AHC another communist power after WWI

Hmm... maybe it is possible during the abdication crisis of 1936, however i think it is very difficult to image a communist Britain. However, it seems many loves the option Brazil... Communist samba for anyone? :D

Abdication's far, far too late. I'd look at the General Strike in a world where things have gotten even worse.
 

abc123

Banned
Several problems with that argument:

1) "Dictatorship of the proletariat" is itself a somewhat contradictory term, used rather vaguely and figuratively by Marx. It could be interpreted in many ways.

2) Dictatorships do not need to be one-party or autachic. Ask Putin.

3) Nominal Marxists violated the letter of Marxian doctrine plenty of the time.

It's more useful to look at what was actually going on intellectually on the German left. But then, your last post shows that you're not really a sympathetic hearer for revolutionary socialism generally, so the idea that every rveolution must result in failure or Stalin is hardly surprising.


Indeed I'm not fan of socialism, because I come from country that has seen too much of that "progress" in past.
OK, give me one example where a socialist revolution did suceeded in the long term in creating free and democratic and prosperous society and that they stayed socialist?
 

abc123

Banned
Several problems with that argument:

1) "Dictatorship of the proletariat" is itself a somewhat contradictory term, used rather vaguely and figuratively by Marx. It could be interpreted in many ways.

2) Dictatorships do not need to be one-party or autachic. Ask Putin.

3) Nominal Marxists violated the letter of Marxian doctrine plenty of the time.

It's more useful to look at what was actually going on intellectually on the German left. But then, your last post shows that you're not really a sympathetic hearer for revolutionary socialism generally, so the idea that every rveolution must result in failure or Stalin is hardly surprising.


Funny that it allways was interpreted in allmost the same way.
Well, I wouldn't called Putin a dictator. Autocratic president-yes.
Yes, they did diferr in many ways, but in the end any of that ways proved good for their countries.;)
 
OK, give me one example where a socialist revolution did suceeded in the long term in creating free and democratic and prosperous society and that they stayed socialist?

Craw-bogle, scarecrow, strawman, spurious argument: I didn't say a revolutionary Germany would be "free" or "democratic" or "prosperous", I said it would not be an exact copy of Stalin's Soviet Union complete with a party-state and autarchy.

Funny that it allways was interpreted in allmost the same way.

You're going to tell me that the USSR, China, Cuba, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, and so on were all exactly the same? And this, note, is all after Leninism prevailed in Russia and established the orthodoxy of "communism", do which you adhered if you wanted the dough. If the original rveolution was somewhere else, this makes Leninism even less influential.

Well, I wouldn't called Putin a dictator. Autocratic president-yes.

He's not a socialist, so when he murders journalists it's okay?

Yes, they did diferr in many ways, but in the end any of that ways proved good for their countries.;)

I'm going to assume that this rather impenetrable sentence is missing a negative. If that's the case: once again, I never said anything about better, I only said different.
 

abc123

Banned
Craw-bogle, scarecrow, spurious argument: I didn't say a revolutionary Germany would be "free" or "democratic" or "prosperous", I said it would not be an exact copy of Stalin's Soviet Union complete with a party-state and autarchy.

Well, many socialist countries were not copies of Stalin's USSR, but nevertheless they were niether free, democratic or prosperous.
I don't wan't to live in any other country.
Socialism or not.
 
Well, many socialist countries were not copies of Stalin's USSR, but nevertheless they were niether free, democratic or prosperous.
I don't wan't to live in any other country.
Socialism or not.

The argument is not about whether socialism is good or bad, but about whether any kind of revolutionary socialism could have prevailed in Germany at the end of *WW1. You are straying from the point and becoming difficult to understand.
 

abc123

Banned
He's not a socialist, so when he murders journalists it's okay?



I'm going to assume that this rather impenetrable sentence is missing a negative. If that's the case: once again, I never said anything about better, I only said different.


No, of course it isn't OK, socialist or not. But I wouldn't be so rash in blaming Putin for all evil in Russia.

