ones, but this is inevitable. What does capitalism mean? It means everything is up for sale. If you have a wealthy capitalist country and a poor capitalist country, this means the wealthy one can just buy up all the industries within the poor one and turn it into a banana republic.

Banana republics are called banana republics because they produce usually one product (such as bananas) solely for a foreign country and all the profits from that product flow to the foreign country and don’t grow their own economy.

Take Cuba for example before its revolution.

Cuban politics remained hostage to the United States, while U.S.companies and investors took control of the major sectors of Cuba’s economy. By 1905, 60 percent of Cuba’s rural land was owned by U.S. citizens or companies. U.S. investors also controlled 90 percent of Cuba’s tobacco trade, the country’s iron, copper, and nickel mines,its railroads, and its electricity and telephone systems…Cuba’s economy exhibited many of the characteristics associated with economic dependency. Three-quarters of the country’s arable land was used to produce sugar, which accounted for 80 percent of its exports. Forty percent of the farms and 55 percent of the mills were in the hands of U.S. companies. U.S. investors also controlled 90 percent of Cuba’s telecommunications and electrical services and half of the country’s railroads, as well as significant portions of the banking, cattle, mining, petroleum, and tourist industries.
— Aviva Chomsky, A History of the Cuban Revolution

The result of this was that Cuba’s economy was horrible with widespread poverty, disease, illiteracy, enormous wealth inequality, etc.

the majority of the population was rural and poor – what Cubans called guajiros . Swedish economist Claes Brunendius described a typical guajiro’s life this way: “ He lived in a bohío , a small house with an earthen floor and a roof made of palm thatch. For 90 percent of the guajiros , a kerosene lamp was the only form of lighting, and 44 percent of them had never attended school. Only 11 percent drank milk, only 4 percent ate meat, and only 2 percent ate eggs. The daily diet, which had a deficiency of 1,000 calories, was the main reason for a constant increase in the number of cases of tuberculosis, anemia, parasitic diseases, and other illnesses.”
— Aviva Chomsky, A History of the Cuban Revolution

This happens all the time. Guatemala for example was mostly owned by the United Fruit Company. The democratically elected president tried to redistribute land to local farmers, the US responded by overthrowing the democratically elected leader and replacing their government with a military dictatorship. The same thing occurred in Iran, where the democratically elected prime minister wanted to audit what is today British Petroleum. When BP refused, he decided to nationalize the oil fields. Britain then complained to the US, and the US overthrew the democratic government and replaced it with a puppet dictatorship.

While these poorer countries are less “democratic” than wealthier ones, the reason they are is due to the very fact they are capitalist. Larger capitalist powers buy up their economy and force their politics onto them and corrupt their governments intentionally to prevent them from redistributing industries back to local businesses.

China as well before the communist revolution was exploited by many countries. They were invaded by the British who tried to force them to buy opium, then they were invaded by Japan who tried to turn them into a colony. France also invaded Vietnam and tried to colonize it, and then the US took the place of the colonizers. It wasn’t until the Vietnamese communists kicked the colonizers out that their economy started to take off. The same for China. China tried to implement liberal democratic capitalism before the communist revolution and it didn’t work.

You talk about “democracy”. Communism is democracy. Eisenhower himself said that the west refused to hold free and fair elections in Vietnam because they knew the communists were overwhelmingly popular and would win any election.

I have never talked or corresponded with a person knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs who did not agree that had elections been held as of the time of the fighting, possibly 80 per cent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader rather than Chief of State Bao Dai.
— Dwight D Eisenhower

Compare communist countries to the US. The US government has a 19% approval rating compared to China’s 95% and Vietnam’s 91%, and 73% of Chinese view their system as democratic compared to only 49% of Americans. Western countries aren’t more “democratic” just because you define “democracy” as capitalism.

The fact is, capitalism only has worked in wealthy countries because they are imperialist and brutally oppress and exploit poor countries in order to maintain hegemony over the global economy and global supply chains. I provide a concrete definition for imperialism in this answer.

Imperialism leads wealthy countries like USA, Britain, and at one point Japan, to exploit poor countries and effectively turn them into colonies for their empire. The US still has many neocolonies around the world just like Cuba used to be.

Why do you think the US maintains 800 military bases around the world?

Why do you think the US spends more than the top 10 countries combined on the military?

Can anyone honestly, unironically, believe they do this solely for “defense”? No, of course not, it is to maintain their global hegemony and control over neocolonies which they exploit cheap labor and natural resources for profits. It is essential for imperialist countries to maintain cheap supply chains of natural resources from all over the world for them to be able to provide you things like cheap iPhones.

The vast majority of countries today are capitalist yet poor. Capitalism only works for the few countries on top, in the same sense wealth inequality within the US is absolutely enormous so most people are living paycheck to paycheck, despite being a “developed” country, because the top 1% own more wealth than the bottom 90% combined. This is true both within an individual country, but also globally.

Globally, a little over two thousand people own more wealth than 4.6 billion people, that is, globally, 0.00003% of people own more wealth than 60% of the entire planet. You say capitalism works great for first-world countries, but these are a small minority of countries. What about the rest of the entire globe?

While it is true first-world countries had fast development during the Cold War, this isn’t even true today. You can’t even point to first-world countries and say “that’s an example of capitalism being successful”. First-world countries today are also failing.