Imagine a communist New Zealand that is overthrown by an Australian invasion.
Communist Anglo-Saxon country
- Thread starter Tio Paquete
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Sure it can. McKinley escapes assassination in 1901. The Republicans never initiate progressive policy, so the progressives both grow more radical and more disillusioned with two party politics, ultimately turning to the Socialists as do Northern industrial workers and ex-Progressives. Essentially a milder form of RaRT resulting in a party shift rather than full on revolution.
And is there any chance that a Communist uprising could happen in the USA with a POD soon after the Depression starts? Maybe a more radical Bonus Army develops into a Red Army of the United States? Hoover wins re-election via dirty tactics and the people turn to armed insurrection having had no succor in politics as normal? Even IOTL there were people with no leftist background who seriously contemplated pulling a Bolshevik.
No way. Debs was mainly backed by German, Finnish and other immigrant and second generation voters who were tied to European socialism. That is not enough to win the presidency. His 6% already was huge.
What you are setting up for is a Bryan presidency in 1908, not a socialist victory.
Look at the Great Depression, where 1/4 of the nation was unemployed. The Democratic party won, not some very left-wing third party.
Would Bryan have been able to carry the Northeast? I feel like Debs will do better in immigrant and working class urban communities, making it possible for Bryan to lose in 1908.
That of course also assumes that the butterflies of neither party wanting to be the first to openly associate with progressivism might result in a completely different candidate being nominated by the Dems in 1908.
And in 1932, the policies people voted for were definitely highly left wing by US standards even if the party and ideology weren't. I think people tend to forget just how radical FDR was in 1932.
Bryan was never strong in the northeast, but as the head of one of the two major parties of America he would certainly do better than Debs. Though he did win NYC in 1900 and 1908.
Debs could never win. He got 6% of the vote and that was a big deal.
The reason Theodore Roosevelt did so well for he was a former president who won the primaries (Crushed Taft) and represented one of the two major party factions. That is not inspiration for Debs.
Most Americans saw Debs and his ilk as labor agitators disrupting the system. They wanted reform, not agitation.
Debs was a man of conviction, but was not a mainstream American politician who could have won the election. He was a radical.
If Bryan loses, people might start looking even more towards a radical. Ultimately, Debs' vote share will increase over time if neither party ever runs a progressive.
Edit: another opportunity might be in 1924 if Debs is chosen as La Follette's running mate, even then it's still unlikely.
But really, it's neither here nor there; my real point in discussing a Debs election was to provide another candidate who would strongly oppose a reoccupation of a Communist Canada, not lead the USA towards Communism directly. Many other candidates/presidents can do the same.
Edit: another opportunity might be in 1924 if Debs is chosen as La Follette's running mate, even then it's still unlikely.
But really, it's neither here nor there; my real point in discussing a Debs election was to provide another candidate who would strongly oppose a reoccupation of a Communist Canada, not lead the USA towards Communism directly. Many other candidates/presidents can do the same.
Not enough. This is assuming way too much.
Bryan did lose three times, and guess what, we still had Progressive Presidents (Roosevelt, Taft and Wilson). Many Americans found FDR too radical!
No Debs presidency.
You cannot convince me that Debs can reasonably become President.
Debs and his party never won a state in a presidential election.
Communist revolutions occurred in Russia and China due to serfdom. America was never a breeding ground for such a movement.
Radical left-wing movements falter in America.
Americans generally are a moderate to conservative bunch who when they feel necessary support reform. Reform is popular, not radicalism or especially revolution. Especially traditionally.
Radical left-wing movements falter in America.
Americans generally are a moderate to conservative bunch who when they feel necessary support reform. Reform is popular, not radicalism or especially revolution. Especially traditionally.
Again, my real effort is to get a President who will invoke the Monroe Doctrine against a Britain intervening to recolonize a revolutionary communist Canada. I don't know enough about Canadian history to say how possible that is but I think it's more plausible than the USA going communist.
I might disagree with you about the plausibility of Debs getting elected but at the end of the day I think we can both agree that (unless RaRT) Debs Presidency=/=Communist USA. It's only what Debs will allow Canada to do that matters and there are a bunch of other candidates who would support Red Canada against the UK for a bunch of other reasons.
Oh for sure. Many Americans would view Debs to be a communist (again, showing how unlikely his chances of winning were) but I am well aware that Debs was not calling to seize the means of production. An actual communist might find himself in prison.
Ummm...Serfdom was abolished in Russia in 1865. They still had communists, due to a combination of farmers unable to compete with (to borrow a Latin term) the Latifunda of larger owners and a heavily mistreated urban proletariat--factors common to the USA in 1917. I'd argue that the real reason Communism is impossible in the USA is a combination of race-bating politics and the "American Dream" myth that have prevented class consciousness and Communist agitation emerging in the US.
It is, but still hard. But Communism is a way for English and French workers of Canada to unite.
It was officially, but the middle class of Russia and America was way different. It was a peasant uprising. My point is that you need a radically different environment from America's for such events to occur.
That's possible, yet Russia was filled with racism and antisemitism. The only way this applies is a lack of unity amongst poor whites and blacks in the south. But don't think that communist uprisings occurred in less prejudiced nations.
To be fair even Debs did find himself in prison.
Oh, I'm not saying that they'd be a 1:1 comparison, merely that they aren't as dissimilar as some people think. The American Middle Class, I would argue, didn't really emerge as a demographic trend until the New Deal Consensus. As an ideal, it's much older, dating back to a complex interface with Manifest Destiny and the idea that anyone could buy a farm and work their way up. Between that and, again, the interface between race and class in the US, class consciousness has a much harder time getting off the ground.
And I'm not sure that I would say that it was just a peasant uprising that led to the Bolsheviks' victory. Yes, they did have support in the countryside, but their two key columns were dissatisfied soldiers and the urban proletariat, small as it were. Remember that the Bolsheviks won the Civil War by controlling the two most important cities--Moscow and Petrograd--and dividing their enemies around their unified bloc, a victory that wouldn't have been possible without urban support. Now, I'm not saying that rural support didn't also play a role in the Bolshevik victory, merely that it wasn't simply one or the other.
There's a difference in scale present, though. The Jews in Russia, particularly in the North, were never as large a share of the population as were racial minorities in the USA. Thus, there wasn't as much immediate ability to foster economic, as opposed to cultural or religious, fear by the ruling elites particularly once the atrocious "Jewish Moneylender" stereotype broke down as the urban proletariat discovered that the Jews certainly didn't have power in the Russian oligarchs dominating them. On the flip side the real job competition between blacks and whites in the US, especially as the former were often used as scabs, had a much greater impact on the ability of class consciousness to emerge.
That is a very good point. Certainly racism has greatly impacted working-class politics in the U.S.
It's not completely one way or the other, but I think it is important to note that Russia and China, the two big successes of Communist revolutions, were primarily rural nations and not primarily industrialized.
Without getting into the debate as to whether Marx was right that Revolution would occur in the most industrialised countries, the USA was agrarian (albeit with different patterns of land ownership) well into the beginning of the 1900s. Furthermore, given how much of a boost the CCP received from the USSR basically giving them Manchuria, I definitely don't think that that's a good comparison.
Between culture and environment, comparing Russia in 1917-1920 to the USA at a similar point is much easier than comparing either to China later on.