DBWI: No MacArthur putsch, could the USA survive?

Pretty basic question comrades, but if Douglas MacArthur doesn’t have a moment of complete idiocy and try to overthrow the democratically elected president Norman Thomas, could the old United States have survived or was the final crisis of capitalism inevitable at that point?

((OOC: this is meant to be in the Reds! TL))
 
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Look, Norman Thomas would have been a successful president and reformer during normal times, but he was too much of a damn perfectionist and micromanager, and that was that.

Without Gen. MacArthur stepping in and getting things done quickly and imperfectly — and delegating broadly — we probably would have had attempts at violent revolution from a number of groups, probably with a hard right group gaining ascendency. I mean, before MacArthur put a stop to it, we had local branches of the American Legion attacking camps of unemployed men. And the local leadership damn was well complicit. It was absolutely classic, blaming poor people for being poor.

So, yes, I think we were relatively lucky to have MacArthur's center-right government.
 
Look, Norman Thomas would have been a successful president and reformer during normal times, but he was too much of a damn perfectionist and micromanager, and that was that.

Without Gen. MacArthur stepping in and getting things done quickly and imperfectly — and delegating broadly — we probably would have had attempts at violent revolution from a number of groups, probably with a hard right group gaining ascendency. I mean, before MacArthur put a stop to it, we had local branches of the American Legion attacking camps of unemployed men. And the local leadership damn was well complicit. It was absolutely classic, blaming poor people for being poor.

So, yes, I think we were relatively lucky to have MacArthur's center-right government.
(OOC: https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/reds-a-revolutionary-timeline-special-edition.168330/)
 
Look, Norman Thomas would have been a successful president and reformer during normal times, but he was too much of a damn perfectionist and micromanager, and that was that.

Without Gen. MacArthur stepping in and getting things done quickly and imperfectly — and delegating broadly — we probably would have had attempts at violent revolution from a number of groups, probably with a hard right group gaining ascendency. I mean, before MacArthur put a stop to it, we had local branches of the American Legion attacking camps of unemployed men. And the local leadership damn was well complicit. It was absolutely classic, blaming poor people for being poor.

So, yes, I think we were relatively lucky to have MacArthur's center-right government.

I don’t know how bad history education in Cuba is, but I would have thought they would at least stick to the basic facts of the revolution.
 
OOC: Since we have a clear timeline this DBWI is based on, can we just ignore anyone who doesn't follow the timeline's events and treat it as non-canon for the DBWI? It'll be easier than trying to herd cats who refuse to play ball with the general facts of the timeline.

IC: Bah, the counter revolution attempt by the bourgeois state showed just how degenerate the second republic and capitalism had become. It was not stupidity by MacArthur but instead historical materialism for his, and the capitalists, attempted putsch.

Do remember he was brought in as the gun man, First Secretary Long was the man who started the ball. Some sort of counter revolutionary attempt was inevitable.
 
Look, Norman Thomas would have been a successful president and reformer during normal times, but he was too much of a damn perfectionist and micromanager, and that was that.

Without Gen. MacArthur stepping in and getting things done quickly and imperfectly — and delegating broadly — we probably would have had attempts at violent revolution from a number of groups, probably with a hard right group gaining ascendency. I mean, before MacArthur put a stop to it, we had local branches of the American Legion attacking camps of unemployed men. And the local leadership damn was well complicit. It was absolutely classic, blaming poor people for being poor.

So, yes, I think we were relatively lucky to have MacArthur's center-right government.

What in the bloody hell are you talking about laddie? The US of A collapsed into civil war shortly after MacArthur took control, he was the one who legitimized the far right in America before the commies blew him away and took over. Did you skip class when they were covering the US revolution? Or did you just never learn about it?

I'm glad that here in the FBU we at least remember history accurately.
(OOC: She said the US collapsed? She also referenced a specific timeline in the OP lol.)

EDIT: Also, as you can see by my avatar, I quite like Thomas, and I think his democratic victory through the ballot box is something socialists around the world should emulate if they are able to.
 
The shot and simple response is - if France and the UK can remain capitalist through the Great Depression, why can’t the Yankees?

