AHC: Have the American South become a bastion of Socialism in America.

OK, what if he was a socialist? Would it be that hard for Long to move left into actual socialism?
I suppose not, as the rock that socialism has always broken against in the United States is its uncomfortable relationship with property rights, and a disregard for property rights often goes hand in hand with those who have an uncomfortable relationship with the rule of law, which was true for Huey Long.

But I think there is a difference between wealth redistribution and public administration of the means of production, and I don't think Huey Long ever really considered going to that degree.
 
I suppose not, as the rock that socialism has always broken against in the United States is its uncomfortable relationship with property rights, and a disregard for property rights often goes hand in hand with those who have an uncomfortable relationship with the rule of law, which was true for Huey Long.

But I think there is a difference between wealth redistribution and public administration of the means of production, and I don't think Huey Long ever really considered going to that degree.

Well it doesn't take an ASB to switch his mind or push his personal politics further to the left.
 
Let's define American Socialism as an ideology that adopts most if not all of the agenda the Socialist Party of AMerica held IOTL. How about something like this:

  • Lincoln survives his assasination attempt.
  • Lincoln leads a more comprehensive and radical reconstruction, which breaks up the power of the Southern states and enfranchises the Black population, blame the Democrats and force the party to disband.
  • During the following decades, the United States essentially becomes a one-party state, with Republicans facing little opposition and winning every election between 1864 and 1912, with a very pro-business and anti-regulation platform that makes the gilded age even worse in terms of income distribution, but industrializes the South to a greater extent than IOTL.
  • All during this period, a strong labor movement begins to take shape...
 
. . . ethnic group at some point in history went to, say, Charleston, and subsequently Atlanta, rather than New York or Boston and subsequently Pittsburgh and Chicago. It'd have to be a white ethnic group, though, and one recognized as white under contemporary law. Perhaps it could be the Polish, or maybe the Scottish. . .
I’m envisioning quite a bit more successful Reconstruction in which African-Americans win state legislature and congressional seats in the 1860s and ‘70s just as in OTL, but then instead of this being abruptly truncated, it rolls forward in a very positive way. :)
 
And if the south is more socialist / progressive / liberal down to the present day,

do southerners lead the way in talking about an investors society version of universal income, or perhaps even a better way of addressing the real facts on the ground of an economy not producing enough middle-income jobs?
 
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The problem here is that the US would probably react negatively towards this. And if we're talking communism as in socialism then yeah...CIA Coups..CIA coups everywhere!
 
I guess it depends on your ideological perspective but I'm not sure that "progressive economics" would lead to a substantial difference in GDP growth. The South lacked investment, and that was its biggest issue, as well as genuine discrimination by the federal government on interstate matters like freight rates and federal contract bidding (and this persisted well into the 20th century).


The south started growing in the 20th century for two main reasons: one, was the advent of air conditioning which made population movement southwards and investment along with the people and businesses that moved south possible, and two, direct investment by the federal government, in many cases due to the tendency of Southern congressmen to last a very long time in their roles and benefit from the seniority system to direct funds homewards. The south needed investment, public and private both, to grow, and unions weren't going to make much of a difference.

What might have made a difference: if immigration flows had been directed southwards in the late 1800s to provide the kind of large scale labor necessary for industrial growth. That would be difficult, unless one particular ethnic group at some point in history went to, say, Charleston, and subsequently Atlanta, rather than New York or Boston and subsequently Pittsburgh and Chicago. It'd have to be a white ethnic group, though, and one recognized as white under contemporary law. Perhaps it could be the Polish, or maybe the Scottish.

I should also add that the fact that the American South's white demographic largely descends from two political cultures that have two distinct fashions of political heritage that are firmly right of centre.

Coastal areas saw the Royalist tradition from the English Civil War form the backbone of what would become the Bourbon faction of the Democratic Party; it was hierarchical, economically conservative, and buttressed the idea of social stratification. More inland areas of the American South were dominated by Scotch-Irish descendants, who were highly individualistic, militaristic, and economically populist. These traditions often fought each other at the local level but there was very little in either tradition that would form the kind of backbone for a socialist outlook.

