It'll be interesting to see how the Russian Revoution (and Russia itself) is regarded in this TL, with other revolutions happening so soon. OTL it's such a singular, world-defining event, with Lenin as a single world-historical figure, but ITTL I feel like it'll get forgotten, sort of folded into the larger wave as a weird, initial blip, taking a backstage to Germany. A lot of people genuinely might not realize that Russia revolted first if they haven't read a lot of history.
Earlier on there was a mention of the USSR not being part of the future pan-european socialist state, but in a friendly way. That implies to me that they remain both culturally distinct and powerful enough to matter.
Yeah, this is admittedly kinda the point. National chauvinism doesn't instantly disappear with socialist revolutions, though now all the revolutionary states do have pretty strong reasons to cooperate.
Random journalist counts as a foreign dignitary now? I suppose Reed will behave with far more dignity to the German Revolutionary Government than any official American diplomat.
Reed is hardly a random journalist - he's a prominent member of the Socialist Party of America and is also affiliated with the Bolsheviks. This was true IOTL as well, IIRC.
Earlier on there was a mention of the USSR not being part of the future pan-european socialist state, but in a friendly way. That implies to me that they remain both culturally distinct and powerful enough to matter.
For a variety of reasons, Russia is going to be much more capable of projecting power in the post-revolutionary era than Germany, which will have a significant influence on the international socialist movement.
Didn't Reed write 10 Days That Shook The World? I'd like to imagine that we'd see the in-universe version of that book. Perhaps the in-universe version is about the German Revolution.
100% Americanism: The United States Stirs from its Bryanist Slumber
"And so all pretenses are dropped and capital sheds its mask of humanity."
-Eugene Debs, 1920
The Bolshevikis have come to town,
With a Russian cap and a German gown,
among the workers they're sure to be found,
for they've come to destroy AMERICA.
They sit in judgment on capital hill,
and watch Mr. Wilson's patriotic bill,
and without their O.K, it passes-NIL.
For they've come to destroy AMERICA.
They will use the movie and lyceum too,
to incite simple blacks and crafty jews,
they prate propaganda from pulpit and pew,
For they've come to destroy AMERICA.
They have a quite sinister plan,
To use the bomb and the firebrand,
and incite class hatred wherever they can,
while they're busy destroying AMERICA.
The special stunt is to arouse the mob.
To expropriate and hate and kill and rob,
While they're working on their political job,
AWAKE! AROUSE!! AMERICA!!!
-"Awake America", Lucia Maxwell
This is called talkin' All-American blues
And there's nothing wrong with this song
Well, I was feelin' sad and kinda blue
I didn't know what I was gonna do
The communists was all around
They was in the air
They was on the ground
They was all over
So I run down most hurriedly
And joined the All-American society
I got me a trusty membership card
I went back home to the yard
Started looking on the sidewalk
Under the hedges
Well, I got up in the morning I looked under my bed
I was lookin' every place for them crazy reds
Looked behind the sink, and under the floor
Looked in the glove compartment of my car
Couldn't find any!
Look behind the cloths, behind the chair
Lookin' for them Reds everywhere
I looked way up my chimney hole
Even looked deep inside my toilet bowl
They got away!
I visited the local library
and found a book by a Mr. Nietzsche
Now he had a mustache that looked German
So I went to visit my friend Herman
And learned Nietzsche was a good American!
One of the good ones!
-"Talkin' All-American Blues", Bob Dylan
Excerpts from the book "Embattled Republic: The Transformation of the American Polity, 1914-1945", by Richard Hofstadter
On the eve of William Jennings Bryan assassination, American society was already divided into two polarized political camps. On the one side were the Bryanist stalwarts: the small farmers of the midwest and great plains, industrial laborers, middle-class suffragists, pacifists, and isolationists, and Irish, German and Italian immigrant communities. On the other was the burgeoning opposition: this included not merely the old "eastern establishment" of financiers and industrialists, but also the majority of the urban middle-class, white-collar workers, and an increasing share of the traditionally anglophilic southern elite. Increasingly, each political camp suspected the other of a "great conspiracy". For the Bryanists, this was the plot of the wealthy and connected to suppress the legitimate democratic and economic claims of the working man; in their collective political mythology, the only figure who truly had the chance to frustrate the dastardly plot of the financiers was Bryan himself, who inspired a nearly religious level of devotion among his closest followers. Opposed to Bryan's charismatic authority was the more formally institutionalized power of America's traditional elites. These aligned almost uniformly with the opposition, and controlled all the nation's leading organs of news. Over the second Bryan term, they launched a seemingly unending propaganda offensive against the president. Soon, a very different conspiracy emerged: Bryan was, the story went, a secret bolshevik, preparing to hand over the keys of the nation to Vladimir Lenin and the unamerican, uneducated mob of hyphenated-americans. The "plot to destroy America" was detailed in every major newspaper, and spider charts were published linking Bryan and his union supporters to the "communist menace".
In short order, each camp received confirmation of their anxieties. Bryan's assassination and the dubious ascent of Wilson was met with great outpourings of grief and rage across the great plains and thousands of working class neighborhoods. To a crowd of several hundred thousand Chicagoans, Eugene Debs eulogized his erstwhile political ally: "The man and I have had our share of differences, and yet I cannot fail to feel a deep admiration for this most ardent champion of the working man, who found his way to the doctrine of socialism through little else than his own sense of moral conviction." Robert la Folette warned of a coming crusade to "demolish the great edifice that Bryan has built", while Lynn Frazier, the non-partisan governor of North Dakota, darkly hinted at a "coming conspiracy to wreck the working man." There could be no doubt of the "plot against the American worker" now.
