One typo in the latest update's second footnote of "itinery" for "itinerary", which Google has assured me is not just another British endeavour to baffle foreigners.
Look to the West Volume V: To Dream Again
- Thread starter Thande
- Start date
Caraíbas is a Lenin. His visible racial mixed background gives it away.
That makes me wonder if the S in Societism stands for South (as well).
The confirmed/implied Societist regions are usually located in the South, whether they are in the *Americas (*South America, former southern ENA), Europe (Southwest and Southeast Europe), *Asia (*South-East Asia) or Africa (Southern Africa).
Maybe, even though in Latin, it's 'meridies', according to Google and Wikipedia. (This finally explains why UPSAsians are called Meridians. I had no idea until now.
) And then there's also the word 'auster'. We don't know how much Nova Latina will resembles Latin, however.Where exactly?
Indeed. I believe the Indian Mahdi ITTL was very similar to the Sudanese Mahdi IOTL.
Last edited:
The UPSA took over former Portuguese colonies around the world.
I presume the UPSA took over the Portuguese colonies in southern Africa as well.
And there is also the Cape Republic, a member of the Hermandad which is located between the Belgian-ruled Kaapstad and the Anglo-American Natal colony.
Its sister republic in Nusantara is confirmed as future Societist Combine territory. I do not expect the Cape Republic not to share the fate of its sister republics.
Okay, my view. Excellent installment as always Thande, and I much appreciate you "stealing" the plot and twist of Around The World In Eighty Days. I take a fairly liberal view of this whole notion of what is plagiarism and what isn't when it comes to literature, and generally feel that fanfiction or reinventing stories is generally a good thing. After all, that's how we got Ulysses. It does of course help that the copyright still has expired on Jules Verne's collected portfolio seeing you intend to publish this some day in the future.
No, no, no! They are located in Zones 1-72!
No, no, no! They are located in Zones 1-72!
The esteemed Mr Lenin was partially of Mongolian extraction, and visibly so.
One Chuvash grandparent and one Oirat grandparent (or possibly great-grandparent), according to wiki.
I keep forgetting about the Cape republic and I never really think about Angola and Mozambique as being in southern Africa, for whatever reason.
Also, the Ottomans control most of north Africa, so the south = societism doesn't seem to hold up 100%. Maybe.
I have a suspicion that Japan turns Societist (or at least part of it), in a sort of reverse-North Korea situation. Perhaps parts are still ruled by Korea or is a member of the Russian Confederation.
Part 201 states (bolding is mine):
Of course, this could be in refference to the Combine proper. However, what is immedietly east of Corea?
Well Russia has land east of Corea, but this is unlikely, given that (a) most of Russia is west or north of Corea, rather than east, and (b) Russia is also diversitarian.
What else is immedietly east of Corea? Why the late, lamented Japan, of course. The most recent update hints at a rebellion in Japan. Of course, there would probably be simmering nationalist sentiment for a while; a breakaway rump Japan might be easy pickings...sorry a key strategic ally for the UPSA, and may end up going societist, and probably a very authoritarian and militaristic one. Hence my "revese North Korea" comment. (With Corea as TTL's Japan analogue.)
Part 201 states (bolding is mine):
Of course, this could be in refference to the Combine proper. However, what is immedietly east of Corea?
Well Russia has land east of Corea, but this is unlikely, given that (a) most of Russia is west or north of Corea, rather than east, and (b) Russia is also diversitarian.
What else is immedietly east of Corea? Why the late, lamented Japan, of course. The most recent update hints at a rebellion in Japan. Of course, there would probably be simmering nationalist sentiment for a while; a breakaway rump Japan might be easy pickings...sorry a key strategic ally for the UPSA, and may end up going societist, and probably a very authoritarian and militaristic one. Hence my "revese North Korea" comment. (With Corea as TTL's Japan analogue.)
I have suspected that since #201.
My guess is that the Societist Combine played an important role in defeating Russia in the Yaponski War of Independence aka Sunrise War.
Consequently, post-war Yapon ended up Societist.
It was basically stated that the Societist threat was defeated in the late 20th century.
Societist Yapon could be a remnant that is still hostile to the victors.
