Reds! A Revolutionary Timeline
- Thread starter Aelita
- Start date
- Timeline Post-1900 Users' Choice!
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I guess one criticism of TTL's backstory is how the American RadLefties manage to maintain momentum after a longer USA involvement in WWI, given how devastating the OTL First Red Scare was to the movement. Even if there was a stronger pre-war movement that gained plenty more elected offices and larger presence in organized labor, it'd take quite the resilience to pull through. Then again, the longer war and higher death toll has the corollary of more potential recruits from among the disaffected veterans, as TTL's Patton demonstrates.
And now we see more seeds of the future rivalry between the Entente and socialist America.
AKuz
Been Better
- Location
- A Rising Tide of Horrors
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I'm actually kinda curious about how Canada's contribution to the First World War has changed, as I imagine they're sharing space with the Americans in terms of equipping and transportation.
Maybe they'll end up with *not* the Ross Rifle?
Maybe they'll end up with *not* the Ross Rifle?
- Location
- UK
One thing that I'm unsure about, is that there's little indication of the same sort of splits that the European radical movements had over the war. Even in Italy and France, with the nominally radical syndicalist unions, the union leadership and membership were divided in the nationalist spirit with half the syndicalists supporting the war (and in Italy going on to eventually join the fascists). Here you have the socialist movement organise a general strike, something no other socialist party across the world managed to do.
Obviously, the intention of this timeline isn't to just repeat the failures of social democracy during the first world war but what would the impact of such a massive strike wave have had on the socialist movement in Europe? The social democratic parties, prior to the war, made vague allusions to organising such a general strike in the case of war but reneged.
Obviously, the intention of this timeline isn't to just repeat the failures of social democracy during the first world war but what would the impact of such a massive strike wave have had on the socialist movement in Europe? The social democratic parties, prior to the war, made vague allusions to organising such a general strike in the case of war but reneged.
Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
The American union tradition is pretty radically different, particularly with its heavy influence from Daniel DeLeon's theories and the death of the American Federation of Labor which would have endorsed any pro-war line. Key to DeLeonism is the "one big union" line, to absorb all worker's unions into a single radical leftist worker's union. And with the demise of the AFL, the patriotic unions are largely dead.
As for Europe, the big difference is that the Great War is fundamentally perceived by the majority of the American left as not America's fight, whereas France, Britain, and Italy are fighting for reasons much closer to home.
- Location
- The Old Dominion
Hmm I take it Pershing didn't gain various powerful connections via marriage and personal contact like the OTL or prove his military worth in the Philippines war then if he hadn't been a general since 1905?
Beyond that like Taft and the senate being willing to undermine key parts of long running american foreign policy regardless of German activities, I am finding hard to believe that the US apparently would simply allow US forces to be used as cannon fodder under british and french command rather than operating under their own generals commands.
This is seems specially glaring as the US entered so early in the war before the french and british armies broke several times over and a sizable chunk of both countries manpower reserves was already dead on the battlefield.
Beyond that like Taft and the senate being willing to undermine key parts of long running american foreign policy regardless of German activities, I am finding hard to believe that the US apparently would simply allow US forces to be used as cannon fodder under british and french command rather than operating under their own generals commands.
This is seems specially glaring as the US entered so early in the war before the french and british armies broke several times over and a sizable chunk of both countries manpower reserves was already dead on the battlefield.
- Location
- UK
Not convinced, I'm afraid. This presupposes a certain level of American-exceptionalism in which the entire leadership of the US socialist movement has their head screwed on better than the likes of Kropotkin, who openly supported the war, and Kautsky, who passively supported it. In France, l'Humanité, a paper founded by the anti-war Jaures, became the mouthpiece of the chauvinists crying for war against German imperialism. Stalwart socialists across the world were drawn into the nationalistic fervour. Yes, you have those like Debs but you've also got Upton Sinclair and Jack London, who supported the war upon US entry. I would have expected at least a little comment on the situation - it destroyed the second international!
