Reds! A Revolutionary Timeline

[AKuz]

I guess we aren't going to hear much about the impact of the Flu Epidemic?

 

[Caesar_33]

I guess we aren't going to hear much about the impact of the Flu Epidemic?

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I remember hearing that an update on the flu epidemic was in the works after being passed over on the ah.com version, but I can't promise anything.

 

[Libertad]

I am a bit curious on the development towards a different electoral college system and how will the map for the 1924 elections will look like then. I hope a map can be done for that election.

Also we are going beyond the 435 seats of the House, right? So there will be more electoral votes as well. Not sure how doable the electoral map can be if that's the case.

The National Congress of Soviets? So there's a precursor for the 1933 Congress of Soviets then? Anything that it did accomplished? Is the Manhattan Soviet retained as the government of Manhattan now?

Is the Wood administration going to reduce taxes as well and go on the 1920s OTL Republican route that created the conditions for the Depression to start...?

 

[Shevek23]

I am a bit curious on the development towards a different electoral college system and how will the map for the 1924 elections will look like then. I hope a map can be done for that election.

Also we are going beyond the 435 seats of the House, right? So there will be more electoral votes as well. Not sure how doable the electoral map can be if that's the case....

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I was very confused by these questions--I am an electoral systems wonk of sorts, and thought I would have noticed radical changes, even just serious proposals being considered seriously if not enacted yet. In 1933 of course quite a lot of change will happen! But then all the terms you are using--Electoral college system, Presidency, House, the USA itself--will all go out the window.

OTL the decision of the House to fix the number of Representatives at 435 was made in the 1920s sometime--also there was no reapportionment of the House in the 1920s OTL though of course it there was every reason to do it and not doing so violated the Constitution. Congress apparently just did not feel like it.

Meanwhile, electorally things seem to be exactly as OTL, except perhaps for the exact size of the House which is up to Congressional discretion. But it seems that barring the possibility that some individual states might experiment with goofy things like at large districts (when not compelled to by being apportioned only one CD, I mean) for some of their Congressional delegation--say California has 10 apportioned positions, and the legislature decides to divide the state into 5 CD each electing one FPTP and the whole state votes some other way to elect 5 statewide--everyone votes for House Representatives the same old fashioned FPTP in each district to elect one for all resident there. And the Presidential elections as late as Leonard Wood's have been illustrated with Wiki type boxes that clearly show each one is being elected the same old way, by the creaky old electoral vote system, and the numbers look to me such that by and large Congress has chosen the same numbers of Reps as OTL, or pretty close to it. I have not detected a whiff of discussion of reform of the EV system or its abolition in favor of straight popular vote based systems.

If you want to have a conversation about an alternate system that involves electoral votes of a sort, though wielded by the leading vote winners in the Presidential national election, by all means PM me, I have ideas I want critiqued and discussed and shared. But these have nothing to do with this TL, where reforms have happened but differently than OTL.

Reviewing to see what sort of reform of the Presidential election you might be talking about, I found nothing, but I did find some debate on the nature of post-Revolution American Soviet government I might want to horn in on. But we haven't got there yet in main canon!

Meanwhile--I did not notice one way or the other if the OTL drive to compel all states to choose their US federal Senate delegation by direct popular vote rather than as was typical early in the Constitutional era and still quite prevelant OTL until the Amendment requiring all states to run public elections for the office, having the Legislature or perhaps Governor or some commission or something handpick these state's Senators. OTL it was one of a package of Progressive reforms, the others including the OTL version of affirming the legal foundation of an income tax and mandating Congress to implement one (has a version here), foundation of the Federal Reserve banking system (has a parallel here, part of the same Amendment that also established income tax) and much later, in the context of wartime politics, the right of women to vote in all states (ATL version comes considerably earlier than 1920) and Prohibition.

It looks to me like the Senate proposal got filtered out or sidetracked or perhaps just didn't come as near serious consideration. It would seem that in 1920, as OTL in 1910, in some states direct election was established by state law but in others other methods were retained, and as the clock is running out on the old USA, the whole thing will be mooted along with the Senate itself by the time the dust settles from the upcoming Revolution. No Senate post 1933, and we'll see if there are any directly elected offices at the top, all Union Soviet level or not.

So there's your one major electoral difference if I am right--quite a few citizens never vote for a Senator and can influence their selection only via electing their state legislators and then lobbying them.

 

[Libertad]

To give you a hint @Shevek23, the 1924, 1928 and 1932 presidential elections were all done with all states using the Nebraska/Maine Congressional district method of apportionment of electoral votes IOTL.

What I am curious about is that if someone or if Aelita can create an electoral college map for these elections knowing that the apportionment of seats ITTL for the House goes beyond the 435-rule IOTL. After all; it's set in cannon that there are 567 electoral votes total for the 1932 elections, which Norman Thomas won by getting 398 of them in a landslide.

The U.S. Senate remain composed of senators elected by their state legislatures/governors as the Republican Party do not want the Senate to get a lot of directly elected senators that may come from WPA. Of course, with the Senate getting overshadowed by the House ITTL, it may not matter much that the Senate remain as it is.

 

[Shevek23]

To give you a hint @Shevek23, the 1924, 1928 and 1932 presidential elections were all done with all states using the Nebraska/Maine Congressional district method of apportionment of electoral votes IOTL.

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That would indeed have evaded my cursory eyeball scan for canon material talking about it, because I reasoned, aha if the Wikibox shows EV in elections, the reform is in the future, and clicked on to the next post, and the next.

The CD system sucks in my opinion, being essentially no improvement...indeed though I can't prove it, I have seen it claimed, and it seemed plausible enough, that Mitt Romney would have won with the same vote pattern as OTL in 2012 if the CD system had been implemented. Elsewhere on another thread I just recently computed that a percentage shift of popular votes to shift the Republicans to the minority party in Congress would be so large they would be demoted to about a 43 percent minority popular vote, and still retaining control of the House with 218 seats and control of 29 state delegations! That gives us some idea how the CD system can elect a candidate with the minority of popular vote to President. That is, even more often than the statewide Winner Take All system does.

Not that this is any objection to Aelita declaring that a sufficiently large number of Americans in her ATL early in the 20th century might have been mesmerized by its apparent fairness and simplicity into believing it would tend to hew more closely to popular vote.

The devil I believe is in the details of how the states draw the district lines. In related gerrymandering news, in 2012 the people of Michigan, in their state legislature vote, voted 55 percent to 45 percent (a little less really since some Libertarians and other third party candidates and independents got enough votes to amount to over 1 percent too) Democratic to Republican, yet the FPTP district results were 59 (of 110 districts) to 51 Republican seats to Democratic--almost exactly the reverse percentage! Since there is no way to draw perfect district lines, at best these systems introduce chaos...at worst of course some gerrymandering mastermind can work powerful mischief with them.

So, I guess I overlooked something. Would you be so kind as to point to the canon text here in this latest version that confirms the CD system was adopted? To be universal would require an Amendment, since the Constitution currently (original articles are still unamended Otl) specifies that the states have complete control over how they will choose the Presidential electors--they can put it up to a lottery, or put the assistant comptroller of the state DMV in charge of naming them personally, or whatever they like. The only restriction is that they must name a number of individual people equal in number to their assigned EV (Congress apportionment plus two Senators) and that these people must meet in a place inside the state specified by the state on a date Congress names, to deliberate and then cast their separate votes. So to specify that two electors are chosen by statewide WTA election and the rest are voted FPTP in each existing CD in each state alike requires an amendment, otherwise any state can refuse and stick with WTA statewide or letting the legislature pick the electors or the governor handpicking them or whatever else takes their fancy--realistically, whatever else the people of the state who elect the legislature think is reasonable enough not to punish their legislature for by voting in a different one. I can see a political situation arising where strong advocacy causes many states to experiment with the CD system voluntarily, but the thing is the reason WTA is so overwhelmingly favored OTL is that each state sees other states resorting to WTA as unfair streamrollering of the nuanced outcome of a CD or proportional system or the like, and that their waffling with mixed electors causes their state to be undervalued in the process, so they have to respond with WTA to stay in the game. It screws half the electorate every time, but it is felt by the losers this cycle that they will get theirs back next cycle or eventually and having lost 100 percent this time they don't want to be generous and go halfsies when the wheel brings their party up again, so round and round it goes.

