Hello everyone,
I am a long-time lurker, but this is my 1st post at the forums. I've had an idea for an ALT knocking around my head for a while now, and I'm having a bit of trouble working out the details. So, I turn to you good folks for advice and insight.
The idea is this: Marxism never rises for whatever reason, and its ideological niche gets filled by a Spiritualist/Spiritist equivalent of liberation theology that has the same enormous impact on history as Marxism itself did. Many of the Spiritualists were already heavily involved in left/progressive/reform politics as it is, so I think that this is a potentially plausible TL if done right.
The details of the ALT ideology hold, like Spiritualism, that there are many "levels" of Heaven in the afterlife, but that a spirit's chances of advancing to the higher levels can be significantly improved if the material/economic conditions of its current physical body are radically transformed. This gives a strong materialist concern to the philosophy, and creates a revolutionary left that practices seances, mediumship, and so on. Perhaps the movement operates in "cells" led by charismatic revolutionary mediums.
I have been trying to come up with a good PoD, and have only thought of two. Either:
a) Karl Marx becomes a Spiritualist/Spiritist at some early point in his life, and codifies a systematic radical political philosophy based on its principles; or,
b) Marx dies in a duel as a young man, and his intellectual niche gets filled some as-yet unnamed Spiritualist/Spiritist thinker whose work catches on and has the same impact as OTL Marx's (this one seems a bit ASB to me, though).
Question being: what are the geopolitical implications? I originally conceived of this AH as being pretty much the same as OTL until the time of the Russian Revolution, but now I'm thinking that's not very plausible, given the geographical origins of Spiritualism and Spiritism.
Opinions are appreciated. Note that I am not postulaing that seances, mediums, etc., actually work in this TL, only that a modified version of Spiritualism's teachings, practices and tropes are perpetuated by a revolutionary movement.
Thanks in advance. I have enjoyed reading a lot of your works on this website for many months.