Overall, I understand the general narrative of this timeline as working towards revolution and not just lumping more complications so perhaps I can excuse this. However, one thing I would be interested about would be the effect of the strike and the American socialists' stance on the movement in Europe. Obviously, things like the support of the German Social Democrats for war credits caused upheaval and confusion amongst the working class movement in Europe. But with the example of a strong anti-war movement in the US, would the internationalists be galvanised? I think it could have potentially had a significant effect on both the response of the anti-war socialists in Europe as well as an effect on the European states' responses to their own workers movements.
Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
Germany backing an anti-american faction in a Mexican civil war, essentially send an early Zimmerman telegram, and immediately declare that all American and British ships headed towards France are fair game for their blockade on the Gallic nation before their entry into the war in August is about as blatant an attack on the America as Germany can do without having battleships start shelling New York City and send German commandos to assassinate people.
You'll get your answers soon.
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Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
The Entente has the good sense to realise that they can't win and this whole sordid affair is a massive waste of resources that does little but benefit Germany and Austria and pulls out earlier.
AKuz
Been Better
- Location
- A Rising Tide of Horrors
- Pronouns
- She/Her
OTL the War was incrediably unpopular to the isolationist American public even after American entry in the war in 1917 and it took a sustained and unprecedented propaganda campaign to bring the public around to the fight (even as the Allies were already essentially winning the war)
I can certainly see the anti war position to be very strong in the early months amongst those so inclined to oppose this random war that America doesn't really have a stake in. I do expect that resistance to be crushed, or greatly weakened, by the time a year or two has passed though.
I can certainly see the anti war position to be very strong in the early months amongst those so inclined to oppose this random war that America doesn't really have a stake in. I do expect that resistance to be crushed, or greatly weakened, by the time a year or two has passed though.
- Location
- The Old Dominion
Though admittedly there was apparently support for the war from british and french immigrants as well as eastern European immigrants even as Irish Americans, German Americans opposed the war and southern and Midwestern farmers apparently tended to range from opposed to apathetic to the war.
- Location
- 2038
It seems like a much more general anti-war sentiment among the American public, rather than an exclusively socialist point of view. I feel it's hinted that the political class' foreign policy views have not remained in line with the more isolationist public.
- Location
- The left-wing of the impossible
The proposition wasn't to use American troops as cannon fodder. The issue was that the US Army has no functional experience of vast commands at the present. The last time they mobilized this many men was during the US Civil War fifty years previous, and that experience would be of limited utility even if pretty much everyone who held an officer commission in that war is dead. And ITTL they don't even have the chance like IOTL to be observers to the conflict to learn by proxy. There's a learning curve and learning from the French or British is the only way.
The operation, like similar ones IOTL, did not work as advertised. But everyone had confidence in the ability of artillery to breach German lines to allow exploit operations. It didn't work out, because troops could not functionally move through the terrain chewed up by these massive artillery barrages, and the barrages themselves telegraphed intend, allowing the positioning of second echelon troops.
This is, as noted, the event that accelerated the transition to singular US command of American troops.
- Location
- The left-wing of the impossible
As has been noted, there is broader anti-war sentiment of which the SLP becomes the de facto leader, and they have the luxury of this because the United States is not under any genuine threat of invasion or occupation. The country itself is safe, but its commercial interests are not, and this creates the rupture between the nationalist impulse to protect those interests in service to the body politic, and those who oppose trading blood for money.
And it's not like they've adopted revolutionary defeatism (yet), merely the standard refrain of peace without impositions or annexations. Because ultimately the US can walk away and only endure commercial and prestige costs. Even then, the labor movement got pushed into compliance anyway by a mixture of public diplomacy and force, as was noted in this very update.