Thus, if CD is not mandated by law overriding each state, which means a Constitutional Amendment is required, it is highly unlikely for all states to choose it freely, and almost as unlikely for more than two or three to adhere to it at any particular moment.

So--for you to be right, there has to be an Amendment accounting for it, and there should be canon text stating that.

Note that what is canon elsewhere is not necessarily canon here! We have to wait for Aelita or other authorized authors to post it here to be sure it carries over.

What I am curious about is that if someone or if Aelita can create an electoral college map for these elections knowing that the apportionment of seats ITTL for the House goes beyond the 435-rule IOTL. After all; it's set in cannon that there are 567 electoral votes total for the 1932 elections, which Norman Thomas won by getting 398 of them in a landslide.

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An EV map with the CD system mandated would be a nightmare to create, fun as it might be to view. You have to draw 435 or more bloody districts, and color in each one, and figure out a way to display the two EV chosen statewide when the whole map of each state is crammed full of districts! In an ATL you have to define the districts and if they have really committed to more than 435 districts, it means the whole thing is off OTL track and you can't even steal them from OTL therefore, except for states that happen to apportion to the same number of districts as OTL, and even then population distributions will be somewhat different!

You want one of these done anew, for every 4 years? Have pity! Have mercy!

Anyway it is of some interest to know there are more CD than OTL but not of much great consequence I think. I don't see any wiggle room for creating more than 48 states, the same ones as OTL (prerevolution, after that the sky is the limit for Republics and whatnot) so we have 96 Senate seats thus EV, leaving 471 from your quote for 1932. Which I know is not canon here yet! Anyway, 471, 435, what is the practical difference from our point of view? The bigger states have a few more Members, that is all. Also it tends to dilute the small state advantage in the Electoral Vote system a little bit, a tiny bit closer to population proportional for Presidential elections. Nothing more.

The U.S. Senate remain composed of senators elected by their state legislatures/governors as the Republican Party do not want the Senate to get a lot of directly elected senators that may come from WPA. Of course, with the Senate getting overshadowed by the House ITTL, it may not matter much that the Senate remain as it is.

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That makes sense--of course OTL the establishment did not want it either but they got steamrollered by a lot of up in arms people, so the Amendment passed. OTOH a lot of good stuff such as women's guarantee of enfranchisement did pass earlier.

No Prohibition in sight either it seems! Note that as with directly elected Senators this does not prove it isn't a thing locally in various states.

And your notion that "the Republicans" blocked direct election of Senators again will not apply to all states, unless as with the CD electoral vote system someone passes an Amendment to mandate legislature appointment and forbid direct election--otherwise Congress can no more forbid a state to directly elect their Senators than they can mandate another state that likes the legislature appointment system to go to direct election anyway.

 

[Spartakrod]

Excerpts from Amanda Waver, The Birth of Columbia, (New York: Prole Posts, 2014) ​

Despite a legacy stretching nearly eighty years, arguably the most frequently analysed portion of what many would call my great-grandmother's most important contribution to revolutionary America was her wartime work. Militantly anti-fascist and constantly trying to push the envelope of animation, many would call the series the animated companion of Frank Capra's "Why We Fight", even though the series started work years before the war actually began.

Created to be a "Revolutionary mythology for a new America", Commander Columbia would break from her contemporaries on the pages of comic books by drawing not from the pages of pulp science fiction like Captain America or Superman but from ancient legends and folklore to create a "pantheon of gods and demons, and heroes and monsters."

Even this day, Samantha insists that "Columbia is a goddess, an American Jupiter, not a superhero" when asked. So for her characters, the battle against Nazism was more than just a political struggle, but a red Titanomachy waged against the sternguard of the reaction by the vanguard of the revolution.

But it would be hardly fitting to speak of Columbia without first talking about her creator. Samantha Moriah Waver was born to second generation Jewish and first generation Irish Immigrant parents in New York City in the year of 1903 and showed an early interest in art and mythology.

She devoured whatever books on myths and legends could find, and was also noted for a deep appreciation of science fiction literature. However she one day came to ask her mother what the American Gods were, only to be told that America didn't have any. This set her on a long path of trying to create her own deities for the modern world if nobody worshipped any of the old ones anymore.

When she saw her first animated films in 1908 she was immediately transfixed and would spend all of her free time practising her craft, trying to break down the process of animation and create her own little flip books.

But had her parents not been buoyed by her father's medical practise, it's unlikely that she would have had the time to hone her artistic abilities to the point that she had become a locally famous artist in her own neighbourhood, often taking commissions or selling drawings to buy more paper, pencils, and other art supplies.

With the start of the Great War came hard times for Samantha however. Her oldest brother Seamus and her uncle Tobiah would both be drafted into the war despite their protestations, while her aunt Mary and her oldest sister Hannah would go off to serve as a nurse, with her father soon being made to serve as a wartime doctor.

Adults in her neighborhood suddenly came in quite short supply, and in her own words "none of the reasons the grown ups gave me for why everyone left made any sense." She would frequently write to her relatives serving in the war, and often mailed them drawings and stories (most of which are still preserved today.) But while her relatives were in the trenches, conditions back home were hardly pleasant either.

Rationing soon set in and imposed a great deal more austerity on her family. Her diet worsened considerably and the sweets she'd often enjoyed at least once a week were far scarcer to provide milk and sugar for soldiers overseas.

"Meat just about disappeared from the table", she recalls, and she grew visibly thinner throughout the war. But more than just affecting her body, the war helped affect her politics. The conflict was deeply unpopular for new yorkers, and her teacher was a "fired up IWW radical who made sure we knew the papers were pushing lies about the war."

Her mother, already a Socialist Labor Party voter, increasingly began to talk politics with her remaining children, telling her about how the "owners and landlords are getting fat while we starve and fight." A hand painted sign she made in support of Reimer's presidential campaign remains in permanent exhibition in the Manhattan museum of labour alongside the poster she painted for Morris Hillquit which even came to be used in a small run in his mayoral election campaign.

Eventually even her art habits would be affected as increasingly frequent strikes cut into the supply of lumber and reduced the availability of pencils and paper, causing her output of drawings and flip animations to plummet, with the worst being in 1918. However the news of her older brother having been killed in Italy during the Battle of the Piave, after having been listed as missing in action the previous year, was to send shockwaves through her world.

Her mother became inconsolable with grief and rage at the people who sent her son to die "spitting curses at everyone from Cadorna to Wilson". And the death of her sister from poison gas in France only further soured the mood at home. Angry and despairing, she joined the mass strikes that would rock New York City in 1918.

In the cold months of January, she joined the picket lines of dock and factory workers, intellectuals, artists, housewives, and children gathered to protest low wages, unfair and uneven rationing that left the rich and well connected still quaffing down "ice cream and steaks like nothing had happened", long and gruelling working hours, and unfair treatment of non-white and female workers.

Though the crowds signing "Bread and Roses" were hardly calling for revolutionary action, the response against them was brutal. With the Pinkertons too afraid of the public fallout if they attacked a crowd of women and children and the police similarly hesitant to act, the National Guard was dispatched to break the strike.

Tear gas, firehoses, batons, rubber bullets, and charging horses were used on the crowds. Her baby brother Sean would end up severely injured by the hooves of a panicked horse as the army cavalryman on top lost control, while she herself was struck with a baton by Corporal Lance Jackson across the head and sent crumpling to the ground.