I bet that modern Yapontsi like threshold weapons even more than North Koreans their nuclear weapons.
Edzo/Hokkaido seems to be a likely candidate, though it was never Japanized ITTL.
But if the Combine has been defeated, why is there still the Cold War style political mobilization going on in the Diverse world? At minimum, I think there will be at least an entity as powerful as modern China which calls itself the Combine and maintains at least some of the tenants of Societism to justify the paranoia.
teg
Maybe it has become an ingrained part of the cultures of the Diversitarian powers.
After all, the struggle between the Societists and Diversitarians lasted from the early 20th century till at least 1990.
The pre-conflict world was no longer in living memory when the Societist Combine was defeated.
The Societists are not gone, just defeated, hence Last War of Supremacy.
This is kind of an embarrassing question (and perhaps a bit late) but can someone explain the party system of the ENA? I know that the Whigs were Carolinians and the Supremacists were abolitionist Northerners, but everything else went over my head.
Not exactly. The Whigs were Carolinians (an analogue of the Northern Democrats) and the Supremacists were nativists (an analogue of the more warlike Republicans). There are also the Patriots (an analogue of the Northern/Peace Democrats) and the Liberals (an analogue of the more radical Republicans).
Presumably Societism is "defeated" insofar as that at an earlier time it looked to be on an unstoppable roll, but in its "defeat" the circumstances giving grounds for the fear it would never be checked changed. Presumably some nation that was going to "go under" did not; possibly some region that had appeared to be swallowed up instead had a Diversitarian uprising, throwing off the Societist identity and allegiance and presumably returning to some version of its former self.
Such a defeat is consistent with large regions and populations remaining Societist in the Combine; what matters is that it can no longer advance with the same implacable momentum.
I remain in the dark but hopeful despite Thande's ominous stage dressing that life in the Societist sphere is not so bad. But while I have my impatience with the absurdities of Diversitarian ideology as they have been presented so far, I have to admit that life in the Diversitarian sphere (as much as we've been shown) does not seem to have anything really terrible about it. I worry about the form that organized Points of Controversy might take, perhaps leading to ritualized violence or oppressive bigotry (as a point of pride!) But it doesn't seem plain as a slap in the face--yet. But neither is there anything concrete we can point to about Societist--well, society--that is plainly abhorrent either. All we know is that Diversitarians make it a shared Point of Controversy to oppose and denounce the Societists, and we gather that apparently the Societists think the Diversitarians are dangerously wrong-headed.
But just what does adopting Societism entail for the (former) nation that does so? One of the first barriers to the intercourse of peoples sundered by culture and the myth of nationhood (as one supposes the Societists have it) is the division of language. And with language of course tends to go billions of distinct cultural markers.
I have the impression that "Novo Latino" or some such is the name of a semi-artificial language that we might suppose all Societist peoples must adopt, the better to be merged. Presumably it has a Latin base, heavily reworked by ideological linguists to make it more logical and also to foster global unity. If so, presumably the transition to the new tongue was easier in Spanish and Portuguese, and perhaps eventually French or Italian speaking communities, than it would have been for Nusantrans or even Afrikaans speaking South Africans. Well, maybe it wasn't the Boers of South Africa who wanted the change, maybe it was the native peoples? But for them the transition would be even harder than for the Afrikaaners!
Hitherto, the Hermanidad dominated by the UPSA has largely concentrated on absorbing territory where either Spanish or Portuguese was the language of rule, if not the universal mother tongue of everyone under their control. We already see inroads, in the 90 days around the world narrative, into places where neither Iberian kingdom ever had control; it may be that only about now are Meridians giving a lot of thought to the question of just how to rope in, and keep roped in, people with no Iberian element in their historic societies.
One method would be to simply and forthrightly favor Spanish; to allow associated nations where Spanish is not a widely known language yet to be run by local elites (tied by strong interests to the Hermanidad to be sure) ruling in the local vernacular, but for it to be obvious, even painfully so, that to get ahead one really ought to learn the dominant language. Presumably this is a factor in who gets to run the associated nominally non-Spanish speaking republics--or principalities--have they already included nations that have some sort of monarchial system still? I'd think a minimum requirement would be for a powerful parliament to balance a monarch, and perhaps they are still insistent on their associates being full republics.
