How is religion viewed in Socialist America? Is it sort of hands off, or is the state actively anti-religious like the USSR or Jacobin-era France?
The Proletarian Presidents: The Graphical History of a Socialist America
- Thread starter ETGalaxy
- Start date
@ETGalaxy who was Paul Goodman's running mate in the 1965 Cooperative Commonwealth presidential election if you don't mind me asking?
Could we also get a "where are they now" segment featuring people like MLK Jr., JFK, LBJ, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Nixon, Robert Kennedy, Joe Kennedy Jr. (if he's still alive, that is), Wayne Morse, Upton Sinclair, Henry A. Wallace, Robert La Follette (Sr. and Jr., though the former died in 1925), Ronald Reagan, the Bushes, John Conyers, W. E. B. Du Bois, John L. Lewis, and others (just a few examples)? We don't need wikiboxes because I know those can take a lot of effort but just a quick little sentence or two to sum up their respective careers would be greatly appreciated!
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More or less the former. The straightforward answer here would be that the Cooperative Commonwealth has freedom of religion enshrined in its constitution, so any form of state atheism would require a constitutional amendment of some kind, but the pre-Second Revolution socialist movement, particularly within the People's Party, isn't really hostile to religion in any meaningful way. Heck, Edward and Francis Bellamy, two early leading figures within the party, were both from a family of Baptist ministers. There is an increase in atheism after the Second American Revolution given that a lot of leading philosophers in the new revolutionary government are outspokenly atheist, but it's not this huge uptick and Christians are still a majority of the population by the 1960s. The biggest shift in religious attitudes in the Cooperative Commonwealth in the early 20th Century is actually greater acceptance of Catholicism and Judaism, with both Catholics and Jews playing a significant role in the base and leadership of revolutionary socialist parties (Daniel De Leon himself was of Jewish ancestry). Interestingly, this actually creates a Cooperative Commonwealth where religion plays a big role in politics. Political coalitions, for example, often form along religious lines, with the Socialist Labor Party being popular amongst Catholics due to Dorothy Day's Catholic anarchist ideology while the Democratic Centralist Party is more popular amongst Mormons and Evangelicals due to its social conservatism. As the DCP transitioned into an explicitly culturally conservative party over time, it has even leaned into Christian nationalism that you'd find in the OTL religious right in terms of social policy, with some (admittedly often fringe) Democratic Centralist officials arguing stuff like the Cooperative Commonwealth being a Christian nation.
Hmm... good question, I haven't really thought about yet. I'll say James Baldwin for now, but that's liable to being retconned.
So is George Wallace a socialist in this timeline (I'm presuming he's a member of the People's Party since he defeated VP Goodman in the 1965 election)?
That’s actually a really cool idea! I might see if I can scrape that together later today or over the weekend.
Yep, every president of the CCA will be a socialist ITTL, given that a capitalist would be completely unelectable (it’d be the equivalent of an OTL US president running on a platform of feudalism), and Wallace is no exception. That being said, he’s a member of the Democratic Centralist Party, which is roughly the same size as the SLP and People’s Party, it’s just that they’ve never managed to elect a president yet. It’s also worth pointing out that the DCP itself, while socialist, wouldn’t really mesh well with OTL socialists. The party was originally formed by an exiled Leon Trotsky and adhered to Leninism as its ideology, but the party tended to attract a lot of former supporters of the capitalists regime and social conservatives (particularly in the South) for its advocacy for a more top-down economic system that would have more meritocracy and its opposition to more socially progressive policies, and throughout the 1950s the party gradually got taken over by these more conservative elements while the “old guard” wing became an increasingly alienated minority. By 1965, the party has a platform of increased military spending, adherence to democratic centralism within its party apparatus, support for state action against whatever political groups are considered "bourgeoisie" or "counterrevolutionary", centralized top-down economic planning with a greater emphasis on unelected bureaucrats, an increased police budget and overall "tough on crime" stance, social conservatism built on a stance of opposition to "bourgeois decadence" (in practice, this typically manifests itself in the form of opposition to LGBTQ+ rights, opposition to birth control and abortion, religious conservatism where policies that promote "traditional proletarian family values" are supported, and opposition to SLP reparation and affirmative action policies in particular), opposition to immigration, especially from Asia, and opposition to extensive social spending programs, especially ones established by the SLP that emphasize decentralization in their structure. As president, Wallace will uphold the entirety of the party platform, particularly the military spending, social conservatism, and authoritarianism.
