"Mound of spring: An early developing Israel in a late developing world TL"

[Lavidor]

I actually find all this Marxism fascinating (and Talmud too, I think you may be on to something...)

I enjoyed seeing all these updates. It seems quite a plausible development to me. In these conditions, the Second International would probably remain united and make plans to include all socialists everywhere.
There is a bit of interesting accidental convergence here- the initiation scene reminded me of a bit from Es Geloybte Aretz yesterday.

 

[Snaut]

I'll try to remember that 2010s audiences have less patience than 1910s Marxists.

Are developments understandable, making sense, and interesting so far?

Not knowing much about the disputes between OTL's Marxists I can't really comment upon plausibility, but the walls of text are perfect the way they are.

 

[yboxman]

I actually find all this Marxism fascinating (and Talmud too, I think you may be on to something...)

I enjoyed seeing all these updates. It seems quite a plausible development to me. In these conditions, the Second International would probably remain united and make plans to include all socialists everywhere.
There is a bit of interesting accidental convergence here- the initiation scene reminded me of a bit from Es Geloybte Aretz yesterday.

Secret societies do tend to have a similliar Modus operendi even when operating under a completley different premise and for utterly different goals.

But in case it wasn't clear the scene above is not the Second international, as such, recruiting people into the "inner party" (though that may be what some of the new recruits believe). It's Trotsky deciding Lenin was right about the need for a disciplined Vanguard party with a secret organization but realizing that Lenin's open split with the Mensheviks was a mistake and that his goals can be better maintained, and his activities better funded, by maintaining a number of organizational layers- some of which masqurade as members of other socialist or anarchist parties, and gradually seek to take them over from within.

The OTL analog is the way Stalin instructed the Chinese (and Indian) communist party membership as well as Euro communists at various time points to maintain parralel memberships in the communist party and a socialist/nationalist ally/host. Of course, TTL, there is no superpower backing the inserted members and presenting a clear source of authority.

Anyway, I'm almost done with the "history of Ideas" phase and will be moving on to faster paced and less texty posts. Next few posts will either deal British domestic and imperial politics (especially India and Egypt) in the aftermath of the great war or get into the nuts and bolts of Canaanite political and economic organization in face of the flood of Polish and Russian refugees they shall be recieving between 1917-1923.

 

[yboxman]

Literary interlude:Maayan Nevo in the 1920s

A bit of a foreshadowing, but the song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud0JZAGxq14 and the scene came into my mind and I just couldn't help myself….

Thousands of mercenaries to the sword gather inside a Mosque,
They discuss my fate but not with me
And my Neighbor's aunt just became a vice battalion commander
Or so said the wife of the father of my sister to me.
Oh my sister….

An armless man is groping for a sightless visionary in the dark
Says only he can avert a catastrophe
And from the streets of Kiev an ancient plague spreads to every town,
And a long lost brother finds his way to me
Oh my brother…
I lied when I wrote that here everything was so wonderful
Because Einstein just showed nothing at all was really true.
But in a world gone mad,
Where even the globe forgot that it was round,
All we can do is crawl into our own black hole.

London Bridge is burning down,
But the trains in Berlin are now on time
And hordes of refugees meet between Lodz and Poznan
So you and I have nothing left but hope
Oh, let us sing the hope

I lied when I wrote that here everything was so wonderful
Because Einstein has shown nothing at all is really true.
But in a world gone mad,
Where even the globe forgot that it was round,
All we can do is crawl into our own black hole.



Why does a stone thrown in Mecca stray away to me?
How does a stone thrown in Mecca stray away to me?
Just you and I are trapped inside a tiny box
And as we sing our hope others join us here to pray until the air is gone

I lied when I wrote that here everything was so wonderful
Across the world a thousand mercenaries to the sword battle in the dark
As an ancient plague takes a new form
I feel so wonderful
I feel so wonderful
We are the chosen people
We are the chosen few

So why politics now?

Maayan Nevo,
Unpublished poems



Port Said, Canal Zone, Egypt, 1925

"How long has she been like this?"

The crisp upper class British voice is jarring. She'd grown used to the harsh, Yiddish and Arabic accented Hebrew of her unit. She'd almost forgotten that she used to airily discuss the affairs of the commonwealth and the world, poetry and novels in French and in German and only occasionaly in the precisely pronounced Hebrew her literary collective cultivated.
But for now, and for the next six years, that is behind her.