- Location
- UK
I'm not suggesting that the US didn't have circumstances in which the anti-war sentiment was more pronounced but there's isolationism and then there's a three week general strike. Take the Unione Syndicale Italiana, the leader of the union, the most radical union in Italy and perhaps in Europe, actually held a revolutionary pro-war position in that he hoped the war would bring about conditions for revolution. The union voted him out and the anti-war anarchist Armando Borghi became the leader but even he couldn't muster support for a strike. There was lots of confusion amongst the entire international revolutionary movement in a way I don't feel is reflected in this segment of the timeline.
Granted, Eugene Debs is a calibre of anti-war leader that the likes of Ebert certainly wasn't and the SLP is a party of a different sort than the Labour Party who had a nominally anti-war leader in MacDonald. The conditions in the US would have been radically different as well, I don't deny that, but a three week general strike means three weeks' worth of strike pay.
Granted, Eugene Debs is a calibre of anti-war leader that the likes of Ebert certainly wasn't and the SLP is a party of a different sort than the Labour Party who had a nominally anti-war leader in MacDonald. The conditions in the US would have been radically different as well, I don't deny that, but a three week general strike means three weeks' worth of strike pay.
Nineteen-Sixteen: Red Blood, Black Earth
- Location
- The left-wing of the impossible
Nineteen-Sixteen: Red Blood, Black Earth
Excerpt from Henry A. Wallace, Salt of the Earth (Nashville, TN: Pathfinder Press, 1963)
The war, I think, changed everything. I am candidly certain that had not over one million young American boys bled the soil of France red, then life as we know it today would be radically different. I'm sure it is the peculiar navel-gazing of old men and historians to ask what would have happened if some important event were to have been undone, but I cannot help to succumb to the temptation. One thing I do know for sure is that my own part in the war changed my life forever. The deaths of my comrades in the trenches of France and the militarization of society at home are an irrevocable part of me, and without them, I do believe I would have remained a simple farmer, happy with the smell of good tilled earth. I'm sure I would have been happier for it.
…During the 1916 Red Scare, President Taft and all of the kings of mine, rail and factory declared that the Army deployed in France was becoming a "boot camp for communist, socialist and anarchist subversion". I do not know much of other regiments, but that was certainly true of mine. My fellow enlisted men were my teachers in the great school of Marxism, and much of what I am today I learned there. When the "dangerous subversives" and "bomb-throwers" are the only men decrying the insanity of attacking machine guns with the chests of men, of sending men to dark and bloodied battlefields for the purpose of conquest and plunder, of killing our brothers so that the Imperialist scramble can continue unhindered; then we all come to find that perhaps we who went along with the bloodshed were the insane ones, not those who denounced it.
Excerpt from Barry Goldwater, The Last Days of the Republic (Havana: Freedom Press, 1961)
It became very clear by 1916 that the Republic that our Founding Fathers had labored so hard to build, placing all the best hopes for humanity in, was entering its twilight years. A great proletarian mass from below, driven by immigrant anarchists, foreign agitators and home-grown demagogues, had come to reject the Enlightenment liberal values of the nation. Set against them, the great captains of industry had too forgotten what had made America great. Caught in between the great tides of Communism and Corporatism, the Constitution could not long endure.
Nevertheless, it became quite clear that the proletarian agitators were the aggressive party. The nation, caught in a war against Prussian militarism, found itself facing a great treasonous uprising among the unwashed masses. Rather than wage a war for liberty, they waged a class war against the Republic and the Constitution. It is no hypocrisy for those who defend liberty to use all means at their disposal to destroy the forces that threaten liberty. The Communists who accuse the War Government of being "proto-fascists" had far less noble aims than the government they betrayed.
Starting with the so-called "Bloody Valentine Raids", the government aimed to suppress such seditious conduct by the Socialist Labor Party. Of the thousands of party activists and leaders arrested under the Espionage and Conspiracy Acts, not a single one of them was guilty of anything less than seditious libel, and a fair number of them were guilty of outright treason. While the leaders of Congressional opposition could not be arrested under federal law, thanks to the immunity granted to them by the very Constitution they sought to destroy, the National Executive of the Party and of the trade union congress were arrested.