The New York Times and Chicago Tribune duly condemned the outbreak of political violence, even while cheering the dubious ascent of Woodrow Wilson. Unsurprisingly, the presidency of the southern professor was shadowed by a pall of illegitimacy. This was not helped by persistent rumors of his poor health and clandestine connections with Britain. In a monumental political blunder, Wilson succeeded in enraging the Bryanist opposition by mentioning the need to institute a draft during one of his first few press conferences. Protests and strikes immediately emerged in response, and it quickly became clear that congress was not willing to provide Wilson with such an authorization until there was a more clear direction to the draft itself. Yet the continuation of isolated industrial actions contributed to the anxieties of the conservative camp, who speculated about an "internal bolshevik opposition" which Bryan had successfully planted during his presidency.
Initially, Wilson's own health seemed to stir nearly as much concern among the reactionary elements of the American polity as the looming Bolshevik threat. Congress engaged in a concerted campaign to convince Wilson to voluntarily step down and give the presidency to a younger and more able figure. This was met by continual stonewalling from the administration. Wilson retained some support amongst the southern democrats, but the Republican congress at once began investigating the President.
...No event did more to confirm the most paranoid fears of the American business class than the general strikes that ripped across New York, the industrial midwest, and the pacific northwest in November. The fact that this wave of industrial action occurred simultaneously with the strikes that brought down the governments of France, Germany, Bulgaria, and Austria seemed to incontrovertibly prove the presence of a Bolshevik conspiracy. Such quickly became the political line of not just the nation's leading newspapers, but also of Wilson's government.
Woodrow Wilson, who served the second-shortest Presidential term in American history
The vast powers of mobilization that the business community had steadily cultivated for the past half-decade were at once put to use. It was felt, first and foremost, that the current president would have to be replaced by a more dynamic and compliant figure. Southern congressmen attempted to resist the tide, but it was of little use: news leaked that Wilson had suffered a stroke shortly after the strikes began, and panic spread across D.C. of a "rudderless presidency". On November 12th, Wilson chose to resign rather than face impeachment. So began the month of three presidents. The new president, Bryan's Secretary of State William Borah, was still plagued by his involvement in the Indian affair. Shortly before Wilson's resignation, he had come to a private agreement to step down from office after the Senate determined a proper candidate for the next Secretary of State (and hence President). In return, he would receive a pardon. A sense of patriotism (and, one has to judge, a desire to receive a pardon) obliged him to accept his role as "caretaker president", but he impressed on his colleagues the urgent need to find a replacement. And so, the Senate, now controlled by conservative republicans and their dixiecrat allies, began to look for a suitable "Secretary of State"; technically, they would have to be nominated by Borah himself.
The Republican Party was torn on whether it was best to elect a unifying national figure such as Leonard Wood or John Pershing, or instead press forward with a more partisan ultraconservative whose first priority would be to rollback the progressive legislation of the Bryan era. All believed that a strong and dynamic figure was necessary, prompting some to float the name of the two-time loser Theodore Roosevelt, but it quickly became clear that the emboldened business wing would not tolerate a progressive. Yet a number of politicians and industrial elites proved equally apprehensive about several doctrinaire, free market conservative candidates; they worried that the likes of Henry Cabot Lodge, Warren Harding, and Frank Lowden lacked the spine, charisma, and "sense of mission" necessary to take on American bolshevism. The traditional doctrine of limited government was felt to be manifestly inadequate to the moment.
In the end, it was a dark horse candidate, Elihu Root, who won the support of the Senate. Root had served a single term as a Senator from New York, and before that, had been both a Secretary of State and Secretary of War in the Mckinley and Roosevelt administrations. His impeccable foreign policy credentials and ultraconservative politics were felt to fit the present moment, though he was instructed to remain quiet about his rather unpopular opposition to female suffrage.
Elihu Root, the 31st President of the United States
Ironically, Root was ten years older than Wilson, and it took a great deal of convincing to conscript him into the Presidency. He put forward several recommendations of his own for the position, which were all felt to be unsatisfactory. Eventually, he acquiesced, on the condition that he would resign the presidency once "the present crisis was brought to a close". Whatever one's judgment of Root's politics, there is little doubt that the man was one of the most brilliant administrators in American history. Over the four years in which he remained in office, he transformed the American polity beyond recognition, creating a network of new bureaus and institutions that have been collectively termed the "security state." For his opponents, he was a diabolical genius who wielded the extensive powers of the presidency to turn America into something less than a democracy. "Under the present banner of anti-communism", remarked H.L. Mencken some years later, "We have constructed a vast and imposing edifice which mirrors in its precise details the most despotic elements of Bolshevism."
Building The Anticommunist State
When Root ascended to the presidency, industrial unrest still raged on, and the financial crisis had only inflamed the protests roiling the midwest. Joe Lewis' superbly organized CIU had swelled with new recruits; over the past two years, it successfully assimilated several more conservative unions, and in late 1918, facing declining membership, even the radical IWW chose to affiliate with it. Contrary to the perceptions of the American elite, Lewis was not an ideological socialist, but he intended to use the present crisis to solidify the place of labor and make the CIU a permanent fixture of the industrial landscape. Standing behind him were countless still un-unionized workers who had joined his strike in solidarity, making it the first truly national general strike in American history.
Upon entering office, Root enacted a sweeping legislative package redefining the relationship between government and civil society. The "Constitutional Protection Act" made it a crime to use "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, abusive language" about the United states government, its flag, the armed forces, and its system of constitutional government, or to engage in "protest, organization, or assembly" that can be "reasonably interpreted to be opposed to the American system of private enterprise and constitutional order". The act also prohibited all language and activities which were intended to, or in effect led others to have "contempt for the American government, its constitutional order, and its institutions." A single day after it was signed, the entire leadership of the CIU was declared to be in violation of its provisions. A stream of arrest warrants followed; the leadership of the non-partisan league and Socialist Party of America were soon also placed under arrest. The American military was deputized to quell the subsequent (and ongoing) labor unrest.
