AHC: Successful Communist Revolution before 1900

With a POD in 1848, have a nation, large or small, western or eastern, be subject under a Communist government for a long period of time. The nation must see minimal resistance(or, at least, not enough to threaten the government-in-power) under Communist rule.
 
First thing that comes to the mind is a successful Commune de Paris. But then they weren't exactly communist, and their success is rather improbable, as they were so isolated. Maybe if they seized the valuables in the Banks of Paris to finance the revolution?

I think that Great War like conditions are necessary, or the communist state would immediately be crushed by foreign intervention.
 
First thing that comes to the mind is a successful Commune de Paris. But then they weren't exactly communist, and their success is rather improbable, as they were so isolated. Maybe if they seized the valuables in the Banks of Paris to finance the revolution?

I think that Great War like conditions are necessary, or the communist state would immediately be crushed by foreign intervention.

It is actually doubtful that the Paris Commune (which included some socialists but also some people who simply thought of themselves as radical republicans in the tradition of 1793) could be considered socialist or communist. I think people are sometimes misled by the word "commune," which in French has nothing to do with communism--it's just the name for a local administrative body.

FWIW, Marx wrote in 1881 (in a letter to the Dutch socialist Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis) that socialism could only come to power when the conditions for it had sufficiently developed, and that the Paris Commune was not a counter example because "apart from the fact that this was merely the rising of a town under exceptional conditions, the majority of the Commune was in no sense socialist, nor could it be. With a small amount of sound common sense, however, they could have reached a compromise with Versailles useful to the whole mass of the people -- the only thing that could be reached at the time. The appropriation of the Bank of France alone would have been enough to dissolve all the pretensions of the Versailles people in terror, etc., etc." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/letters/81_02_22.htm
 
That's why I wrote "not exactly communist". But I think that the difference between communists and socialists was not really important before WWI, or am I wrong? I am aware that the relative majority of the communards were radical republicans probably, on the other hand also in the Russian revolution initially the bolsheviks were far from dominant.

As to Marx analysis, it is right, but the problem is that more industrialised capitalist state had some sort of social security measures like Bismarck's German Empire, or strong unions and a whole empire from which to extract resources like the UK. That's why in otl communist revolutions happened in relatively underdeveloped states.
 
Perhaps somewhere in poorer Southern Europe? Greece fails fatally in the Balkan wars? Spain goes really bankrupt and then loses alt-SpanAm war? Portugal, maybe?

Or, if you want to be really interesting, Italy?
 
One fascinating historical figure and (in my opinion) missed Great Man, Louis Blanc might have kickstart something actually resembling communism in France:

De chacun selon ses facultés, à chacun selon ses besoins/ “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."
Louis Jean Joseph Charles Blanc (OTL)

- In 1847 Louis Jean Joseph Charles Blanc published the two first volumes of his Histoire de la Revolution Française. Its publication was interrupted by the Revolution of 1848, when Louis Blanc became a member of the provisional government. It was on his motion that, on 25 February, the government undertook "to guarantee the existence of the workmen by work"; and though his demand for the establishment of a ministry of labour was refused—as beyond the competence of a provisional government—he was appointed to preside over the government labour commission (Commission du Gouvernement pour les travailleurs) established at the Palais du Luxembourg to inquire into and report on the labour question.

Frontis from Blanc's Organisation du Travail, published in Paris in 1850 by Nouveau Monde.
The revolution of 1848 was the real chance for Louis Blanc's ideas to be implemented. His theory of using the established government to enact change was different from those of other socialist theorists of his time. Blanc believed that workers could control their own livelihoods, but knew that unless they were given help to get started the cooperative workshops would never work. To assist this process along Blanc lobbied for national funding of these workshops until the workers could assume control. To fund this ambitious project, Blanc saw a ready revenue source in the rail system. Under government control the railway system would provide the bulk of the funding needed for this and other projects Blanc saw in the future.

When the workshop program was ratified in the National Assembly, Blanc's chief rival Emile Thomas was put in control of the project. The National Assembly was not ready for this type of social program and treated the workshops as a method of buying time until the assembly could gather enough support to stabilize themselves against another worker rebellion.
Emile Thomas's deliberate failure in organizing the workshops into a success only seemed to anger the public more. The people had been promised a job and a working environment in which the workers were in charge, from these government funded programs. What they had received was hand outs and government funded work parties to dig ditches and hard manual labor for meager wages or paid to remain idle. When the workshops were closed the workers rebelled again but were put down by force by the National Guard. The National Assembly was also able to blame Blanc for the failure of the workshops. His ideas were questioned and he lost much of the respect which had given him influence with the public.

Between the "sans-culottes", who tried to force him to place himself at their head, and the National Guards, who mistreated him, he was nearly killed. Rescued with difficulty, he escaped with a false passport to Belgium, and then to London. In his absence he was condemned by a special tribunal at Bourges, in contumaciam, to deportation. Against trial and sentence he alike protested, developing his protest in a series of articles in the Nouveau Monde, a review published in Paris under his direction. These he afterwards collected and published as Pages de l'histoire de la révolution de 1848 (Brussels, 1850).-

Taken from here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Blanc#The_Revolution_of_1848

Maybe if he had more luck, and someone competent was put in charge of the cooperatives we might have gotten something resembling the Mondragon Cooperative network on a national scale.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
 
What kind of communism are you asking for zeppelin? A socialist regime (something more radical than Social Democracy I'm guessing) or something along the lines of dictatorship of the proletariat and Bolshevism?
 
With what POD? If Queen Victoria dies in an assassinatin attempt in 1840, the King of Hannover (Ernst Augustus?) takes over, if I recall. If you have thigns get bad enough in Britain through his reactionary policies, you might see a revolution *if* things don't get better for the poor. If thigns get substantially worse for the poor from 1840 to the 1880s or so, theoretically you could get a Communist revolution.
 
Any western communism country before 1900s without a great war will just be attacked by its neighbors Revolutionary France part 2
 
With what POD? If Queen Victoria dies in an assassinatin attempt in 1840, the King of Hannover (Ernst Augustus?) takes over, if I recall. If you have thigns get bad enough in Britain through his reactionary policies, you might see a revolution *if* things don't get better for the poor. If thigns get substantially worse for the poor from 1840 to the 1880s or so, theoretically you could get a Communist revolution.

So basically the Socialist Dawn in Britain TL except a century earlier?
 
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