I’ve seen this sort of argument before and it intrigues me. Are we sure this is how people work? You see it sometimes applied in areas where the US has attempted nation-building as well, where folks talk about how democracy isn’t in the Iraqi....character/genes/culture/what have you.

How much was communism in the Chinese (what have you) in the 1920s? Or Russia in the 1890s? How strongly can (what have you) stand against more current pressures wrought by the world than habits formed centuries ago?
 
The historical cases of (relative) political radicalization most often occur due to a pre-existing period of oppression. Seems like the South has lots of good opportunities there, though the most obvious ones are pre-1900.
 
I’ve seen this sort of argument before and it intrigues me. Are we sure this is how people work? You see it sometimes applied in areas where the US has attempted nation-building as well, where folks talk about how democracy isn’t in the Iraqi....character/genes/culture/what have you.

How much was communism in the Chinese (what have you) in the 1920s? Or Russia in the 1890s? How strongly can (what have you) stand against more current pressures wrought by the world than habits formed centuries ago?
I mean obviously it doesn't register down to an exact level, and events can change things as you mentioned.

I would also ask you though, do you think it was a coincidence that Russian Communism involved an imperialistic state with a strong leader for almost its entire period that utilized severe political repression and forced population transfers to ensure regional loyalty, and which suffered from widespread economic inefficiency and developed a ruling class of sorts (in the nomenklatura) that jostled for power and access to the leader?

Do you think its a coincidence that Chinese communism involves an extremely centralized state with the party acting as a prestigious civil service of sorts that people aspire to rise to hold a position in, and that a corruption in the party is a constant issue for those at the top to deal with, and that the state has poor relationships with its nearby neighbors fraught with tension?

Or, for that matter, do you think it was a coincidence that German Fascism involved an extreme form of militarism and colonial ambition directed at Eastern Europe, with anti-Semitism and anti-Slavic racism part and parcel of the governing ideology?

I guess the point I'm making is that longstanding cultural practices can bleed over into politics, even when you're talking about ideological extremities.

I don't think its as cut and dry as talking about national genes or anything of the like; I would say in the Iraqi example that while I think democracy is actually able to be set up anywhere, it doesn't have to function in the same way that we think of it. We think of democracy as people giving consent to be governed and being able to hold those who govern to account if we are pleased or displeased with their actions. I think democracy in many parts of the world (and arguably our own in some ways as well) is more of a way for groups in society to mobilize and compete for the ability to hold power and patronage to reward their subnational groupings, and that the very notion of the nation state is more of an imposition than a reality, and therefore democracy is literally a substitution for direct conflict.
 
William Jennings Bryan getting elected President would be a good start to a more leftward South. Another would be if you had a cultural realignment where poor whites came to see the patrician planter class as the vice and not the blacks, then you could see such a realignment. Again, a slightly different anti-segregation but pro-poor white Bryan could gain some traction. It'd need an orator of that skill to happen.

To get truly centralized planning, though, that'd be very difficult.
 

Zwinglian

Banned
Let's define American Socialism as an ideology that adopts most if not all of the agenda the Socialist Party of AMerica held IOTL. How about something like this:

  • Lincoln survives his assasination attempt.
  • Lincoln leads a more comprehensive and radical reconstruction, which breaks up the power of the Southern states and enfranchises the Black population, blame the Democrats and force the party to disband.
  • During the following decades, the United States essentially becomes a one-party state, with Republicans facing little opposition and winning every election between 1864 and 1912, with a very pro-business and anti-regulation platform that makes the gilded age even worse in terms of income distribution, but industrializes the South to a greater extent than IOTL.
  • All during this period, a strong labor movement begins to take shape...
Lincoln wasn’t going to go through a radical reconstruction. He vetoed the Wade Davis Bill, and unlike Johnson radical republicans wouldn’t be willing to stand up to Lincoln. And even if Lincoln disbanded the Democratic Party, America isn’t gonna stay a 1 party state for 50 years. The Democratic Republicans collapsed 1 term after winning every single state
 
For what it's worth, I think the essential boundary between "socialist" and "strongly social democratic reformism of capitalism" is not that the economy must be "centrally planned" so much as that control of means of production is removed from private property and placed into democratically overseen hands. One obvious way of doing that is to have full on USSR style state socialism of course! And to propose alternatives certainly does require some sort of regime-wide coordination of local or shop floor controlled enterprises. If we define any sort of effective coordination, even in a case where local communities have a lot of power to cooperate or not, as "central planning," then yeah, "economic central planning" is by definition necessary to socialism, but I think if one considers that there are a range of approaches to regime wide coordination that do not necessarily resemble Stalinist centralized bureaux, the range of what socialism might look like, and therefore the possibility it might appeal to people who would reject Stalinism, should be broadened considerably.