Next came the "Industrial Relations Act", the most important piece of legislation in the employers counteroffensive. All of the labor reforms of the Bryan era were summarily voided, and in its place came a new, highly draconian structure which required all industrial unions to seek "pre-clearance" with new government "labor deputies" before forming new locals. All unions would be forced to submit monthly reports detailing their efforts to "eliminate unamerican radicals"; the presence of activists who violated the Constitutional Protection Act in even the middle ranks of unions could be used as grounds for dissolution. The state would retain the right, until the end of the present emergency, to engage in warrantless searches of union offices who were suspected of disloyalty. This legislation succeeded in cowing the craft unions into slavish obedience.
Perhaps the most infamous legislation, however, came in early 1920. For the purpose of enforcing the previous legislation, in consultation with Root, Congress passed the National Security and Protection act, which created the National Bureau of Investigation and Intelligence (NBII) as an agency within the Justice department. Begrudgingly, military and naval intelligence were forced to subordinate themselves to the gigantic new agency. The anticommunist former mayor of seattle Ole Hanson was placed at its chief. The bureau was mandated with coordinating all intelligence gathering and serving as a general antisubversive body. With the assistance of the tireless deputy director Edgar Hoover, the body began acquiring a great deal of power, prompting the president to deputize the middle-class "All-American leagues" and conscript them into the structure: it was hoped that these groups, controlled by the business community, would provide a counterweight of sorts.
These bodies, however, turned out to be even more zealous than Hanson himself in the prosecution of the anticommunist crusade. Over 1920, with the nation in a veritable red panic, the NBII's anti-radical dragnet grew to encompass figures few would have expected of genuine subversion. First came the case of the so-called "Red Intellectuals", when John Dewey, Thorstein Veblen, Lewis Mumford, Walter Lippmann, Max Eastman, Floyd Dell, H.L Mencken, and countless others were accused of "plotting to infect America with bolshevik theories." Then came the arrests of the "Red journalists and literatis", in which the muckrakers of the progressive movement were charged with "conspiring against the free enterprise system". These included (but were not limited to) Upton Sinclair, Theodore Dreiser, Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, and Ray Stennard Baker. Feeling emboldened, the NBII next moved to decimate the pacifist, feminist, and civil liberties movements: Jeanette Rankin, Jane Addams, Welter Nelles, Roger Nash Baldwin, Fanny Garrison Villard, Grace Abbot, Mary Heaton Vorse, Alice Daly, and Sophonisba Breckenridge were charged with the "promotion of free love, socialism, and anti-constitutional subversion".
These so-called "show trials" were greeted with jubilation by anticommunist stalwarts. A cultural counterrevolution from above had commenced, with citizens of all stripes implored to embrace "100% Americanism". As is the case with many counterrevolutions, the claim to restore tradition masked a covert modernization. This form of state-directed, ideological mobilization was utterly atypical of the 19th century liberal polity, and in fact shared more in common with Bolshevik Russia than it did with Jefferson's America. The "All-American Leagues" were products of a statist nationalism, and the desire to forge a polity purged of all ethnic difference echoed the fascist nationalism of Croatia and Poland more than it did the condescending prejudice of traditional WASP snobbery.
There were more than a few traditional conservatives who were alarmed by this frenzied onslaught; this new anticommunist crusade did not only target their racial and class inferiors but also fellow Harvard graduates who, admittedly, may have occasionally expressed themselves in a needlessly controversial manner. Blame was directed toward Ole Hanson, and in April the Root administration, already tiring of the man's antics, chose to depose him in favor of the young Edgar Hoover, who promised a more rational, orderly, and streamlined anti-subversive campaign. The anticommunist "crusade" was replaced with the "routine administration of the law".
Ole Hanson, anticommunist Seattle Mayor and first director of the NBII
Hoover used his new position to subordinate the All-American Leagues more fully to the dictates of the bureau, which was welcomed by a good number of citizens who had tired of their ceaseless hooliganism. He directed the attention of the agency away from intellectuals and journalists and back toward the "dregs of society", who were the true "engines of bolshevist agitation". At Hoover's urging, in May a law was passed giving the NBII temporary emergency powers to summarily deport alien residents as well as citizens from Japan, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Russia, Austria, Hungary, or Bulgaria who had been naturalized in the past decade. It is difficult to avoid concluding that the mass (and likely unconstitutional) deportations of "foreign subversives" which followed were primarily intended to take the unemployed masses off the streets. Unsurprisingly, the tens of thousands of deported German and Italian Americans became some of the most ardent supporters of the new revolutionary European regimes.
There were admittedly signs that the nation was tiring of this prolonged ideological mobilization and the ever-stiffening restrictions on speech and political activism. To redress this, Root created an office of public information, which was granted not only the power of censorship but also a budget which allowed it to disperse propaganda. Working in concert with the All-American Leagues and NBII, the various Bryanist organizations were successfully shattered over the first half of 1920.