If the Meridians push Spanish pretty hard, informally but strongly, that would be another analogy with OTL's USA of course. Linguistic chauvinism would be an impediment in winning over more allies, but that might be a price they are willing to pay for greater cohesion within the "Brotherhood."
Now if we suppose as seems more and more certain that the Meridian hegemony is the heartland of Societism on the other hand, language becomes a crisis.
Perhaps less so if the maxim attributed to Caribias is always followed, to never become involved in any military conflict until one side is clearly losing. I don't recall any expansion of that maxim being laid down yet, to say which party to then ally with, and I would guess that sometimes the regime would favor the losing side, when the Combine's forces are strong enough to cause the hitherto winner to back off, and then the rescued loser is beholden to the Combine and in no position to refuse to implement recommended "reforms," such as favoring the common Societist language until it becomes common, and eventually abolishing its independent government and deeding its territory and peoples over to the larger whole. Or vice versa, sometimes the Combine would ally with the winning side, and for services rendered (shortening the war, saving lives and treasure, rendering decided what might have been otherwise doomed to be a festering sore leading to generations of violence to come) get a piece of the spoils; again the loser territories ceded to Societist influence are in an abject position. Note that either way, territories gained this way are not only weak but demoralized, perhaps fertile ground to get converts to Societist revolutionary values, not the least of which would be trading in their old limited and failed national identity for membership in the largest and most powerful single polity on the planet. The Sanchezists promise that if they make this trade their old identities will never be counted against them.
If this is how the Combine has grown, then perhaps the absorbed peoples can be made to speak any language at all, even one very alien to them, so that language might as well be a thinly disguised, ideologically made over version of Spanish as anything else.
However--if we suppose that part of Societism's spread has been more genuinely ideological and revolutionary, then we have to be supposing that sufficient numbers of people--not necessarily majorities--in many diverse countries few of which have any Spanish heritage, are willing to accept an ideology that requires them to sacrifice their mother tongue to adopt a strange one. And then have the power to force this change on the rest of their compatriots--they may call on the Combine to send agents to assist them of course, but the process of forcibly converting their own former countrymen must be a harsh and brutal one, even if the Combine offers carrots by the bushel along with sticks.
In this case it would be helpful if the new language everyone must learn, willing or not, is not blatantly the one that a bunch of South Americans happened to have inherited naturally, but was neutral ground. A made up artificial language perhaps,, that is just as alien to the old core of the Hermanidad as to potential new recruits overseas.
What it looks like to me now is that perhaps we have mostly the former strategy, of opportunistically seizing vulnerable territories, with a bit of the latter, revolutionary mode of expansion. And the outcome seems to be that ostensibly a revolutionary new artificial language has been developed, but it is pretty close to Spanish, ostensibly a remade Latin. It is technically a new tongue, different from Spanish, but easy for Spanish speakers to learn.
Another question would be, are the Societists (by the late 20th century if not necessarily in their origins with Caribias) so radical as to try to extirpate the old languages completely, and by monopolizing translations from the old languages manipulate the consciousness of the Society in an Orwellian fashion? Or is the "New Latin" meant to be, as Esperanto hoped to become OTL, the "universal second language," a tongue no one is expected to be raised in as their mother tongue but everyone is expected to more or less master for the sake of global intercourse? And governance of course.
I've been wondering these things in the light of the suggestion that Yapon might manage (at least partially) to throw off Russo-Corean dominance by means of a Societist revolution. The Yaponese, despite their helot status ITTL, don't strike me as people willing to simply abandon their unique language and culture, to submit utterly to one alien culture merely as a tactic to throw off the rule of others. Well when I put it that way, perhaps I can see it; if Russo-Corean rule has destroyed much of what OTL Japanese prided themselves in and degraded the rest, perhaps if they truly are reduced to helotry they might consider the choice to be absorbed into the Society, new language, new art styles, new diet, new everything, as preferable to trying to adapt to a hegemony that will always look down on them.