While a number remained fugitives of justice until the granting of amnesty post-war, the party itself was decisively crippled during the state of emergency. But rather than destroy it outright, the leaders of the nation shirked at the duty they had to defend the constitution, and allowed the party itself to remain. By failing to destroy the organizational base, and arresting moderate "yellow socialists" alongside hardened reds, the noble cause of defending the Constitution would only serve to unite and further radicalize the forces that opposed the Republic.
Excerpt from Alan Smithy, The Twilight of the Law: The Legal Degeneration of the Old Republic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975)
In 1916, Charles Schenck was General Secretary of the Socialist Labor Party of America. As part of his political duties, Schenck was responsible for printing, distributing and mailing party literature – in this case, leaflets advocating that American proletarians refuse to submit to conscription to fight in the First World War. Because of its principled opposition to the First World War, the party had found unprecedented growth, tapping into a powerful popular discontent with what was viewed as an imperialist war.
For exercising what he believed to be his constitutional right, protected by the First Amendment of the 1787 Constitution, Schenck was indicted and convicted under the Espionage Act of 1915.[1] Upon appeal, the case made itself all the way to the Supreme Court. It is here that the eminent Justices of the Supreme Court stepped into the breach, not to protect the rights of a citizen of the United States, but to affirm evermore that war is the health of the state. The case of Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S 47 (1917), represents a tortuous legal opinion that failed to articulate a credible standard in determining the free speech protections enjoyed by residents of the United States.
The "Clear and Present Danger" test put forth by Schenck was never applied in contemporary or subsequent jurisprudence.[2] The "Bad Tendency" test put forth by the subsequent case Eugene Debs v. United States, 249 US 211 (1917) gave even less protection to free speech. The overturn of precedent in mere months undermined the credibility of the Court's implied position as an impartial arbiter of the law. As the legal logic of the Schenck case will show, maintaining the conviction and punishment of dissenters was a higher priority than the consistent application of the Court's own legal standards.
In Schenck, the esteemed so-called liberal Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes freely admitted that "in ordinary times" Schenck would have been perfectly within his rights in saying all that was said in the pamphlets he distributed, 249 U.S. 47, 52 (1917). It is here that Holmes utters the famous analogy, that "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic."
Thus begins the false dilemma, expertly crafted to nullify the right of political speech whenever the state has declared an emergency, wartime or otherwise. However, Holmes paints us a picture, not of a man expressing his dissatisfaction at a nation being ram-rodded into a war it had no stake in, but rather of a bomb-throwing anarchist; a menace to society whose words are weapons against the state. True, Holmes lays out a fairly succinct and clear standard. As he writes; "The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent."
What "substantive evil" might there be in this case that we should so devoutly wish that Congress use all the majesty and might of the state to prevent? Holmes does not elaborate beyond the obstruction of recruitment into the armed forces. Truly a great evil that Schenck might dissuade people from being sent off to by truckloads to die in the mud of northern France in a war that was being waged for economic interests.
It is quite telling that Holmes offers no concrete example in the Opinion of the Court as to what way the exercise of Schenck's political speech – opposing a war that was absolutely lethal to working class soldiers – might threaten the state. The United States was not under the threat of invasion. To the extent that the United States was directly threatened came only from the sinking of American merchantmen at sea – merchantmen who were shipping war material to Great Britain flying the flag of Mexico, a supposedly neutral country, in direct violation of the laws of war. It is simply taken, ipso facto, that to dissent in time of war constitutes a seditious crime against the state. This was a total violation of the Court's assumed role as a guardian and fair arbiter of the law.
It was during times of war that the fundamental liberties protected by the Bill of Rights were needed the most. The text of the First Amendment stated very plainly that "Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." It made absolutely no mention that these rights only apply in peacetime. It did not say that speech is free unless it is speech that is dangerous to the state.