Perhaps the most vexed question for the Root administration concerned immigration and the ongoing refugee crisis. The ongoing conflicts in Europe were producing a tidal wave of "white emigres". In one of his most controversial decisions to date, Root issued an executive order in February prohibiting authorities from turning back European immigrants fleeing political persecution. Instead, they were to be housed in temporary camps in Long Island until Congress could settle upon a resolution to the issue; more than a few Prussian aristocrats, Italian business magnates, and Austrian princes were reduced to quite miserable conditions. The fear of "subversion" was real enough, and at present, America simply did not have the capacity to employ this torrent of political refugees. Many others, however, considered it rank hypocrisy to reject these fellow anticommunist crusaders, and patriotic, middle-class elements of the German and Italian communities began to petition for them to be granted refuge. These pleas did not fall on deaf ears: Root urged congress to pass a bill permitting the emigres to apply for citizenship, and, sympathetic to this proposal, Edgar Hoover offered to use the NBII to vet the immigrants.
The anti-immigrant republican congress, however, refused to consider granting permanent asylum or citizenship to the refugees until there was a more thorough reform of the immigration system. With unemployment still over 15%, most businesses also had little interest in defending the current, more liberal immigration system. In return for transferring control of the white emigres to a special commission composed principally of NBII representatives, Root agreed to a sweeping set of immigration restrictions. Yearly numbers were capped at 100,000 a year, less than 15% the level before 1914. Asian immigrants were banned altogether, while a series of restrictive national quotas was placed on European nations which aimed to preserve the "racial stock" of the United States. The "victims of red terror" were excluded from these measures, and very quickly, jurisdictional questions arose concerning who precisely constituted a victim of terror. With his agency's vast powers of surveillance and investigation, Hoover proved the predictable victor of this interdepartmental struggle, and soon enough all the burghers and aristocrats of old Europe were petitioning at the doors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Intelligence.
Confronting the Financial Emergency
Root inherited a financial crisis, spiralling unemployment, and systematic price deflation. Without a federal reserve, he had few tools to prevent a further cascading failure of the banking system. The infection spread across the first three months of his presidency, until a federal reserve bill was passed, allowing fresh money to be injected into the regional banks. This halted the monetary crisis, but the industrial one continued apace, and attempts to reopen the stock market continued to end in disaster. England's inflationary policies had appeared to save it from the worst of the crash, but the big financiers who had propped up the banks back in November lobbied against any such expedient. Yet now, with the federal government more firmly in control of the nation's finances and a coalition of industrialists urging the lowering of interest rates, they found themselves outflanked. While Root would not engage in a "market distorting aberration" such as public works spending, he did follow the advice of John D. Rockefeller, and interest rates were slashed to 2%. Shortly after came the gigantic navy expansion bill of May 1920, which provided a much needed stimulus for the steel industry.
In fact, the growth of the Army and Navy provided a suitable substitute for more civilian-oriented deficit spending. The next major coup came just a month into the Eastern Seas War, when Root successfully negotiated the first of the Atlantic Accords with Britain, providing America with a vital new export market. Churchill agreed to slash most of the wartime tariffs by more than half in return for a promise of future American aid to Britain in fighting the "Bolshevik revolts". A more formal schedule of British loan repayments was also agreed upon, easing the worries of financiers. At the end of the year, Root was finally able to reopen the stock market. America was on the way to recovery, though employment still stood well over 10%, and the market remained at its lowest point since 1907.
Laying the Groundwork of a new Global System
Underlying the Root presidency was a synoptic and internationalist vision of an American-led capitalist order. It is worth recalling that Root was one of the first of the foreign policy doyen; over his presidency, he displayed an often obsessive attention to diplomatic matters, even while he delegated domestic policy to his ultraconservative advisors. He engaged in the highly unusual move of directly attending diplomatic talks with Japan, and his secretary of state Charles Evans Hughes complained privately that his entire department had been made a "private demesne of the President".
In its overall conception, if not its particular details, Root's plan for an international order was not especially far off from the proposals of the Trenton Conference. He envisioned a world in which commerce, trade, and capital flowed freely between borders, informally undergirded by American industry and finance. America would serve as the guarantor of this system which, through steadily advancing human prosperity, would temper the forces of social radicalism and reactionary empire-building. Britain would be forced to give up its colonies, but only because the more general spread of the protestant virtues of thrift, industry, and self-reliance had rendered the need for "imperialist tutelage" obsolete. At last, a sort of global pacification would occur, obviating the need for an expansive military and surveillance apparatus.
The revolutions in Europe posed a very direct threat to this vision; so too, did the Japanese assault on China, which if successful would permanently compromise America's access to the world's largest market. The British Empire also constituted a challenge of sorts, though here Root was far more willing to engage in far more pragmatism and expediency, unlike some of his successors.
By the middle of 1920, the Republican foreign policy establishment had purged itself of its isolationist faction, but it was still internally divided between hardline, unilaterialist "internationalists" who urged a direct intervention in Europe and more anglophobic "easterners" who instead advocated war with Japan, the consolidation of control over the Chinese market, and a strangling blockade against the new socialist states. It might appear as if the "easterners" won the initial power struggle, as America engaged in a policy of brinksmanship with Japan that led to war. But even during the eastern seas conflict, this faction was never able to secure unalloyed control of the state department; reflecting the priorities of the internationalists, a considerable number of the most skilled American pilots and military advisors were sent to France, Greece, and even Croatia while the Pacific Fleet clashed with the Japanese Navy. The re-arming of the American military was stalled by the priority frequently given to ragged European paramilitaries, and in the end, the most hardline easterners were not able to achieve their goal of unquestioned American hegemony in the Pacific.
Superficially, this might appear to be a classic case of overcommitment, but there were some compelling considerations in defense of this "mixed" policy. Firstly, whereas the legitimist governments in Europe were struggling to hang onto their limited territories, America had the luxury of time in prosecuting its war against Japan, which was hopelessly overstretched in China. Secondly, an early declaration of war against Japan preempted any British assistance, which would have been more plausible without the bulk of the British army busy in India. Finally, a commitment to both theaters ensured the steady growth of the munitions and shipbuilding industries, permitting continued recovery from the economic crisis.