Though she survived without lasting injury, the experience introduced her to a new level of anger. Every day she could, she would be off joining a strike of some sort, and the drawings and flip books she produced had grown outright revolutionary in character.

Eugene Debs, Emma Goldman, Vladimir Lenin, and Peter Kropotkin became her idols, and when the German Revolution began and brought about an end to the Hohenzollern monarchy she came to be introduced to the names of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht[1] and soon idolised them as well, organising a commemoration event for Karl when he was killed[1].

Despite a spell of Spanish Flu that she survived due in large part to her less than ideal health[2] after years of rationing, she remained active in wildcat strikes and agitative movements throughout the remainder of 1918 and 1919. With the return of her father and uncle from war however, the revolutionary mood had yet to dissipate.

And with masses of veterans angry about the difficulty of finding work after suffering through years of the trenches in western Asia and Europe she would find herself joined by many faces she hadn't seen in years on the picket lines.

Throughout the summer of 1919, now freed from the duties of school, she'd produce some of her "angriest work yet"; her uncle couldn't find work and despite the war being over living conditions were slow to improve. The cack-handedness of the government's response to the Spanish Influenza pandemic[3] had only hardened the anger many felt to those who survived by hiding themselves away from the proles who gave them their luxuries, and many had found themselves bankrupted by medical expenses.

She'd accompany her father as he offered free medical assistance to his fellow union members, and would come to meet her future husband Spartak Leonovych Kolisnyk, born to Russo-Jewish immigrants fleeing persecution[4], when her father helped treat him for a case of strep throat.


______________________________________________________________________________________

Author's notes:

[1] TTL, Rosa manages to survive Wiemar's Thermidor moment, Karl does not.

[2] It's worth noting that the Spanish Flu is deadlier to people in good health due to just how the pathogen affects the body. A Cytokine Storm is survivable by the malnourished or the old or young, but is devastating to well fed adults. Samantha Waver is someone who in our timeline, probably died in the 1918 Spanish Flu outbreak despite seeming to be in good health.

[3] Continuing from my earlier point, the Pandemic is not quite as severe in America because living conditions are harsher. It is still the most devastating outbreak of disease in the history of the United States (the native genocides not included), but many who would have otherwise died survive. However when the scale of the tragedy becomes apparent it becomes a major sticking point for the SLP because so many people dying of plague in the 20th century is utterly abhorrent.

[4] More specifically from the post-Russo-Japanese war pogroms where the Russian Empire felt its most intense yet wave of paranoia about the Jews in part due to the aid the likes of Jacob Schiff gave to the Japanese war effort to keep them in the financial black.

 

[Aelita]

Program

and

Constitution

Workers' Party of America

Adopted
At National Convention

New York City
18 - 28 August 1921

Preface​

The Great War has brought untold misery and chaos in its wake. Millions of workers have been maimed and slaughtered in the conflict of the imperialist governments. Capitalist society is face to face with social and industrial collapse; Kingdoms and empires have disappeared; but republics, ruled by an exploiting class more powerful and more unscrupulous than the kings and emperors, have taken their place.

National hatred rules the world. In spite of peace treaties and international conferences, the relations between the nations are more strained than ever. Intense commercial rivalry, and the resentment of the weak and vanquished nations against their victorious oppressors are a constant menace to world peace. The capitalists, dismayed at the chaos, and yet unable to understand it or even to contemplate its economic causes, are blindly steering the world towards new wars.

In Germany and Austria, the masses are being bled to meet the exorbitant war indemnities. In England, France and Italy, an impoverished proletariat is paying for armaments on a larger and more stupendous scale than ever before. Every gun that is made, every battleship that is launched and every shell that is manufactured, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, to add to the profits of the exploiters, and increases the poverty of the wage slaves.

Even before this war social legislation met only inadequately the needs of a proletariat condemned to uncertainties of existence under capitalism. Today it is a farce. No lasting improvement of the condition of the workingman under capitalism is any longer dreamed of. More than ever before, hunger and' want are rife among the workers. And the violent uprisings that result are met with merciless suppression by the master class. All capitalist governments are openly fighting the battle for the employers. The legislatures, courts and the executive powers stand behind them. The struggle of the workers for the most elementary necessities of life is met with ruthless persecution, and tends to become a fight for political power – a revolutionary struggle.

The Workers' Party will base its policies on the international nature of this struggle. It will strive to make the American labor movement an integral part of the revolutionary movement of the workers of the world. The Workers' Party will expose the Second International, which is continually splitting the ranks of labor and betraying the working masses to the enemy. It will also warn and guard the workers against the attempt of the so-called Two-and-a-Half International to mislead them.

Disillusioned by the cowardly and traitorous conduct of their own leaders, and inspired by the proletarian revolution in Russia, the workers of the world have organized the Communist International. Despite the bitter opposition of the Capitalists and their Progressive lieutenants, the Communist International is growing rapidly; it has become a world power, the citadel and hope of the workers of every country.

Even America, the bulwark of world capitalism, is suffering acutely from the general disorganization. Its economic and financial life has been caught in the violent, swirling maelstrom of war. Because of the catastrophic appreciation of European currency it can find no outlet for the products of its industry. Its foreign trade has declined approximately fifty per cent. Armies of unemployed crowd the cities. Millions are out of work. War prosperity is ended. The bread lines have come. Capitalism is totally unable to cope with the situation. Its utter helplessness was revealed at the recent Government Unemployment Conference. Nowhere is there a serious effort to ameliorate this condition. On the contrary, the employers are using it to increase their power of exploitation and oppression. The steel trusts, the oil monopoly, the railroads, the meat-packing and textile industries have already made heavy cuts in the workers' pay. A powerful anti-worker campaign is being waged by the Employer's Association. Even the soldiers who have given their all in the fight for capitalist "democracy" are now clubbed and jailed at the first sign of protest against the destitution forced upon them by this same "democracy," which is in fact a dictatorship of the exploiting class. Everywhere it is robbing the workers of the small gains they have won through many years of struggle.

Platform​

Imperialism

For generations the workers have been producing a surplus over and above what they have received in wages. A part of this surplus the capitalists have invested in the development and exploitation of the industrially backward countries of Asia, Africa and South America. These countries have been cowed into submission as colonies or "spheres of influence." In order to safeguard their investments in these countries, European and American capitalists have seized control of the local governments and oppressed and terrorized the native populations. Today these exploited and oppressed people, inspired by the Russian Revolution, are demanding freedom. In China, in India and Egypt, in Haiti, in the Philippines, in South America, in Mexico and South Africa – everywhere the spirit of revolt is awakening with new strength and momentum.

In the United States, the master class has not only been culpable for immense atrocities, both to foreign peoples and to its own sons it sends overseas to protect the plunder of rich men at home, but has also been complicit in the crimes of the other imperialist powers.

The Workers' Party is the only party opposed to the despoliation and plunder of the peoples of the world to serve the interests of capital. As in our own struggles against our domestic oppressors, we recognize an organic solidarity with all of the oppressed peoples of the world, and that an injury to one is an injury to all.

It is the program of the Workers' Party to oppose all foreign imperialist adventures. We demand that no more blood be spilt for plundered riches. We will not stand idly by while humanity is placed on a cross of gold. With the establishment of a Workers' Republic in the United States, the Party shall ally itself with the forces of liberation across the world.

The Class Struggle

The whole capitalist system of production rests upon the robbery and enslavement of the workers. In the United States, the Morgans, the Rockefellers, the Schwabs, the railroad junkers, the coal barons, the industrial magnates, own the means of production and the workers cannot secure work without their consent. They are unable to earn the means of buying food, clothing, and homes to live in without the permissions of these financial and industrial kings. The owners of capital are so many czars and Kaisers, each with a group of workers ranging from a few hundreds to tens of thousands whose right to life they hold in their hands through their control of the workers' opportunity to earn a living.

