Goldstein
Banned
A Commiewank, no more no less. I already have a scenario like that (one of my first maps), but this one diverges earlier and has many competing flavors of Socialism that differ substantially from what we understand by it IOTL. Which is basically the point of the map. The POD and the American Path are heavily based on Reds! by Jello_Biafra, though the development is quite different here.
William Mckinley survives his assassination attempt in 1901, and the Progressives in the United States are marginalized long enough for the North American trusts to reinforce their position and the Progressive Era never really to emerge. During the first decade of the 20th century, the Socialist Party becomes a serious force in the United States, and the Socialist movement worldwide finds itself in a much better position. WWI happens on schedule, but it finds a much more organized worldwide anti-war movement with Socialist undertones. By 1918, the spark of revolution ignites not just in Russia, but in Germany, France, the Ottoman Empire (inspired by the much more disseminated works of Mir-Said Sultan Galiev), the UK and the United States, and it spreads. An earlier, messier decolonization movement would start in the subsequent years, taking the Socialist revolutions of the metropoli as a political inspiration.
By 1960, all the world was living under Socialist governments in one form or another. Yet, the ideal of universal brotherhood has never been so far away. Confrontations between centers of power persists, between cores and peripheries, between irreconcilable ideologies. Because new blocs have emerged, and their ideas on what this new stage of humanity should look like are quite different, often incompatible.
The USSR and its Comintern represents Socialism as we mostly understand it IOTL: vanguard party and central planning. In this world it has more definite (we would say) third-worldist tones, for it's easier to develop and organize where previous productive forces and political instititutions had not reached a great degree of political sofistication. The USSR, as IOTL, is big on Modern architecture and city planning, and most satellite states follow it at the scale that their economies allow. They're at the forefront of the advancement in physics, medicine and biology (there was no Stalin -no Trotsky either-, and Lysenkoism never caught on), having a much more pronounced bent towards eugenics.
The Worker's Confederation is different. It has a much greater Internationalist vocation, and it's a fusion of the Coucil Communist ideal of Germany with the Syndicalist movements of the rest of Western Europe. It applies a true worker's democracy at a productive level, with local councils organized in national syndicates or boards of sydicates with a vague representative streak, and in bourses du travail at a local and municipal level. It is a highly participatory society (the leader in IT, the one that developed, and the only one apart from the USSA, that uses personal computing), but also a highly illiberal one de to its ideologically tight, one-sided streak, and its birth out of revolutionary terror. Everyone polices everyone, and it has an extensive secret police that it has nothing to envy in methods to the NKVD. Architecture in the WC tends to the orderly and neoclassical, full of mythological allegories and palatial elements, and compared to the USSR, it favors medium and lower densities.
India didn't get on board. It felt that way neutered its national struggle. India and the area of influence it would carve in SE Asia, they follow a form of Council Communism that put a great emphasis in national self-determination and national values, and that only allows a single national syndicate as the representation of the national body. It has greater technocratic tones than the WC, but it couldn't be properly be called fascistic, as worker's democracy, heavily conducted by the official channels as it is, does exist.
The USSA set the American Path. While undoubtedly Socialist, it kept much of the spirit of the original constitution. Property was expropiated and redistributed, worker's democracy was instituted, a clear direction towards eradication of all forms of discrimination was taken, and at the same time a wide rage of the freedoms and political pluralism of the former political environment was kept. It was just understood that only political formations that accepted and embraced the Socialist nature of society could participate from the political process. The Mexican Revolution took much of this process as an inspiration, already counting with Privatist, Zapatista principles similar to those enacted in the USSA, and many parts of the English-speaking world copied the American Path. The USSA is the champion of engineering and aerospace technology, and its cities are a communistic form of Deco-Punk.
