Communist or Fascist America confirmed?
You're about to find out. Secondly, I see the London Naval Treaty generated a lot of feedback and I tried to incorporate all of it in an edit of the last update. Now moving on to what's been happening in the USA.
Chapter IX: Revolutionary America, 1928-1937.
Part 1: Preamble: The Rise of the Socialists.
The United States of America, a federal presidential constitutional republic born from a revolution against British colonial rule and surviving a four year civil war over slavery, was going to experience a third major upheaval. Though isolationist and not involved in the recent European wars, America would not escape their consequences. After the “national revolution” that led to its independence, the United States were headed toward a “social revolution.”
For much of its history, the US had been a two party system (there were more political parties, but most of the time they had no influence on the national stage). In the year 1900, no-one could predict that a third party would rise once again and, this time, making a lasting impact since the party that did so only gained a few percent of the vote in the first decade of its existence. Its candidate ran in the Presidential elections of 1900 (0.6% of the popular vote), 1904 (3.0%) and 1908 (2.8%) with limited success.
The Socialist Party was confronted by a looming split with the international trade union “Industrial Workers of the World.” In 1911 IWW leader Bill Haywood was elected to the SPA’s National Executive Committee and accused it of abandoning the class struggle. Before he could perhaps break away from the more moderate faction of the party, he was killed in a mugging in New York days before he would square off in a debate against fellow party member of the social democratic wing. Moreover, the party’s Presidential candidate had a personal meeting with American Federation of Labor leader Samuel Gompers to mend fences, issuing a statement that “the Socialist movement and the trade unions strive to achieve the same goals through different means and wouldn’t allow capitalists to divide them.”
Keeping together the social democrats, the agrarian utopians and the outright Marxists and strategically sending their representatives to campaign where their brand of socialism would have the most appeal, led the Socialists to appeal to a diverse electorate. The 1912 US Presidential elections produced a minor electoral breakthrough. In this election there were four major candidates rather than the usual two: Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson, Progressive candidate Theodore Roosevelt, Republican candidate William Howard Taft and Socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs. Debs won 7% of the popular vote, more than doubling his number of votes from to well over 1 million compared to roughly 420.000 in 1908.
The 1916 Progressive National Convention was held in conjunction with the Republican National Convention in the hopes of reunifying the two parties with Roosevelt as the presidential nominee of both. The Progressive Party collapsed after Roosevelt refused the Progressive nomination and insisted his supporters vote for Charles Evans Hughes, the moderately progressive Republican nominee. Hughes got the nomination and went to face off against Wilson, the winner of 1912.
Seeing the disarrayed state of the Progressive Party as an opportunity, Eugene Debs and other prominent socialists campaigned heavily in the states the Progressives had previously won in 1912 even before the Progressive and Republican national conventions. They were inspired by the success of the Social Democrats in Germany, who successfully managed to change their country into a real democracy. Debs almost exhausted himself as he tried to speak at as many places as possible since he was the best speaker of the party: though disdainful of organized religion, he was very charismatic and called on a Christian vocabulary when needed and adopted the oratorical style of evangelism.
The Socialists put a heavy emphasis on taking Roosevelt’s trust busting agenda further, including the nationalization of key industries that were deemed of national interest (like coal mining and coal-fired power plants, as these provided much of the country’s electricity). Besides nationalizations, Socialist positions were centred on the 40-hour workweek, a minimum wage, women’s suffrage and a welfare system with benefits for unemployment, sickness, work-related accidents, disability, widows and orphans. This would be funded through taxes on the “predatory rich, big business and finance capital.” The leftist segment of the Progressive Party was absorbed by the Socialists and effective Socialist propaganda ensured they got most of the former Progressive vote.
The Socialists doubled to 14%, which amounted to 2.6 million popular votes and won the states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, South Dakota and Washington State. Particularly the first two were heavily industrialized, with steel industry, coal mining and an emerging automobile industry, resulting in a large proletariat susceptible to the socialist campaign (this reaffirmed Marxist ideology, which was centred on the industrial proletariat). The five states won by Debs amounted to 77 electoral votes. The Republicans got fourteen states, 184 electoral votes and 41.3% of the popular vote. Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson won a second term by winning 29 states, 270 electoral votes and 44.4% of the popular vote.
There had been fairly successful third parties before, but all of them had come and gone and only the Republicans and Democrats had persisted. Captains of industry, bankers and many in the Southern states hoped this would be the case once again. They were haunted by the spectre of nationalization, workers’ self-management and racial desegregation after this socialist success. Contrary to expectations, the Socialist Party managed to stick around.