The conditions on which the workers are permitted to work is the enrichment of the capitalists. They must prostrate themselves, and work for wages which will leave in their masters' hands the lion's share of what they produce. They much add more millions to Rockefeller's billions, they must create new hundreds of millions for Morgan, they must add to the swollen fortunes of the financial and industrial lords of the country.

In the Declaration of Independence, a document underlying the institutions of the country, it was laid down as a principle that all men are endowed with certain inalienable rights, and "that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

These rights do not exist for the thirty million American wage workers and their families. The workers of this country are industrial slaves. They cannot work and earn a living without the consent of the capitalists.

The struggle against these conditions is continually breaking out in strikes. The history of this country during the last half century is full of examples of the rebellion of the workers. This class struggle for enough bread to feed their families has always been met with violence by the kings of industry.

The mass power of the exploited class is its strongest weapon in the struggle against the capitalists. And the capitalists are aware of this, and rightly fear the power of a band of working men. The capitalists seek to divide the workers against each other, through patronage to skilled laborers, a class of enforcers on their payroll, and by setting native workers against immigrants, and White workers against their Negro, Chicano and Chinese brothers.

By hook or crook, the masters have maintained their power. But the successes of the Workers' Party, and of the International Worker Solidarity Union have testified to the ultimate historical inevitability of socialism. The power of the capitalist state, and its armies, police, prisons and propaganda apparatus have not been sufficient to defeat the simple resistance of ordinary workers across the country. The powers they wield are great, but the power held by the workers, organized as a class to fulfill the interests of class, is greater than the might of any army.

The task of the Workers' Party in this era of revolutionary upsurge is to continue this struggle. The Workers' Party shall serve as the university of the working class. Through its union federation, the party shall fight the day to day struggles for better conditions, organizing resources to ensure the maximal defense of the immediate interests of the working class. The Party has committed itself to fight every struggle for workers' power, and to unite ever greater numbers of workers into the class struggle.

The Government

The workers' struggle has also been a struggle against the capitalist state, for the state is the instrument of class rule. Recent events have testified all too well to this inescapable truth; far too many mothers have buried their sons thanks to the relentless brutality of the capitalists' cronies. The parties of the establishment are in actuality a single capitalist party, united against the Workers' Party.

In the struggle against the imperialist war, the Democrats and Republicans, who claim to be foes and irreconcilably opposed to one another, had no problem collaborating to bring the army and police to bear against workers who did not wish to see their sons die for Morgan's gold. This repression has continued even after the capitalists triumphed, and began to feast upon the corpses of their foes.

The workers cannot wage a successful struggle against capitalist exploitation and oppression while the government remains in the control of the capitalists. The Workers' Party is prepared to fight the political struggle of the class war; a struggle for the workers to at last take control of the government and direct their own lives.

To this end, the Workers' Party will use all the tools at its disposal to fight this political struggle, including elections. The Workers' Party will not foster the illusion, as is done by the yellow Socialists, that the workers can achieve their emancipation through election alone. The institutions of the country have been designed to prevent exactly that.

The so-called democracy of the United States is a sham. The constitution makes it impossible for a majority antagonistic to the ruling class to make its will effective. The merchants, bankers and landlords of 1787 wrote the constitution to protect the interests of their class. A majority of people cannot change the constitution. The votes of two-thirds of the members of the legislatures of three-fourths of the states is required to pass a constitutional amendment. One-fourth of the states, in which there may live only one-fortieth of the population, can prevent any change to the law of the land.

The House of Representatives and the President are elected every four years, while the Senate is elected by the state legislatures every two years for six year terms. The Senate may block the actions of the House of Representatives, and the President may veto the actions of both bodies. And over and above them stands the Supreme Court, which can nullify laws which all three unite in passing.

In addition to these protections, millions of workers are further disenfranchised through naturalization laws. Hundreds of thousands cannot vote because of residential qualifications, which through the necessity of earning a living wage make it impossible for them to comply with. The capitalists control thousands of newspapers through which they seek to shape the ideas of the masses in their interests. They control the schools, the colleges, the pulpits, the moving picture theatres, all of which are part of the machinery through which the capitalists seek to dominate the workers.

Under these conditions, talk of democracy is to throw sand in the eyes of the workers. This democracy is a sham. And yet the masters call the people to pay their reverence to this nation's "greatness" every Fourth of July. What, to the American worker, is the Fourth of July and all its pageantry for freedom and "democracy"? We, the Workers' Party, answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, this celebration is a sham; the boasted liberty, an unholy license; the national greatness, swelling vanity; the sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; the denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; the shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; the prayers and hymns, sermons and thanksgivings, with all the religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy – a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.

There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the capitalists of the United States, at this very hour. The scale of the brutalities unleashed upon the American workers horrifies even the reactionaries of British and French Empire. The pages of The Times of London are filled with accounts of the atrocities committed to maintain order in the United States, which are read with horrified fascination by the establishment, unaware that the storm of class warfare that grips the United States will one day engulf the whole of the world.

Under conditions such as these, the Workers' Party recognizes the impossibility of winning emancipation through the use of the machinery of the existing government. Nevertheless, the Workers Party realizes the importance of election campaigns in developing the political consciousness of the working class, and that independent political action within the existing government is necessary for revolutionary political action. Therefore, the Workers Party will participate in elections and use them for propaganda and agitation, while holding to the fundamental truth, long forgotten and heard only in whispers, that it is the right of the people to alter or abolish governments detrimental to their interests.

The Workers' Republic

The program of the Workers' Party is a revolutionary one, no less monumental than the American or French Revolution. The Workers' Party seeks to transform the institutions of administration in the United States based upon the experience of the revolutionary workers in Russia, Hungary and Bavaria. The soviets, or workers' councils, of these revolutionary surges are the proper organizations of the workers' power in times of crisis, arising naturally out of previous struggles and the experiences of workers.

The federations of councils, experimented in the great revolutionary upsurge in the United States under the leadership of the Workers' Party, have proven to be the most effective weapon for democratic liberation by the workers. The Workers' Party shall make the soviets the basis of the future revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

The existing capitalist government is a dictatorship of the capitalists. Today in the United States a comparatively small group of capitalist-financial and industrial kings control the government of the United States, of the states and municipalities.

The Workers' Party rejects the hollow mockery that is the bourgeois dictatorship of capitalism and its sham democracy. Through the institution of the true democracy of workers' power, the working class will maintain its dominance against its enemies, taking hold of the direction of society. The working class as a whole can finally control its own destiny.

The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat shall at once take from the capitalists their plundered wealth, in the form of the control and ownership of the raw materials and machinery of production which the workers are dependent upon for their life, liberty and happiness, and establish collective ownership.

Together with this collective ownership the Workers' Republic will as quickly as possible develop the system of self-management of the industries by the workers. Through the establishment of the socialist system of industry the exploitation and oppression of the workers will be ended. As the power of the capitalists in industry wanes and the lower stage of communism is established, the struggle between the classes will disappear. Through the development of technology and the productive powers of industry, each individual will finally have the freedom to develop his talents to the furthest. And so shall the free development of each be the condition for the free development of all.

The International

The Workers' Party accepts the principle that the class struggle for the emancipation of the working class is an international struggle. The workers of Russia have been obliged to fight against the whole capitalist world in order to maintain their Soviet government and to win the opportunity of rebuilding their system of production on a socialist basis. In this struggle they have had the support of the organized workers of every country.

The future struggles against capitalism will take the same character. In order to win the final victory in the struggle against world capitalism the working class of the world must be united under one leadership.

The leadership in the international struggle which inspires hope in the hearts of the workers of the world and arouses fear in the capitalists of all nations is the leadership of the Communist International, the fraternal organization of Workers' parties around the world.

The Workers' Party declares once again its sympathy with the principles of the Communist International, and enters the struggle against American capitalism, the most powerful of the national groups, and in doing so it takes up the vanguard of the world struggle against capitalism.