In the total absence of precedent, the Court set out – in the midst of the First World War – not to impartially interpret the law, not to protect the rights of the citizenry; but rather to find whatever rationalization possible to ensure that the enemies of the state were punished. The Court applied two separate standards in the three largest cases it saw of this type, all within a single year. The clear chilling effect upon free speech is plain to see. In the case of Debs v. United States, the plaintiff, Eugene Debs, then four time Socialist Labor Party candidate for president, had very carefully tailored his speech to avoid prosecution under the Espionage Act. It was to no avail. The so-called liberal Holmes did his patriotic duty, and found Debs guilty of intending to obstruct recruitment on the flimsiest of grounds, 249 U.S. 211, 212-4 (1917).
There can be no doubt that the Court had no lofty minded goals in its conduct of the free speech trials. The standard of "clear and present danger" put forth in Schenck was articulated in bad faith, inconsistently applied, and then unceremoniously abandoned the moment it was no longer useful in upholding the convictions of enemies of the state. It was not as though the facts of the case were not properly understood by the Court. The facts themselves were irrelevant in the face of the necessity of protecting the state's use of terror against dissidents. Schenck and the related cases were not just bad law; they represent a total abdication by the Court, and thus of the rule of law itself, to the political class and the state. The Court fulfilled its most basic, never admitted role: perpetuating the state and the class that controls it. Holmes et al. did their patriotic duty to the Fatherland in clear violation of their duty to the rule of law. Perhaps what is most illustrative of these cases and the abject failure of the rule of law is that they have proven it does not matter if the Emperor has no clothes. In the very speech that resulted in his conviction, Debs noted that "Every single one of these aristocratic conspirators and would-be murderers declares himself to be an arch-patriot." It was not just the political branches of government that were guilty of betraying the public to serve narrow class interests. The Supreme Court made itself a willing accomplice as well.
The War on the Front
It was a badly hidden secret that all the various armies on the Western Front were in bad shape by 1916. The front-line divisions of all of the belligerents had been ground into dust months ago; the French Army held on with poorly trained reservists and new call-ups. The British Army's entire professional core was gone; either dead or incapacitated or watered down to provide NCOs for the waves of the recently conscripted. The US Army fared no better. The professional core had been pulverized, and while the new waves of conscripts were better equipped with machine guns and artillery than they had been in 1915, morale had plummeted.
In May 1916, the French Army began its costly attempt to break out from the fortress town of Verdun. The German Heer, predictably, gave ground stubbornly and at great cost to the French. The German commanders, having lost the initiative in the West, were determined to wage a battle of attrition against the Entente.
The main action of the year, however, would be the bloodiest single battle of the war: The Somme. On June 1, the American and French armies began a joint offensive, supported by the largest artillery bombardment yet seen. It would not be enough. While the American and French units were better equipped with artillery and ammunition, they lacked a sufficient number of heavy guns to destroy the well-prepared German bunkers. Further, the gunners lacked sufficient accuracy to drop shells to maximum effect on the front.
In spite of an average of fifty tonnes of explosives and shrapnel being dropped on each kilometer of front, many of the frontline soldiers survived the barrage in their deep dug-outs, and savaged the infantry in no-man's-land as soon as the barrage lifted. In spite of the outright failures of the initial attacks, the assaults continued until November, with the Heer giving ground slowly and at great cost.
In late July, the British Army under General Haig joined the battle on the northern flank, hoping to provide the extra push necessary to collapse the German defenses. Unfortunately for the Entente, the British proved no more effective than their American or French allies, and were similarly savaged. While the British Army fielded its wonder weapon, the tank, in September, this proved to be entirely underwhelming, and had very little effect on the outcome of the battle. Many of the tanks broke down before they reached the starting line, and those that did begin the assault could not sustain the offensive. But, in spite of this, the tank proved to be an effective terror weapon, and the proof of concept had been made.
