Continued from Reds: A Revolutionary Timeline; this thread will cover the historical period from the end of the Second American Revolution (February, 1934), to the end of this timeline's Second World War. I'd like to humbly ask that any comments on material from before this date be kept in the first thread. That said, without further adieu, I present to you A Red Dawn.
The First Cultural Revolution
The first updates in this timeline will consist of an in character examination of the dimensions of what would later be known as the First Cultural Revolution, a period roughly from 1934 to 1940 that would herald dramatic changes in all facets of American culture and society, from politics, economics and religion to recreation, art and even personal relationships. To begin, I offer you excerpts from Murray Bookchin's foreword to Paul Avrich's seminal work on the period, A Return to Eden: A Social History of the Cultural Revolution (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1984).
Membership of the Central Committee, Foster Government 1933-1938
The Central Committee serves as the collective executive body for the UASR. It consists of the head of government and his deputy, the heads of the government secretariats, and the chairmen of important union committees and commissions. Some offices, such as the political head of the People's Secretariat for Justice, have an atypical title, in this case Attorney General. "*" denotes a position added in April of 1934.
Premier:William Z. Foster
Deputy Premier: Earl Browder*
People's Secretary for Foreign Affairs: John Reed
Attorney General: Crystal Eastman
People's Secretary for Defense: Martin Abern
People's Secretary for Labor: Emma Goldman
People's Secretary for Finance: Thomas G. Corcoran
People's Secretary for Foreign Trade: Walter Lippmann*
People's Secretary for Agriculture: Henry A. Wallace
People's Secretary for Education: John Dewey
People's Secretary for Public Safety: J. Edgar Hoover*
People's Secretary for Railways: James P. Cannon
People's Secretary for Communication: Max Eastman*
People's Secretary for Maritime Transport: Joseph Ryan*
People's Secretary for Energy: Farrell Dobbs*
People's Secretary for Heavy Industry: W.E.B. Du Bois*
People's Secretary for Light Industry: Sidney Hillman*
People's Secretary for Construction and Housing: Clarence Senior*
Chairman, State Planning Commission: Albert Kahn*
Chairman, Academy of Arts and Sciences: Eugene O'Neill*
Chairman, Union Bank: William Truant Foster*
Membership of the Council of the Union, 1934-1938.
The Council of the Union, as per the Basic Law, consists of one representative from each Union Republic, and an equal number of national representatives, elected to 10 year terms by the Congress of People's Deputies. For the first election, representatives were selected in rough proportion to the number of people's deputies each pro-socialist political party had.
President of the Union: Upton Sinclair (re-elected 1936)
Deputy President: Louis C. Fraina
Provincial representatives: 36 Workers Party, 12 Left Democrats
National representatives: 34 Workers Party, 14 Left Democrats
Next installment: the functions and policies of the People's Secretariats during the Cultural Revolution
The First Cultural Revolution
The first updates in this timeline will consist of an in character examination of the dimensions of what would later be known as the First Cultural Revolution, a period roughly from 1934 to 1940 that would herald dramatic changes in all facets of American culture and society, from politics, economics and religion to recreation, art and even personal relationships. To begin, I offer you excerpts from Murray Bookchin's foreword to Paul Avrich's seminal work on the period, A Return to Eden: A Social History of the Cultural Revolution (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1984).
We often never realize just how vastly different our own epoch is from past epochs. Events that we celebrate, cherish and immortalize become we removed from the time and circumstances of their own epoch. Disconnected from their own circumstances, events of history become the free floating ideological debris of our own age, constantly filtered and re-filtered through the discriminating lens of the historian. But as a result, our sense of history is impoverished. It becomes the burden of those of us who had born witness, as well as those who consider themselves to be proper students of history, to cut back the veil of time, and breath life into the dead past so that we may fend the cycle of historical tragedy and farce.
The great centers of learning in our Union must prepare the students of today to continue the battles of yesterday. And I'm sure they do not need an old man such as me to tell them this. But if I may offer my own experiences to help light the way, I am more than happy to my duty for the great human brotherhood. While it may depress the modern reader to learn that America has not always not been on the right side of the World Revolution, and has failed in her duty to her international comrades many times since her own revolution, it is patent absurdity to even entertain the conservative charge that to teach these truths is anti-American and counter-revolutionary. If that is indeed the case, then we have already lost.
In my own lifetime, I have seen world capitalism brought to its knees by a crisis of its own making. I have lived through the counter-revolutionary junta of the American master class, and manned the barricades during the revolution. I've watched fascism cover the whole of Europe in a terror never before seen in the world. I, like everyone else of my generation, took up arms to defend the country of my birth as well as the country of my mother's birth. I saw first hand the results Stalin's wanton betrayal of the revolutionary movement. I too gasped in awe and horror upon seeing the news reels of the harnessing of the power of the atom, and the liberation of Nazi death camps in Central Europe. Had these tragedies alone been our legacy as a species, we would have already had our share of blood spilt.