 

[Aelita]

Some notable events, 1922

January 8: Derailed by the Great War, the campaign to erect a monument to President Abraham Lincoln in the National Mall resumes.

January 13: Following raids by the Saudi Ikhwan into the British protectorate in Transjordan, the British foreign office terminates relations with the Sultanate of Nejd.

February 2: Ulysses by James Joyce is released

February 8: Pope Pius XI succeeds the now-deceased Pope Benedict XV to become the 259th pope of the Catholic Church.

February 8: The Russian Cheka is reorganized as the State Political Directorate (GPU), ending its extraordinary status.

February 13: The Washington Naval Treaty is signed. The treaty limits battleship size to 40,000 long tons (excepting certain current construction), limits the total fleet size on a ratio of 5:5:3:2:2, and places additional limits on aircraft carriers, cruisers and submarines.

March 1: The United Kingdom issues the Unilateral Declaration of Egyptian Independence, formally recognizing the independence of Egypt with the exception of foreign policy and the military.

March 4: Nosferatu, German impressionist horror film directed by FW Murnau, is released.

March 11: In Mumbai, a young Indian lawyer and independence leader named Mohandas Gandhi is arrested for Sedition.

March 20: The USS Langley (CV-1) is commissioned as the first aircraft carrier in the US Navy.

April 6: Joseph Stalin becomes the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks).

April 13: Samantha Waver is accepted in a job posting at Inkwell Studios.

May 1: In another inroad to reconciliation, President Wood and First Secretary Dyer sign legislation formally declaring May 1st to be a federal holiday, dubbed "International Labor Day". Later that day, Dyer lays out a progressive legislative agenda before the House. The platform contains: legislation establishing a forty-hour standard work week with guaranteed overtime pay, lowering taxes on the poor while increasing income taxes on the wealthy, creating a national health service and a cabinet-level Department of Health, establishing cabinet Departments of Education and Labor, and a law establishing a National Labor Relations Board to streamline adjudication of collective bargaining. The platform is controversial and ambitious, and a crisis of leadership soon erupts.

May 12: Edward Douglass White Jr., Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, passes away.

May 17: New York becomes the first of five states this year to enact measures changing the apportionment of presidential electors from winner-take-all to a congressional district system.

May 19: The All-Russian Young Pioneer Organisation is formed.

May 24: The Turkish Liberation Army captures the city of Smyrna from the Greek Army

June 11: President Wood gives the first ever national radio address. In his speech, he urges moderation and reform to fight the tide of class warfare and militancy within the country. In his words, "the choice is reform or revolution; the rascals in on Wall Street would sooner see revolution before tearing away their claws from their acquired power."

June 18: Nanook of the North , a film documenting the real life excursions of an average Inuit man, is released, the first "documentary" (despite being heavily staged and fictionalized)

July 8: President Wood kills the Fordney-McCumber Tariff Act, preventing a trade conflict with Europe.

July 14: The Vicksburg Pogrom: white reactionaries, assisted by the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, attempted to disrupt a local meeting of the Tenant Farmers Union. While the initial attack is successful, the eruption of strikes and counterattacks by the communist-led TFU will force a federal response in the coming days.

July 18: The first Republican Party Conference begins in Philadelphia. The party conference drafts a party constitution establishing the Republican Party of the United States of America as a membership organization of state Republican Parties, affiliated political clubs, and the Congressional Republican Party. A standing National Executive Committee is elected at the close of the conference, with President Wood serving as Chairman and First Secretary Dyer as Party Leader.

July 30: The Steelworkers Union founds the "Vulcan" sports club, headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to provide recreation for its members and their families. By years end, the club will have a presence in every steel-making city, offering recreational baseball, rugby, basketball and boxing programs.

August 1: The US Senate confirms Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. as Chief Justice. Harlan F. Stone is appointed Associate Justice. Together with Louis Brandeis and John Hessin Clarke, Wood now has a solid progressive bloc on the court.

August 16: A limited version of Dyer's "Progress Platform" is enacted by the US House. It contains provisions establishing a cabinet Department of Education and Labor, strengthens food and drug regulations, and establishes a 40 hour standard work week.

August 23: The Mexican Civil War ends, following a peace agreement between Emiliano Zapata's Liberation Army of the South, and President Plutarco Calles. The ruling Laborist Party hopes to cement its rule with land reform.

August 27: Armistice is signed between Greece and the Turkish Grand National Assembly. Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal presses claims on Istanbul and Eastern Thrace with British mediators.

September 2: "Black September" begins. 13 known members of the KKK in Mississippi are murdered in retaliation for the Vicksburg lynchings in a campaign by the Mississippi Red Army.

September 18: The Mississippi National Guard is paralyzed by mutiny over attempts to break tenant farmer and industrial strikes. The Great War veterans will not turn their guns on their former comrades.

September 24: "The National Youth March": protests in major cities across the country, organized by the Young Communist League but with participation from the College Republicans and other civic organizations. Marchers demand that, with continued Selective Service registration and state National Guard conscription, voting franchise be extended to eighteen year olds.

October 1: Public Law 64-89 is enacted by the US federal government, opening all federal offices to women.

October 12: US Marshals arrest Warren County Sheriff Eric Jackson* for his participation in the Vicksburg Pogrom. President Wood warns Governor Lee Russell that unless constitutional order is restored, he will be forced to invoke the Insurrection Act.

October 14: The Wheeler Commission, a tripartite investigatory commission on race-relations in the United States, publishes its initial findings, detailing an endemic problem of extralegal violence and unconstitutional vote suppression across the southern United States.

October 18: The British Broadcasting Corporation is founded

October 26: Federal indictments rain down on Mississippi. In total, seventy-two white citizens and four black citizens are charged with violating the Anti-Lynching Act.

October 28: The Italian Fascists stage their "March on Rome", steering Benito Mussolini to power. The Constitution is soon suspended, as a general terror campaign begins on enemies of the Fascists. Elsewhere, the Red Army occupies Vladivostok, signalling an end to major fighting in the Russian Civil War.

November 1: UK General elections occur, precipitated by Conservative withdrawal from the National Coalition. The Conservatives win a razor-thin majority government.

November 3: Mehmed VI, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, formally abdicates from the throne, marking the legal end for the 600 year long Ottoman Empire.

November 4: British archeologist Howard Carter and his team find the entrance to the tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings, untouched for thousands of years.

November 7: US Senate and state level elections. Political violence erupts in Alabama and South Carolina as black citizens engage in civil resistance to win their right to vote.

November 19: Albert Einstein wins the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in relativity (his theories confirmed by the solar eclipse earlier in the year).

December 7: Chinese Kuomintang leader Sun Yat-sen falls seriously ill before the fateful summit with Comintern representative Adolf Joffe. Some fear he is on death's door, and as he recovers Sun Yat-sen begins to consider how the revolution must best survive without him.

December 8: President Wood delivers his State of the Union Address. Broadcast by radio and reprinted in full in newspapers across the country, Wood uses the speech to address the topic of class conflict at home, and violence in the Deep South. He declares that it is a moral imperative to give the heroes of the Great War their due for the blood sacrificed in building this great nation.

December 24: The Japanese Navy commissions Hōshō, the world's first purpose-built aircraft carrier. The new aircraft carrier will serve to test naval and air strategies, and be the first of several aircraft carriers built during the interwar by the Japanese Navy.

December 28: Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Transcaucasia sign a treaty of union, creating the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

December 31: At the end of the year, 8,000 German marks now equal one U.S dollar. The currency is practically worthless, and the inflation shows no sign of stopping.

 

[Libertad]

@Shevek23 , the latest 1922 update confirms it. There was a steady shift of the use of electoral votes to a Congressional district method of apportionment. New York was among the states to use the method for the 1924 election. Yes, I agree with you. This is not going to be a universal phenomenon, especially in states that may still use the winner take all system in protest to this initiative. This may divide the Republicans and Workers' parties opinions as well. Some may push for an amendment for a popular vote system to be introduced but this proposal may remain in committee-level in Congress.