"Almost two days."

She slowly opens her eyes. It's Shrulik of course. As the senior physician it's his job to look after the resident apprentices. And she had given him other reasons to be solicitous of her welfare once she realized he didn’t care about the scars and once he realized she required little from him but physical and mental diversion.

The British Laison she doesn’t recognize. He's not on the medical staff. But if the British rank insigna are anything like those of the Maccabees he's an officer and a senior one at that.

"Damn it, I told Alexandria that the way you were sending women here to do a man's work is criminal! I don’t care if your people cost half what it would cost to bring in Medical personnel from London. Calling a woman a doctor doesn't make her one and putting her to treat combat wounds is just asking for trouble. She had too much of it and fainted I suppose."

One of them. Sneering down at her. Helpless. Again. She won’t have it. She. Will. Not have. It.

She climbs to her feet, hastily wrapping her coat around her spare frame and clearing her throat.

"No. Not the wounded. It's my sisters. They were sent to fulfill their national service in the Gilad. There was a Wahabist raid. They… they were outside the stockade"

Shrulik rushes to her and starts to extend his hand before her frozen gaze stops him on his tracks.

" I've been treating the wounded to the satisfaction of all for the past year and I will continue doing so. I…regret my indispostion"


She voted for him after the ticket split of course. How else, when all the other candidates offered no solutions, no hope and little pride? When the calorie ration was cut again, and then again? Besides, whatever she had told her parents, he was the reason she made Aliya.

And she saw hints that he understood what set her and him and the others apart from them. That he shared her secret thoughts. That the intelligent and creative needed to be rewarded, and that the dull and listless needed to be managed and contained rather than flattered and coddled.

And he was right, he had to be right. If he wasn't… well that meant it was all for nothing, didn’t it?

Would she still have written her sisters to come if she would have known what would happen? Would she still have voted for him if she knew where his policy would lead?
Of course she would have. There was no fate. Only decisions which had to be reached in the absence of full information. And the decisions she made were the correct ones. But what would she tell her father?

The British mumbles something indistinct under his breath.
She ignores him and turns to Shrulik.
"I will return to the patients momentarily. Give me a few minutes to freshen up."
Shrulik nods curtly.

"Good. That's good. We have some new arrivals. Copts from upper Egypt. Some of them are in pretty bad shape"
This time the British officer doesn't bother muttering under his breath.

"Whole country is in pretty bad shape. Whole bloody empire is a mess- and it wouldn't be if you lot hadn't stuck your noses where it didn’t belong!"
An Arabist then. Or maybe just an old school anti-semite. Or maybe neither. There were plenty of British, and a few Jews as well, who were critical of Zhabotinski's decision to intervene in the Mecca war, albeit indirectly, and blamed him for the fallout of the Zaidi takeover of the Kabba.

An old joke from Lvov flashes trough her mind.

Roman Dmwosky and the Nicholas III meet after the time of troubles to negotiate the boundaries of the grand duchy. Dmwosky warns Nicholas that if Lvov is not granted to Poland he will not be able to prevent angry poles from getting drunk, rioting in protest and carrying out a Pogrom which would drive Jews into Russia proper. "Well, say you get Lvov, what then?" Asks Nicholas. "Well if we do I obviously couldn’t stop Poles from celebrating the decision by getting drunk and carrying out a Pogrom- but I'll steer the refugees towards Hungary"

"What do you think would have happened if the Ikhwan would have won the Mecca war? Don't you think the victorious Mujahidin would have returned to Egypt and done even worse than they have?"

"That's as may be but I don't see as how we can know for certain. I know it was no business of yours to get involved".

When he turns to leave Maayan calls to him sharply at the door. "The Caloric value in the daily rations for a British soldier in Egypt is 4,800 calories"

"Well, what of it?"

"Before the Transjordan campaign my daily rations were 2,500 calories. And fifteen thousand people were landing on the Haifa docks every month"

 

[yboxman]

Posy #39: The emerald isle

For Britain the end of the Great war is greeted with relief and as an opportunity to return to normality. Asquith and the liberal party, having guided the nation throughout the war to an outcome viewed by most as a victorious defence of British interests and the expansion of the British empire, while leaving the conservatives outside the government, gain significant political capital.

