Who isn't liked, the NDP or the Liberals? I assume you mean the Liberals. Anyway, yes, the NDP is still a moderate social democratic party.
Challenge: Strong Socialist Party of America lasting into modern days.
- Thread starter Turquoise Blue
- Start date
Who isn't liked, the NDP or the Liberals? I assume you mean the Liberals. Anyway, yes, the NDP is still a moderate social democratic party.
The NDP. You haven't led in polls since October last year, and is behind the Liberals and constantly third place since last month.
First of all, why "you"?
And that's just Trudeau's initial bounce. It's a really close race - the only thing that seems even slightly certain is a Tory plurality, and even that could change.
That's because the potential shake up of the Liberals is still dividing the votes as Mulcair is seeking to pull the moderates over to his side and Quebec is now seeming to slide into the Liberal camp.
It will seriously depend on the next two years to see what happens, I don't trust the polls very much personally.
Obviously going to happen with the Grits retaining some of the center-left vote and the Greens serving only to siphon off votes.
We're derailing the thread, so could you reply via PM?
Will Kürlich Kerl
Banned
Not necessarily the same thing.
Socialist Party: The socialists had conservative wings and radical wings, religious socialism, syndicalism, and many other factions that do not really correspond to social democracy. I do no know your limit on how far back the PODs can be, but with a POD far back enough, the Socialists might be different that the socialists of OTL.
"Far left"/Progressivism: The USA from 1901-1920 basically had three progressive presidents, but during the reign of the three presidents, we saw the death of the Socialist Party. The numerous factions of the Socialist Party have policies that do not correspond to Roosevelt's/Taft's/Wilson's Progressivism, and probably would be considered radical instead of progressive.
American NDP: If Progressivism progresses as OTL and the Socialist Party embraces some other form of socialism, such as syndicalism, then the American NDP analogue will be different than the other two.
Socialism is a blanket term that tended/tends to be used pejoratively in reference to pretty much anything opposed to the extant socio-economic elite.
Wilson is... interesting. Very racist, radically anti-communist, and a heavy-handed thug, among other things; yet also very prescient as far as WWI went.
Basically left-libertarianism, or anarcho-syndicalism, would be the best bet. Keep the anarchy movement alive somehow, or at least get it to appeal to the ostensible anti-establishment American political rhetoric.
American socialism was so inspired by anarcho-syndicalism that it could well just be called Marxist-Syndicalism given how their most major changes where to adapt other marxist ideas into the anarcho-syndicalist mold.
Prevent McKinley's assassination in 1901 and by extension Theodore Roosevelt's presidency. That'll make the progressives in the two main parties lose a lot of their influence, and what support they got will be more easily taken up by a stronger socialist party. Whether or not this party will last long, let alone find itself in the White House, depends on other factors such as how strong and radical the labor movement becomes in the absence of progressives.
What about if Teddy Roosevelt died in 1912. While it might seem like a bad thing, you could end up with a Progressive/Socialist type party led by Robert LaFollette at some point. I don't know how he felt about Debs, but he did feel Debs shouldn't be in prison.
Have Teddy Roosevelt die in 1912, Taft win in 1912, and Charles Evans Hughes win in 1916 or so. This means the Democrats have been entirely locked out of the White House during the Fourth Party System, and allows the Socialists to replace them as the alternative to the Republicans. Hughes was against the persecution of the Socialists (favored by Wilson and, yes, Roosevelt and Taft), so if we enter WWI under Hughes, the Socialists could profit as the anti-war party without being destroyed. Then they come in after the Depression.
I think to have a strong Socialist Party in the US you would probably have it not be a Marxist party with its anti-religious overtones. Of all the Western nations the US is almost certainly the most religious. What is possible is a Socialist Party that is indifferent to religion or even a kind of Christian Socialism. This is quite workable as there have been Christian Socialist movements before and I think this is probably the best way to get a Socialist Party. It might even call itself the Christian Socialist Party.
The SLP and Farmer Labor actually had some pretty signifigant rural support in the areas the religious right is most prominent in today and they wheren't very active on fighting for or against religion in private life at all. That and on the whole them being anti-religious had nothing to do with their decline, their decline had far more to do with progressives and reformists undermining them in the polls and attracting most moderates away from them while at the same time being under assault from both major parties.
The important thing is that they weren't fighting against it like most Marxist based Socialist Parties usually do. If they were going around the South saying that "Religion is the opiate of the masses" and stressing anti-religious themes they wouldn't have been as successful. They may have been even more successful linking it up with Christianity like Jesus's statement of the chances of a rich man going to heaven.
Yeah no, the SLP wasn't run by idiots, they knew that would never appeal in America (although they did still have their anti-clerical elements it tended to be against popular targets like Corrupt priests). Although I also doubt they would make it an explicitly religious message.
EDIT: Yeah they where led by idiots at points, but not early on.
I think that you could encourage Huey Long types to become open socialists in the South. You'd get a poor electorate of whites who would be swing votes, but be open to a socialist party. You could also court hispanics and maybe even some blacks (even socialists would realize that blacks would alienate white southerners). Maybe even later with Hispanics you could use the whole liberation theology angle.
Yeah other than your complete and utter bias (and obvious lack of knowledge on the subject) I do agree that the cold war did a ton of damage to socialism in America (though I won't say it killed it or discredited it, even now most of the younger generation no longer find socialism such a dirty word).
