Good point odin1. While you're waiting for Mike to log in, I'll add few thoughts.
The hole in your argument is that the Nazi regime (for example) seized the power, the economic base, and the science, none of which had evolved under that system. The same can be said of Stalin and the October Revolution. It's arguable that the USSR made significant scientific progress - and there were many great Soviet scientists - but I think it was not as significant as it could have been, given the population and natural resources. The catastrophic waste of a dismally inefficient economy and a vast mechanised army would hardly have occurred in a modern democratic political environment. The Soviet Union had a population similar to that of the United States, yet the overall development of science and technology in the latter was much greater. As much as we like to criticise the 'consumerism' that is part of democracies, it promotes technological development. The general public have sufficient wealth to buy the products resulting from scientific research, thus expanding the high tech industries and promoting further research and development.