I've never seen syndicalism explained in a way that allows me to categorize it; my understanding is it means each productive enterprise is seized and run by its workers collectively, with the workers choosing their management and overseeing its actions, and then as separate politically autonomous entities (hence the "anarcho-" pre-appended to the word "syndicalist") they reach agreements with other syndicalist enterprises to exchange goods on a barter basis, but of course a pretty scientifically determined barter. The result could, assuming a reasonable degree of human cooperative rationality (note we are not talking about individual people here but collective enterprises so much of the orneriness of interpersonal dynamics can be filtered out by organizational management, structuring delegations and conferences, choosing the better diplomats among each syndicate, etc) be a global network of intricate cooperative specialization that is highly productive.

Supposing this is the form populist grassroots radicalism veers for, would it qualify as socialist or not? By my definition, surely it could, provided the syndicalist collectives are governed by humanistic democratic priorities and not capitalist profit maximization. If they go for the latter, it is quite likely democracy within the syndicate fails as cronies who are good at the game rig it to centralize control of the resources and the management in themselves; then we've just reinvented anarchic capitalism and descend into ruthless industrial-feudalism. Meanwhile whether nominally still democratic internally or not, each enterprise, seeking to egotistically maximize its own wealth whether by cooperative or cutthroat means, recreates the capitalist global market and with it its more savage tendencies (along with its pragmatic strengths of course).

I'm pretty eclectic in my thinking; I still stubbornly think Marx probably had the right of it in terms of long term analysis and thus the endgame of any populist democracy that persists is likely to converge on a Marxist form of communism, but I am pretty la la la relaxed about the possible options for advancing the immediate interests of the working people for real. Where dogmatic Marxists tend to say "any path but the one we recommend is doomed," I see that there are obstacles to such "straightforward" Leninist routes, and costs, and risks, and suspect alternate paths, while the risk of backsliding right back into capitalist rule are plain on them, overall might be less risky or anyway no worse. So even if I suppose say a syndicalist path might be unsustainable in the long run, it could be a viable way station to something more sustainable.

The goal is to advance the interests of the common people and to defuse the destructive tendencies of capitalism, without inventing something even worse. To me, something that is pretty far from socialism yet, but a move in that direction, with a path for further progress still open before it, counts as moving in a socialist direction, and that is a good thing not to be sneered at, provided the momentum is sustained.

I definitely think that while in theory one might say "OK, then, Shevek, what a scheme for whites-only socialism that collectively exploits and subjugates African Americans, isn't that OK if later on the stronger socialist society gets a conscience and belatedly integrates the AAs?" in fact that path would not really be an open one. In honesty I would reject it because it is morally unacceptable to me, but I believe that revulsion of mine is based on how morality emerges from pragmatics.

Part of socialism is intention, you see, not just abstract description of organizational forms. Organizational forms of course condition structures of intention, but in the end Marxist economics retains the title "political economy" for a reason; people remain human beings, with agency, whatever social forms they live in. The means of production may govern and constrain their options, but their choices between the options they have remain moral and political. No movement can be evolving toward socialist if it begins by throwing a racial subcaste under the bus!

So a first criterion, a necessary but not sufficient condition (but one very likely to veer leftward) is African American and "white" southerners coming together and improving mutual respect and cooperation.

While on the other hand, arguing that the south cannot become Socialist because they would reject Stalinist industrialism (as would any other population, given a vote) is just mistaken.
 
@Shevek23

“ . . I've never seen syndicalism explained in a way that allows me to categorize it; . . ”
To me, that would be a feature and not a bug! :p

Meaning, I like spanning approaches which encompass several different things. For example, if we add transparency and channel capitalism so that it works as advertised, I’m going to count that as a victory. And maybe citizens occasionally vote for things like Tennessee Valley Authority (power generation), at times even to directly outcompete a couple of quasi-monopolies, well, is that capitalism or socialism?

