Communist Revolution In USA

The reason that there is not "Socialism in America" is that, by and large, Americans have been taught to hate socialism.

Fixed it for you :p

More seriously Debs, the IWW, and the Socialist movement right up until the Red Scare had a pretty sizable following with lots of room for growth. Socialism's decline began the moment the federal government started rounding up, jailing, exiling, and in some cases killing known Socialist, Wobbly, anarchist, and other radical organizers in conjunction with an intense, sustained propaganda campaign. Add the Cold War on top of that which was a gift-wrapped opportunity for anti-socialist propagandists to paint anything to the left of a capitalist system as being a tool of Moscow and it's no surprise socialism is so weak in America. It's definitely worth noting during the same time period when socialism was repressed in the United States similar actions took place in France, Britain, Germany (a la the Freikorps), and other parts of the world outside of Russia against their own home-grown radical and revolutionary movements.
 

Japhy

Banned
More seriously Debs, the IWW, and the Socialist movement right up until the Red Scare had a pretty sizable following with lots of room for growth.

No, not really, they'd peaked in the 1910's. Debs did alright for himself in 1920 only as a lingering reaction, but the fragmentation of the Far Left was going to happen and when it did the whole thing was going to go crashing down. Now Debs might have been able to do better in say, 1912 had Roosevelt not been in the Race, but it wasn't the sort of long term, entrenched growth that a Socialist Party would need to keep going in the US.
 
No, not really, they'd peaked in the 1910's. Debs did alright for himself in 1920 only as a lingering reaction, but the fragmentation of the Far Left was going to happen and when it did the whole thing was going to go crashing down. Now Debs might have been able to do better in say, 1912 had Roosevelt not been in the Race, but it wasn't the sort of long term, entrenched growth that a Socialist Party would need to keep going in the US.

And the fact that most of the Socialist Party was thrown in prison on spurious charges, driven out of the country, or killed outright had nothing to do with that collapse :rolleyes:
 

Japhy

Banned
And the fact that most of the Socialist Party was thrown in prison on spurious charges, driven out of the country, or killed outright had nothing to do with that collapse :rolleyes:

Thats not what caused the fracturing into a dozen and a half different parties, no. Thats not what caused the IWW Socialist split, no.

So, while I am not contesting that those actions didn't damage the party a lot my point is still that the Socialist Party's Doom was already setup to happen. It had just as much to do with Party conferences and Moscow Directives.

But yeah keep eye rolling and pretending it was all because of the Red Scare and the reactionaries.
 

katchen

Banned
Socialism would have had a lot more of a fighting chance if the Confederacy had kept it's independence. There is much more of a communitarian tradiition in the North and Northwest. Without the South to counterbalance it (and Southern white troops to fire on socialists) a US made up only of the Northern and Western States could have lurched a lot further to the Left during the Progressive Era and then during the New Deal.
 
The argument that most of you are making that communism/socialism would fail in America because of its principles. That's not a very valid argument. As America is based off a very liberal representative democracy, which isn't that far off from democratic socialism or social republicanism. Also the argument that the fragmentation of the left can't be butterflied away is flawed too. A few PODs to stop fragmentation are: Bolshevism is destroyed in its infancy this would butterfly a lot of fragmentation of the left around the world also it would remove the stigma they gave socialism and communism. SLA and SPA cohesion in their early years like in Jello's Reds is another good one. And the best is to create a strong opposition to the left, an American fascist movement would clearly bring the left and center together. This could easily be achieved by creating only a little cohesion between the left. But your best course is to use all of this. Libertarian socialism/anarcho-communism aligns quite well with the American principles of equality, liberty, and freedom. A proper system revolving around democratic socialist republicanism and anarcho-syndicalist communism is the ideal governance for America, IMHO.
 
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