As a result, they prove utterly victorious in the general elections of March 1917, increasing the Liberal's hair width lead over the conservatives by a comfortable margin and enabling them to form a majority government with no coalition partners.

The effect of the addition of nearly a million newly enfranchised veterans into the voting roster is unclear- on the one hand, labor does not appreciably gain in strength. On the other hand, it is quite possible that absent enfranchised working class votes Labor would have disappeared from parlimant. In any event, since everyone is certain Britain will never need to recruit such masses of men in the forseeable future, the matter remains moot.

Nonetheless, with the end of the war, problems and fissures which divided Great Britain and its empire prior to the outbreak of hostilities resurface.
Chief among them is the matter of Ireland.

One troubling development in the 1917 election is Sinn Fein's success in finally sending a representative into parlimant. While Lord Redmond's Irish parlimantarians remain the dominant political force on the emerald isle it is clear to all that absent the veterans vote Eamon De Valerra may well have become the spokesman for Irish sentiments- an outcome greatly to be feared. While his links to the May 1st uprising are unproven, his presence in the commons is an outrage and a persistant provocation to the unwritten code of conduct which governs the British empire. Clearly, something must be done.

Asquith, a man of his word, moves to fulfill his pre-war promises to lord Redmond in the face of significant Internal opposition within his own party as well of the conservative press and MPs.

Recognizing his precarious position the amended home rule bill he presents to the commons devolves responsible government further by dividing Ireland into five autonomous provinces (Conacht, Leinster, Munster, Ulster and greater Dublin), and granting each county within each province, the five counties of Ulster included, considerable autonomy as well. Protestants from the four Catholic majority counties are also guaranteed considerable representation in the provincial and all-Ireland Dublin based parlimant. The number of Irish MPs in the UK parlimant is agreed to be reduced to 42, and to be reviewed and further adjusted on a 8 year basis.

The compromise displeases many but Asquith, by prodigial expenditure of political capital, carries it through the commons… only to see it shot down, yet again, by a thin majority in the conservatively minded lords.

The resulting public uproar gives Asquith the ammunition he requires to adopt a drastic measure by which he seeks to kill two birds with one stone- an appointment of carefully selected new peers to the house of lords drawn primarily from the Dominions, Ireland, and, shockingly, from India as well.
By October 1917 the fifth Irish home rule bill is passed in both houses, allowing Lord Redmond to die in peace, his life mission fulfilled. His funeral is a somber, yet truimphant occasion, with the acrimony of hard line unionists and Sinn Fein extremists largely suppressed.

However, the political capital Asquith has expended in the effort, and a manner derided by his party members as tyrannical leaves him exposed. By January 1918 an internal party coup is well underway with Winston Churchill and David Loyd George cooperating increasingly in sidelining Asquith.
Both, however, have made their own enemies, and are too divisive figures to openly challenge him for the seat of prime minister or party leader. Instead, in the run-up to the 1921 general elections they both back a third, apolitical figure who is greatly popular with almost all sections of British society….



Your country needs YOU

Vote for the right honorable Earl Herbert Kitchner for Prime minister!
Vote for the Liberal Party!
Vote for the BRITISH EMPIRE!

 

[yboxman]

Post #40: The sun never sets…





Selecting Kitchener as party leader and Prime Minister Candidate proved to be a political masterstroke, at least insofar as the 1921 elections were concerned.

The figure of Lord Kitchener was comforting and led many voters with otherwise conservative worldviews to vote for Liberal candidates. The party's lurch rightwards was not, however, without its costs, leading to a further, modest, increase in the power of Labor.

To some extent the growth of Labor was, paradoxically, simply a function of the recovering economy. Prior to the Great War some fifty percent of the adult male citizens of the United Kingdom paid sufficient taxes to be eligible for the suffrage. But as the economy recovered from the war and surpassed pre-war performances, the number of voters with working class background sufficiently wealthy to vote grew, and generally grew faster than their adoptions of middle class identity and interests.

As the power of labor grew, that of the conservative party would decline, finding itself forced into defending increasingly irrelevant positions against the center oriented Liberal party, in particular concerning imperial questions.
The Great War had demonstrated the critical importance of imperial resources and manpower in securing British interests and confirmed the Dominion's attachment and support of the Motherland.