Hey just wondering, is this the official state flag of the Cooperative Commonwealth of America?
Have you gotten any finished yet?
Aldo Happy New Year! Here's for a great 2023!
Indeed it is! It was adopted in 1905, shortly after the ratification of the constitution of the Cooperative Commonwealth, replacing the typical Stars and Stripes that had been used in official purposes by the Provisional Government of America following the Second American Revolution.
Nope, college finals and some other projects got in the way. As of now, I've done LBJ, Joseph P Kennedy Jr, JFK, and Ronald Reagan, and I'm considering adding WEB DuBois and at least one other person (leaning towards Solon De Leon, but I'm not sure).
Thanks, happy New Year!
Nice! Perhaps you could do Robert F. Kennedy and Ted Kennedy to round out the Kennedy family though I do wonder if they would have fled to the United Kingdom due to their opposition towards communism and socialism? Other than that maybe Ralph Nader and Noam Chomsky since they're bound to get involved in politics soon enough. Am hopeful that Bernie Sanders' parents still moved to the United States in the '40s during WWII and Bernie's on his way to hopefully becoming mayor (either NYC or Burlington) and then a Governor (of either Vermont or New York depending on where he chooses to start his career).
This'll be elaborated upon more in the update, but the Kennedys are very much supportive of the Cooperative Commonwealth and didn't flee abroad following the Second American Revolution.
I haven't put a lot of thought into Nader, although he'd be fun to incorporate into American politics come the 1980s and 1990s, but, as alluded to in an earlier update, Chomsky's going to get elected president by the early 1980s, so I'll refrain on overviewing his political career until then. For now, what I'll say regarding Chomsky is that his politics are gonna be pretty similar to OTL and he'll go to college around a similar time, but I'm not sure if I want him to be a linguist. Apparently he considered joining a kibbutz in OTL, so maybe he's a prominent agrarian politician or something to spice things up?
I'm very likely going to keep Sanders in the Cooperative Commonwealth ITTL, although I'm not entirely sure what to do with him yet.
1965: "Where they are now"
1965: "Where they are now"
- Lyndon Baines Johnson is a delegate to the All-Regional Congress representing the California Socialist Republic, the current leader of the People's Party in the ARC, and former Speaker of the All-Regional Congress. The son of Samuel Ealy Johnson Jr, a Populist representative from Texas during the waning days of the United States and delegate to the Second Constitutional Convention who had been forced to flee Texas with his family during the Texan Counterrevolutionary War who went on to serve as a delegate representing California in the ARC, Johnson briefly became a high school teacher in southern California before following the example of his father and getting involved in state Populist politics after graduating from the University of California, Los Angeles, being elected to the All-Regional Congress in 1935. A committed De Leonist, Johnson was an ambitious and bold delegate who often put himself at odds with the Parsons Revolution, arguing that a dictatorship of the proletariat that efficiently took advantage of central planning was necessary to strengthen the American economy and develop infrastructure while increasing military spending was necessary to spread the socialist revolution in the face of the German Empire during the First Great Struggle. Throughout the 1940s, Johnson jockeyed for influence within the ARC Populist caucus, being elected to the position of All-Regional Congressional Minority Leader in 1945 and becoming Speaker of the All-Regional Congress two years later in a coalition with the Democratic Centralist Party following the defeat of the Socialist Laborite majority that had held since the 1930s. As Speaker of the ARC, Johnson was one of the paramount officials of the Cooperative Commonwealth during the Global War, being an enthusiastic advocate for decisively defeating Germany and her allies abroad while being one of Long's closest allies in getting his agenda passed domestically. Under Johnson's watch, the People's Party managed to gain an outright majority in seats in the All-Regional Congress in 1953 thanks to the popularity of Long during the Global War, giving Johnson a degree of power unique in the Sixth Party System. Johnson was forced into a coalition with the DCP yet again in 1959 and ultimately lost control of the ARC in 1961. Following the 1963 and 1965 elections, the People's Party has become the third largest party in Congress, and Johnson has been reduced to the junior partner of the growing DCP. As of 1965, Johnson