Both the American and French armies soon formed their own tank corps. However, the bodies continued to pile up at the Somme. By the time the offensives ceased in early November, there were over 900,000 casualties for the Entente, and perhaps 600,000 for the Germans. Little more than 13 km at the deepest penetration, the Somme was a catastrophic debacle. However, the German army could little afford the causalities either. The Somme truly represented the attritional phase the war had entered.
The State of Exception on the Home Front
By September, it was abundantly clear to the War Cabinet that the political costs of the war had become astronomical. The upcoming general election would likely result in a disastrous political defeat for the National Unity Government. With the continuing bloody nose at the Somme, the debacle at Jutland, and the seething unrest at home, the government was faced with politically catastrophic consequences.
Thus Wilson did what had been previously unthinkable: dozens of opposition Congressional candidates were arrested and held without trial by federal and state police. Patriotic citizen groups brutalized Socialist Labor Party gatherings, and attempted to suppress the vote in November. And the truly unheard of happened: Democrats and Republicans did not stand for election against each other.
Such brutal, unconstitutional exercises of power were justified, as always, to defend the Constitution and the state against a clear and present danger.
However, as always, there was skullduggery afoot, even within the National Unity government. President Taft declined Wilson's proposal that he run for a third term as president. In a seeming gesture of goodwill, Taft instead offered for the Republican Party to not run a candidate in the 1916 election, and instead back prominent Democrat Thomas R. Marshall on a unity ticket, with a Republican as his running mate.
While the resulting deals would give the Democratic Party its first taste of power in ages, it would also place the political cost of the war firmly at the feet of the Democratic Party. The Republican Party would quickly capitalize on this after the conclusion of the war, victorious or otherwise, and place the entire blame for the war on the Democrats.
Economically, the American worker was somewhat secure. Unemployment had dropped to 2.5 percent by mid-year 1916, completely unheard of levels. Immigrants from China, Japan, and Latin America were being hired for farm or war industry at the ports of entry to keep up with the demand for labor. With much of France's native industry under German occupation, American industry boomed thanks to the demand generated by French and British orders, themselves buoyed by favorable loans given by American financial institutions and secured by the United States government. And through the central control of war production in the Department of Industrial Coordination, the American industry rapidly transformed itself with the application of scientific management and patent sharing.
Wages ticked up modestly, held down by a mixture of government intervention and public diplomacy. Rationing of many basic consumer goods and food ensured workers and farmers would invest their gains in government bonds to support the war effort. The public face of the system of wage and price controls, rationing, conscription and Taylorism was one of patriotic sacrifice for the freedom of the people of the United States. In practice, the system was immensely corrupt, and the Wilson government made few attempts at seriously curbing it.
The scions of rich and politically connected families received draft deferments, or posts at the much expanded US Military Academy in West Point, all but guaranteeing they would miss the present slaughter. Luxuries of the rich were excluded from rationing, and few local sumptuary ordinances regulating restaurants, which were unrationed, were seriously enforced. A perception of corruption and war profiteering was widespread. An unreasonably high number of defective rifles, machine guns, and munitions made it to the front. Food and clothing for the troops was another target of war profiteering, and the US government's overtaxed resources faced difficulty combating it. In one of its last acts before the 1916 General election, Wilson's government moved to nationalize munition production, to meet demands for quality and quantity that the previous system of subcontracting had failed to do.
The much cowed labor movement made political hay of these scandals, focusing efforts away from direct resistance towards criticism of corruption, and profiteering. It proved to be an effective way to condemn rent-seekers and capitalist bloodsuckers while avoiding the worst of the wartime environment.
