Reds fanfic

[Aelita]

Obviously some demonization will happen, particularly during the revolution and immediately after. But I think you're overestimating it's salience in American audiences.

For one, it would go against the Marxian social science that every school boy and girl learns. It's something that would go beyond merely an academic context, it would suffuse into propaganda and daily life. The moral character of individuals or classes has no place in Marx's analysis. Capitalists do not exploit because they are evil, wicked men; some might be sure, but plenty of honest and decent people find themselves in their ranks as well. Capitalists exploit because they too are servants of capital.

This is something so fundamental to the critique of political economy, yet so hard for people to really underestand because it goes fundamentally against everything our present culture takes for granted. At present, our culture is built around the basic idea that individuals are the master of their destinies, and we explain social dynamics with the language of personal moral failure/triumph.

Reds-verse Americans born after the Revolution would more likely have a smugly pitying attitude towards the European bourgeoisie. Like, Look at you deluded fools who think you're the captain of your soul, you're being led around by the nose by an impersonal system, a rat race of capital accumulation for its own sake that only makes you tired, haggard and neurotic.

And they're right. But they're also insufferable because they tend to overestimate just how much the Comintern has actually transcended the bedrock of capitalism: the value-form, exchange, commodity production, etc. It's been alluded to in the most recent revisions, but it's out of focus both in text as well as in universe because, you know, global total war. But the focus for the next chapter after The Great Crusade will be the internal tension within the Comintern.

There'll be a major cultural touchstone early in the post-war era, in which a major American political leader makes a statement that "full communism is twenty years away." The recurring theme of the post-war world will be that communism, like fusion power, always seems to be about twenty years away from realization. Progress is constantly being made, but the journey turns out to be far longer than anticipated.

 

[Redshank Galloglass]

Obviously some demonization will happen, particularly during the revolution and immediately after. But I think you're overestimating it's salience in American audiences.

For one, it would go against the Marxian social science that every school boy and girl learns. It's something that would go beyond merely an academic context, it would suffuse into propaganda and daily life. The moral character of individuals or classes has no place in Marx's analysis. Capitalists do not exploit because they are evil, wicked men; some might be sure, but plenty of honest and decent people find themselves in their ranks as well. Capitalists exploit because they too are servants of capital.

This is something so fundamental to the critique of political economy, yet so hard for people to really underestand because it goes fundamentally against everything our present culture takes for granted. At present, our culture is built around the basic idea that individuals are the master of their destinies, and we explain social dynamics with the language of personal moral failure/triumph.

Reds-verse Americans born after the Revolution would more likely have a smugly pitying attitude towards the European bourgeoisie. Like, Look at you deluded fools who think you're the captain of your soul, you're being led around by the nose by an impersonal system, a rat race of capital accumulation for its own sake that only makes you tired, haggard and neurotic.

And they're right. But they're also insufferable because they tend to overestimate just how much the Comintern has actually transcended the bedrock of capitalism: the value-form, exchange, commodity production, etc. It's been alluded to in the most recent revisions, but it's out of focus both in text as well as in universe because, you know, global total war. But the focus for the next chapter after The Great Crusade will be the internal tension within the Comintern.

There'll be a major cultural touchstone early in the post-war era, in which a major American political leader makes a statement that "full communism is twenty years away." The recurring theme of the post-war world will be that communism, like fusion power, always seems to be about twenty years away from realization. Progress is constantly being made, but the journey turns out to be far longer than anticipated.

Exactly. I'm more like Haywood in the sense that I'm not the most well read (my ADHD kinda makes reading that stuff impossible for me to do for more than 10 mins) but even I noticed that there were some problems with some individuals' modern day hypothesis.

 

[Bookmark1995]

Obviously some demonization will happen, particularly during the revolution and immediately after. But I think you're overestimating it's salience in American audiences.

For one, it would go against the Marxian social science that every school boy and girl learns. It's something that would go beyond merely an academic context, it would suffuse into propaganda and daily life. The moral character of individuals or classes has no place in Marx's analysis. Capitalists do not exploit because they are evil, wicked men; some might be sure, but plenty of honest and decent people find themselves in their ranks as well. Capitalists exploit because they too are servants of capital.