The war against Japan stimulated an unprecedented enlargement in the powers of the American government. Some of this built on the efforts of Bryan, who had already begun a more modest program of army modernization and expansion. More important for Root's program was the system of national registration that was put in place with the introduction of social security, which gave the state a readily accessible database of information on its citizens. The first national draft in early 1921 used this body of data to determine who would be called up, technically acting in violation of the privacy provisions in Bryan's bill.
The war also provided a suitable pretext to extend the emergency measures of the labor wars, even while most industrial activists were now behind bars or deported to distant shores. Additional measures soon followed, further expanding the government's reach into the homes and lives of the average citizen. Little real resistance was offered: the NBII had succeeded in decimating the most important sources of potential opposition in civil society, and the brazen Japanese assault on the Philippines gifted a tremendous propaganda boon to the American government, which used it to mobilize popular opinion. And yet, even with the extensive growth of the American state during the Bryan administration and the first six months of the Root presidency, the nation was fundamentally unprepared for war. The navy was certainly capable enough, but the army still lacked junior officers, and it would be some time before aid could be shipped to China. It was fervently hoped that the southern half of the Philippines could be reinforced before the Japanese conquered the entire islands; otherwise, the army would have no option but to seize the western pacific islands "one-by-one" in a tortuous campaign that nobody desired...
Damn, that's really bad. I can see how Bryan is seen so badly in the future, given the bourgeois coup over what American democracy existed pre-war.
Also, while you did manage to get the secretary of state being first in the succession back then, iirc, there was no provision for the election of a vice president by Congress before 1967.
Damn, that's really bad. I can see how Bryan is seen so badly in the future, given the bourgeois coup over what American democracy existed pre-war.
Also, while you did manage to get the secretary of state being first in the succession back then, iirc, there was no provision for the election of a vice president by Congress before 1967.
Ah, so they would have to choose a new president by nominating a new secretary of state. I will rewrite this in a few to fix this; thank you for bringing it to my attention.
I am going to write a dedicated post for Mexico and Latin America. Don't want to spoil too much till then, but there's certainly going to be a certain level of American involvement.
I feel like a moral standard board would likely be set up, but it would probably be mostly unnecessary given the amount of soft pressure that film and radio networks would be subjected to from conservative elements of bourgeois civil society.
goddamn the yanks are spiraling and will, like as not, take the rest of the Americas with them. pour one out for my fellow latin americans, we ain't making it out of this one gamers.
With the Philippines under conflict once again, I wonder what will the various political parties and the people are going to do. The Nacionalistas may be split and leaning towards sticking with the Americas because of the income of the elite are tied with US trade but may consider switching sides once again. The Democratas are on the same boat but very much less pro-American. The fledgling left meanwhile are still in development with the urban Congreso Obrero de Filipinas being a mix of moderates and radicals, so they may be paralyzed and the rural counterpart is still fresh with the then Union de Aparceros de Filipinas and hasn't undergone its OTL reorganization phase but the war may glue them together in the meantime so an earlier Hukbalahap may happen but it not as likely as OTL.
Meanwhile, Tydings-Mcduffie doesn't exist and there is no path to independence for the Philippines, making the Filipino people more willing to swallow any propaganda regarding pan-Asianism. Combine that with former Filipino revolutionaries still being alive and there may be an active group of new Katipuneros that may or may not be pro-Japanese that either has Emilio Aguinaldo at its head if it it is truly independent or Artemio Ricarte if it is pro-Japanese.
Per the U.S. Constitution, the power to appoint members of the Cabinet is the exclusive domain of the (acting) President. The Senate can approve or reject those appointments, but has no legal authority to order the President to choose a specific candidate.
@Curby , I think I get the play. Obviously, there's a time-traveler on the other side (capitalist side) who had a brilliant idea.
You cannot have a Roaring Twenties and a Great Depression crash to lead to a crisis of capitalism if the good times never return and you just live perpetually in either collapse or malaise.
You cannot have a Roaring Twenties and a Great Depression crash to lead to a crisis of capitalism if the good times never return and you just live perpetually in either collapse or malaise.
But yeah, I legitimately don't think there's juice for a "Roaring Twenties" or even a, "Roaring 1926-1935" or whatever.
The socialist bloc is likely going to be too busy doing local stuff, with the exception of some Luxembourgist attempts to keep up with the colonial world, for them to be able to immediately exploit it... but American investment into just Britain won't be enough to reach the 'heights' that American wealth did in the 1920s, and I don't think whatever engagement they have with China (if they even win against Japan) will, like...
Be enough? I do think there WILL be a recovery, because there always is, but I think it'll be tepid and more about retrenchment than reviving that optimistic sense of endless wealth and opportunity among the middle class, etc etc.
I'm surprised that Bob Dylan still uses his stage name here, instead of going by his birth name Robert Zimmerman. Actually, with the "Awaken America" song mentioning the "crafty Jews", it would not surprise me if there was a lot more anti-Semitism ITTL, and thus Bob Dylan using a stage name makes even more sense here.
The arrest of so many so called "red" intellectuals and journalists is going to absolutely hamstring any gains made by the progressive movement under Bryan and make political liberalism almost a dead letter. Doubly so if it gives the new reactionary regime the political capital to roll back any reforms associated with either them or Bryan. Many of these figures, at least OTL, were decidedly not socialists but instead liberals (even pro-war liberals)!