However, it was obvious to all that the growing assertiveness and national pride of the White dominions must be addressed if imperial unity should prevail. So far the British Empire had been held together by informal understandings, unofficial arrangements, common interests and sentiments, reliance on the emotional attachments of white settlers to the homeland, and careful avoidance of testing this attachment. Muddling through, however, would no longer do.

Accordingly, Kitchener called for second imperial conference with the prime ministers of the White dominions and selected representatives of the government of India and the colonies almost immediately after his election.
The need to find an agreed and formal mechanism to bind the empire together was clear- but even the White dominions were adamantly opposed to any measures which would interfere with their freedom of action. In effect, they desired the benefits of imperial association, and a chance to influence imperial policy to their benefit, without overly cumbersome obligations to a center which was still significantly wealthier and more populous than they were.

The solution crafted by colonial secretary Winston Churchill was to formalize the mechanism implemented by Asquith for expanding the House of Lords to include members from the dominions while simultaneously modifying the functions and authority of the house.

The formula eventually adopted and proposed for the consideration of the commons of the United Kingdom and the upper and lower houses of the dominions defined the authority of the lords as pertaining to imperial policy, as opposed to domestic British policy. Henceforth, its primary function would be to consider the naval estimates and foreign treaties entered upon by the imperial government, as well as budgetary and policy questions related to the colonies not yet enjoying home rule (1).

New peers would be selected by the governments of each dominion and the United kingdom. The candidates would be subject to approval by the monarch and Imperial chancellor (who would also serve as prime minister of the United Kingdom), with the quota for each dominion as well as the Home Isles being determined on the basis of each member's contribution to the budget of a common Imperial navy, And the colonial budget. It was further agreed that the House of Lords would determine the proper proportion of each dominion's contribution to the common budget on a decade long basis- but that this proportion would not, in any event, exceed its domestic government budget relative to the home isles.

Suggestions to further elaborate this mechanism into an imperial constitution which would codify a common trade policy were bluntly rejected and effectively vetoed by Canada. As Prime Minister Mackenzie pointed out, Canada and the United states shared the longest land border in the world and it would be "impolitic" as well as economically disadvantageous for Canada to subordinate, in any way, trade relations with the United States to an external decision mechanism.

It was however agreed that free trade between the dominions, colonies, and the home isles, as well as a repricopial "most favored nation" status would be a fundamental cornerstone of the British Empire. Suggestions to adopt a similar policy with regard to immigration were just as firmly resisted by Australia as a common trade policy was by Canada. The result would be a watered down resolution recognizing the right of any citizen of the home isles and the dominions to freely immigrate between each other.

Additional Issues related to the non-self-governing colonies, and particularly the Indian elephant in the room, were politely deferred to the next imperial conference, which was agreed to take place on a bi-annual basis.
Events, however, would soon outpace the imperial conference's sedate deliberations.

 

[Lavidor]

Does this have a basis in any proposals from OTL?

 

[yboxman]

Does this have a basis in any proposals from OTL?

Yes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Federation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Federation_League
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Preference

Some kind of binding constitutional re-definition of the relation of the Dominions with the home isles was in the making OTL prior to WWI. But the motherland was percieved to manage the war badly, wasted the lives of dominion soldiers (especially in the Dardanelles), and it's economic and political clout was sharply reduced after the great war.

Added to the Irish troubles, the outbreak and mismanagement of the Indian and Egyptian indepenence movements, U.S pressure on Canada, and the breakup of the Liberal party there simply wasn;t sufficient interest on the part of the dominions and political will on the part of London to push anything more than irregular imperial conferences through.

TTL Asquith takes care of Ireland (he almost did OTL before getting the boot), India and Egypt are delayed, The British avoid sending the Canadians into the Somme bloodbath, and the ANZACS have the chance to shine in the most succesful and mobile front of the war. Also, Britian and Europe are less of an economic basket case and the Liberals retain cohesiveness and gain in power albeit under the leadership of their more right wing members.

Mind you, all of this is directed at the white dominions. India, Malaysia, the West African colonies and the Arabian-Persian Protectorates (and Canaan) are not included in either the discussions or agreements though they are mostly included in the Imperial Free trade zone.

What is relatively novel is that representation is based on financial contribution rather than a set allotment to each dominion or a population based one. It seems to me to make sense, though.