This is something so fundamental to the critique of political economy, yet so hard for people to really underestand because it goes fundamentally against everything our present culture takes for granted. At present, our culture is built around the basic idea that individuals are the master of their destinies, and we explain social dynamics with the language of personal moral failure/triumph.

Reds-verse Americans born after the Revolution would more likely have a smugly pitying attitude towards the European bourgeoisie. Like, Look at you deluded fools who think you're the captain of your soul, you're being led around by the nose by an impersonal system, a rat race of capital accumulation for its own sake that only makes you tired, haggard and neurotic.

And they're right. But they're also insufferable because they tend to overestimate just how much the Comintern has actually transcended the bedrock of capitalism: the value-form, exchange, commodity production, etc. It's been alluded to in the most recent revisions, but it's out of focus both in text as well as in universe because, you know, global total war. But the focus for the next chapter after The Great Crusade will be the internal tension within the Comintern.

There'll be a major cultural touchstone early in the post-war era, in which a major American political leader makes a statement that "full communism is twenty years away." The recurring theme of the post-war world will be that communism, like fusion power, always seems to be about twenty years away from realization. Progress is constantly being made, but the journey turns out to be far longer than anticipated.

So would the Marxist interpretation of Mr. Schindler be, "He was a man who overcame the temptation of capital to save people." ?

 

[Shevek23]

Obviously some demonization will happen, particularly during the revolution and immediately after. But I think you're overestimating it's salience in American audiences.

For one, it would go against the Marxian social science that every school boy and girl learns...

...And they're right. But they're also insufferable because they tend to overestimate just how much the Comintern has actually transcended the bedrock of capitalism: the value-form, exchange, commodity production, etc. It's been alluded to in the most recent revisions, but it's out of focus both in text as well as in universe because, you know, global total war. But the focus for the next chapter after The Great Crusade will be the internal tension within the Comintern.

There'll be a major cultural touchstone early in the post-war era, in which a major American political leader makes a statement that "full communism is twenty years away." The recurring theme of the post-war world will be that communism, like fusion power, always seems to be about twenty years away from realization. Progress is constantly being made, but the journey turns out to be far longer than anticipated.

I think one of the key reasons that the claim that the UASR will not degenerate into a totalitarian hellhole is plausible is the diversity of parties who make the 1932 Revolution, and the related fact that despite civil war they don't attempt to purge everyone who disagrees with them, as long as they agree to accept the socialist order the pro-revolutionary majority imposes. Thus we have several parties that are more or less D-DL/Marxist, and in addition to that more conservative parties that reject radical socialist doctrine for themselves but are prepared to constructively engage with it.

(I am not saying that a truly humane, progressive revolution that opens the way for true human freedom as well as this ATL movement does is impossible if carried out by a single united party--if the single vanguard party were self-critical and humane, it might be done by one--but given general skepticism such selfless self-discipline is reasonable to expect it certainly helps your TL that diversity of leadership and a certain degree of partisan checks and balances emerged in the American revolutionary crisis).

Given this diversity, I don't think that either acceptance of the validity of Marxian social science or a uniform interpretation of it will emerge, though I do think that over time a consensus interpretation will prevail and many early disputes will be gradually dropped, the consensus being the new common sense. Still, outside the Debs-DeLeonist pale are conservatives of various kinds, including a Trinitarian Church--I'd guess than only a fraction of the pre-revolutionary devout would take it seriously, but even allowing for the fact that the Christianity claimed by Americans in the 20th century OTL is broad but shallow, with large numbers not really taking it very seriously, the devout remnant would be a pretty substantial number of people with a voice in the culture at large--the strongly atheistic might treat their interpretations with withering contempt and the more politely intentioned among them might suggest that the Christian view is, where not demonstratably morally bankrupt, just a parallel path for arriving at conclusions that can be reached without reference to God.

So--Schindler's actions, and the more culpable ones of more typical Reich entrepreneurs, are not going to be seen through a strictly Marxist lens by everyone.

I don't know if I can see clearly what a proper Marxist in your view ought to see; certainly it is right to say that the enemies of humanity are not so just for the Evuls, but that certain actions are more functional in a given system than they would be outside it, and that that system exists for strong pragmatic reasons, and even that one protests morally against certain common oppressions in vain unless an alternative system, as robust as the evolved one, is available for actors to switch over to.