John Dewey: education reformer, OTL pro-war liberal. Probably targeted for his (rather lukewarm, he mostly opposed the government's tactics and rhetoric instead of actually supporting the strike) opposition to the Pullman Strike
Thorstein Veblen: sociologist who coined the term conspicuous consumption in The Theory of the Leisure Class, non-marxist critic of capitalism. OTL worked with Wilson in 1917 on potential WW1 peace settlements, and was an anglophile who contrasted authoritarian Germany with Democratic Britain in Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution during the war.
Lewis Mumford: Was actually in the Navy during WW1 in OTL, became a literary critic in 1919 and his first work came out in 1922 (The Story of Utopias). Not sure why he's targeted other than maybe utopianism as a whole being equated to Marxism ITTL.
Walter Lippmann: Journalist who coined the term Cold War and in OTL was a captain in the AEF during 1918, later worked with Wilson to draft the 14 Points speech. Pro-war, himself stated he had no "no doctrinaire belief in free speech," but opposed excessive censorship. Targeted either for that or for flirting with socialism in 1911.
Max Eastman: Editor of the Masses, leading socialist paper at the time. OTL anti-war activist, sent John Reed to the USSR and later lived in the USSR during the red scare until the Stalin/Trotsky power struggle disillusioned him about communism.
Floyd Dell: Also an editor of the Masses, targeted by the espionage act OTL.
H.L Mencken: Isolationist journalist, sort of a proto-objectivist (he got Rand's first work published), anti-war from an elitist conservative POV, also anti-organized religion (mocked the scopes monkey trial).
Upton Sinclair: OTL reformist socialist
Theodore Dreiser: Novelists targeted by censors for the content of his novels, also committed socialist activist.
Ida Tarbell: investigative journalist who wrote much about Standard Oil. Served on Wilson's Women's Committee on the Council of National Defense in OTL.
Lincoln Steffens: investigative journalist, OTL early supporter of the USSR, later became an anti communist new dealer
Ray Stennard Baker: investigative journalist, personally sent by Wilson in OTL to observe the war, later Wilson's press secretary at Versailles.
Jeanette Rankin: first woman elected to federal office in US, pacifist who opposed entry into WWI OTL.
Jane Addams: Social reformer who founded Hull House and co-founded ACLU OTL, peace activist
W[a]lter Nelles and Roger Nash Baldwin: ACLU founders and peace activists, former charged with espionage act OTL for opposition to WWI, latter imprisoned for conscientious objection to war.
Fanny Garrison Villard: NAACP co-founder, peace activist post WWI
Grace Abbot: labor reformer (non-socialist), focused primarily on child labor reform. OTL was appointed by Harding in the 20s to be director of the US Children's Bureau.
Mary Heaton Vorse: Labor activist and suffragette, affiliated with the IWW.
Alice Daly: suffragette, politician, labor activist, and pacifist in South Dakota
Sophonisba Breckenridge: social scientist and activist, WTUL affiliate.
Excerpts from German Industrialization: 1850-1940, Alexander Gerschenkron (Berlin: UB Press, 1966)
Introduction
The new socialist government in Germany faced immense economic challenges. Though there had been less destruction of capital assets than in Italy, France, or Russia, the war caused systematic distortions in the economy and near its end led to chronic underinvestment in consumer-oriented industries. The previous government also took out enormous loans from the middle-classes, and the new, socialist state had to decide whether it was going to honor these. In the hopes of preserving its alliance with the National-Social Association, the ruling Social-Democratic coalition initially avoided any talk of default.
A state of de facto industrial chaos existed during the first few months of 1920. To cement their control over the domestic economy, the social-democrats nationalized the big vertically-integrated corporations, including Siemens, Thyssen, Krupp, M.A.N., and AEG. The Kriegsgesellschaften were also nationalized, and continued to perform their previous service: organizing the procurement of raw-materials for the big corporations. With the business tycoons fleeing Germany or sitting in prisons, a battle for leadership of the commanding heights of the company commenced between the worker's councils and the trade unions. The old social-democratic leadership, clustered around Wels and Haase, favored the latter; though the unions were still under some level of suspicion by many socialist activists, most of their leadership were ousted in late 1919 by mid-level functionaries who had worked throughout the war to undermine their bosses. Reforms were passed democratizing the unions and attempting to win the workers over to their cause.
Nonetheless, in large sections of industry, most notably the chemical and electronic sectors, workers chose to elect trade union officials who were loyal to the council movement. As a consequence, a large number of unions effectively dissolved or were rendered powerless. A mixture of council and union delegates sat on the new Kriegsgesellschaften and the other planning boards of the national economy, which had been inherited from the wartime years. As a whole, these were in a fairly weak position due to mass purges of the reactionary officials and reduced state capacity.
The government confronted its first real economic crisis in the summer, when it became clear that many of the big, vertically-integrated corporations were no longer turning a profit. Prices began to deflate across the entire economy. Middle-class skepticism, bourgeois capital flight, and wartime chaos threatened to lead to a full-blown demand crisis. With a banking and financial sector still under construction, the government chose to conduct its first systematic socialization drive. A new provision in the constitution allowed for the expropriation of all industries with over 25 employees, and a series of decrees were passed incentivizing workers to "take up their historic duty". The quick socialization of vast sectors of the economy was tremendously disruptive, but it also introduced - in the form of greater worker incomes - a surge of consumer spending which propped up the big firms. It also, however, cut into the profitability of many of the industries, particularly smaller firms with higher levels of proportional labor costs. The crisis of demand turned into a crisis of investment, prompting the Council of People's Commissars to pass an emergency measure requiring a set level of profits in each firm to be reinvested.