Probably need some POD before the Great Depression, which disempowers the Socialist Party as a political force. Perhaps they end up supporting WWI like the European SocDems ended up doing, thus expelling the radical anti-war segment of the party. Or possibly their more modest early goals get co-opted in a watered-down format by leaders in the old Democratic and Republican parties. The old USA’s electoral system was pretty hard for the Socialists/Communists to ultimately break through, given all the barriers in place. Keep those barriers up, and the two old Ds and Rs dominant, and one can end up with a capitalist USA surviving the Great Depression.
 
@Edward_Elric But the Democrats had essentially collapsed as a national party by 1930 and even had difficulties with keeping their white poor base with the rise of the DFLP.

The likelihood of SLP being pro-war was quite low. Very few Americans were for the war, outside of the bourgeois, wanted to fight war the war out of some nebulous concept such as the Toronto Agreement (one made without any support of the general public by the way). The next four years of resistance to the war would then decimate the reformist wing of the party. Remember, the main conflict was always between the anti-Bolshevik far left and the pro Bolshevik left; the reformist wing was always the second fiddle when the SLP was debating on joining the Comintern. Something the reformist wing knew which was why they stayed in the party and even those who did split and form the "Independent Socialist Labor Party" would before the end of the 1920's rejoin the main communist party.

Plus the right of the communist party was the Austro-Marxists of Viennese International, who whilst wrong were not quite as cowardly and traitorous as former their comrades in the dead Second International. There was never a real force of reformists to support the First World War in the Old United States and is a large part of the reason the First World War ended with Bienno Rose in the United States. Besides the fact the American State literally attempted with violence to crush the election of the SLP to mayorship in New York. Which would serve as a chilling premonition on their attitude a decade and a half later.
 
The US, had it gone a massive economic restructuring, could've survived, but it was doomed if it had kept the economic policies, which allowed the rise of trusts.
 
Wasn’t McKinley’s VP (can’t remember his name offhand) supposedly an early reformer?

Maybe something happens to McKinley and that guy gets into office.
 
The United States was as capitalist as capitalist come however and the likelihood of that was...low. Especially after the Sherman antitrust act was struck down. From then on the only fate for America, like all capitalist societies, was class war. Though America's class war was especially violent, with the American state being particularly repressive in how they handled Organized Labor. Which of course just pushed the working class closer and closer to revolution as the state became more and more repressive until...well their is a reason we have this topic after all.

Though I am skeptical even that would really work. After all, in the "progressive era" the Trusts were "managed" by the bourgeois state to reduce the tempo of class conflict so why would any attempted economic restricting by the bourgeois work? What would they even economically restructure a capitalist state too?
 
There was a news story a while back about a Polish guy who had planned to kill him in Buffalo, but was arrested.
Yeah, I remember that, I guess that is the main way for it to happen, alongside the Anti-Sherman act being found constitutional unlike OTL. I am still doubtful it would save American capitalism in the long run until it created it's own reaper in it's treatment of the working class but that should at least push back the revolution.

Debs and the American Railway Union never joining the STLA would also give American capitalism some breathing room. Debs joining the SLP was what really helped the STLA to become the primary rival of AFL, the worthless class collaborists they were, as they did. Which would help serve as the bedrock of the rise of SLP and eventually Worker's communist Party as the Trade Union Federation of Solidarity.
 

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If Thomas stays on as a constitutional socialist relations between the USSR would be worse, might it make Stalin more purge happy without the UASR as an alternate model. Then again Thomas could become America's Kerensky which would make WW2 worse than OTL.
 
Just because a fascist decides it isn't his time doesn't mean the contradiction of capitalism stops. Perhaps the United States may survive, but capitalism will not. We're (mostly) Marxists here, we know this.

(lol get ready for the pissy FBU folks)
 

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OOC: Since we have a clear timeline this DBWI is based on, can we just ignore anyone who doesn't follow the timeline's events and treat it as non-canon for the DBWI? It'll be easier than trying to herd cats who refuse to play ball with the general facts of the timeline.

IC: Bah, the counter revolution attempt by the bourgeois state showed just how degenerate the second republic and capitalism had become. It was not stupidity by MacArthur but instead historical materialism for his, and the capitalists, attempted putsch.

Do remember he was brought in as the gun man, First Secretary Long was the man who started the ball. Some sort of counter revolutionary attempt was inevitable.
Actually, that is not how DBWI work, at all. The real direction of a DBWI depends on the second and third posters, not the OP.

One of the main reasons they tend to be role plays and not DBWI is that the OP has an entirely different plan than the actual set-up man.
 
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