No USSR, state of left wing politics in the USA?

  • Thread starter Deleted member 1487
  • Start date

Deleted member 1487

Assuming that the USSR never got off the ground after WW1, say it was defeated in the RCW, what impact would that have had on US left wing politics going forward, especially if there is no rise of the Nazis and no WW2 (as we know it, there might be other wars, but not a major one started by Germany ITTL)?
 
Assuming that the USSR never got off the ground after WW1, say it was defeated in the RCW, what impact would that have had on US left wing politics going forward, especially if there is no rise of the Nazis and no WW2 (as we know it, there might be other wars, but not a major one started by Germany ITTL)?

A lot of things. For one thing, there would not be a "Communist" Party, separate from the Socialist Party. The failure of Bolshevism in Russia would strengthen the position of moderate "parliamentary" socialists around the world.

OTOH, those radicals truly intent on violent political change might abandon socialism for anarchism.
 
The Socialists would be a lot more popular than IOTL. Expect them to win > 5% in 1920 and they'll probably win a couple of seats in Wisconsin (they won 1 seat in Wisconsin IOTL) in this decade and a large number of seats during the Great Depression.
 
Domestic repression of socialists had nothing to do with the Bolshevik Revolution, and everything to do with the Socialist Party of America's strident opposition to imperialist wars (most anciliary socialist groups as well).

The Red Scare was purely about native radicalism, which was only slightly influenced by Bolshevism in this period. The majority of the cadres of the Socialist Party were already in aligned to a revolutionary position before the Bolsheviks took power. In essence, they were already Bolsheviks before Bolshevism became known internationally.

This was also a battle that they could not win. Whatever support they had won for opposing an unpopular war was progressively beaten out of them by state repression that extended to the early 20s. The SPA itself splintered, as the party leadership expelled the majority of the membership for being too radical (another aside; the membership and electorate of the SPA had been out of step with the leadership since 1912, with the majority being of a much more radical, revolutionary bent like Debs, while the office holders from the Midwest cities controlled much of the party's national infrastructure).

Essentially nothing changes through the 1920s. It is highly likely there'd be a left-right factional split even without the Bolshevik Revolution. There'd still be the First Red Scare. The difference is that the mass left of the party, if it could hold together, wouldn't be marching based on the orders of the Soviet government, and might be freed from the constant mistakes that were forced on them, espescially by the 30s. In the Depression, they re-emerge as significant force on the left. And at that point, it's anyone's guess, because the New Deal isn't pre-ordained by Providence. Without activist left-leaning federal policy, the far-left will be the big long-term winner in the Depression. But they probably won't take power until after recovery if they even can.
 
No WW2 -> no national fight against a racist state -> substantial delay in civil rights for blacks and in the assimilation of Jews in the US.
 

Deleted member 1487

The Socialists would be a lot more popular than IOTL. Expect them to win > 5% in 1920 and they'll probably win a couple of seats in Wisconsin (they won 1 seat in Wisconsin IOTL) in this decade and a large number of seats during the Great Depression.
You don't think the WW1 crack down on US Socialists would impact them post-war?
 
the biggest reason people are against socialism is the perception that it's talking insultingly to your betters.

That kind of thing. Very emotional. Very little to do with actual facts.

But still, the percentage baseball type of argument. And could the U.S. socialist party become like UK's Labour party with the Democrats as a minor regional party? Maybe.
 
The idea of a regional party in the USA, without any changes to the constitution, would be plenty for a timeline by itself. It would, naturally, ally itself with a national party, but that it gets to pick which would give it greater power over national policy than one might expect.
 
Assuming that the USSR never got off the ground after WW1, say it was defeated in the RCW, what impact would that have had on US left wing politics going forward, especially if there is no rise of the Nazis and no WW2 (as we know it, there might be other wars, but not a major one started by Germany ITTL)?

Without the Soviet Union.....hard/far left-wing politics might actually stall a bit prior to the end of the '20s, but there will actually be many benefits after that-for one, no Stalin, the rise of whom alienated a good few who might have otherwise been sympathetic to at least some planks of a socialist platform.

No WW2 -> no national fight against a racist state -> substantial delay in civil rights for blacks and in the assimilation of Jews in the US.

These, to be honest, are all fairly unlikely. You might see a *slight* delay in Civil Rights depending on developments afterwards, but even under OTL's circumstances, that could have started taking off perhaps up to around a decade earlier than it actually did. There's also no real reason why there would necessarily be a significant delay in the assimilation of American Jews-granted, it took until the 1930s, early 40s to be complete IOTL, but it could have happened a fair bit earlier.

the biggest reason people are against socialism is the perception that it's talking insultingly to your betters.