Still, I would say that a big part of the revolutionary drive is precisely that even people indoctrinated in a society with built-in injustices and harsh exploitation do not simply shrug and accept the imperatives of that system willingly like so many programmable drones. I think it is meaningful to talk about senses of morality outside of the functional requirements of an evolved social system--even while complying with social norms, and perhaps profiting by their social standards, people protest and complain, and sometimes rebel, in little ways or in big ones. There is a sense in which the various evolved systems of social organization, necessarily organized around exploitation of many for the benefit of few, and placing those few in control within the parameters of maintaining the system, all meet the judgement and condemnation of people at all class levels, both the suffering most-exploited and the elite leadership with the most to lose including people who sense injustice and cry out against it.

In the UASR, it too will have critics, and while many of these critics can be written off as apologists of an obsolete and bygone past order, some will be more biting and telling, and come from authentic protests of the moral senses of people who know evil when they see it. Now, frankly the way you've presented the society I see little evil being possible there, and these authentic protests will be more grunts than groans, more bickering that outcries. And since the magnitude of dysfunction is plausibly much reduced, while the combination of competitive democratic norms and a raised level of individual self-criticism and social conscience will mean that pragmatic solutions will pave over most complaints with relief of the cause, neither will valid self-criticism ever go away. In fact the Marxist paradigm of human success pretty much depends on it! Along with science and human creativity, a system is evolving that works harmoniously with the human drive for justice and uses it efficiently to stay on track of focusing human energy on improving human lives.

It clearly is better to see the gross and appalling evils of the Nazi regime as a worse-case development of the dysfunctional values of capitalist society than it is to blame all the evils on personal whims. It helps people better face the idea that if the alternative of massacring everyone who ever followed Hitler for any reason is barbaric and unacceptable, then the alternative must be rehabilitation--some day soon after the war is ended, German (and other nationality) survivors who enabled mass evil in many ways are going to change and grow somehow into people who wouldn't do it again--and yet also be able to somehow live with the responsibility for what they have done, and for others they intended as victims, who have lost friends and kin to their merciless wicked stupidity, to work with them and live with them and somehow accept them into a shared community.

The Marxist perspective says, change the circumstances and the rules change; change the premises and expect different consequences, and that is to the good, especially if the understanding of cause and effect is clear. But I think it does lack something, suffer a kind of horrible glibness, to make it so simplistic as to suggest that good and evil don't exist at all, and that there are actions conscience should cause people to shy from no matter how profitable taking them would seem for them. After all, Schindler is not alone in history; the hymn "Amazing Grace" was written by a former slave trader after all, and very long before society as a whole evolved to make slavery obsolete he individually came to his own epiphany that he had been doing evil and must stop it, stop doing it himself and spread the word that everyone else should too, damn the expense and lost profits!

Since I do not identify as a religious person at all, and do not believe that morality is a matter of some divine imposition of black and white rules, but rather sort of an emergent sense that is tied up in our intelligence somehow, and not I think in an arbitrary way but profoundly if flexibly anchored to the basic logic of the Universe, I for one have read a lot of Marx in a way suggesting he at least had a similar sort of sense; that progress is a meaningful thing, not just in the sense that the next thing happens, but that human beings are gradually empowering themselves to live in a better way. The moral outrage exists even among people who can see no practical way to leap clear of it; that outrageous things are inevitable does not make them right.

I gather from your remark that the "Marxian social science every schoolchild learns" is "insufferable" due to overestimating just how far they have come, you recognize that the dialectical evolution of society is far from complete--indeed in a sense will never be complete. And implicit is the possibility that for all that more backward moralists such as Trinitarian Christians can be shown to be off base and half-baked in their formal propositions, that they do have a partial grasp on moral truths that the best Communists intuitively hang on to as well, whether they have doctrine to explain and justify it or not, and that the less adept ones overlook in pursuit of pseudo-dialectical prattle; the many-headed nature of UASR society helps save it from headstrong half-baked dogmatism, by a dialectical process in which the thesis of essentially correct but incompletely worked out materialist reasoning meets the antithesis of irrational but not entirely wrong rival ways of thinking to develop a synthesis of a more profound sort of evolved Marxism. The "insufferability" of the ATL Marxist catechism the children are taught is challenged and reforged by pragmatic experience and a society that has not lost focus on the aim of making things better, not worse.

Stories such as those of Schindler with their apparent contradictions will help the society in this self-evolving process I would think.