has become one of the most controversial politicians in America. On the one hand, Johnson is viewed by his supporters as a remarkably effective and assertive legislator, a passionate fighter carrying on the legacy of President Long, a patriotic De Leonist, and a hero of the international socialist revolution. On the other hand, Johnson's detractors, particularly amongst the SLP, view him as a narcissistic career-obsessed politician with a tendency to intimidate political opponents, one of the greatest threats to the legacy of Lucy Parsons and Dorothy Day, and a hawkish advocate for red imperialism, especially after he endorsed Rustin's foreign policy in both East Africa and New Zealand. Johnson had initially considered running for president in 1965, but ultimately decided against it, instead throwing his weight behind Governor Huey Long III of Louisiana.
- Joseph Patrick Kennedy Jr is a delegate to the All-Regional Congress representing Massachusetts and the current vice president-elect for the incoming Wallace administration. The eldest son of Joseph P Kennedy Sr, a leading member in the Cooperative Commonwealth's Irish Catholic community in the 1920s and 1930s and influential bureaucrat within the Industrial Federation of Film Workers, Kennedy had been groomed from his father at a young age to run for the presidency after an assortment of scandals and controversial statements made by Kennedy Sr ruined his own aspirations for higher office. Kennedy attended Harvard College starting in 1933, but ultimately enlisted in the People's Continental Army in 1937 following the beginning of American intervention in the Spanish Civil War. Upon returning from service in the armed forces in 1939, Kennedy resumed his studies and ultimately graduated from Harvard Law School in 1943, however, the popularity of incumbent President Dorothy Day, herself a Catholic, within the Massachusetts Irish Catholic community, meant that the Democratic Centralist Party failed to gain any seats in the republic's delegation to the All-Regional Congress in 1945, which meant that Kennedy had to wait until 1947 to win public office as a delegate to the ARC. As a delegate, Kennedy grew to become deeply popular within the Democratic Centralist Party for his charisma, ability to appeal to Catholic voters even as the demographic increasingly became a key component of the Socialist Laborite coalition, and ability to appeal to all three wings of the DCP (the Dixiecratic Centralists, a socially conservative faction popular in the Bible Belt and Great Plains that was increasingly overtaking the party, the Old Guard, the historical founders of the party nominally still led by ARC Caucus Leader Leon Trotsky that strictly adhered to Marxism-Leninism and Trosky's ideal of a "permanent revolution", and the Technocrats, a fringe but nonetheless influential wing of the party that was especially popular in the Northeast and West Coast and advocated for treating economic and social governance like a scientific problem and placing unelected meritocratic engineers in positions of power). Outside of the DCP, however, Kennedy was often viewed controversially, largely due to his support of eugenics, tendency to make anti-semitic statements, and support for more authoritarian measures to quell domestic opposition, particularly during the Global War. Nonetheless, Kennedy's vocal support for the American war effort against Germany made earned him the reputation of a patriot, and by the time the Treaty of San Francisco had been signed in 1955, Kennedy had risen through the ranks of the DCP, second only to Caucus Leader Harry Byrd in terms of ARC delegation leadership. Kennedy briefly ran in the 1961 Democratic Centralist presidential primary but quickly dropped out as his support was cannibalized between the conservative Joseph McCarthy and technocratic Howard Scott, and instead of repeating his mistakes from 1961 in 1965, Kennedy instead became an early backer of Florida Governor George Wallace's bid in return for the vice presidency, believing that such a position would poise him to be the natural heir to the leadership of the party after the end of the Wallace administration. On the campaign trail, Kennedy largely backed Wallace's socially conservative and authoritarian platform of escalating involvement in the New Zealander Civil War, promoting "Christian working-class family values" domestically, and being tougher on crime, while particularly emphasizing his support for more punitive measures towards substance abuse and using state power to investigate and punish "counterrevolutionary activity". Following Wallace's victory in March 1965, Kennedy has largely been credited for increasing voter turnout for the DCP from Catholics and appealing to voters for Howard Scott's splinter ticket.