But only if they despair of the third option, that one would figure would be the first choice actually, to overthrow the foreigners and then re-assert their own culture. I don't know of any people so abject that they would convert en masse and on the spot to a new culture; emigrants do it piecemeal, but in a context where they are strangers and a minority.
The idea that Yapon is in fact Societist, at least some of its territory, is only implied as yet, and the assumption they got that way through revolution is only a guess about a guess.
-----------------
Speaking of guesses about guesses, a lot of folks are on the bandwagon of Caribias being a Lenin figure, and I could easily roll with that myself (only because I find both Caribias and Lenin admirable figures though--it seems clear some people compare them in order to damn Caribias by the association!) But objectively speaking, Lenin would never act as Caribias has thus far. Instead of founding a radical labor movement with the stated purpose of overthrowing private capital completely, Caribias's response to being fired was to found a new business of his own.
Suppose that Karl Marx had hit upon his analysis of the mechanisms of capitalism but did not recoil from it as a temporary and compromised system, but rather wished to use his insights into how it all worked to enter the world of highly financed industrial business and conquer it from within--to become a capitalist without illusions, but with an agenda and principles. Suppose that recognizing that organizing his workplaces so as to give more dignity, pay and control to the workers in the shops (but not enough to have them take it over from himself) he would be at a bit of a competitive disadvantage vis a vis more conventionally ruthless bosses, he still felt he could stay ahead by means of the inside track he had on how it all worked, and thus if only he had some capital, he could become a great captain of industry, one who would (on his theories anyway) thus also wield great political power as well? Well it so happened OTL that his staunchest friend and comrade was in fact a capitalist, or anyway the scion of a family with business interests in Germany and Britain. If Marx had been willing and able to roll up his sleeves and get his hands dirty on behalf of the Engels firm, perhaps he could within a couple decades expand its holdings into a mighty conglomerate, one with a political following as well as a huge portfolio of properties.
In OTL US terms, he might thus combine in his person aspects of both Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Carnegie! Or a very liberal-progressive Henry Ford.
And this seems more like the sort of path Caribias might go down. He'd be a Lenin only in the sense that someone might consider Ayn Rand to be a Marx--falling between the two in terms of his program.
I believe one of Thande's goals or drives in writing this TL has been to demonstrate the arbitrariness of our OTL political and economic doctrines by having a very different basis for radicalism that threatens to dominate the 20th century, scorning the economic analyses of Marx completely and showing a radicalism that concerns itself not at all with the concept of "the class struggle."
As someone convinced that it is not that easy to get away from Marx's analysis, I'd suggest that to get a world where the insurgent discontents of the poorer masses are not so focused, one needs to put a "human face," to grossly paraphrase Dubcek of Czechoslovakia, on capitalism. This is what was more or less attempted by the New Deal in the USA and the very partial accommodations with socialism in post-WWII Europe; to produce a balanced society where the power of the very rich under capitalism is checked by what was hoped to be robust democratic regulation. By infusing some ethics, enforced strongly by dominant ideology and public sentiment, into the conduct of the workplace, one might hope to sidestep the adversarial relationship between more or less organized labor and capital. This is how Caribias is shown to lead by example.
The upshot is again to reinforce the parallelism between the United States of OTL and the trajectory of the UPSA toward a huge global Combine. As with Orwell's 1984, the critique of the pathologies of Leninism seem plain enough--but Orwell was actually a critic of pathological trends in the nominally free West as well, and reading 1984 through a lens where the triply divided world is a parallel to the Cold War polarization is more profitable than just as an "OMG what if the Commies took over!?!" screed. I wonder here then how much of a mislead it is to scrutinize Societism for its parallels to Leninism, and ignore how it resembles the model of how Americans saw their dominance in the Cold War period--the ideal free republic, which once founded by the staunch courage and wisdom of its creators goes from strength to strength, the natural beacon of the wisely ordered way of life to which all the world flocks, ready to spread its light and liberty through the world and eliminate all the foolish and ruinous conflicts perpetuated by greedy and backward elites. Take away USAian racism and provincialism and what stands between the ideology of 1950s America and the Combine?