 

[Bookmark1995]

The end of the North American Border Guard

Buffalo Working Rag

December 31, 2012

Niagara Falls, New York

Over a generation ago, a passport was needed to cross into each side of the picturesque Canadian-UASR border. Today, in the Canadian Niagara Falls, border officials and their American counterparts are celebrating New Years, and the end of their position in the most peculiar manner possible: the burning of customs papers, immigration forms, and old stamps in a bonfire just outside the soon to be defunct border offices.

"We're not just burning paper," says soon-to-be former customs official Matthew Ronson, standing in front of the bonfire "we're burning a symbol of division. We end the last form of restrictions that separated us from our American comrades."

Ronson's words prompt applause and cheers from the party-goers, and rolled eyes from Patricia Jenkins. At 47 years, Comrade Ronson is the most senior official from the Canadian side. Remembering the tense years of the North American Cold War, she looks upon the bonfire with some dismay, feeling like her profession has lot its respect.

"We used to be warriors," Jenkins remarks with some scorn, "We made sure the capitalists couldn't peddle their garbage. Now we're just paper-shufflers, and even that is going up in smoke, literally!"

Born in Niagara Falls in 1947, Jenkins grew up when the industrial hub of Western New York was becoming one of the most contentious borders of the Cold War.

Before 1933, the borders between America and Canada had been largely undefended, reflecting the once warm relations between the Old Republic and the capitalist United Kingdom.

With the deterioration of US-Canadian relations, the first fences dividing the continent were put up. Despite being little more than wooden posts, they reflected the divide forming between America and northern Canada, as the former embraced liberation, while the latter remained tied to its colonialist master.

The World War II alliance of convenience led to brief relaxation of tensions as both sides collaborated to bring down the threat of fascism. The Rainbow Bridge, which connects the two towns, was built as a symbol of reconciliation. But with the decline of post-war relations, the security along borders reached staggering levels.

Across the several-thousand mile border, fences as high as 6 m, and with concrete as thick as 7 m. sprung up. But the area between Niagara Falls resembled a war zone. On each side of the river were even small frigates in the Niagara River, soldiers, and even anti-aircraft defense. Even with a visa, a trip across the Rainbow Bridge would take nearly 8 hours, due to red tape and paranoia. Of course, there were examples of attempts by each side to smuggle weapons and contraband to each other, which to Jenkins justified the security.

"The Canadians were capitalist dogs," Jenkins,"All that red tape was needed to protect ourselves."

Jenkins entered the UASR Border Guard in 1970, at the height of tensions. By that time, however, the UASR-Canadian border was become an oddity in a continent that was becoming gradually becoming more interdependent.

With the Treaty of Buenos Aires in 1953, travel barriers across Red America were slowly coming down. The process was aided by rising living standards in Latin America, which gradually reduced the desire of Latin Americans to immigrate. By 1960, visa-free travel had been permitted with Mexico. By 1973, the US-Mexican Border Guard vanished into the ash-heap of history, and would soon vanish among the rest of Latin American Comintern.

The Canadian border, however, remained an area of tension, as guards like Jenkins were trained not just to stamp passports and intercept contraband, but to prepare for war.

But then came 1978, and suddenly 40 decades of geopolitical tension in North America vanished. But even as the machine guns and tanks were pulled away from the border, the walls, guns, and people like Jenkins remained.

Terrorism and political violence by far-right Canadians was but one reason for the continued border security throughout the 1980s, but Jane Hillard, another customs official claims the existence of walls and customs reflected the continued cultural and social divide between the two North American nations.

"I mean, I would go try to Canada for a weekend,"said Hillard, but the Canadian officials would still stall my passport. I think it was because of my short skirt, since Canadian woman still mostly wore skirts down to their ankles."

It was only in 1993 that Canadians could begin to travel to the UASR with only a passport and vice-versa, but even then, the border was seen as increasingly superfluous, a costly fossil in a period of growing interdependence between the two nations.

These view was underscored as stories emerged of guards allowing people in without passports and getting paid to sit around, of neglected border walls crumbling into dust, of schoolchildren playing across areas, ignoring the border entirely.

In 2005, it was finally agreed that the Border Guard along the Canadian border would be phased out on New Years' Day 2013. With it, thousands of miles of border was dismantled, guard posts left to rot. Now even Niagara Falls, a famous symbol of tension, has become a symbol of increasing cooperation between two former rivals.

