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Reds! A Revolutionary Timeline

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Katamariguy said:
This is an idea I've never seen before. Does it originate from historical communist symbolism?
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As an image, I've seen a few of them. And I know that a number of socialist thinkers have deconstructed the symbolism of the blind goddess Justitia. The one that comes to mind most readily is Murray Bookchin in The Ecology of Freedom.
 
Aelita said:
Following the establishment of a constitutional regime, more substantive reform measures were undertaken. Gold was revalued at $1.25 per gram (~$38.76 per Troy ounce), a major devaluation of the dollar and monetary expansion. As a part of open market operations, the gold reserves held by the All-Union Central Bank would nearly treble in five years to approximately 19,000 tonnes. Paradoxically, the socialist state became a major target for capitalist investment, and the expansionary monetary policy greatly eased investment and consumption, and thus economic growth.
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I'm surprised they kept the gold standard. Is this a temporary measure or is gold backed currency something a lot of socialists genuinely believed in?
 
the atom said:
I'm surprised they kept the gold standard. Is this a temporary measure or is gold backed currency something a lot of socialists genuinely believed in?
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It's temporary. However desirable a true fiat currency would be, in an era before reliable, high volume long distance communications keeping meaningful exchange rates is difficult. In this case, they've suspended convertability; dollars are not actually convertible to gold on demand like they are in a full gold standard. Additionally, the government nationalized all gold in the country save for some exempted personal jewelry. Gold's only real relevance is providing a metric to gauge inteernational exchange rates for the time being.
 
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Aelita said:
gold reserves held by the All-Union Central Bank would nearly treble in five years to approximately 19,000 tonnes.
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Triple.
That said, I do appreciate that the coins are given Civil War 1 imagery rather than all being based on the second civil war, or including explicit Marxist imagery since that would be at least a little dubious given the intention to eventually drop currency entirely under Marx's proposal.
 
Aelita said:
As an image, I've seen a few of them. And I know that a number of socialist thinkers have deconstructed the symbolism of the blind goddess Justitia. The one that comes to mind most readily is Murray Bookchin in The Ecology of Freedom.
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Is Murray Bookchin also a prominent libertarian socialist in a non-Kurdish context? I have always assumed, that he would have been an obscure political activist without being a source of ideological inspiration for PKK/PYD.
 
azadi said:
Is Murray Bookchin also a prominent libertarian socialist in a non-Kurdish context? I have always assumed, that he would have been an obscure political activist without being a source of ideological inspiration for PKK/PYD.
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He got a posthumous signal boost thanks to Ocalan and the events in Syria, but within the admittedly small context of libertarian socialism in the second half of the 20th century, he was a relatively large influence over the decades.

Ursula K. Leguin wrote The Dispossessed after reading Bookchin's Post-Scarcity Anarchism. He was a significant figure in the student movement of the 60s and 70s, and one of the major voices in radical environmentalism. The Fundi faction of the German Greens were hugely influenced by his work. That's why you could get his work at a chain book store, even living in Montana in the 00s.
 
Aelita said:
It's temporary. However desirable a true fiat currency would be, in an era before reliable, high volume long distance communications keeping meaningful exchange rates is difficult. In this case, they've suspended convertability; dollars are not actually convertible to gold on demand like they are in a full gold standard. Additionally, the government nationalized all gold in the country save for some exempted personal jewelry. Gold's only real relevance is providing a metric to gauge inteernational exchange rates for the time being.
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Ah so they also rounded up the gold coins and perhaps even went further and rounded up the silver and copper coins as well then I am guessing as well given they were made with a pretty pure amount of metal 90 percent gold and ten percent copper for the various gold coin types in circulation(quarter eagle, half eagle, eagle and double eagles), ninety percent silver and ten percent copper for the various silver coins(dimes, quarters half dollars and dollars) and 95 percent copper and 5 percent tin and zinc for pennies into the depression.
 
