Yeah, and for all we know, Lucas deleted that scene precisely BECAUSE he wanted to avoid implying in any way that Communism was bad.
And besides, the radical anti-war left claimed WE were engaging in “nationalization” when entering Vietnam. I’d know, a film professor (one of my WORST professors if you ask me), who definitely was an aging student radical supporting all the leftist causes, when I bluntly told him when he claimed the end of the Vietnam War proved the Domino Theory wrong that Vietnam being invaded by the Communists as well as Cambodia and Laos if anything proved the theory was right cut me off and said “We invaded them first, all to get their tin deposits” or something like that. So it’s not a guarantee that Lucas had in mind the Soviet playbook when he did that or Communism even when he said that (especially when his actions and words back then and today had him making VERY clear that he adhered to Marxist thought, even paraphrasing Marx’s dictum when gloating about his victory over Hollywood, to say little about his constant railing against corporations and all of that.).
It’s hard to say. The scene remained in the novel and comic book tie ins. From what I read it was deleted when Lucas showed a rough cut to some director friends of his and Brian de Palma offered to do some improvements and it was cut because it slowed down the pace. There were two allusions to the badness of the Empire left in. Ancient Rome and the Nazis. (old republic, legions, stormtroopers)