Yes, it misses a negative. English isn't my mother tongue.
The most important is that it is better, different isn't some important thing. Nazism is different than communism, but it isn't better. So the same thing is wether you are killed because you are a racial or class enemy, the bottom line is that you are dead.
 

abc123

Banned
The argument is not about whether socialism is good or bad, but about whether any kind of revolutionary socialism could have prevailed in Germany at the end of *WW1.

Yes, and I did said that things that were possible in Russia are not possible in Germany. Simply, Germany is in centre of Europe, Russia is in peryphery.
;)
 
No, of course it isn't OK, socialist or not. But I wouldn't be so rash in blaming Putin for all evil in Russia.

I blame the fall of the USSR, myself. :p

Yes, it misses a negative. English isn't my mother tongue.

Quite alright.

The most important is that it is better, different isn't some important thing. Nazism is different than communism, but it isn't better. So the same thing is wether you are killed because you are a racial or class enemy, the bottom line is that you are dead.

But these differences may be very significant and important in determining whether or not a regime can rise to power, and keep it, in a particular country at a particular time - as you have just neatly proven. The Nazis in fact did come to power in Germany, and if one nasty regime unlike Stalinism can do it, why on Earth not another?


Yes, and I did said that things that were possible in Russia are not possible in Germany. Simply, Germany is in centre of Europe, Russia is in peryphery.
;)

The rise of Stalinism was only possible in Russia and by your own admission Stalinism isn't necessarily what we're talking about.

Not every edge, by the way, is peripheral.
 

abc123

Banned
I blame the fall of the USSR, myself. :p



Quite alright.



But these differences may be very significant and important in determining whether or not a regime can rise to power, and keep it, in a particular country at a particular time - as you have just neatly proven. The Nazis in fact did come to power in Germany, and if one nasty regime unlike Stalinism can do it, why on Earth not another?




The rise of Stalinism was only possible in Russia and by your own admission Stalinism isn't necessarily what we're talking about.

Not every edge, by the way, is peripheral.


Well, all of Europe didn't feel endangered from Nazism, but all of Europe was feeling endangered from communism.
 
Well, the whole "Intellectual Vanguard" idea was something Marx THOUGHT was bad but necessary, right? Or, perhaps it was entirely Lenin's idea, I'm no expert... but actual communism is incompatible with a political government.

Now, as we all know, the Soviet Union never moved away from a political government. So, just because you are supposed to do something to bring about communism, doesn't mean you have to.

Just because there is a socialist revolution, doesn't mean it has to follow Marx. After all, clear, definite definitions of a government's role and goals is bad for the ruling class ;)

Problem is that socialist regimes tend to lose popularity quickly once the big issue that brought them to power (normaly peace, land reform or anti-colonialism) is resolved.
 
I think that best shot is some eastern European country that allies itself with Russia/SU to prevent foreign intervention. Poland would be hard, too much anti-russian sentiments. Noit sure about Romania or Bolgaria.
 
Problem is that socialist regimes tend to lose popularity quickly once the big issue that brought them to power (normaly peace, land reform or anti-colonialism) is resolved.

So these regimes should have mechanisms that keep them in power set up by that time..... :cool:
 
I think that best shot is some eastern European country that allies itself with Russia/SU to prevent foreign intervention. Poland would be hard, too much anti-russian sentiments. Noit sure about Romania or Bolgaria.

That won't end well for Romania.
 
You'll note that I specifically said that it is silly and incorrect to think that any revolutionary socialist regime at about the same time would have to be "communist" (which is to say, Leninist). A revolutionary socialist regime in Germany or anywhere else does not have to be an authoritarian one-party state with a sealed economy just because that's what happened in Russia - and in fact it's pretty certain that it wouldn't be. It need only be a) revolutionary and b) socialist.
....

But there's an excellent chance that they might call themselves Communist, especially if no one else has already appropriated the term as Lenin did OTL.

Even if they don't take Marx as their sole guiding light, European or American (north or south!) socialists of the post-*WWI period are very likely to put a lot of store in him, and Marx certainly did intend and expect that socialism would evolve into communism; therefore a party that sees itself as ultra-progressive and "in front" will likely claim that mantle, unless their specific theory says that no kind of communism is the goal.

