Good description of the swarm, Aeon. I wouldn't call it communism at all. It's no more communistic than most real life european countries politics. It's also much more social democratic than it is communistic. But this is irrelevant.

In terms of the old EvE politics, when controlling territory meant towers at the moons and tower warfare and no one yet had blobs of hundreds of dreadnoughts, the swarm organization was already an exception.

Each super-power in the game had his specific organizational structure. Yet it was (and actually still is) common to have council based superblock politics where a superblock is a semi-permanent NAP+CoAggression Pact between several alliances where each alliance in the council actually is itself the most powerful one of a group of alliances forming a more permanent NAP. Within these smaller NAPs the non-leader alliances were generally termed pets (if fighting) or renters (if generally not fighting) by the enemies. Internally each NAP and eventually each alliance had it's own organization. Often, not always, the NAPs would be council based (some were leader based). Often, not always, single alliances were leader based, some were council based.

Goons always disliked both the "council" principle and the single leader one. So much that they somewhat disliked being part of a council based superblock.

And that's probably why goons were never really considered a part of a superblock. They were considered allied (possibly temporarily) to one or more superblocks or to one or more other powerful alliances. But never really part of a superblock.

Goons were not part of the eastern russian block, and yet they were often sympathetic to xXDEATHXx (and even Solar) and definitively big friends of the RED Alliance (because of great respect earned in historical circumstances in Insmother). Ther were never part of the big northern coalition NAP, but they were allied to them for a long time (especially against the BOB later Ken later IT forces and their allies). They were never part of the mini coalition between PL and SOT that controlled Fountain, but had a long standing friendship with PL (partly, I think, because of the respect based friendship between the Mittani and Kugu and the involvement of Kugu with PL, but of course mostly because they had the same agenda against BOB). The fact that the swarm and PL often happily fought each other is irrelevant: they were not fighting, they were just 'sploding each other ships (I guess you know what I mean).

Yes. The swarm has always been more "robust" and mostly immune to burnouts, pissoffs, failcascades and other shenanigans. And yes, it's leadership (or more exactly it's political organization) proved to be superior in several ways.

And yet I do not think that superior leadership or organization is the main reason for the persistence of the swarm. I think there is a deeper reason. A reason similar to the bound that keeps the eastern block together (more or less). Or the one that more than once prevented the complete failcascade (did not prevent multiple partial failcascades, but did prevent a complete one several times) of the french guys.
A bond that has to do with strong out-of-game recognition of each other as part of a social group. That's nationality and national culture/history for the french and the russians. It's a forum for the swarm.

I'm sure more than one eyebrow will rise to the idea that a forum can be as strong a social identity as being russian (or japanese, or french or whatever strong national identity you like). But those eyebrows do not belong to someone that knows that forum, and those that do not know it do not understand it.