Some states may also start voting their senators through popular vote but this is also not going to be a universal phenomenon and I expect a majority of states still using the old method as per IOTL of election through state legislatures or appointment by state governors, whichever works that ensure Republican/Democratic control of the political system.

 

[Aelita]

@Shevek23 , the latest 1922 update confirms it. There was a steady shift of the use of electoral votes to a Congressional district method of apportionment. New York was among the states to use the method for the 1924 election. Yes, I agree with you. This is not going to be a universal phenomenon, especially in states that may still use the winner take all system in protest to this initiative. This may divide the Republicans and Workers' parties opinions as well. Some may push for an amendment for a popular vote system to be introduced but this proposal may remain in committee-level in Congress.

Some states may also start voting their senators through popular vote but this is also not going to be a universal phenomenon and I expect a majority of states still using the old method as per IOTL of election through state legislatures or appointment by state governors, whichever works that ensure Republican/Democratic control of the political system.

Click to shrink...

As you might note, New York was one of the states that the WPA won in 1920. The move to congressional district apportionment of electors is something done in bad faith, because urban districts have twice as many voters or more than more rural districts. And they're not planning on implementing this in any of the Republican majority states.

This presents some clear constitutional issues, especially since like IOTL, the Congress did not reapportion following the 1920 census. There are other voting based constitutional issues bubbling up as well. Things to think of for the future, now that there's a progressive plurality in SCOTUS

 

[Shevek23]

I see it now, line item dated "May 17." It did not stand out to me. Are there similar moves to CD in prior year recaps I also overlooked, or was Libertad merely anticipating something already established on the other site?

I have been curtailing my involvement there, you see, and regard this thread as the sole true definitive Reds! up to date. When it happens here, it is real, otherwise I figure everything is subject to change.

Anyway I see what is happening here, thank you both for drawing it to my attention! Even without mis-apportionment and gerrymandering, the CD system I suspect is inherently worse than the state winner take all system in terms of matching raw voter preference to the outcome. Since electing a President means "pick one," there is no better answer in a democratic system than "it goes to whoever gets the plurality;" no one else had a better claim. Of course various defenders of EV in its variations will argue that making the result more indirect somehow weighs in other "sectors" in a fashion that is more "republican" than just letting the majority, or rather plurality, rule, but I would like to see a trustworthy nonpartisan analysis. The best I can do is compare the outcome of winner take all versus CD, and generally I cannot do that because I don't have district by district data! It so happens I do have such data for 2016, so maybe I will pop off and see what a universal CD system all across the USA in 2016 would do.

Based on what I know offhand right now, it would 1) give the victory to Trump and 2) do so by a bigger margin than he won OTL. Therefore for 2016 if that is the case, winner take all statewide is better because of course the national plurality was for Clinton and the farther away a system is from that the worse it is. My guess is that if someone had the data to determine CD by CD which presidential candidate each district plurality favored and thus how they would vote CD wise, CD determined EV would track the ratio of plurality to second choice nationally more poorly than winner take all does. It is very counterintutive this should be so! and perhaps the only reason for the evident distortion is that the CD boundaries are themselves grossly manipulated; perhaps with "fair" boundaries the CD system would track voter preference more faithfully as one would naively assume.

But with the best will in the world, fair district boundaries are a moving target at best.

Statewide Winner take all automatically tracks the voters wherever they go, within the state. People migrating in or out throws the state out of whack with its apportionment but when reapportionment happens on schedule the number of states that gain or lose districts are few, and it is not common for a state to lose or gain more than one congressional seat and thus EV. Meaning that except in exceptional cases, overall net migration and different birth and death rates are gradual enough that the previous census is close enough for government work. Trying to keep individual districts on track is much more challenging.

 

[Katamariguy]

Butler himself would remark soberly in a diary entry dated 24 December 1917:

We have taken the 'Holy City' of Jerusalem, but I do not feel holy for walking through its streets. [General Edmund] Allenby says I'm becoming a Turk; maybe. Perhaps I do feel a stronger kinship now with the Mehmets fighting desperately to defend their state than I do with the conquerors. There is something shameful in an American, whose forefathers fought to free themselves from the British Empire, fighting to extend the imperial yoke to another people.​

Click to shrink...

It's time for a Butlerian Jihad, eh?

 

[Aelita]

Some notable events, 1923

January 1: Under the terms of the Railway Act of 1921, British rail companies are consolidated into four major firms.

January 2: Under the leadership of Anatoly Lunacharsky, the Soviet Union forms a committee to develop the romanisation of the Russian alphabet, led by Professor N. F. Yakovlev and with the participation of linguists, bibliographer, printers, and engineers. This will culminate in a bill in 1924 establishing the Latinization of some 70 languages within the Union.

January 3: At the beginning of the new Senate term, the pro-administration Republicans push through a major revision of US Senate procedures, reinstating the rules to move the previous question, cutting off the possibility of unlimited debate.

January 7: The Rosewood Massacre: following the false report made by local newspapers that a white woman had been raped in the majority black town of Rosewood in rural Florida, a white supremacist mob, led by hooded members of the KKK attacks and burns the town to the ground. As many as 150 perish.

January 14: French troops occupy the Ruhr, strangling the second Ruhr Uprising in the cradle, and enforcing reparations payments.

January 24: Protests by unionists against the Gainesville Daily Sun turn violent, leading to the injury of several police, and the burning of the newspaper's offices.

February 1: The Sun-Joffe Manifesto is signed, declaring that the Soviet system is not right for China while establishing terms for Soviet aid in unifying the country. At Joffe's direction, the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee orders the suspension of covert activities.

February 14: Peace demonstrations in the US, organized by the Workers Party and various front groups, condemn the French occupation. President Wood has already ordered the State Department to attempt to mediate the conflict.

February 22: Time magazine debuts in the United States.

March 17: Yankee Stadium opens for business in the Bronx.

March 20: The first issue of horror/fantasy anthology Weird Tales is published

April 4: The United States recognizes the Republic of Turkey following the ratification of the Treaty of Lausanne, establishing the country's modern borders and bringing the (legal) end of the Ottoman Empire.

April 18: The Soviet Sports Club Dynamo, so named for 'power in motion', is founded under the sponsorship of the State Political Directorate.

April 28: Wembley Stadium opens in London

May 8: The Great War Adjusted Compensation Act, AKA the Bonus Bill, is signed into law.

May 9: Railway workers in Java, Dutch East Indies, take strike action following declining wages and raising rents for company housing. The use of armed force to suppress the strike is narrowly averted with a compromise negotiated after three days.

May 18: The Wheeler Commission on Race Relations recommends invoking Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment, reducing representation to states proportional to the population they actively suppress from voting.

June 1: The National Forests are significantly enlarged by the Clarke-McNary Act.

June 13: Li Yuanhong, President of the Republic of China, is overthrown by the warlord Cao Kun.

June 20: The novel Aelita by Alexei Tolstoy is published in the USSR. It quickly becomes a favorite due to its strong socialist themes and optimistic, fantastic setting.

July 3: At the height of the economic crisis, German workers and unemployed begin a spontaneous uprising in Hamburg, fanned on by hyperinflation and declining living conditions. The uprising is crushed within the week, but every movement of the Reichswehr sees new problems develop elsewhere. Germany is on the verge of becoming a failed state.

July 13: The Hollywoodland Sign is formally completed

August 2: Warren G. Harding, US Senator, passes away of an apparent heart-attack. With one of the more powerful conservative voices in the Senate absent, the Wood faction of the Republican Party neuters the ability of the Senate to hamstring the Cabinet.

August 20: An expedition led by Roy Chapman Andrews of the American Museum of Natural History, finds the first Dinosaur eggs in Mongolia as well fossils like Velociraptor and Protoceratops.