But communism, broadly defined as a society which has dispensed with private property and is about sharing the creation and distribution of wealth as duties and rights of all people, is clearly a logical conclusion of socialistic reform. Socialistic reformers might take care to set bounds on how far their reforms are intended to go, but the OP after all specifies some kind of power that at least calls itself "communist."

So, I Blame Communism, if you were right that Communism somehow equals Leninism, then for purposes of this thread you'd be forced to try and envision movements tantamount to Leninism somewhere.

Or we can relax your equation quite a bit, and then a broad range of movements might be included....

...as long as they looked forward to somehow achieving something that might reasonably be called "communism."

Heck, my right-wing Catholic mother says Catholic monasteries are "communist" and in that case she thinks it's a good thing. (Because they are Christian communists, you see.)

So the Brazilian version might conceivably be some sort of liberation-theology Marxist/Thomist fusion. That would be pretty anachronistic without some much earlier POD that shows how a truly radical political/social/economic movement does grow up in the Roman Catholic tradition about a century before such a movement really did occur OTL, and then how it can take over Brazil.

I suspect that there were such movements among serious Catholic believers quite a long time ago, it's just that the Church is pretty good at suppressing that kind of thing. They can't always see to it that the dissenters are stopped completely but they can always, in the end, declare them heretics and toss them out of the Church. I daresay that if the Brazilian movement was not atheistic and many (if not all) of its chief actors thought of themselves as true Catholics, the Pope would still excommunicate them.

But for quite a long time, progressivism and atheism, or at any rate anticlericism, went pretty much hand in hand; the Anglosphere was something of an exception but even there, in Britain and the USA in the 19th century, a big part if not all of labor radicalism and the like was atheistic or at least iconoclastic. I'm thinking of something in one of Hobsbawm's books, probably IIRC The Age of Empire, where he asserts that a typical workingman's movement library would be much more likely to have books on atheism than Marx, and he was talking about the USA or Britain or both.

So a liberation-theology Communism suitable for Brazil requires a POD that shows how that particular brand of social democracy would build up its credibility and currency there to the point that it leads the radical movement when its moment comes.

Or of course we can go with traditional atheistic social-democracy and leave the Trinity out of it.

Anyway, liberation-theologians or not, I bet they at least fancy themselves serious Marxists of some kind, whatever else they might also think they are about.

And thus, they'd be defining "communism" in a way consistent with Marx, if not necessarily the way Lenin read it.

Probably a similary question was already posted, however i put this challenge: develop a TL where another country, more liking a great european power but the choose is free, developed a communist regime.

If you want the formation of URSS is permitted, but i think is more suggestive if the Whites won the Russian civil war and the nation you choose become the main light bearer of International. There is already a TL on progress about communist USA, so select that nation will be a bit clichè. Cuba and China the same.

Reversal governments are allowed (example marxist Germany and fascist France).

Have fun!;)

See, the OP doesn't actually demand that the Bolsheviks fail in Russia, just indicates that that would be nice. But if people think it is unthinkable that a Red revolution can happen in Germany all by itself (I think one problem would be that the Entente powers would intervene to stop it, and they'd have the help of German reactionaries too) WI the Bolsheviks are there, hanging on in Russia, and then around 1920 or '21 or so, then there is the Spartacist uprising in Germany? And if the Bolsheviks had done a little better in their war on Poland, or were in the middle of their advance toward Warsaw when the Germans rose up, might there not be a link-up, enough to deter the Entente powers from daring to invade--or they do invade, and then a lot of their soldiers mutiny (and wind up citizens of Soviet Germany--they'd almost surely call it that, it doesn't imply that Lenin or any of his Russian successors rule there).

Well, there's another way besides Brazil that satisfies the strict stipulation if not the entire intended spirit of the OP. Besides, WI after helping to guarantee the initial success of the German Reds, shortly after that the Bolsheviks lose their grip in Russia and then there is a belated second White takeover there--but meanwhile the revolution consolidates itself in Germany?