Perhaps a lot. In the Combine, it would appear, a self-appointed party controls writing, or attempts to; perhaps controls the very machinery of language itself (or again attempts to). Students of Noam Chomsky and other radical gadflies of the US hegemony might suggest that the "freedom" of the Western press was in effect no less tightly controlled--if in fact in the Combine it is technically legal and somewhat possible, with some difficulty, to get ahold of non-Sanchezist-approved literature and question aspects of the regime, even if it is at the price of being essentially frozen out of all meaningful power and labeled a malcontent, unappreciative and intellectually deranged nonconformist, the parallelism would be that much closer. But is the Combine more Stalinist in its thought control?
We have that implication, but how free is thought in the Diversitarian sphere?
My guess? It is well, diverse. In a strong power like Russia, there is probably a lot of dissenting scholarship. I'm not so sure about England though, and I forget if we've been shown anything about the state of the perhaps former ENA in the 2010s.
I suspect that in addition to debunking Marxists or any theories that claim historic inevitability, the author is also rather showing up the OTL hegemony of the USA, and like the prophet Nathan (IIRC) speaking to King David telling of a wicked man who oppressed his neighbor horribly, the denoument would be the reveal--"thou art the man!" for all the American fans so keen to see the dreaded Combine as a projection of TTLs USSR--rather than our own order.
Such a defeat is consistent with large regions and populations remaining Societist in the Combine; what matters is that it can no longer advance with the same implacable momentum.
I remain in the dark but hopeful despite Thande's ominous stage dressing that life in the Societist sphere is not so bad. But while I have my impatience with the absurdities of Diversitarian ideology as they have been presented so far, I have to admit that life in the Diversitarian sphere (as much as we've been shown) does not seem to have anything really terrible about it. I worry about the form that organized Points of Controversy might take, perhaps leading to ritualized violence or oppressive bigotry (as a point of pride!)
But it doesn't seem plain as a slap in the face--yet. But neither is there anything concrete we can point to about Societist--well, society--that is plainly abhorrent either. All we know is that Diversitarians make it a shared Point of Controversy to oppose and denounce the Societists, and we gather that apparently the Societists think the Diversitarians are dangerously wrong-headed.But just what does adopting Societism entail for the (former) nation that does so? One of the first barriers to the intercourse of peoples sundered by culture and the myth of nationhood (as one supposes the Societists have it) is the division of language. And with language of course tends to go billions of distinct cultural markers.
I have the impression that "Novo Latino" or some such is the name of a semi-artificial language that we might suppose all Societist peoples must adopt, the better to be merged. Presumably it has a Latin base, heavily reworked by ideological linguists to make it more logical and also to foster global unity. If so, presumably the transition to the new tongue was easier in Spanish and Portuguese, and perhaps eventually French or Italian speaking communities, than it would have been for Nusantrans or even Afrikaans speaking South Africans. Well, maybe it wasn't the Boers of South Africa who wanted the change, maybe it was the native peoples? But for them the transition would be even harder than for the Afrikaaners!
Hitherto, the Hermanidad dominated by the UPSA has largely concentrated on absorbing territory where either Spanish or Portuguese was the language of rule, if not the universal mother tongue of everyone under their control. We already see inroads, in the 90 days around the world narrative, into places where neither Iberian kingdom ever had control; it may be that only about now are Meridians giving a lot of thought to the question of just how to rope in, and keep roped in, people with no Iberian element in their historic societies.
One method would be to simply and forthrightly favor Spanish; to allow associated nations where Spanish is not a widely known language yet to be run by local elites (tied by strong interests to the Hermanidad to be sure) ruling in the local vernacular, but for it to be obvious, even painfully so, that to get ahead one really ought to learn the dominant language. Presumably this is a factor in who gets to run the associated nominally non-Spanish speaking republics--or principalities--have they already included nations that have some sort of monarchial system still? I'd think a minimum requirement would be for a powerful parliament to balance a monarch, and perhaps they are still insistent on their associates being full republics.
If the Meridians push Spanish pretty hard, informally but strongly, that would be another analogy with OTL's USA of course. Linguistic chauvinism would be an impediment in winning over more allies, but that might be a price they are willing to pay for greater cohesion within the "Brotherhood."
Now if we suppose as seems more and more certain that the Meridian hegemony is the heartland of Societism on the other hand, language becomes a crisis.
Perhaps less so if the maxim attributed to Caribias is always followed, to never become involved in any military conflict until one side is clearly losing. I don't recall any expansion of that maxim being laid down yet, to say which party to then ally with, and I would guess that sometimes the regime would favor the losing side, when the Combine's forces are strong enough to cause the hitherto winner to back off, and then the rescued loser is beholden to the Combine and in no position to refuse to implement recommended "reforms," such as favoring the common Societist language until it becomes common, and eventually abolishing its independent government and deeding its territory and peoples over to the larger whole. Or vice versa, sometimes the Combine would ally with the winning side, and for services rendered (shortening the war, saving lives and treasure, rendering decided what might have been otherwise doomed to be a festering sore leading to generations of violence to come) get a piece of the spoils; again the loser territories ceded to Societist influence are in an abject position. Note that either way, territories gained this way are not only weak but demoralized, perhaps fertile ground to get converts to Societist revolutionary values, not the least of which would be trading in their old limited and failed national identity for membership in the largest and most powerful single polity on the planet. The Sanchezists promise that if they make this trade their old identities will never be counted against them.
If this is how the Combine has grown, then perhaps the absorbed peoples can be made to speak any language at all, even one very alien to them, so that language might as well be a thinly disguised, ideologically made over version of Spanish as anything else.
However--if we suppose that part of Societism's spread has been more genuinely ideological and revolutionary, then we have to be supposing that sufficient numbers of people--not necessarily majorities--in many diverse countries few of which have any Spanish heritage, are willing to accept an ideology that requires them to sacrifice their mother tongue to adopt a strange one. And then have the power to force this change on the rest of their compatriots--they may call on the Combine to send agents to assist them of course, but the process of forcibly converting their own former countrymen must be a harsh and brutal one, even if the Combine offers carrots by the bushel along with sticks.
In this case it would be helpful if the new language everyone must learn, willing or not, is not blatantly the one that a bunch of South Americans happened to have inherited naturally, but was neutral ground. A made up artificial language perhaps,, that is just as alien to the old core of the Hermanidad as to potential new recruits overseas.
What it looks like to me now is that perhaps we have mostly the former strategy, of opportunistically seizing vulnerable territories, with a bit of the latter, revolutionary mode of expansion. And the outcome seems to be that ostensibly a revolutionary new artificial language has been developed, but it is pretty close to Spanish, ostensibly a remade Latin. It is technically a new tongue, different from Spanish, but easy for Spanish speakers to learn.
Another question would be, are the Societists (by the late 20th century if not necessarily in their origins with Caribias) so radical as to try to extirpate the old languages completely, and by monopolizing translations from the old languages manipulate the consciousness of the Society in an Orwellian fashion? Or is the "New Latin" meant to be, as Esperanto hoped to become OTL, the "universal second language," a tongue no one is expected to be raised in as their mother tongue but everyone is expected to more or less master for the sake of global intercourse? And governance of course.
I've been wondering these things in the light of the suggestion that Yapon might manage (at least partially) to throw off Russo-Corean dominance by means of a Societist revolution. The Yaponese, despite their helot status ITTL, don't strike me as people willing to simply abandon their unique language and culture, to submit utterly to one alien culture merely as a tactic to throw off the rule of others. Well when I put it that way, perhaps I can see it; if Russo-Corean rule has destroyed much of what OTL Japanese prided themselves in and degraded the rest, perhaps if they truly are reduced to helotry they might consider the choice to be absorbed into the Society, new language, new art styles, new diet, new everything, as preferable to trying to adapt to a hegemony that will always look down on them.
But only if they despair of the third option, that one would figure would be the first choice actually, to overthrow the foreigners and then re-assert their own culture. I don't know of any people so abject that they would convert en masse and on the spot to a new culture; emigrants do it piecemeal, but in a context where they are strangers and a minority.
The idea that Yapon is in fact Societist, at least some of its territory, is only implied as yet, and the assumption they got that way through revolution is only a guess about a guess.
-----------------
Speaking of guesses about guesses, a lot of folks are on the bandwagon of Caribias being a Lenin figure, and I could easily roll with that myself (only because I find both Caribias and Lenin admirable figures though--it seems clear some people compare them in order to damn Caribias by the association!) But objectively speaking, Lenin would never act as Caribias has thus far. Instead of founding a radical labor movement with the stated purpose of overthrowing private capital completely, Caribias's response to being fired was to found a new business of his own.
Suppose that Karl Marx had hit upon his analysis of the mechanisms of capitalism but did not recoil from it as a temporary and compromised system, but rather wished to use his insights into how it all worked to enter the world of highly financed industrial business and conquer it from within--to become a capitalist without illusions, but with an agenda and principles. Suppose that recognizing that organizing his workplaces so as to give more dignity, pay and control to the workers in the shops (but not enough to have them take it over from himself
) he would be at a bit of a competitive disadvantage vis a vis more conventionally ruthless bosses, he still felt he could stay ahead by means of the inside track he had on how it all worked, and thus if only he had some capital, he could become a great captain of industry, one who would (on his theories anyway) thus also wield great political power as well? Well it so happened OTL that his staunchest friend and comrade was in fact a capitalist, or anyway the scion of a family with business interests in Germany and Britain. If Marx had been willing and able to roll up his sleeves and get his hands dirty on behalf of the Engels firm, perhaps he could within a couple decades expand its holdings into a mighty conglomerate, one with a political following as well as a huge portfolio of properties. In OTL US terms, he might thus combine in his person aspects of both Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Carnegie! Or a very liberal-progressive Henry Ford.
And this seems more like the sort of path Caribias might go down. He'd be a Lenin only in the sense that someone might consider Ayn Rand to be a Marx--falling between the two in terms of his program.
I believe one of Thande's goals or drives in writing this TL has been to demonstrate the arbitrariness of our OTL political and economic doctrines by having a very different basis for radicalism that threatens to dominate the 20th century, scorning the economic analyses of Marx completely and showing a radicalism that concerns itself not at all with the concept of "the class struggle."
As someone convinced that it is not that easy to get away from Marx's analysis, I'd suggest that to get a world where the insurgent discontents of the poorer masses are not so focused, one needs to put a "human face," to grossly paraphrase Dubcek of Czechoslovakia, on capitalism. This is what was more or less attempted by the New Deal in the USA and the very partial accommodations with socialism in post-WWII Europe; to produce a balanced society where the power of the very rich under capitalism is checked by what was hoped to be robust democratic regulation. By infusing some ethics, enforced strongly by dominant ideology and public sentiment, into the conduct of the workplace, one might hope to sidestep the adversarial relationship between more or less organized labor and capital. This is how Caribias is shown to lead by example.
The upshot is again to reinforce the parallelism between the United States of OTL and the trajectory of the UPSA toward a huge global Combine. As with Orwell's 1984, the critique of the pathologies of Leninism seem plain enough--but Orwell was actually a critic of pathological trends in the nominally free West as well, and reading 1984 through a lens where the triply divided world is a parallel to the Cold War polarization is more profitable than just as an "OMG what if the Commies took over!?!" screed. I wonder here then how much of a mislead it is to scrutinize Societism for its parallels to Leninism, and ignore how it resembles the model of how Americans saw their dominance in the Cold War period--the ideal free republic, which once founded by the staunch courage and wisdom of its creators goes from strength to strength, the natural beacon of the wisely ordered way of life to which all the world flocks, ready to spread its light and liberty through the world and eliminate all the foolish and ruinous conflicts perpetuated by greedy and backward elites. Take away USAian racism and provincialism and what stands between the ideology of 1950s America and the Combine?
Perhaps a lot. In the Combine, it would appear, a self-appointed party controls writing, or attempts to; perhaps controls the very machinery of language itself (or again attempts to). Students of Noam Chomsky and other radical gadflies of the US hegemony might suggest that the "freedom" of the Western press was in effect no less tightly controlled--if in fact in the Combine it is technically legal and somewhat possible, with some difficulty, to get ahold of non-Sanchezist-approved literature and question aspects of the regime, even if it is at the price of being essentially frozen out of all meaningful power and labeled a malcontent, unappreciative and intellectually deranged nonconformist, the parallelism would be that much closer. But is the Combine more Stalinist in its thought control?