- John Michael Kennedy is an actor, editorialist, and the second eldest son of Joseph Patrick Kennedy Sr. As a child, Kennedy suffered from several medical ailments, many of which would plague him throughout the rest of his life, and was often overshadowed by his ambitious older brother, Joseph Jr. Nonetheless, Kennedy managed to overcome the worst of his health complications and enrolled in Harvard College in September 1936, and went on to produce that year's annual "Freshman Smoker", which was lauded by a handful of reviewers and, alongside his father's involvement within the Industrial Federation of Film Workers, inspired Kennedy to consider a career in acting. Upon graduating from Harvard with a major in dramatic arts and a minor in political science, Kennedy went on to move to Fort Lee, New Jersey, the "motion picture capital of America", in the 1940s and worked a series of jobs in both film production and acting before assuming his first role in 1947's The Lady from Munich, a noir film directed by Orson Welles in which Kennedy played an Irish-American whose wife is eventually revealed to be a deep-cover spy for the German Empire. Kennedy's performance was widely acclaimed and, in part thanks to the connections of his father, ultimately became one of the most popular American actors of the 1950s, notably starring in a plethora of propaganda films produced by the American military during the Global War. Kennedy married actress Nancy Davis in 1952, who has often been credited for Kennedy becoming more vocally socially conservative throughout the 1950s. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Kennedy oftentimes wrote editorials in a variety of papers, particularly on foreign policy, and championed American interventionism to proliferate the "permanent revolution", advocated for increasing American military buildup to combat capitalist states internationally, and applauded the Long administration's commitment to a decisive victory over the German Empire and her allies. While much more apolitical than the rest of his family, Kennedy's knowledge in foreign policy caused President Douglas to offer him the ambassadorship to Puerto Rico, however, Kennedy declined the offer due to health complications in the late 1950s. Despite such complications, Kennedy has remained a prominent actor and prolific writer, and as his health problems have begun to subside, there is talk that President-Elect Wallace is contemplating appointing Kennedy as his administration's ambassador to Cuba.
- Ronald Wilson Reagan is an actor, most recently having been cast in the role of Captain Robert April in Gene Roddenberry's science-fiction television show Final Frontier. The son of religious yet socially progressive parents who were supporters of the Socialist Labor Party during the early years of the Cooperative Commonwealth, Reagan adopted many of his parents' political views, describing himself as a "Catholic anarcho-syndicalist" throughout his career, regarding President Lucy Parsons as "a true hero", and eagerly campaigning on behalf of President Dorothy Day in both 1945 and 1949. After graduating from Eureka College as a middling student in 1932, Reagan briefly became a sports announcer for the California Broadcasting Service, which was under the management of the Industrial Federation of Radio Communications of California and was one of the first republic television channels in the country as the mass consumer appeal of televisions caused several republics and local radio communications industrial federations to invest in the production and distribution of television infrastructure starting in the late 1920s. The Parsons Revolution and the passage of the Third Amendment in particular opened up a plethora of new career opportunities for Reagan as national filmmaking and broadcasting collectives independent of the national industrial federations began to emerge, with Reagan managing to star in his first lead role in 1939's La Semaine Sanglante, which was produced by the anarchist-leaning Haymarket Filmmakers' Association and was a melodrama in which Reagan depicted an anarchist fighting and ultimately dying in the defense of the 1871 Paris Commune. Throughout much of his career, Reagan stayed associated with Haymarket, in large part due to shared political views, and Haymarket's 1942 "Gilded" film (an American film genre that became increasingly popular in the 1940s and 1950s that generally depicted ragtag underdog union workers during the pre-Second Revolution Gilded Age collaborating together to fight back against capitalist tyranny) The Red Knights, in which Reagan played a Knights of Labor organizer who helps organize a diverse band of scrappy