Through the hectic months of civil war, trade with the socialist and social-democratic governments in Sweden, Denmark, Russia, Italy and the Netherlands provided crucial support for the national economy. Munitions factories in particular benefited from trade with Italy and Socialist France, while large quantities of coal continued to be sent to Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. Russia was a crucial source of foodstuffs. By the end of 1920, Germany's total exports exceeded those of any year in the war, despite stagnating output in many major industries. The Socialist republic also became an important middleman for the trade of goods between the Soviet Union and the other socialist states in Europe: the dockworker's unions of Lubeck, Kiel, and Rostock grew wealthy enough to help pay for expansions of port facilities, even while Hamburg struggled under the weight of an Anglo-American embargo.
Enterprise Structure in the New Socialist Economy
By the time that Luxemburg's revolutionary government came to power in October 1920, the socialist economy had already begun an internal and self-directed process of differentiation. At least five major types of enterprise structure existed. Firstly, there were the massive, vertically-integrated corporations, the successors of Krupp, Thyssen, and other titans of heavy industries engaged in mass production. These were dominated by the trade unions and began to engage in a kind of syndical planning. They were concentrated in Silesia, the Ruhr Valley, and Northeastern Westphalia. Secondly, there were the large modern industries of the "second industrial revolution", which produced chemicals, electronics, pharmaceuticals, engines, and advanced machinery. In these, the worker's councils successfully seized power, and the firms slowly took on a more federated and decentralized structure. Some of them began to resemble trusts (in which profits were pooled and divided between independent firms) rather than unitary businesses. Technically speaking, these enterprises were still owned by the state, but they tended to be more resistant to centralized planning.
Thirdly, a form of confederal cooperativism, negotiated among many small and medium-sized collectivized firms, emerged in the old heartlands of the German industrial mittelstand. Before the war, Saxony, Baden-Wurttemberg, the Rhineland, and Southwestern Westphalia were home to numerous small businesses employing between 30 and 200 people. In these areas, the production process was frequently distributed between numerous actors, with the overall industrial landscape defined by relations of deep dependency due to the exchange of made-to-order assets. An unusually high proportion of industrial enterprises were dedicated to consumer goods (particularly textile) production. Heavy-industrial factories found a market niche through creating extremely specialized products and maintaining flexibility in production. In contrast to the vertically-integrated industries in Brandenburg, Silesia, and the Ruhr Valley, many elements of the production process were delegated to outside contracting agencies.
These small, decentralized industrial landscapes anticipated their socialist-confederal successors. During the Wilhelmine era, informal social networks and regional governments acted to coordinate the exchange of goods. In many cases, each individual business did not have a "competitor" in the market due to their degree of specialization. Trade associations frequently functioned as "specialization cartels" which eliminated production redundancies which might lead to overcapacity. As a consequence, market mechanisms already played a smaller part in price-setting than they did in traditional capitalism.
Over the summer and autumn, a wave of collectivization in the decentralized regions followed the socialization provisions. Saxony Wurttemberg-Baden, and the Rhineland had perhaps the densest network of interstitial institutions in all of Europe, and Stuttgart, Leipzig, and Chemnitz were strongholds of Luxemburgist RWF (Revolutionary Worker's Front) organizing. Most of the small specialized firms fell bloodlessly into the hands of the workers. Educated bureaucrats previously employed by trade associations were incorporated into subcommittees of regional councils, which became a vital center for extrafirm enterprise governance. The social networks that undergirded decentralized industrialization were quickly formalized through the regional councils, and small, worker-controlled businesses entered into "confederal agreements" with their counterparts. At first, these were simply formal acknowledgements of their de facto commitment to cooperation, but over the course of Luxemburg's government, they were recognized as a distinctive form of enterprise organization and accrued additional powers. These will be discussed more later; over time, the confederations became a key institution of the Central European economy, combining planning, worker's governance, as well as some internal market mechanisms.
The fourth form of enterprise was the consumer cooperative. These were particularly prominent in the sectors of food and banking. Cooperative savings banks and credit unions were already widespread before the war, particularly in the decentralized industrial regions with a high proportion of small and medium-sized firms. These institutions primarily served the local bourgeoisie; after the first socialization drive, they went on a capital strike, causing a temporary crisis of investment in the new confederal cooperatives until the Commissariat of Finance decreed the that the banks would be transferred into the hands of the regional councils. Eventually, these banks would serve as the basis for a regional public banking system, though they continued to be run on a quasi-cooperative basis, and prominent worker-stakeholders shared power with state governments. They gained a renewed prominence by 1921, when public finance became one of the "pillars" of economic planning.
In contrast to the credit unions, the food cooperatives were mostly a product of wartime exigencies, and tended to have a more proletarian and urban membership. The largest food cooperatives were not located in the decentralized regions of Saxony, Baden-Wurttemberg, or Thuringia, but in the large industrial cities of Berlin and Hamburg. In concert with the worker's councils, most of the coops were converted into public institutions during the first months of the civil war, with special privileges for members, while others chose to formally affiliate with the modern firms controlled by the worker's councils. Food cooperatives remained very popular after the revolution, and their presence multiplied throughout the rest of the country during 1920.
The remaining enterprises were remnant capitalist firms, typically employing under 25 workers. These were concentrated in the rural hinterlands of Germany, such as Pomerania, Posen, and East Prussia. They tended to be either agricultural or professional in character. Legal and consulting firms, mid-sized peasant holdings, and other small businesses in the service sector comprised most of the capitalist economy. The capitalist sector employed a sizable portion of workers, though it constituted a smaller share of the overall economy since the average business was poorer and less capital-intensive than their collectivized counterparts.