In 1917, the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party convened the Second National Congress to make policy on the crucial topic of race. The party did have some “scientific racists” who argued that African Americans and mulattoes constituted a “lower race” but they didn’t constitute a majority in the party. A majority of delegates at this policy making party congress voted to reject biological racism. The party stated that the conclusions of such racial biologists were foregone given that they were all white men born into bourgeois capitalist milieus, giving them motive to justify exploitation of black workers. When addressing the characteristics of supposed inferiority, the Socialists called them “subjective” and pointed out the failure of racial scientist to make inferiority quantifiable. In the amended party program it was finally concluded that “there’s no reason a black man, when given the opportunities of a white man, couldn’t do just as well.” Secondly, the Socialists voted to adopt a statement from the 1912 Tennessee party platform as a policy line for the entire party: it stated that white supremacist ideology was a tool of the capitalist class to divide and rule the working class, making white supremacists persona non grata within the party. Thirdly, this National Congress adopted a 1909 Virginia party resolution to focus more attention on encouraging solidarity between black and white workers and to invite non-white workers to join the party. Furthermore, the Socialists vowed to continue the struggle for women’s suffrage and reaffirmed that they supported workers regardless of skin colour, race or sex.
The Second National Congress of the Socialist Party of America was held just before the 1918 midterm elections. As a result, virtually all African Americans with the right to vote voted Socialist (in 1920, they numbered 10.5 million people, or 9.9% of the population on a total of 106 million). Given the predominance of Anglo-Saxon white Protestants in politics, economics, cultural life and general society it was unsurprising that, besides blacks, the socialists also attracted almost all of the Asian American, Irish, Italian American and Hispanic votes. In the 1918 US House of Representatives elections, the Socialists won 22.1% of the vote and gained 96 seats. The Republicans won 36.8% of the popular vote, enough for 160 seats in the House of Representatives while the Democrats got 40.5% of the vote, which translated to 176 seats in the House. Long story short, not one party had a majority in the House of Representatives. The incumbent President, the Democratic Woodrow Wilson, now had to seek the alliance of the Socialists or the Republicans to get a majority in the House and was presented with a conundrum: the Republicans would surely demand massive concessions for their support, which Wilson was unwilling to concede, while gaining Socialist support would cost him his loyal voters in the “Solid South” as the Socialists opposed segregation. The Republicans sought the help of the Socialists to make Wilson a lame duck President.
Ultimately, the Socialists sped up the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment (which granted women the right to vote) and in doing so gained the sympathy of female voters. When the 1920 Presidential elections loomed on the horizon, the Republicans were hoping to defeat the Democrats by pointing out the ineffectiveness of their President. The Socialist march forward in the more industrialized northeast, however, continued unabated and at the expense of the Republicans. Eugene Debs ran for President as the Socialist candidate once again and, as with the previous elections, his share of the popular vote and in the electoral college mounted. He won Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana (Debs’ home state), Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, South Dakota, Washington and California. With 29% of the popular vote, carrying eleven states and getting 189 electoral votes, the Socialists became the second party of the country. Republican candidate Warren G. Harding won 24 states, 193 electoral votes and 35.9% of the popular vote. Democratic candidate James M. Cox won thirteen states, 149 electoral votes and 35.1% of the popular vote. The 1924 Presidential elections saw a similar result with Calvin Coolidge becoming President (he had succeeded Harding upon the latter’s death in 1923). Less than a year into office, Coolidge was confronted by the World Depression (called that because the entire world suffered from it).
The Depression had its origins on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean in continental Europe. The compromise between the Social Democratic, Liberal and Catholic majority in the Reichstag on one hand and Emperor Wilhelm II and the Junkers on the other, which laid the groundwork for a constitutional monarchy, was flawed. The three parties of the so-called “Grand Democratic Coalition” of 1916 had allowed the Kaiser control of the military budget, which stayed high as Wilhelm II wanted to keep up battleship construction and maintain his large, professional army. Meanwhile, a welfare state was built under SPD leadership that was so generous that it was incomparable to anything in the Western world. Unable to lower defence spending and running into a refusal of royal assent when trying to raise taxes on the wealthiest, which included the Prussian Junkers and other landed magnates, the funding for this welfare state that would take care of people “from the cradle to the grave” was lacking. While they lulled themselves into a false sense of security by telling themselves the funding would be found, an overspending bubble grew. As overspending continued, it became increasingly more difficult to get more loans as the faith of creditors that Germany would be able to repay them declined because funding was in fact not found.