In 2012, construction began on began on the first new spans of the Rainbow Bridge in seven decades. Two of them will be pedestrian, a sign of how interconnected the UASR and Canada have become. Jenkins however, wishes that the story of people like her will not be the story of division, but the story of people safeguarding a revolution.

"People mock us and call us lazy," Jenkins said,"but it was our presence that kept the capitalists at bay. My wish that even if the border wall is forgotten, our noble task of defense isn't."

 

[Miss Teri]

So, I'm thinking of doing a piece on a multinational Model UN (inspired by one of the stories I heard on Jeopardy), but I was wondering if anyone knows uf the TTL UN has any difference from the OTL one.

 

[Bookmark1995]

So, I'm thinking of doing a piece on a multinational Model UN (inspired by one of the stories I heard on Jeopardy), but I was wondering if anyone knows uf the TTL UN has any difference from the OTL one.

Why not a model Comintern?

 

[Miss Teri]

Why not a model Comintern?

The story I mentioned was about a Model UN run by US and Chinese students.

 

[Bookmark1995]

The story I mentioned was about a Model UN run by US and Chinese students.

Well, that also sounds interesting (sorry if I was telling you what to do).

Well, for that to work, you need to imagine ITTL contemporary issues, and also read up on General Assembly procedure.

 

[Miss Teri]

Well, that also sounds interesting (sorry if I was telling you what to do).

It's fine. I was just clarifying why a Model UN specifically.


For the second point, I do have some knowledge of UN procedure.

 

[Bookmark1995]

It's fine. I was just clarifying why a Model UN specifically.


For the second point, I do have some knowledge of UN procedure.

Anyways, I can't wait to read it.

 

[Bookmark1995]

AH Thread: What To Expect for Militia Training?

UpNorth said:


Hello everybody. A classmate of mine advised me to sign up early to get my militia training out of the way. So, I'm wondering if anybody can give me the gist of what to expect if I enter it early?

 

[Miss Teri]

AH Thread: What To Expect for Militia Training?

Don't expect a uber-intense military regiment. It does basic stuff, like firearms training, drills, and obstacle courses. Just enough to prepare you in case of an emergency. There is also job training and personal skills classes.

If you have objections, you can opt to volunteer in lieu of militia, though it has to be a public service, and it has a large amount of hours you need to complete.

 

[Bookmark1995]

AH Thread: What To Expect for Militia Training?

UpNorth said:


If you just watch movies, you'd assume that those militias only have two kinds of people: angry drill sergeants, or bisexual drunken party animals with guns.

 

[Miss Teri]

AH Thread: What To Expect for Militia Training?

Well, it's not that dichotomic. There are fun activities that you do in training, and people are generally serious about it.

 

[Bookmark1995]

AH Thread: What To Expect for Militia Training?

UpNorth said:

I was being facetious.

The truth is I'm a little anxious. While my family has been serving in some kind of military since World War I, I'll be the first generation in my family since the Red Turn to join a Red militia.

 

[Knightmare]

Yeah, it's always fun to see the rooks come in, expect the bisexual drunken party animals with guns, get met by the angry DIs. Always makes for such fun entertainment, watching their faces crash dive.

 

[Miss Teri]

AH Thread: What To Expect for Militia Training?

I wouldn't be too worried. My dad was a commissar in the civilian militias during the 80's, and since he lived in Minnesota, after the Red Turn, a lot of Canadians came there for training. He said that they generally got the program, or were quick learners.

 

[Bookmark1995]

AH Thread: What To Expect for Militia Training?

UpNorth said:

I don't know. I met this guy who had joined the militias five years ago. He ended up stationed in Miami, of all places to send a Canadian, where the Cubans mocked his accent.

It's been almost 40 years since the Red Turn, and yet the stereotype that all Canadians are pint-sized cowards still persists among the far-left in this country, despite people like Romeo Dallaire becoming icons in the Comintern military.

I'm nervous about being stuck with a bunch of tankie lunatics for several months in some faraway place.

 

[Derekc2]

Hm, would the term tankie actually exist ITTL? The term IOTL after all came from the description of those who uncritically supported the USSR crushing the 1956 Hungarian revolution -if I remember correctly- which I doubt will have an ITTL counterpart.