Two nations fusioned Marxism with religious teachings, arguing that the Materialistic aspect of Marxism wasn't telling the full story. In the Ottoman Empire, it was also too convenient, for the blend between Marxism and Islam was seen at the moment by its proponents as the way to instill it with a new sense of purpose and save it from collapse. To say that it met resistance would be an understatement, especially in the Arabian Peninsula, where repression was brutal, but in the end it found its own adherents in Egypt and Iran (the ideology had strong pan-Islamist streaks, and aspired to sweep the Sunni-Shia divide). Its functioning wasn't different to that of a Marxist-Leninist nation, with a vanguard party and a state-run economy, except that the leadership of the party ultimately fell under a board of religious experts led by a Supreme leader, positions acquired by adoption by the institution itself starting from the original council, with no democratic process involved, and imams also served the role of political commisars. It was, on practice, an islamic clerical structure functioning as the leadership of a worker's party, its bases identified with the Ummah.
New Jerusalem formed out of former Canada, thanks to a group of preachers and charismatic leaders that blended the Socialist trends with the spirit of the Temperance movement, a sense of spiritual awakening, Agrarianist ideas... according to them, the practice of Marxism was prefigured in the first Christian communities. New Jerusalem could be called a tight Theodemocratic social order, communal at a local level and favoring small, farmsteading enclaves and townships with a degree of (very illiberal) local democracy, all supervised by an elected Spiritual Board, which at the same time elects a Lords Spiritual. The system overall reminds of a mix between Gaddafi's Libya and the Kibbutzim system of Israel, with Dominionist tones.
Original Socialism was the Decolonialist idea that true, adecuate forms of Socialism were already present or were reachable in syntony with the traditions and traditional structures of the local peoples. An appeal to what Marx called Primitive Communism, if you want. In Peru and Bolivia, that translated into a revolutionary movement that called to a return to the indigenous roots and the elimination of all Spanish influence. It ended up relatively well and stable in the long term, but at a great human cost. Though unable to project any kind of power, the Primitivist guerrillas and even terrorist cells directly inspired by their teachings worldwide make it to be considered a great annoyance by most powers.
Finally, Asian Socialism was what Ikki Kita came up with ITTL. A very Conservative, vertical, pan-Asian outlook on Socialism that reclaimed Confucius as its main source of inspiration. The Asian Empire is Monarchist and militarized, virulently traditionalistic... Totalitarian, an observer from OTL would say. But resources are indeed totally planned and distributed according to social harmony and justice. It must be Socialism, then. But then again, what constitutes true Socialism is such a contentious issue that it threatens to jeopardize the new order Socialism itself has created.
William Mckinley survives his assassination attempt in 1901, and the Progressives in the United States are marginalized long enough for the North American trusts to reinforce their position and the Progressive Era never really to emerge. During the first decade of the 20th century, the Socialist Party becomes a serious force in the United States, and the Socialist movement worldwide finds itself in a much better position. WWI happens on schedule, but it finds a much more organized worldwide anti-war movement with Socialist undertones. By 1918, the spark of revolution ignites not just in Russia, but in Germany, France, the Ottoman Empire (inspired by the much more disseminated works of Mir-Said Sultan Galiev), the UK and the United States, and it spreads. An earlier, messier decolonization movement would start in the subsequent years, taking the Socialist revolutions of the metropoli as a political inspiration.
By 1960, all the world was living under Socialist governments in one form or another. Yet, the ideal of universal brotherhood has never been so far away. Confrontations between centers of power persists, between cores and peripheries, between irreconcilable ideologies. Because new blocs have emerged, and their ideas on what this new stage of humanity should look like are quite different, often incompatible.
The USSR and its Comintern represents Socialism as we mostly understand it IOTL: vanguard party and central planning. In this world it has more definite (we would say) third-worldist tones, for it's easier to develop and organize where previous productive forces and political instititutions had not reached a great degree of political sofistication. The USSR, as IOTL, is big on Modern architecture and city planning, and most satellite states follow it at the scale that their economies allow. They're at the forefront of the advancement in physics, medicine and biology (there was no Stalin -no Trotsky either-, and Lysenkoism never caught on), having a much more pronounced bent towards eugenics.