Aelita said:
The Front had its own line which it enforced based on the principle of democratic centralism. In practice, the UDF's line was mostly an agreement between the party leaders that certain issues would remain uncontroversial. Whatever misgivings one had about the Red Terror, the hardline on racism, or the suppression of counterrevolutionary organizations, a member of the Front would not raise these issues in the election or as part of debate.
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I'm surprised no one tries to dissent here. How do they practically enforce that? Are the "true" democrats really the only people who will rail against those? Wouldn't it be worth it to let a few of the committed leftists with doubts about terror to say their piece in order to keep it democratic and show there's some opposition to it outside the counterrevolutionaries? Because otherwise it's pretty worrying and basically saying that the only reason this goes back to being democratic is fundamental differences in the united front.
 
Aelita said:
It's temporary. However desirable a true fiat currency would be, in an era before reliable, high volume long distance communications keeping meaningful exchange rates is difficult. In this case, they've suspended convertability; dollars are not actually convertible to gold on demand like they are in a full gold standard. Additionally, the government nationalized all gold in the country save for some exempted personal jewelry. Gold's only real relevance is providing a metric to gauge inteernational exchange rates for the time being.
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So it's like the OTL's Executive Order 6102, right?
 
Alane1 said:
Ah so they also rounded up the gold coins and perhaps even went further and rounded up the silver and copper coins as well then I am guessing as well given they were made with a pretty pure amount of metal 90 percent gold and ten percent copper for the various gold coin types in circulation(quarter eagle, half eagle, eagle and double eagles), ninety percent silver and ten percent copper for the various silver coins(dimes, quarters half dollars and dollars) and 95 percent copper and 5 percent tin and zinc for pennies into the depression.
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Pretty much. The price of copper is right now too low to be worth demonetizing copper coins, so the penny is safe...for now.
kammada said:
So it's like the OTL's Executive Order 6102, right?
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Yes.
Nyvis said:
I'm surprised no one tries to dissent here. How do they practically enforce that? Are the "true" democrats really the only people who will rail against those? Wouldn't it be worth it to let a few of the committed leftists with doubts about terror to say their piece in order to keep it democratic and show there's some opposition to it outside the counterrevolutionaries? Because otherwise it's pretty worrying and basically saying that the only reason this goes back to being democratic is fundamental differences in the united front.
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As an agreement between the party leadership, they party leadership uses its internal organization to ensure members comply. Since they control finances, they have control over media spending and a much tighter control on who is considered a party member or a candidate for public office. And it's right now pretty uncontroversial because it has been mere months since the end of major fighting, and there's still major partisan warfare going on in many places against holdouts. It should be treated as a wartime election in tone.
 
If nothing else its not like lets say president Lincoln didn't allow for some extreme measures during the onset of the civil war, some state legislators were imprisoned without charge or trial on suspicion and a judge was even beaten and pistol whipped in his own court before being dragged off imprisoned without charge and released months later among various other incidents.

Not that it makes such actions remotely right but history is filled with crisis's where norms of society get thrown out the window in the moment, the real test comes wither such norms can be restored or wither the throwing out of norms causes greater lingering problems that eventually brings a greater crisis.
 
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I have a question or two, maybe.....
So, my first question, compared to OTL America of that time, will be this Red America technological more advanced or less advanced. And if they are more advanced, in wich fields are they more advanced.

My second question is the standard of living. Knowing how the people in many communist countries lived (i had relatives in communist romania), mostly in poor or very poor conditions and only the fat cats at the top of the party had a livining standard comparable to that of the west, how will be the living standard of the people in this new red america will be ? Will it be higher or lower compared to OTL ?
Nitpick: the mustard in communist counties were better than that of the west....
 
Aetherius said:
I have a question or two, maybe.....
So, my first question, compared to OTL America of that time, will be this Red America technological more advanced or less advanced. And if they are more advanced, in wich fields are they more advanced.

My second question is the standard of living. Knowing how the people in many communist countries lived (i had relatives in communist romania), mostly in poor or very poor conditions and only the fat cats at the top of the party had a livining standard comparable to that of the west, how will be the living standard of the people in this new red america will be ? Will it be higher or lower compared to OTL ?
Nitpick: the mustard in communist counties were better than that of the west....
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Possibly the UASR would be the same technology/living standard as OTL but allocated in different ways. Less personal transportation and better mass transit, denser cities but more garden plots. With the cost of post-war rebuilding environmental awareness and recycling are paramount. In the Comintern standards are higher for all benefits such as communal housing, better medical systems, water and sewer treatment and so on. Most of the FBU and Alliance would be similar to what you and I are used to with islands of plenty surrounded by lower income areas.
 