Problem is that socialist regimes tend to lose popularity quickly once the big issue that brought them to power (normaly peace, land reform or anti-colonialism) is resolved.

A cynic might say, that's why they are careful not to solve that issue!

"Peace, land, bread!" was Lenin's promise to the Russian peasants and proletarians. They didn't get a whole lot of any of that, as individuals anyway, did they.

Besides, socialists are forthrightly setting the goal of a radical reconstruction of society, and from their point of view that is the big issue that brings them to power. It takes a while to "resolve" such a grandiose scheme.
 
Britain goes communist

A slash timeline of British post-WW1 communism
or
How Lloyd George Destroyed The World

The dawn of war in Europe, Summer 1914, and David Lloyd George sticks to his threats, and to his avowed pacifist principles, and resigns from Asquith's Liberal government as it becomes obvious that Britain intends to enter the European war.

British politics, already in flux over the Irish crisis, enters a deeper darkness, fighting during August under an atmosphere of political uncertainty before King George V summons Bonar Law and asks him to form a government.

Financial and industrial unrest begin to get out of control, without the mercurial spirit of Lloyd George to rein them in, and without any agreement with Labour leaders.

Winston Churchill at the Admiralty did not long survive the establishment of Conservative rule, he being a figure of particular hate on the Conservative benches due to his having quit the party. He is replaced by the veteran Conservative, Mr X, whilst Prince Louis of Battenberg is sacked as First Sea Lord due to anti-German bias, and replaced by the venerable Fisher. The new duo get to work, Fisher's plans for battlecruisers steaming ahead whilst no mention of an "Eastern Strategy" gets to the ears of the cabinet.

1915 is a difficult year with the shell crisis, and setbacks on most fronts, but 1916 is even worse, with labour unrest at a high, and the incredible death toll of the Somme breaking down discipline in the ranks.

Worse is yet to come as the Conservatives have replaced Jellicoe with an admiral more in keeping with the gungho agenda of the right-wing press and his performance at Skaggerak results in disproportionate losses amongst the battleline, losses not confined to the battlecruisers. In the weeks that follow the veteran First Lord, the aged Fisher, and the unlucky admiral are all sacked and a steady ship brought into being under Carson at the Admiralty

With the crushing of the Easter Rising in Dublin, Carson's star seems to be in the ascendant and he takes the bull by the horns. He informs a horrified cabinet that Fisher's battlecruiser programme which has been steaming far ahead of itself, is in danger of creating a fleet of weakly armoured ships suitable only for target practice.

1917 sees the horrors of a general French mutiny and the defeat of Italy. British finances are in a parlous condition, only kept afloat by American loans that the London markets eat up half the value of before they can be used. American entry into the war is too late to save Italy, and France has not the men, nor Britain the money, to effect aid, leaving Rome to capitulate.

Russia's defeat is confirmed in late 1917 and the October Revolution brings a general cessation of hostilities in the East. The deposed Tsar is allowed passage through the Baltic by the Germans and arrives to scenes of absolute mayhem in Britain.

1918 opens with industrial unrest threatening Britain's war effort, and a Treason Act rushed through parliament to arrest and intern anybody deemed to be associated with such actions - the pacifist wing of the Labour Party is swept up as much as are the Trades Union activists.

As the first US forces arrive in Europe, they are spread out to reinforce the weakest elements in the Anglo-French line, those weakened by mutinies, defeats and unrest. Thus, as the Central Powers switch their focus to the West in the late Spring, there is no independent American command, whereas German forces are reinforced not only by German, but also by Austrian, units from the East.

The German attack splits the Western Front, sending the French reeling back and the British staggering North. Reinforcements continue to pour in, and German forces reach the outskirts of Paris, where immense rail-mounted guns begin a barrage.

The air war is also in a new chapter as zeppelin raids have given way to raids by immense Gotha and Zeppelin Werkes bombers, London especially suffering.