General Election, 1916
Presidential Results
Wikibox courtesy of @Asami
Congressional Results
|
House of Representatives |
Seats |
Change |
|
Republican Party |
190 |
-45 |
|
Democratic Party |
182 |
+22 |
|
Socialist Labor Party |
63 |
+23 |
|
U.S. Senate |
||
|
Republican Party |
47 |
-2 |
|
Democratic Party |
41 |
-3 |
|
Socialist Labor |
8 |
+8 |
- U.S.C. 18, Pt 1, Ch 37. Specifically, IOTL Schenck was convicted for "causing and attempting to cause insubordination, &c., in the military and naval forces…and to obstruct the recruiting and enlistment service of the United States…" while in a time of war. See Schenck v. United States, 249 US 47, 48-9 (1919).
- IOTL, See Debs v. United States, 249 U.S. 211 (1919) and Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616 (1919). Notably, these cases also involved Socialist Party politicians being convicted for speaking out against the war.
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- Location
- 2038
Another great update. Perhaps some hints at some serious discontent in the trenches themselves in 1917 (the WWI mutinies are truly fascinating) to mirror the home front. Is any American assistance going to Russia?
I note that Verdun seems to be a French offensive rather than a German one, probably because there are now a lot of Americans to hold the line and free up French troops to die elsewhere. I wonder how the casualties will shape up. OTL the two sides took roughly equal losses IIRC, but here I assume the French won't be attacking proper modern fortifications, but then again I wouldn't expect any tactical brilliance at this stage.
8 million votes is pretty impressive. The SLP's first states are the low-population extractive states, oil and silver I guess. It's quite telling. This is Oklahoma's first presidential election, no? It's a Fun Fact™ that the socialist movement was very strong there at this time, of course it's still a Red state so some things really never change. Does Socialist Labor have any governors or control any state legislatures yet?
I note that Verdun seems to be a French offensive rather than a German one, probably because there are now a lot of Americans to hold the line and free up French troops to die elsewhere. I wonder how the casualties will shape up. OTL the two sides took roughly equal losses IIRC, but here I assume the French won't be attacking proper modern fortifications, but then again I wouldn't expect any tactical brilliance at this stage.
8 million votes is pretty impressive. The SLP's first states are the low-population extractive states, oil and silver I guess. It's quite telling. This is Oklahoma's first presidential election, no? It's a Fun Fact™ that the socialist movement was very strong there at this time, of course it's still a Red state so some things really never change. Does Socialist Labor have any governors or control any state legislatures yet?
- Location
- The left-wing of the impossible
Yes, the Russian Empire is getting some assistance in terms of credit and raw materials, but it's a sort of hush-hush thing, lest it undermine the state. Emperor Nicholas II and his government are in somewhat of a bind about this, because of attempts to maintain the appearance of being a great power (historically, there was more assistance given to Kerensky's government, when the imperial system was collapsing).
Yes, Germany can't get localized superiority to engage in offensive action presently, so they're digging in and trying to draw out the struggle until the war can be won in the East.
Yup, historically radicalism was strongest in the extractive states, which tended to have very little in the way of a middle strata between poor homesteaders, miners, loggers, and support infrastructure, and their employers/creditors. They have pluralities in the state legislatures of these states, and at least in Montana and Oklahoma's case, the governor's office as well, because the state Democrats and Republicans did not work out a unity ticket.
- Location
- 2038
What can potential SLP state governments even do, at this point/in the 20s, to move towards the minimum programme? I imagine a lot of stuff would violate federal law and/or fall afoul of the supreme court especially in wartime. Are there state affiliate parties with a certain amount of autonomy or is it a more centralised party structure?
- Location
- The left-wing of the impossible
In truth, very little. They can keep the police/national guard from being used against strikers, stop rental evictions, and generally enforce health and safety laws on employers and landlords. But that's of limited utility because in the wartime environment, unemployment isn't the pressing issue, and the federal government does have means of quashing strikes.
- Location
- At your local SPCA
Yes.
Fucking yes.
This and Pacific War Redux are my favorite Alt-TL's on the interwebs. I'm glad to see it migrated here.
Fucking yes.
This and Pacific War Redux are my favorite Alt-TL's on the interwebs. I'm glad to see it migrated here.
Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself