AH Challenge: Communist USA

With a PoD no earlier then the creation of the USSR and without them invading the USA, could the Alternate History cliche of a Communist USA be acheived? (Bonus points if it is during the cold war)
 
With a PoD no earlier then the creation of the USSR and without them invading the USA, could the Alternate History cliche of a Communist USA be acheived? (Bonus points if it is during the cold war)

1918 is too late for the US to go communist in the Great Depression, the US Socialists had shot their bolt and failed to become a truly mass party and the Communists were just a splinter of a shrinking party (coming out against entry into WWI hurt the US Socialists, not that they were doing all that well as it was).

Now, if you can keep the US out of WWII, get rid of Roosevelt, and get a worse response to the Great Depression on one side of the Atlantic, and have Someone Else than Stalin in charge across the Atlantic - imagine a dissent-riven reactionary right-wing US with economic problems and few real allies against a USSR which won against the Germans sans US help, and the Red Block extends from the Rhinelands and N. Italy to N. Vietnam...we might get a scenario of US failure bad enough to give a home-grown Left movement a chance (nuclear WWIII strikes me as more likely, though. Perhaps the Communists take over the rubble).

Bruce
 
1934, country was in the grips of mass labor strikes and clashes. Unionists attacking scabs, policemen shooting unionists...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1934_West_Coast_waterfront_strike
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minneapolis_Teamsters_Strike_of_1934
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textile_workers_strike_(1934)

In the 70s, the radical left was rather popular and many police cars, banks, and mailboxes were blown up. Presumably if Vietnam continued, and so did racial unrest, then the countrywould fall into Communism.
 
1934, country was in the grips of mass labor strikes and clashes. Unionists attacking scabs, policemen shooting unionists...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1934_West_Coast_waterfront_strike
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minneapolis_Teamsters_Strike_of_1934
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textile_workers_strike_(1934)

In the 70s, the radical left was rather popular and many police cars, banks, and mailboxes were blown up. Presumably if Vietnam continued, and so did racial unrest, then the countrywould fall into Communism.

Perhaps you are merely poorly informed rather than a loony, so I will forgive the bizzarre notion that all those opposed to Vietnam and being second-class citizens were somehow aiming for communist revolution.

Bruce
 
the reason i posted this thread was because of the cliche of a communist USA, it never seemed all that likely to me, but incase you did not notice i dod post an end day, you could go into the future if you want
 
Well, if the currently corporate/banking interests dominated US ruling class screws up badly enough with global warming, peak oil, rare element depletion, etc. the notion of capitalists dangling from lamp-poles may gain some currency again....

Bruce
 

mowque

Banned
Well, if the currently corporate/banking interests dominated US ruling class screws up badly enough with global warming, peak oil, rare element depletion, etc. the notion of capitalists dangling from lamp-poles may gain some currency again....

Bruce

Yeah but that'll just be some populism gone horribly wrong. Not communism.
 

Teleology

Banned
What are the stipulations?

Does it have to be Soviet style Communism of one of the various brands or does it have to be of the main Leninist traditions like Soviet Communism, Trotskyism, and Maoism? Can it be any Marxist ideology, including such alternate paths as Luxemburgism and ATL non-Leninist Marxist spin-offs?

Can it be non-Marxist communism? The name communism was thrown around during the early blooming of Socialist thought, back when Socialism encompassed everything from the Communards that gave Marx some inspiration to the German True Socialists he hated, to the various breeds of Anarchist.

Or does it have to be some Leninist, or at least Marxist brand or spin off brand?

And, regardless of whether it is Marxist or not, does it have to call itself communism?
 
Yeah but that'll just be some populism gone horribly wrong. Not communism.

The word "populism" is very vague, and can have various sorts of meanings: presumably our post-diaster dictatorship will be distinctly socialistic due to the huge government efforts required to clean up the mess left by Extreme! capitalism: but I note the author of the thread is calling for Soviet or Mao-type communism, so it probably wouldn't meet his requirements closely enough. It most likely wouldn't call itself Communist, if only because of the foul stench left by Stalin and Mao... The People's Technocracy? Millenial Americanism? :)

Bruce
 
soviet or maoist

Their's no way with that PoD that America woud go Soviet or Maoist Communist, they simply go to much against core American sociopolitics.

America can go Communist, however it will be a unique American form of it.
 
Their's no way with that PoD that America woud go Soviet or Maosit Comunist, they simply go to much against core American sociopolitics.

America can go Communist however it will be a unique American form of it.

then look into the future, you can put in a future date too
 
then look into the future, you can put in a future date too

Still won't in the future, Soviet Communism is highly authoritarian and centralized, both things America is essentialy the anti-thesis of.

Maoism is almost totally dependant on a country having a large non-Urbanized population.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Political movements like communism is usually run by a clique of elites who pretty much direct every thing, as in the French and Russian revolutions, to name a few.

Populism is more dominated by the "people" so to speak; more of an organic movement, so to speak, usually based on resentment of "entrenched elites" and a want to "throw the bums out" or "take the country back" rather than a really defined ideology. I suppose you could say it's more of an emotional movement rather than a political one.

Anywhoo, communism isn't going to take root in anywhere of significance after 1991, much less a country so ardently anti-communist as the United States.

I agree with the "worse Great Depression" scenario, but even then that's probably not going to not be enough. Jello_Biafra has an excellent TL where America goes Red, but it's POD is before 1922. I believe it's McKinley surviving and an American shift to parliamentarianism.
 
Still won't in the future, Soviet Communism is highly authoritarian and centralized, both things America is essentialy the anti-thesis of.

Maoism is almost totally dependant on a country having a large non-Urbanized population.

mostly i opened this thread to show how impossible a Communist USA would be if communism/socialism/whatever was created in the same as OTL
 
I'd have to agree with the consensus that it's probably not plausible given the POD constraints. If you'd be willing to play just a little bit with the POD (push it back to 1919), and keep the Socialist Party of America from degenerating into a sectarian nightmare and destroying the party organization, it might be doable

If you keep the reformists who controlled the national executive from expelling the entire Left Wing Section to prevent them from taking control at the next Convention due to weight of numbers, it might be doable. Keep the Socialist Party as an effective, if heavily damaged by government repression, revolutionary political organization would be the sine qua non of achieving some sort of socialist/communist revolution in the US given the time constraints.

It wouldn't be an exact expy of Soviet communism, but it would share important attributes (nested council political structure, probably a democratic centralist one-party state). But over all, the material advantages of the US's industrial developed economy would make the two countries have a very different experience.

Less fear of encirclement and invasion, for one. America will be the largest industrial power, and have a formidable navy still. And also, the lack of any need for a Stalinist style mass expropriation and liquidation of rural classes to finance industrialization (that already happened through the inexorable march of capitalism).
 
Political movements like communism is usually run by a clique of elites who pretty much direct every thing, as in the French and Russian revolutions, to name a few.

Populism is more dominated by the "people" so to speak; more of an organic movement, so to speak, usually based on resentment of "entrenched elites" and a want to "throw the bums out" or "take the country back" rather than a really defined ideology. I suppose you could say it's more of an emotional movement rather than a political one.

Was there ever such a movement that actually established a national government? :confused: Such "gut-based" movements usually simply are the dupes of one elite or another, or of wannabe elites.

Bruce
 
Less fear of encirclement and invasion, for one. America will be the largest industrial power, and have a formidable navy still. And also, the lack of any need for a Stalinist style mass expropriation and liquidation of rural classes to finance industrialization (that already happened through the inexorable march of capitalism).

Liquidated rural classes = Native Americans, no? :)

Bruce
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Was there ever such a movement that actually established a national government? :confused: Such "gut-based" movements usually simply are the dupes of one elite or another, or of wannabe elites.

Bruce
No, they've never established a national government, but they've held a good deal of sway in areas. The KKK, for example, was a populist movement. You can't say they were controlled by elites since the organization was rather decentralized, grassroots (like all populist movements), and despised by the elites who inhabited most of the Klan's strongholds. The Southern aristocracy, for example, loathed the Klan and saw them as a bunch of troublemaking white trash thugs.

Here's a rather good link on Wikipedia that outlines and lists some populist movements and what makes them populist as opposed to fascist.


But you're right to point out the rather weak nature of sustained populist movements. Most movements that we would call "populist" were just building blocks of fascism, which is what made the leap from mass popular discontent (populism) into outright reaction (fascism).
 
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