The Worker's Confederation is different. It has a much greater Internationalist vocation, and it's a fusion of the Coucil Communist ideal of Germany with the Syndicalist movements of the rest of Western Europe. It applies a true worker's democracy at a productive level, with local councils organized in national syndicates or boards of sydicates with a vague representative streak, and in bourses du travail at a local and municipal level. It is a highly participatory society (the leader in IT, the one that developed, and the only one apart from the USSA, that uses personal computing), but also a highly illiberal one de to its ideologically tight, one-sided streak, and its birth out of revolutionary terror. Everyone polices everyone, and it has an extensive secret police that it has nothing to envy in methods to the NKVD. Architecture in the WC tends to the orderly and neoclassical, full of mythological allegories and palatial elements, and compared to the USSR, it favors medium and lower densities.
India didn't get on board. It felt that way neutered its national struggle. India and the area of influence it would carve in SE Asia, they follow a form of Council Communism that put a great emphasis in national self-determination and national values, and that only allows a single national syndicate as the representation of the national body. It has greater technocratic tones than the WC, but it couldn't be properly be called fascistic, as worker's democracy, heavily conducted by the official channels as it is, does exist.
The USSA set the American Path. While undoubtedly Socialist, it kept much of the spirit of the original constitution. Property was expropiated and redistributed, worker's democracy was instituted, a clear direction towards eradication of all forms of discrimination was taken, and at the same time a wide rage of the freedoms and political pluralism of the former political environment was kept. It was just understood that only political formations that accepted and embraced the Socialist nature of society could participate from the political process. The Mexican Revolution took much of this process as an inspiration, already counting with Privatist, Zapatista principles similar to those enacted in the USSA, and many parts of the English-speaking world copied the American Path. The USSA is the champion of engineering and aerospace technology, and its cities are a communistic form of Deco-Punk.
Two nations fusioned Marxism with religious teachings, arguing that the Materialistic aspect of Marxism wasn't telling the full story. In the Ottoman Empire, it was also too convenient, for the blend between Marxism and Islam was seen at the moment by its proponents as the way to instill it with a new sense of purpose and save it from collapse. To say that it met resistance would be an understatement, especially in the Arabian Peninsula, where repression was brutal, but in the end it found its own adherents in Egypt and Iran (the ideology had strong pan-Islamist streaks, and aspired to sweep the Sunni-Shia divide). Its functioning wasn't different to that of a Marxist-Leninist nation, with a vanguard party and a state-run economy, except that the leadership of the party ultimately fell under a board of religious experts led by a Supreme leader, positions acquired by adoption by the institution itself starting from the original council, with no democratic process involved, and imams also served the role of political commisars. It was, on practice, an islamic clerical structure functioning as the leadership of a worker's party, its bases identified with the Ummah.
New Jerusalem formed out of former Canada, thanks to a group of preachers and charismatic leaders that blended the Socialist trends with the spirit of the Temperance movement, a sense of spiritual awakening, Agrarianist ideas... according to them, the practice of Marxism was prefigured in the first Christian communities. New Jerusalem could be called a tight Theodemocratic social order, communal at a local level and favoring small, farmsteading enclaves and townships with a degree of (very illiberal) local democracy, all supervised by an elected Spiritual Board, which at the same time elects a Lords Spiritual. The system overall reminds of a mix between Gaddafi's Libya and the Kibbutzim system of Israel, with Dominionist tones.
Original Socialism was the Decolonialist idea that true, adecuate forms of Socialism were already present or were reachable in syntony with the traditions and traditional structures of the local peoples. An appeal to what Marx called Primitive Communism, if you want. In Peru and Bolivia, that translated into a revolutionary movement that called to a return to the indigenous roots and the elimination of all Spanish influence. It ended up relatively well and stable in the long term, but at a great human cost. Though unable to project any kind of power, the Primitivist guerrillas and even terrorist cells directly inspired by their teachings worldwide make it to be considered a great annoyance by most powers.
Finally, Asian Socialism was what Ikki Kita came up with ITTL. A very Conservative, vertical, pan-Asian outlook on Socialism that reclaimed Confucius as its main source of inspiration. The Asian Empire is Monarchist and militarized, virulently traditionalistic... Totalitarian, an observer from OTL would say. But resources are indeed totally planned and distributed according to social harmony and justice. It must be Socialism, then. But then again, what constitutes true Socialism is such a contentious issue that it threatens to jeopardize the new order Socialism itself has created.
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