Almost all socialist politicians and activists viewed the capitalist sector as a potential reactionary fifth column. Though most of the urban firms went untouched during the first year of the socialist republic, the old agricultural sector came under immediate assault. A sweeping land reform broke up the estates of the Prussian Junkers and forced many mid-sized holdings to give up land. After she came into power, Luxemburg held off on immediate collectivization, instead opting to first weaken the agricultural sector through importing vast quantities of Russian grain. This was facilitated by the November Konigsberg agreements, in which Germany pledged to provide the Soviet Union with industrial secrets, engineering assistance, and specialized agricultural machinery in return for the right to purchase any grain surpluses over the next two years. The truly vast social upheaval that followed, in which plunging prices of foodstuffs prompted millions of agricultural laborers to stream into the cities, was memorably captured by Walter Ruttman's 1925 film, The Great Flight.
The Coming Upheaval
In 1921, on the eve of the first "Age of Socialist Construction", market relations were diminished but still intact. They still served an important role in coordinating exchange between different sectors of the economy. Ironically, the sweeping cartelization of the wartime years likely displaced market relations to a greater extent than any of the initial measures of the socialist government. Despite the relative weakness of markets as a disciplining force, the central government at first exercised little control over the direction of the national economy. Neither "democratically planned statism" nor Italian-style "mixed market socialism", the German economy was in the unique position of having both weak markets and a weak state.
At the commanding heights of the economy were the worker's representatives elected through trade union and council elections. These individuals possessed de facto control over the nation's largest firms. They jointly engaged in informal, non-institutionalized cooperative bargaining to make determinations about their own enterprises and to set the prices of key industrial goods. One scholar described this crystallizing economic structure as a "cooperative mixed economy coordinated through non-state networks of worker's representatives". The frequently secretive nature of these negotiations prompted fears of a new elite emerging, particularly among those anxious about the vast powers accumulated by the trade union bureaucrats in charge of German heavy industry. Upon assuming the chairmanship of the new government in October, Luxemburg vowed to "subordinate the economy to the worker-councils" and "subordinate the state to society". Thus began the first real drive toward the "democratic planning" of the economy.
In the first month of assuming power, the new government unilaterally defaulted on all wartime loans, created a unitary maximum income for all industries, introduced legislation to expand, empower, and reform the wartime planning boards, and passed a slate of new mandatory collectivization laws targeting urban service industries. This was merely a prelude to a vast and systematic reorganization of the key institutions of the German economy. Taken together, the initial decrees indicated that Luxemburg intended to make good on her promise to "annihilate the last vestiges of extractive-exploitative Wilhelmine capitalism, and begin the construction of the socialist economy." For the loyalist German mittelstand who had reluctantly consented to partake in the socialist experiment, the new direction of the government constituted an assault on its very existence.
The dizzying pace of socialist advance would only heighten in the coming years, and it would leave German society transformed beyond recognition. Even so, the 19th-century heritage of geographically dispersed, state-directed "late industrialization" would continue to shape the structure of the economy. The diverse regional industrial orders of Germany, a product of uneven and combined development, persisted throughout the process of socialist construction. Whether this has been a blessing or a curse is a matter of individual judgement: what some denounce as a "confused patchwork of excessively bureaucratized overlapping fiefdoms" others applaud as a "laboratory of plural and mutually supporting socialist industrial modernities."
1) There will certainly be some level of agricultural mechanization, though at first, most of this is going to be pawned off to Russia. The new socialist government will depend on market mechanisms, grain imports and a range of state incentives and subsidies to push people off the farms and into the cities.
2) I haven't gone into too much of the minutiae here, but as far as the labor supply goes, Germany is actually having the opposite problem. The demobilization of the army and capital flight means that at first (in 1919-1920, really), there's going to be some difficulty in employing everyone, particularly in the cities. This is compounded by the investment crisis and the tendency of many cooperatives to spend money on improving productivity rather than hiring new workers. So, guest workers won't come until later, probably sometime in the mid-1920s. When they do arrive, they'll come in pretty big tranches - something of a free labor zone is going to emerge pretty quickly among the socialist nations, which will enable workers to move around the bloc pretty easily.
AEG is a very interesting company at this time. If I recognize the name correctly, it's actually a German electronics firm that was acquired by the Swedish company Electrolux AB.
So, I'm wondering if Socialist Germany would ever have the ability to have the state-run remnants of old AEG produce consumer electronics, or if their products will be redirected towards things with military use.
Hey folks - just wanted to thank everyone who has nominated this TL for the User's Choice Awards. It means a lot and I'm excited to work further on this once some RL craziness clears up!
The next few updates will be granular social/political histories of Italy, France, and the Netherlands through the last year of the Great War and the first few of the First Revolutionary Era. I am also cooking up an entry on art, architecture, and urban planning in Germany during the rushing 20s. If any of you have knowledge of Weimar era aesthetics, let me know - I'd love to ping some ideas back and forth.
AEG is a very interesting company at this time. If I recognize the name correctly, it's actually a German electronics firm that was acquired by the Swedish company Electrolux AB.
So, I'm wondering if Socialist Germany would ever have the ability to have the state-run remnants of old AEG produce consumer electronics, or if their products will be redirected towards things with military use.
This is right! It was a pretty big firm at the time. Telefunken, one of the biggest producers of radios and televisions, was initially a joint subsidiary of Siemens and AEG.
I am also cooking up an entry on art, architecture, and urban planning in Germany during the rushing 20s. If any of you have knowledge of Weimar era aesthetics, let me know - I'd love to ping some ideas back and forth.
Hey! Love this timeline so far and am still working my way through the backlog, but if there's anything i've got a Weird Nerd Passion for it's interwar-era art and architecture in general so don't hesitate to hit me up!
