Socialist America butterflies

I could see a version of De Leonism in my TL. The Socialist-Populists get elected in the 1910s, and established legal frameworks for profit sharing and other methods for workers to own the means of production.
Working with reformist elements of the Democratic and Republican parties, as well as their own cadre of congressmen and senators, the Socialists establish a series of laws that lead to a more left-wing America.

So the TL is moving away from a violent revolution and embracing a democratic revolution stance like the OTL Japanese communists? I think that the Socialist Party would keep in its manifesto revolutionary rethoric, and still be a fairily radical party for a few decades.
 
So the TL is moving away from a violent revolution and embracing a democratic revolution stance like the OTL Japanese communists? I think that the Socialist Party would keep in its manifesto revolutionary rethoric, and still be a fairily radical party for a few decades.

What about the supreme court and the people who want to prevent such laws?
 
Why? Just why?

"France goes Nazi if Germany wins the war" is such an overdone trope. And, if you look at French political history, rather less likely than Al Capone becoming the American Stalin.

France was very much aware that it was in a state of relative decline versus Germany. Both before and after WW1, there were those who advocated accommodating to German ambitions and seeking a German alliance rather than the British alliance that France decided on before both world wars. WW1 ending with Germany retaining even more of France is just likely to strengthen the pro-German lobby since siding with Britain and Russia would be clearly shown to have failed.

Then there is the political dimension - the far right just never got much traction in France, for a number of deep seated reasons. But the political machinery of the third republic really doesn't lend itself to radicals gaining power. Unlike Germany, where the constitutional seeds for Hitler's power were planted within the Weimar constitution, the French constitution was filled with impediments to any sort of rule from the center (that included rule by non-radicals - there is a reason why France between the wars struggled to achieve any sort of reform).

Further, Germany barely had enough power to start WW2 - if Hitler had been even a little less lucky, WW2 would have never started and instead we'd have just had a little regional war where Germany got the tar beaten out of her. France, even if the interwar period went very, very well, cannot expect to equal even OTL's 1938 Germany's relative power until the late 40s at least (and that is with an economic and demographic miracle that frankly strains credulity). Thus, even if France does go nationalist and try to start a war, most likely it ends up getting thoroughly thrashed by the surrounding powers without the war drawing in enough participants to be a "world" war.

It is more likely that Britain would start WW2!

fasquardon

That is a good point.
 
So the TL is moving away from a violent revolution and embracing a democratic revolution stance like the OTL Japanese communists? I think that the Socialist Party would keep in its manifesto revolutionary rethoric, and still be a fairily radical party for a few decades.

Certainly, they would be a controversial party who are admired by some and hated by others.
I imagine Debs being elected president in 1912, but with a minority of electoral votes, and only winning because Roosevelt and Wilson effectively split the vote.
 
What about the supreme court and the people who want to prevent such laws?

Debs, though a fairly radical socialist, is working in a coalition with the People's Party, and also has to tone down his policy in order to pass it through the Senate. The actual legislation passed by the Populist-Socialist Coalition government is more along the lines of what we would consider social democracy.
 
One of the scariest people to come to power, prior to 1976, Lyndon La Rouche was part of a Worker's Socialist Party. He also propsed a series of mega-projects across the globe until in 1988. In 1983, LaRouche was a a booster for the "Star Wars" Defense Initiative...
 
One of the scariest people to come to power, prior to 1976, Lyndon La Rouche was part of a Worker's Socialist Party. He also propsed a series of mega-projects across the globe until in 1988. In 1983, LaRouche was a a booster for the "Star Wars" Defense Initiative...

Yeah, La Rouche was just crazy.
 
Try to imagine him as the ATL's analogue to Stalin, especially with his conspiracy theories and hatred of British, Jewish, and African-American culture..

Yup, that would work.
But, in my TL, Stalin is around in the USSR, and he incites a political rift between the American-style socialists and the Soviet-style communists in the early 1950s, similar to the Sino-Soviet Split.
 
Yup, that would work.
But, in my TL, Stalin is around in the USSR, and he incites a political rift between the American-style socialists and the Soviet-style communists in the early 1950s, similar to the Sino-Soviet Split.

Imagine Lyndon LaRouche as a Socialist answer to Ronald Reagan, someone willing to risk the apocalypse, just to win as a "Cold Warrior "...
 
Results for the 1912 presidential election:

http://imgur.com/3Mh6cJ3


Socialist/Populist: 217 electoral votes.
Democrat: 194 electoral votes.
Progressive: 107 electoral votes.
Republican: 13 electoral votes.

I don't want to be a pessimist, but these results are widely improbable. You would need various political scandals regarding corruption, barely legal power grabs, back-alleys deals to weaken the two-party system. Plus you would need to butterfly the whole progressive movement as a whole, because its goal was to implement reforms that would sweep away support for extremist parties.

The only away for that to happen is for a progressive to be president when the country is emerged in an economic recession. The progressives discredited, the two party system weakned by scandals and the country submerged under an economic recession (added to the inhuman conditions of living quarters and workplace plus the low wages that were prevalent during the Gilded Age) to give the socialist a chance.

Even then it would take a republican presidency for socialists to get enough popular support. The two-system is extremely strong and resilient and the Republicans were still at this point a free market party- Teddy Roosevelt supported the free market, he just wanted to curb its excesses and ensure its survival in long term through government regulation.
 
I don't want to be a pessimist, but these results are widely improbable. You would need various political scandals regarding corruption, barely legal power grabs, back-alleys deals to weaken the two-party system. Plus you would need to butterfly the whole progressive movement as a whole, because its goal was to implement reforms that would sweep away support for extremist parties.

The only away for that to happen is for a progressive to be president when the country is emerged in an economic recession. The progressives discredited, the two party system weakned by scandals and the country submerged under an economic recession (added to the inhuman conditions of living quarters and workplace plus the low wages that were prevalent during the Gilded Age) to give the socialist a chance.

Even then it would take a republican presidency for socialists to get enough popular support. The two-system is extremely strong and resilient and the Republicans were still at this point a free market party- Teddy Roosevelt supported the free market, he just wanted to curb its excesses and ensure its survival in long term through government regulation.

Maybe there's an extremely corrupt Republican president who accidentally instigates a public backlash toward big business.
 
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