And if something is working pretty well and we’re debating whether it’s capitalism or socialism, I’m going to count that as a very good thing. :)
 
To me, that would be a feature and not a bug! :p

Meaning, I like spanning approaches which encompass several different things. For example, if we add transparency and channel capitalism so that it works as advertised, I’m going to count that as a victory. And maybe citizens occasionally vote for things like Tennessee Valley Authority (power generation), at times even to directly outcompete a couple of quasi-monopolies, well, is that capitalism or socialism?

And if something is working pretty well and we’re debating whether it’s capitalism or socialism, I’m going to count that as a very good thing. :)
I entirely agree that the important thing is how well does something work, and ideology has got to just accommodate itself to explaining facts on the ground, rather than trying to force the facts to fit the theory.

I do think though that a lot of mainstream thinking is grotesquely channeled by willful blind spots in observation and reasoning, that critical ideologies spotlight effectively, and no one is really trying very hard to think about it all in good faith. We all fly more or less self-blinded in other words. We owe it to ourselves and others then engage with ideological challenges more seriously--which is not at all the same thing as saying "well I just capitulate then." Truth is not determined by poll. Truth is something that in an absolute sense no one ever possesses fully and never will, but good faith means letting the facts lead.

At the same time when we argue about what could be possible that isn't manifest yet, we are extrapolating from a a situation where facts exist to one where what "would" happen is quite hypothetical. We each guess what would happen based on our understanding of how things work, grounded in real facts.

I don't think Southern people have it fixed in stone they must be more conservative than Americans of other regions for instance. I think maybe there is such a thing as a distinctive Southern spirit, a soul if you will, a cultural heritage that carries over regardless of alternatives, but that spirit does not predetermine which political side Southerners will be on. It is a matter of style more than anything.

The Texan (hence as I see things, Southern!) journalist Molly Ivins asserted that "Southerners are crazy." They like big splashy gestures, loud sweeping statements. Iconic moments have weight. But fundamentally, they are as intelligent and shrewd as anyone else, and I think if you change the circumstances, you change the political outcomes.

Also that ideology is a thing in that, based in part on an unspoken assessment of who has power and is likely to get or keep it and who doesn't, people choose to listen to narratives that soothe them in their circumstances. This is what gives contrafactual narratives their power; it is not always as we know to our sorrow sufficient to have the facts on your side, if you don't also have credible power. People who are perfectly capable of understanding that they are clinging to dubious propositions will still pretend to believe them if it makes them feel better about themselves for what might be characterized as a cowardly submission to overwhelming power.

To get back to your point then, to anticipate that a system will work in ways no one arguing ideology in advance can properly explain is to assert the ideologies are all badly out of whack with the full scope of reality. But since in hypotheticals, we are all extrapolating from known reality using theories to guide what "would" happen, when we propose a hypothetical and say "I think this would work," we are in fact basing that on our own personal head canon ideology. We each think things work a certain way. So if you propose a hypothetical, which is what your threads generally are, and assert it would work a certain way, what you are doing is talking about how you think things work. You aren't doing without theory, you have one of your own. We should all work on making these things explicit in our minds so that we can test and improve them deliberately and arrive at more accurate and useful ideologies. Anything that is based on a falsehood or evasion should be spotlighted and we should face the hard choice of going with an ugly but we judge, unavoidable condition, or else change our thinking if we feel the evasion is too painful if faced head on.

Against all this, we are pretty limited and fuzzy and reality is always full of surprises. It will be more dauntingly unpredictable if we are not fully honest, out of fear or in desperation for self-respect, but no one can be faulted for not anticipating everything. It is a question of good faith.

And there are different personality types too; some want to have everything nailed down in advance, fully planned and orderly; some are comfortable with ad hoc problem solving here and now. This is why our species benefits from communication! We have many eyes on everything, from many perspectives.

It does not do though to reject arguments from hostile ideologies out of hand. It is legitimate to reject their final and absolute authority, but insofar as doubts cast on a scheme are expressed in a concrete way, they should be addressed.
 
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