We have that implication, but how free is thought in the Diversitarian sphere?
My guess? It is well, diverse. In a strong power like Russia, there is probably a lot of dissenting scholarship. I'm not so sure about England though, and I forget if we've been shown anything about the state of the perhaps former ENA in the 2010s.
I suspect that in addition to debunking Marxists or any theories that claim historic inevitability, the author is also rather showing up the OTL hegemony of the USA, and like the prophet Nathan (IIRC) speaking to King David telling of a wicked man who oppressed his neighbor horribly, the denoument would be the reveal--"thou art the man!" for all the American fans so keen to see the dreaded Combine as a projection of TTLs USSR--rather than our own order.
This talk about the Combine being the 1950s USA from hell is interesting because I did a lot of reading on the subject for my dissertation and it really does fit. (On that subject, Total Cold War, One Nation Underground, and The Imaginary War are all excellent works on the subject of political regimentation in Cold War America.) The 'people don't know what is good for them' and the transformation of a particular nation's values into universal values would all be familiar to American presidents from Roosevelt to Eisenhower and beyond. Except whereas the United States started with its punitive military expeditions and blatant political manipulation, and was able to adopt the Good Neighbor Policy for much of the 1930s through to 1965 (debatable) as the fruits of this, the reverse will happen with the Combine. After decades of comparative toleration of the diversity of its satellite states, the UPSA will transform into the Combine and will forcibly mold the former Hermanidad in its image, regardless of the consequences. Well the comparison is not entirely water-tight, I think the Combine is going to have some features of the USSR - its avowedly ideological and revolutionary aims, the depth of political manipulation which even Eisenhower and Nixon would blanch at, and the lack of even the somewhat restricted democracy of 1950s America.
teg
teg
Thande
Donor
It's too ornate and gothic for that, but that is an interestingly different architectural style which I may use in another context, so thanks.
Technically this is not a rip-off of Around the World in Eighty Days, it's a ripoff of the OTL events that likely inspired Around the World in Eighty Days and what OTL events Around the World in Eighty Days in turn inspired. As far as I know nobody in OTL ever did the 'national teams racing out of pride' aspect though.
It changed over time. Here's a brief run-down:
When the ENA was given self-rule in 1788, two main parties formed: the Patriots (or American Tories), who were more aristocratic, closer to British interests and favoured a more unitary state, and the Constitutionalists who wanted more independent policies and more power to the Confederate governments. A faction of the Constitutionalists who wanted more democratic policies broke away to become the American Radical Party. Over time the Constitutionalists then more thoroughly broke apart over Catholic emancipation and (to a lesser extent) slavery and split into the Whigs and the Neutrals. The Whigs were more of a southern slaveholder party but one which advocated Catholic Emancipation, and the Neutrals were a western frontiersmen's party which allied with the more urban ARP to form the Radical-Neutral Alliance which eventually merged into the Liberals. The Whigs grew to dominate Carolina but with virtually no support anywhere else, which both politically divided the ENA and made is almost impossible for anyone else to form a majority government. The Supremacist Party arose in New York in criticism of the corrupt aristocratic machine politics of the Patriots, and became a populist and nativist movement which objected to American Indians being allowed to retain some of their lands and privileges within the ENA, and condemned Carolina and the Whigs for their activities.
As of the 'present day', the Whigs are now gone from the ENA when Carolina left (and are now banned), the Liberals are a pro-business, pro-immigration party roughly equivalent to a mix of Republicans and Northern Democrats from the OTL USA of the late 19th century, the Patriots are reduced to third party status after being discredited over their handling of the end of the Great American War, and the Supremacists retain their nativist instincts but also advocate a more aggressive foreign policy. There is also now a small working-class labour party, the Mentians, which is dominated by immigrants. The two big parties that always form the government (though sometimes a minority government or with coalition partners) are the Liberals and Supremacists. Currently the Liberals are quite dominant due to public approval of the 'Seventies Thaw' in relations with the UPSA and the ensuing economic boom.
That's very interesting.