But new horrors would follow the Second World War. The world evermore divided itself into three bitterly opposed hostile camps. America and the Soviet Union both in turn betrayed the World Revolution in their rush to divide the world into zones of control. The last of the Imperialist powers, the Franco-British Union, recovered its strength, and clutched onto its colonies ever tighter, while Dewey and Bulganin brought the world to the brink of thermonuclear war in their struggle to control the Comintern and the path that international communism would follow. The only way to go was down. Each passing year brought more warheads, more powerful nuclear weapons and deadlier means of delivery. Our collective race to suicide was sad and terrifying. The world over, we saw the end of the classical worker's movement, it's revolutionary potential negated by the march of history.
...At some point, we must ask, where did this all begin? We hear often of the good that came from the Revolution. Where did it come from? And how?
This is where Avrich's book comes in. As his own words show (see Preface), Paul began writing this book seeking to answer exactly these questions for the high school history students of America. Like many of the great history texts, a commission from the People's Secretariat for Education set the ball rolling, but hundreds, perhaps thousands of individuals devoted their time and effort to making this book possible. I am proud to have contributed in my own way to this project. As Karl Marx noted, "History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this."
Politics After the Revolution: An OverviewThe great centers of learning in our Union must prepare the students of today to continue the battles of yesterday. And I'm sure they do not need an old man such as me to tell them this. But if I may offer my own experiences to help light the way, I am more than happy to my duty for the great human brotherhood. While it may depress the modern reader to learn that America has not always not been on the right side of the World Revolution, and has failed in her duty to her international comrades many times since her own revolution, it is patent absurdity to even entertain the conservative charge that to teach these truths is anti-American and counter-revolutionary. If that is indeed the case, then we have already lost.
In my own lifetime, I have seen world capitalism brought to its knees by a crisis of its own making. I have lived through the counter-revolutionary junta of the American master class, and manned the barricades during the revolution. I've watched fascism cover the whole of Europe in a terror never before seen in the world. I, like everyone else of my generation, took up arms to defend the country of my birth as well as the country of my mother's birth. I saw first hand the results Stalin's wanton betrayal of the revolutionary movement. I too gasped in awe and horror upon seeing the news reels of the harnessing of the power of the atom, and the liberation of Nazi death camps in Central Europe. Had these tragedies alone been our legacy as a species, we would have already had our share of blood spilt.
But new horrors would follow the Second World War. The world evermore divided itself into three bitterly opposed hostile camps. America and the Soviet Union both in turn betrayed the World Revolution in their rush to divide the world into zones of control. The last of the Imperialist powers, the Franco-British Union, recovered its strength, and clutched onto its colonies ever tighter, while Dewey and Bulganin brought the world to the brink of thermonuclear war in their struggle to control the Comintern and the path that international communism would follow. The only way to go was down. Each passing year brought more warheads, more powerful nuclear weapons and deadlier means of delivery. Our collective race to suicide was sad and terrifying. The world over, we saw the end of the classical worker's movement, it's revolutionary potential negated by the march of history.
...At some point, we must ask, where did this all begin? We hear often of the good that came from the Revolution. Where did it come from? And how?
This is where Avrich's book comes in. As his own words show (see Preface), Paul began writing this book seeking to answer exactly these questions for the high school history students of America. Like many of the great history texts, a commission from the People's Secretariat for Education set the ball rolling, but hundreds, perhaps thousands of individuals devoted their time and effort to making this book possible. I am proud to have contributed in my own way to this project. As Karl Marx noted, "History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this."
Membership of the Central Committee, Foster Government 1933-1938
The Central Committee serves as the collective executive body for the UASR. It consists of the head of government and his deputy, the heads of the government secretariats, and the chairmen of important union committees and commissions. Some offices, such as the political head of the People's Secretariat for Justice, have an atypical title, in this case Attorney General. "*" denotes a position added in April of 1934.
Premier:William Z. Foster
Deputy Premier: Earl Browder*
People's Secretary for Foreign Affairs: John Reed
Attorney General: Crystal Eastman
People's Secretary for Defense: Martin Abern
People's Secretary for Labor: Emma Goldman
People's Secretary for Finance: Thomas G. Corcoran
People's Secretary for Foreign Trade: Walter Lippmann*
People's Secretary for Agriculture: Henry A. Wallace
People's Secretary for Education: John Dewey
People's Secretary for Public Safety: J. Edgar Hoover*
People's Secretary for Railways: James P. Cannon
People's Secretary for Communication: Max Eastman*
People's Secretary for Maritime Transport: Joseph Ryan*
People's Secretary for Energy: Farrell Dobbs*
People's Secretary for Heavy Industry: W.E.B. Du Bois*
People's Secretary for Light Industry: Sidney Hillman*
People's Secretary for Construction and Housing: Clarence Senior*
Chairman, State Planning Commission: Albert Kahn*
Chairman, Academy of Arts and Sciences: Eugene O'Neill*
Chairman, Union Bank: William Truant Foster*
Membership of the Council of the Union, 1934-1938.
The Council of the Union, as per the Basic Law, consists of one representative from each Union Republic, and an equal number of national representatives, elected to 10 year terms by the Congress of People's Deputies. For the first election, representatives were selected in rough proportion to the number of people's deputies each pro-socialist political party had.
President of the Union: Upton Sinclair (re-elected 1936)
Deputy President: Louis C. Fraina
Provincial representatives: 36 Workers Party, 12 Left Democrats
National representatives: 34 Workers Party, 14 Left Democrats
Next installment: the functions and policies of the People's Secretariats during the Cultural Revolution