I suspect there’s cognitive bias inclining people to belief systems like common religions. Had Communism won the Cold War, religion (in all but name) would have returned within a generation, possibly by Marxism-Leninism mutating to have more religion-like characteristics (more rituals, prayers-in-all-but-name to dead Bolshevik heroes, a Communist afterlife for all the comrades who don’t reach the promised land in this life, and so on). Within a century, the secular and materialistic nature of Communism would have been all but forgotten, much like Gnostic Christianity or the secular nature of the American Revolution.
I suspect there’s cognitive bias inclining people to belief systems like common religions. Had Communism won the Cold War, religion (in all but name) would have returned within a generation, possibly by Marxism-Leninism mutating to have more religion-like characteristics (more rituals, prayers-in-all-but-name to dead Bolshevik heroes, a Communist afterlife for all the comrades who don’t reach the promised land in this life, and so on). Within a century, the secular and materialistic nature of Communism would have been all but forgotten, much like Gnostic Christianity or the secular nature of the American Revolution.