That kind of thing. Very emotional. Very little to do with actual facts.

IOTL, it was mainly thanks to the spectre of Stalinism, more than anything else.

But still, the percentage baseball type of argument. And could the U.S. socialist party become like UK's Labour party with the Democrats as a minor regional party? Maybe.

With a fairly influential Socialist Party, it is entirely possible that the two-party system could be broken in the U.S., perhaps by around the 1950s or '60s.
 
You don't think the WW1 crack down on US Socialists would impact them post-war?

Not to the same extent, as there would be no Red Scare. Rather, there would be some limited fears of socialism that would not be as pervasive and widely-held than IOTL. If FDR's presidency is butterflied away, the Democrat that would follow the Republican in 1932 would be shitty and would do nothing to resolve the Depression. The Socialist Party is at a perfect position to gain seats.
 
the red scare was brought about by anarchist bombing, hate to say it, but it was.

And I hate to say it because I really like the philosophic position of anarchism. It's both anti-big government and anti-corporate. It talks about freedom in the hands of individuals both theoretically and effectively practical. and then some jackasses bomb thinking when oppression comes, people will see how rotten the state is. bullshit, people will just get used to it.
 

Deleted member 1487

the red scare was brought about by anarchist bombing, hate to say it, but it was.

And I hate to say it because I really like the philosophic position of anarchism. It's both anti-big government and anti-corporate. It talks about freedom in the hands of individuals both theoretically and effectively practical. and then some jackasses bomb thinking when oppression comes, people will see how rotten the state is. bullshit, people will just get used to it.
So Libertarians with balls trying to take down the state?
 

Morty Vicar

Banned
The USSR was a useful boogeyman, but McCarthyism had more to do with corporate power plays than international politics, so there probably would still have been some sort of anti-Communist movement.
 
Last edited:
the red scare was brought about by anarchist bombing, hate to say it, but it was.

And I hate to say it because I really like the philosophic position of anarchism. It's both anti-big government and anti-corporate. It talks about freedom in the hands of individuals both theoretically and effectively practical. and then some jackasses bomb thinking when oppression comes, people will see how rotten the state is. bullshit, people will just get used to it.

Yeah, people forget there were legitimate concerns during the Red Scares, not just bogeymen. The USSR had little to do with the first one, the actual causes chiefly being that anarchists were bombing Wall Street and government offices, combined with nativist tensions and general opposition to socialists within state and the federal government.
 
Yeah, people forget there were legitimate concerns during the Red Scares, not just bogeymen. The USSR had little to do with the first one, the actual causes chiefly being that anarchists were bombing Wall Street and government offices, combined with nativist tensions and general opposition to socialists within state and the federal government.

Indeed, but with no USSR, the Red Scare is going to be heavily reduced.
 
Indeed, but with no USSR, the Red Scare is going to be heavily reduced.
No it won't.

The Bolshevik Revolution played very little role in the First Red Scare, which was a reaction against domestic radicalism. American socialists by and large were "Bolsheviks" before the October Revolution made Bolshevism into a household word. There was already drastic domestic repression against leftists well before the October Revolution, and there is nothing to suggest that the presence of a revolutionary government in Russia did anything to change the US establishment's game plan with regards to domestic dissidents.

The domestic dissidents gained a new rallying cry, and some new terminology filtered into the movement, but the domestic repression from 1917 through 1919 and into early 1920 was entirely natively oriented.

The USSR didn't even exist at any point. The Bolsheviks were a long way from winning the Russian Civil War, even by late 1919.

The Second Red Scare, after WW2, is a completely separate event. And in any TL without the Russian Revolution, thus the dynamics of 1920s and 30s radicalism, WW2 as we know it etc., you won't have an equivalent event. But that's irrelevant, because everything that led up to it is dramatically different.
 
the real question is not wheter or not the Russian Revolution would have an impact upon the first red scare (it wouldn't as many pointed out) but the long-term impact upon the left after that. The effective end of pluralism in the Third International and Stalin's control freak tendencies sabotaged the hard-left and its scars still run deep to this day.

The lack of a communist boogeyman could well serve to further unite the american left which had, until its degradation in the 70s, been one of the most militant and vibrant in all of the developed world. Only true extremists like anarchists could be the exception to this unity, but even that would depend across individuals.

One of the most interesting aspects is the potential for the rise of a left-wing party- an actual left-wing party, not a centrist progressive one.
 
Last edited:
Top