The bubble burst and the Frankfurt Stock Exchange crashed on Wednesday November 11th 1925, also known as Black Wednesday. This resulted in a major economic crisis in Germany. The German economy was easily the largest in Europe and, after its Great War victory, Germany had proceeded to establish bilateral trade agreements and customs unions with most European countries. This embryonic economic integration centred on the motor of the European economy sped up the spread of the Depression. Stock markets in other European countries plummeted, culminating in the crash of the London Stock Exchange six days later on Tuesday November 17th. The City of London was the financial and business centre of Great Britain and the British Empire, which covered a quarter of the world, and was also considered the finance capital of the world. The United States could not escape this economic crisis: the New York Stock Exchange crashed too on Friday November 20th.
US President Calvin Coolidge was a proponent of small government and laissez-faire economics. He asked business and labour leaders to avoid wage cuts and work stoppages, conveying his belief that this would be just another brief recession. Coolidge also convinced railroads and public utilities to increase spending on construction and maintenance, and the Federal Reserve announced that it would cut interest rates. Coolidge opposed congressional proposals to provide federal relief to the unemployed, as he believed that such programs were the responsibility of state and local governments as well as philanthropic organizations.
Contrary to President Coolidge’s belief that this would be a brief recession, however, the crisis persisted and numerous banks went bankrupt, leading to countless people losing their life savings and being reduced to abject poverty, complementing the growing army of unemployed. In December 1927, little over two years after the crisis had erupted, the unemployment rate reached 15% and, unsurprisingly, the crime rate soared. State and local governments as well as charities couldn’t keep up relief to the unemployed. The Coolidge Administration nonetheless continued to adhere to non-interventionism and budget discipline. Long story short, Coolidge did little and that led to enormous resentment among the working class, the lower middle class and small farmers as they got the worst of the crisis.
Socialist propaganda was very effective in painting Coolidge as the “President of the rich” and they made gains during the midterm elections in 1926 and for the first time polls indicated the Socialists would win the Presidential elections. Eugene V Debs, 71 years old at the time, announced he’d be running for President for one final time. This time the Socialists unleashed a propaganda war never seen before, even when compared to their vigorous campaigns during previous elections: they said the current Depression showed that the capitalist system was bankrupt and would never provide a high standard of living for all, instead moving from one economic crisis to another with periods of growth in between that led to the accumulation of capital in the hands of the happy few. After the “national revolution” of 1776, now it was time for “social revolution.” Millions of people who were unemployed or otherwise struggling to get by heard the call. By the time the 1928 Presidential elections took place, unemployed peaked at 20%.
Given the Democrats' support of segregation, they naturally carried all thirteen Southern states and even made an inroad into the north by winning Missouri, getting 167 electoral votes and winning 36.9% of the popular vote. The Republicans were reduced to the less densely populated, largely rural states west of the Mississippi River. They carried nineteen states, obtained 104 electoral votes and 17.9% of the popular vote. Socialist success expanded to New York, Connecticut, New Jersey and Rhode Island. In total they carried fifteen states, got 260 electoral votes and won 45.2% of the popular vote. Eugene Debs became the first Socialist President of the United States of America. He was the oldest man ever elected to the office of President.
In his inaugural address, Debs was relatively moderate and stated his administration “[I will] take steps to ensure that the broadest shoulders will carry the heaviest loads, relieving those who’ve suffered the worst. Part of the American Dream are opportunity and equality. Now opportunity favours the lucky few, but equality for all will provide chances to the masses now still wallowing in misery and poverty and suffering from oppression and exploitation. The economic system will be changed to one wherein the fortunes of the working class are not dependent on the one thing they have to offer: their labour.” Collaborating with the Republican minority in Congress gave the Socialists a majority. The new administration passed the “Unemployment Benefits and Social Security Act” in 1929, which determined the following: the Social Security Bureau would pay newly unemployed 85% of their previous wage for the first six months of their unemployment and $70 a month after that ($70 in 1929 amounts to roughly $1.000 in 2019 dollars). To pay for it, the Debs Administration adopted “squeeze the rich” taxes as well as high profit taxes, net asset taxes and corporate income taxes. Furthermore, President Debs formed the Committee of Public Works, which oversaw the construction of mines, power plants, oil refineries, dams, bridges, hospitals, schools, railroads and the first highways while taking the lead in asphalting major existing country roads. Long story short, the Committee of Public Works (CPW) generated jobs.
The job generating policies, which had cut unemployment in half by the time of 1932 Presidential elections, increased the popularity of the administration. This showed in the midterm elections in 1930, in which the Socialists advanced further, winning even more in the north and west at the expense of the Republicans. It’s therefore unsurprising that the Socialist candidate won in 1932. True to his word that he would only run one more time and because of his advanced age (he’d be 77 by the time of the election), Debs didn’t run again. Instead Vice President Foster was the Socialist candidate. He won and his Presidency would see the Second Civil War.