coal mine workers living on a company town in Kentucky to victory against an attack by Pinkerton agents, particularly contributed to winning Reagan national stardom. By the time the Global War broke out in 1949, Reagan was one of the country's most popular actors and used his fame to protest the conflict despite such a stance quickly becoming an unpopular view, and as the war dragged out Reagan protested the use of chemical weapons by both sides and the implementation of conscription by the Cooperative Commonwealth. While such statements were controversial, Haymarket continued to back Reagan, and Reagan was cast as the host for Haymarket's America Tonight! Starring Ronald Reagan, which began airing in 1953 and was one of the the country's first late night talk shows. Reagan was America Tonight!'s host until 1960, using the position to jokingly report on current events, do comedy sketches, interview prominent public figures, and make fun of both the Long and Douglas administrations. After the end of the Global War, Reagan became particularly vocal against the usage of nuclear weapons, oftentimes using America Tonight! to call on an international treaty to ban the usage and development of such weapons. In 1964, television producer Gene Roddenberry cast Reagan to star in his upcoming science-fiction television show Final Frontier, which depicts the interstellar exploration mission of the CSS Buenos Aires, a 23rd Century starship of the utopian post-scarcity anarchist United Confederation of Free Planets. Recently premiering in late March 1965, Final Frontier has proven to be popular with audiences, and Reagan's lead role as Captain Robert April of the CSS Buenos Aires, a strategic and principled man who remains committed to the utopian ideals of the Free Planets despite his isolated deep space mission away from its worlds, has been critically acclaimed. Final Frontier's first season has yet to conclude airing, however, Reagan's popularity might just be getting started, even if your opinion on Reagan might be shaped by your political views.
- William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was a sociologist, revolutionary, and politician who was notable for serving as the governor of the Black Belt Republic, being an influential figure in its history since the establishment of the Cooperative Commonwealth. Born in 1868, Du Bois grew up during the waning days of the United States, being only nine years old when the Railroad Revolution of 1877 erupted throughout the country and galvanized the American revolutionary socialist movement. Du Bois grew up in Massachusetts but attended higher education at Frisk University, where he was both exposed to socialist theory firsthand and the systemic racism and authoritarianism throughout the Jim Crow Era Deep South. After attending Harvard University and the University of Berlin, Du Bois would move between several universities as a teacher before ultimately winding up at the historically black Atlanta University, from which he would study and write about racial inequality, civil rights, and class conflict, becoming an increasingly outspoken De Leonist during this time. By 1904, Du Bois had become a leading black thinker and civil rights activist, arguably overshadowed only by Lucy Parsons, and campaigned for Daniel De Leon's presidential bid against Benjamin Tillman (although he was open about the one-party regimes in the Deep South rendering campaigning in this particular region for De Leon effectively irrelevant). As the Second American Revolution broke out throughout the country, Du Bois partook in protests in Atlanta against the Supreme Court's overturning of De Leon's victory, and later against the American capitalist regime more generally, and endorsed the sustained uprisings against white supremacist rule and establishment of farming communes and cooperatives throughout the Black Belt during this time period, although Du Bois never participated in the armed confrontations between capitalist and socialist militias in Atlanta. Following the overthrow of the United States, Du Bois was elected to the Congress of the Provisional Government as an independent and spearheaded the establishment of the Black Belt Republic, arguing that the region was culturally distinct from white communities in the Deep South and required self-rule in order to end racial exclusion in the region and complete the revolution upending racial disparities first initiated by the Freedmen's Bureau. Du Bois played a critical role in the constitutional convention of the Black Belt Republic, and following its ratification, was elected its first governor as an independent endorsed by both the Populists and Socialist