Aetherius said:
My second question is the standard of living. Knowing how the people in many communist countries lived (i had relatives in communist romania), mostly in poor or very poor conditions and only the fat cats at the top of the party had a livining standard comparable to that of the west, how will be the living standard of the people in this new red america will be ? Will it be higher or lower compared to OTL ?
Nitpick: the mustard in communist counties were better than that of the west....
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Well, most of that was because the countries in question were already poor and as such there wasn't the resources to quite provide for everyone.

However, with the (former) United States, that had excess capacity to take on the entire world? At that point it's more a distribution issue rather than a production one.
 
Traveller76 said:
Possibly the UASR would be the same technology/living standard as OTL but allocated in different ways. Less personal transportation and better mass transit, denser cities but more garden plots. With the cost of post-war rebuilding environmental awareness and recycling are paramount. In the Comintern standards are higher for all benefits such as communal housing, better medical systems, water and sewer treatment and so on. Most of the FBU and Alliance would be similar to what you and I are used to with islands of plenty surrounded by lower income areas.
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I sort of imagine the FBU to most closely resemble OTL Britain under New Labour - so an avowedly capitalist state but with at least some commitment to conciliation rather than outright confrontation. Of course the advantage of the People's Party being a big tent is that the hardliners are never far from power and can be easily placed in power if the need arises. Due to the pressures of the Cold War, I can see the FBU having no choice but to invest heavily in healthcare, mass transit (so no Beeching Report), communal housing and a general welfare state to prevent social conflict spiralling out of control. None of these will be as well financed or effective as their counterparts in the Comintern as the FBU's increasing crisises, most of all the threat that India's growth might turn western Europe into a fairly precise copy of 4th century Italy/Rome, and over-commitment will drag it slowly down.
 
I figure most of Europe and metropolitan areas of the Alliance are similar to OTL US/Europe. Public housing, private residences, parks, mass transit, private cars etc. I figure that the FBU and other European countries invested heavily in the colonies and then former colonies to 1) have a market for finished goods and access to raw materials, 2) head off Communist and Nationalist subversion and 3) relocate industries from Europe in case of a Third World War and the bombs started flying. The 40s and 50s may see the post-war Alliance working with a variety of groups in Africa/Asia and Latin America in a form of carrot and stick system.

By the 60s and 70s you may see a rise in civil rights and various movements for better representation in various economic, political and civic affairs. The Alliance is forced to comply since the Reds are right next door and they need a united front. By the 90s and 2000s the power has started to shift to Africa and Asia, especially the Greater Indian Commonwealth, the same way people look towards China IOTL with its population and economy.
 
Question. Is this a rewrite or just copy-over from AH.com?
 
It is a major rewrite; the basic sequence of events is largely similar as are the broad outcomes but the level of detail is higher, and the many iterations have resulted in very solid realism--it was OK before, but now a lot of detailed questions and critiques have good answers, and the multidimensional solidity of the TL is stronger than ever. A lot of points of view are taken that give it great realism.

So a lot more than a copy-paste!
 
Shevek23 said:
It is a major rewrite; the basic sequence of events is largely similar as are the broad outcomes but the level of detail is higher, and the many iterations have resulted in very solid realism--it was OK before, but now a lot of detailed questions and critiques have good answers, and the multidimensional solidity of the TL is stronger than ever. A lot of points of view are taken that give it great realism.

So a lot more than a copy-paste!
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Will you make an ISOT Timeline afterward? Where this Heavy-AU!US gets sent to RL, RL past or some other universe?
 
Out of curiosity, where has FDR wound up by this point in the timeline? Is he still on the continent, fled to Cuba, or dead during the war?
 
He could well be dead, historically He almost died during the anarchist bombing spree that kicked off the first red scare though he wasn't the target he just happened to be walking nearby and if the bomb had gone off a little sooner he would have been killed.
 
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