August 30: Hyperion Animation Studios is founded by brothers Walt and Roy Disney.

September 1: Miguel Primo de Rivera, with the support of King Alfonso XIII and the army, overthrows the constitutional government of Spain and establishes a military dictatorship.

September 2: The Kanto region of Japan is devastated by a 7.9 magnitude Earthquake, causing damage in the cities of Tokyo and Yokohama

September 9: TS Eliot's The Waste Land is published in the United Kingdom.

September 11: The Reichstag passes an Enabling Act, allowing Chancellor Gustav Stresemann's cabinet to rule by decree. Existing Papiermarks are cancelled, to be exchanged for a new Rentenmark at a rate of one trillion to one. New policies affecting industrial arbitration force the large industrial firms to bargain with unions and workers.

October 7: The US Navy's first purpose built carrier, the USS Kitty Hawk (CV-2), is laid down at the Newport News Shipyard.

October 30: British Prime Minister Bonar Law dies in office from an upper GI tract infection, later revealed to be a complication from throat cancer. He is succeeded by Stanley Baldwin.

November 5: The "Scissors Crisis" (in which the prices of industrial goods dramatically increased while the price of agricultural goods fell) gripping the Soviet Union comes to a head, with waves of strikes among urban workers. A group of party dissidents sign a critical letter to the Central Committee drafted by Leon Trotsky, while the working-class rank and file form a new Workers' Opposition.

November 8: Adolf Hitler begins the ultimately unsuccessful Beer-Hall Putsch. The streets of Munich are seized by street fighting between the Nazi Sturmabteilung, the Bavarian state police, and the militants of the Kommunistische Arbeiter-Partie Deutschlands, a left-splinter from the official KPD.

November 20: Vladimir Zworykin, a Russian-American inventor, files a patent for a "television system", using a cathode ray tubes to transmit and receive electrons in a sequence eventually forming an image.

December 4: The public record of the phrase "the Baby Boom" is published in The Atlantic, in an article discussing the major increase in birth rates attributed to the return of millions of soldiers and the end of wartime conditions.

December 21: The Ten Commandments , an epic adaptation of the classic Biblical story of Exodus by C. B. DeMille, is a massive success.

December 31: The Naturalization Act of 1923 goes in effect. Aside from providing citizenship to all non-citizen aliens who served in the US armed forces in the Great War, the Act also repeals racial restrictions on naturalization.

 

[Caesar_33]

June 20: The novel Aelita by Alexei Tolstoy is published in the USSR. It quickly becomes a favorite due to its strong socialist themes and optimistic, fantastic setting.

Click to shrink...

hmmmmmmmmmmm

 

[Aelita]

hmmmmmmmmmmm

Click to shrink...

Where do you think I got the username?

 

[AKuz]

Wooo!

I always look forward to new updates.

<3

 

[FiNAL_0083]

Is the Great War Adjusted Compensation Act different from OTL's World War Adjusted Compensation Act, besides being a year earlier? I am really interested in how this will play out with the Bonus Army.

 

[Aelita]

Is the Great War Adjusted Compensation Act different from OTL's World War Adjusted Compensation Act, besides being a year earlier? I am really interested in how this will play out with the Bonus Army.

Click to shrink...

Aside from minor differences in details, and many millions more people being mobilized, it's essentially the same. And it's gonna come up later

 

[Aelita]

Some notable events, 1924

January 7: The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit voids a conviction of several Pioneer League leaders for obscenity charges, holding that the educational purpose of the League's sex education program for teenagers, which warned older pioneers about the dangers of venereal disease and the means of avoiding it or unwanted pregnancy, exempted it from the federal definition of obscenity.

January 15: Following his narrow defeat in the Louisiana Democratic Primary, populist Huey Long tells his supporters to vote for the DFLP candidate for Governor.

January 25: The first Winter Olympiad opens in Chamonix, France.

January 31: The 1924 Soviet Constitution is promulgated, legitimating the Treaty of Union.

February 16: President Leonard Wood extends formal diplomatic recognition to the USSR, following the conclusion of back-channel negotiation to allow the return of prisoners of war.

February 18: George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue is first performed by Paul Whiteman and his "Palais Royal Orchestra" in New York.

March 20: As Eugene Debs, in ailing health, steps down from his position as General Secretary of the Workers' Party, the Politburo places C.E. Ruthenberg as the provisional head of the party until the next National Convention.

March 27: The Virginia General Assembly narrowly rejects the proposed "Racial Integrity Act" to strengthen provisions against miscegenation, fearing political backlash as many northern business interests begin to exert pressure against Jim Crow.

March 30: Multiple Asian American entities such as the North American Industrial Company, Chinese American Citizens Alliance, and La Choy Foods combine to form the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Commune (大東亜共栄團) in Detroit. A national organization, it serves the blooming Asian American community through job offers, loans, legal representation. The GEACPC would also spearhead the development of the American soju and seaweed aquaculture industries.

April 1: Adolf Hitler is sentenced to 5 years in jail for his participation in the Beer Hall Putsch. He serves only 9 months.

April 7: In a rigged election, the Italian Fascists cement a 2/3rds control of the Italian Parliament.

April 18: Amidst a booming economic situation, the Revenue Act of 1924 further lowers federal income tax rates, especially on the wealthy. President Wood's signing statement declares that the United States has "both won the war, and won the peace."

May 4: The Games of the VIII Olympiad open in Paris, France.

May 9: Several prominent Italian socialist leaders are kidnapped by Blackshirts, including the head of the PSI Giacomo Matteotti, who was abducted in broad daylight.

May 18: Miners in Taung, South Africa discover a fossilized ape skull. Further examinations reveal very human-like characteristic, redefining human evolution.

May 24: The Immigration Act of 1924 establishes strengthened deportation rules for criminals and subversives. Amendments to further restrict immigration through national quotas are quashed in committee.

June 9: The Alignment: following months of negotiations in smoke filled rooms, the insurgent Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party establishes a national compact with the Republican Party. Legislative candidates of the two parties will not run against one another, and will caucus together in Congress, and the DFLP will run the Republican nominee on all of its ballot lines.

June 14: Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin passes away in his sleep from a sudden, massive stroke. The vibrant intellectual and energetic leader of international communism's death is sudden and though he'd been in ill health, few thought he'd been on death's door. Lenin's posthumous testament, criticizing fellows within the All-Union Communist Party (bolshevik), will become the focal point of political struggle in the Soviet Union.

June 16: The Whampoa Military Academy begins operation in the KMT-controlled Guangzhou.

June 24: Lt. Colonel Patton supervises US Army testing of the British Vickers Medium Mk II tank at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds.

June 28: At the Democratic National Convention, the party adopts a platform condemning the Ku Klux Klan as a terrorist organization, and authorizing the expulsion of all Democratic Party members for affiliation with it.

July 1: The Bureau of Investigation is reorganized as the National Bureau of Investigation. J. Edgar Hoover is appointed its first director.

July 15: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, a silent adaptation of the L. Frank Baum story of the same name, is released by the newly formed film conglomerate Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

July 31: The Fifth World Congress of the Communist International: the "Second Period" policy of accommodation begins, as national communist parties are directed to retreat from direct militancy with the retreat of revolutionary conditions, and instead pursue cadre building for future revolutionary moments.

August 1: The Dawes-Young Plan, reducing German indemnities by 20 percent and providing major American capital investment to secure annual reparations payments, is accepted. French troops will leave the Ruhr, ending the direct expropriation of raw materials.

August 4: Harold Gray's beloved comic strip Little Orphan Annie debuts.

August 6: An act of Congress is passed, granting all Native Americans within the territorial boundaries of the United States full citizenship rights.

August 9: A statewide sit-in campaign against Virginia's segregation laws provokes widespread reactionary violence from local police and reactionary paramilitaries, before order is restored by the National Guard.