As the British command attempts to regroup and throw forces into the breach, the long-suffering British mutiny, a rising which quickly becomes general across the front and soon spreads to those units of the fleet based in Dover, Chatham and Portsmouth.

Revolution in Paris causes the government to flee to Bordeaux, with many exhausted French units mutinying and rallying to the revolution. German forces consolidate their gains, build up their logistics, and open negotiations with the isolated commanders facing them, many of whom are American, or Portuguese, cut off from their own commands, and surrounded by their allies in rebellion.

Hipper leads the High Seas Fleet into the Channel, the Kaiser's objections over-ruled by the Supreme Command who see the navy as a kind of seaborne cavalry, cutting off the British from their base. With the Channel Fleet paralysed by mutiny, and the Grand Fleet always playing catch-up from its base in the Orkneys, Hipper is able to sweep the Channel clear of troopships, supply vessels and the few escorts still active. He bombards the French ports and fires the warehouses, before heading home in the darkness. Entering Dutch waters he is able to avoid a general battle, but outlying units are attacked and destroyed by the Grand Fleet.

Nevertheless, despite these losses it is obviously a German victory on the strategic front, and as the Germans re-energise their advance in early Summer, mutinying British units form their own revolutionary batallions and massacre the senior command. Naval mutiny now spreads across the Grand Fleet, and Hipper is able to lead the somewhat battered High Seas Fleet out unopposed in early July.

France capitulates, the news reaching Britain and bringing about a general rising amongst the workers, mutineering soldiers and sailors, and those activists remaining free. Parliament attempts to impose martial law but is attacked by a mob and flees to Oxford. King George V attempts to placate the mob but infuriated by reports that the ex Tsar is at Buckingham Palace the mob overcomes the defenders and burns it to the ground, murdering the royal family, but not the ex Tsar who had already been moved to Sandringham.

Revolutionary cells in all major cities come into the open proclaiming the government of the people, and sending delegates to a National Revolutionary Assembly in Birmingham. As revolutionary armies close on Oxford, the government attempts to negotiate, agreeing to free anyone still imprisoned by the Treason Act that remain in their power, but with even the elite units now beginning to disperse, many taking ship to Canada with the fleeing gentry and aristocracy, the Oxford Parliament has no choice but to capitulate.

The National Revolutionary Assembly moves to London and sits in the Tower, where by near unanimous resolution it offers peace terms to the Central Powers.

By this time fighting in France has generally ceased, apart from between various factions amongst the French. The American command has already agreed for his local commanders to negotiate Non-Aggression Agreements with the Germans, and it only remains to arrange for their evacuation.

Berlin responds to the British peace overtures with a mixture of welcome and derision. Their reply makes it clear that any attempt to agree a peace based on the status quo will be rejected and hostilities resumed. As if to underline this, the High Seas Fleet sails unopposed to the Thames Estuary in demonstration.

Anti-colonial elements are strong within the National Revolutionary Assembly and these move that British colonies should be set free. A bill to make the dominions independent meets no opposition, but a second bill to free the crown colonies is met by objections that most of them cannot be self-governing and would fall prey to other nations' rapaciousness. After building in safeguards the bill squeezes through.

Berlin demands the surrender of half of the Grand Fleet and the payment of indemnities, but Britain is no state to do the latter, and the fleet is not under the control of anyone apart from the revolutionary committees aboard each ship. Some vessels have made their way to Canada, or to Jamaica, but the majority is now inactive in British waters.

Berlin is content to wait, agreeing instead to a peace with the United States, and bringing peace-keeping operations deep into France as part of an anti-revolutionary alliance. With the trade routes now opened, foodstuffs flood into the Reich, and Germany is soon the arbitor of European food aid.

Civil war breaks out amongst the various British revolutionary factions, but the communists are the best-organised and able to portray the more mild of their opponents as reactionaries. By mid 1919, the Communists have control of Britain and agree a peace with Berlin whereby the remaining British battleships will be handed over, along with a plethora of industrial equipment, and locomotives in lieu of money.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
I'm sort of surprised in that scenario that the portion of the Empire in Africa was not signed away to Germany.
 
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