September 4: The Tenant Farmer General Strike: a multi-racial strike organized by the Tenant Farmers' Union begins in the Deep South. Teamsters, railway and dock workers take sympathy action, refusing to load or unload cargo for the planter class. The strike largely succeeds at earning recognition, with the sharecropping relationship mediated by collective bargaining and cooperative arrangements to provide tools and working animals to tenant farmers free from the exploitive terms of the landlords.

September 18: Several members of the Tennessee state legislature are expelled for their connections with the KKK. Voluntary denouncements follow in other states as the national committee exerts its pressure.

October 13: The US Supreme Court strikes down a Mississippi poll tax law as unconstitutional. The controversial 5-4 decision in Hatch v. Mississippi Board of Elections, 266 U.S. 1 (1924)(1) infers a general right to vote based on the Fifteenth and Eighteenth Amendments. Poll taxes, whether discriminatory like Mississippi's (which effectively exempted most whites) or not, are unconstitutional.

October 20: Yevgeny Zamyatin's We is published in English, after being banned in the USSR.

October 27: National delimitation in Central Asia begins with the formation of the the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic.

November 4: United States General Election: President Wood is re-elected by a full majority of voters, while a Republican government is returned in the House of Representatives.

November 26: The Mongolian People's Republic, a presently unrecognized Soviet satellite state, is established, asserting its independence from the Beiyang government of the Republic of China.

November 27: The first "Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade" is held in New York City, the success of which makes an annual tradition.

December 4: Following the destruction of his forces by the British-trained forces of Sharif Hussein, Ibn Saud abdicates as Sultan of Nejd.

December 22: An inter-allied committee chaired by French General Foch certifies that Germany has complied satisfactorily with disarmament protocols of the Treaty of Versailles, enabling the final withdrawal of French troops from the Ruhr.

December 26th: Astronomer Edwin Hubble realizes that the Andromeda Nebula is in fact another galaxy, the first one discovered outside the Milky Way.

December 31: A group of thirty-six Blackshirts arrive at Mussolini's office, demanding that he crush all opposition to the National Fascist Party, or they would without him.

(1) Fictional Court case

---

The 1924 General Election​

The 1924 election season began with the Wood Republicans strengthening their grip over the Republican Party. Conservative "Business Republicans" lacked the national voice to compete with the president. In most of the Republican primaries, Wood stood virtually unopposed, and even in the "smoke filled rooms" that characterized the leadership of the state Republican parties, most agreed that Wood's popularity and temperance were an absolute necessity.

The Republican platform, adopted in 1923, would provide the blue-print for Wood's second term. A one-two punch, combining an aggressive focus on civil rights with federal infrastructure spending would crack the Solid South. But the Republican name was still tarnished in the South, however much work had been done in eroding the Lost Cause in the National Army and the Great War mobilisation.

Fortunately, the left-wing splinter from the old Democrats had proved amenable. The insurgent Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party had performed poorly in the 1920 election, failing to secure much ground in state governments. Worse, the split had hastened the extinction of the Democratic brand outside the South. Rather than go the way of the Populists, the loose leadership of the DFLP, represented by Montana Congressman Burton K. Wheeler, found common purpose with Wood and the Republican Party.

In the historic "Alignment" negotiated in the summer of 1924, the DFLP would effectively become the Republican Party's auxiliary in the South. The two parties would caucus together in Congress and in state governments, would not run in opposition to one another, and run a common candidate for president. With the Alignment came a new infusion of money into the party, allowing it to continue activities in the 1924 election campaign.

While Wood deferred granting the VP seat to the DFLP until at least 1928, should the Alignment prove successful, he gave more concessions to the DFLP in the form of farm relief and infrastructure spending. The Alignment also gave him new weapons against the Business Republicans. Nonetheless, in the 1924 Republican Convention held in Cleveland, Ohio, Wood recommended relative political newcomer Herbert Hoover as his running mate.

Hoover straddled the line between the Progressive and Business Republicans. He'd won considerable prestige for himself in organizing relief efforts in the Russian Civil War. And most importantly, did not seem to have great ambitions at this time.

The Democratic Party, purged of its populist elements, nearly considered not enduring the expense of running a presidential campaign, especially having lost ballot access outside the South. While the party had become frozen in serving as the vehicle of Southern sectional interests, the landowning elite and White supremacy, changing political winds were pulling the party to the center.

A bitter primary fight ensued, with John W. Davis of Virginia and John Nance Garner of Texas in a virtual dead heat. The convention deadlocked initially over questions of the party's increasingly unfortunate connection to the KKK, the looming threat of federal intervention, and a need to accommodate to growing militancy among the Negro population as well as white workers.

The Democratic leadership hoped to win enough electors to throw the election to House, which would vote as state delegations, and thereby extract additional concessions by playing kingmaker. To that end, it was believed that party unity mattered more than anything. On the final ballot, John Nance Garner conceded, and was installed as the VP nominee.


For the Workers' Party, the sudden shift to the conciliatory "Second Period" policies by the Communist International was a welcome relief. In 1924, the Party's resources had been stretched thin by the past few years of confrontation and revolutionary agitation. Second Period policies gave more room for practical policy making, and given the Presidents campaign on shifting federal resources to protect the civil rights of its citizens, the time was ripe for party building.

In 1924, the Party was active in all 48 states, and had conducted primaries to send delegates to its national Party Congress. The 1924 program adopted a huge slate of practical policy proposals, including cooperative housing, nationalization of the major trusts, democratic control of workplaces, robust tenant rights and social insurance. Combined, the platform would have been impossible to implement without a revolutionary overthrow of the existing constitution and the imposition of a workers' republic.

This was the strategy developed by Benjamin Gitlow and William Z. Foster, to ratchet up the demands and expectation of workers, smallholders, and sharecroppers, and leave the political system incapable of meeting them. For no one expected to win the elections at present time.

The 1924 election season occurred under the specter of terrorist violence in the South, but the party was resolute in nominating black candidates to stand for election in Southern state and Congressional elections. Canvassing in white neighborhoods, talking to poor whites about their concerns was dangerous work. But it was working. The Southern strategy served to strengthen cross-racial alliances among working people, and the few notable victories they eked out served as symbols for this new coalition.



Results



Legislative elections, 65th Congress​

House of Representatives

           

Party	Leader	Home State	Seats	Last	Net
Republican	Leonidas Dyer	Missouri	227	222	5
Workers' Party	Upton Sinclair	New Jersey	101	136	-35
Democratic	Claude Kitchkin	North Carolina	76	70	6
Democratic-Farmer-Labor	Frank Havener	California	29	5	24
Independents			2	2
Total			435
Needed to Win			218

Senate

     

Party	Seats	Change
Republican	48	-1
Democratic	22	-2
Workers' Party	16	2
DFL	10	1
Total	96

Special thanks to @Asami for all the graphics

 

[Asami]

Wonderful!

 

[veteranMortal]

If it's not too much bother, would it be possible to switch the orange for the democrats to something a little lighter? I can't easily differentiate between them and the worker's party?

That aside, I'm really enjoying this timeline!

 

[Asami]

If it's not too much bother, would it be possible to switch the orange for the democrats to something a little lighter? I can't easily differentiate between them and the worker's party?

Click to shrink...

I genuinely didn't think about the specifics of colourblindness or people with that problem and this palette. I'll whip up a quick "revised" edition and send it to Aelita!

 

[Asami]

@veteranMortal is this better? I made their orange a much sharper, electric shade.

 

[Katamariguy]

Some notable events, 1924

Multiple Asian American entities such as the North American Industrial Company, Chinese American Citizens Alliance, and La Choy Foods combine to form the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Commune (大東亜共栄團) in Detroit. A national organization, it serves the blooming Asian American community through job offers, loans, legal representation. The GEACPC would also spearhead the development of the American soju and seaweed aquaculture industries.

Click to shrink...

Is this another one of those historical irony jokes?