Laborites in 1906. As governor, Du Bois prioritized the monumental task of overcoming centuries of systemic racism through extensive wealth redistribution programs, the collectivization of sharecropping farms, funding public education, promoting industrialization in Black Belt cities, and establishing mutual-credit banks throughout the region. During the De Leon administration, Governor Du Bois was a key ally in coordinating federal efforts in combatting white supremacist terrorist cells, which were commonplace throughout the Deep South following the Second American Revolution. Even after the De Leon presidency, Du Bois remained an independent, unaffiliated with either the rival Populists or Socialist Laborites, but remained in good graces with both of their local wings. After serving for four terms, Du Bois opted not to run for the BBR governorship in 1922, and was succeeded by Socialist Laborite Hubert Harrison. Following his first tenure as governor, Du Bois would become a leading figure in the National Afro-American Council, the most prominent civil rights organization at the time, and eventually became the organization's president. During the 1920s, Du Bois utilized his position as leader of the NAAC to advocate for greater anti-discrimination laws and wealth redistribution to racial minorities while criticizing colonialism and warfare internationally, including American military interventions during the First Great Struggle. Du Bois condemned the American invasion of Canada, and the annexation of Canada in 1931 prompted him to ultimately register with the Socialist Labor Party. Du Bois went on to run for the Black Belt governorship yet again in 1934, defeating incumbent Populist Governor Cyril Briggs, serving until 1946 and becoming a pivotal ally of President Parsons' agenda, particularly the creation of mutual aid networks and localized control of natural resources and law enforcement. It was during this time period that the Freedman's Party, a black nationalist organization, grew into a dominant force in the BBR as a coalition of black nationalist Populists and Socialist Laborites alike. Du Bois ultimately lost the 1946 election to Freedman Paul Robeson and remained retired from politics thereafter, but was nonetheless politically active throughout the 1950s and 1960s, becoming controversial for his initial opposition to the Global War, a position he later amended as the Allied Powers prioritized decolonization in the African theaters. After the war, Du Bois became a prominent anti-war and anti-nuclear weapons activist, but became the subject of criticism nationally for his belief that the Empire of Japan, despite its liberal-vanguardist ideology, was a force for anti-imperialism due to its war against European colonies in the 1950s, and called on a detente in the Second Great Struggle where the Global War alliance between the two global superpowers would be maintained. WEB Du Bois passed away in 1963, having been a vocal supporter of President A Philip Randolph in his final years. A complex and controversial political leader, Du Bois is regarded as a champion of the civil rights movement and combatting the systemic racism left over from the days of the United States by his supporters and as an unpatriotic counterrevolutionary willing to submit to the demands of the Japanese sphere of influence by his opponents.
- Barry Goldwater is an Arizonan politician and former pilot who has recently become a leading figure within the emerging liberal socialist movement, being the running mate of liberal socialist Milton Friedman in his recent 1965 independent presidential campaign. The son of a former department store chain owner from Phoenix, Goldwater's father remained bitter about the collectivization of the chain and its integration into the Industrial Federation of Retail Associates, despite remaining a prominent figure within the worker councils of his former stores, and this opposition to the central planning of the De Leonist economic system of the Cooperative Commonwealth was passed on to a young Barry Goldwater. Indeed, both Goldwaters were registered members of the Progressive Party, the last major political party in the CCA where opposition to socialism was still an acceptable political stance, until its collapse in 1932. Throughout the 1930s, as Goldwater became involved in the retail unions his father previously owned, ultimately being briefly elected to oversee the management of one in Phoenix, he gradually came to be more accepting of socialism than his father but remained an opponent to both central planning and government spending, believing that the American syndicalist economy should be liberalized into a market socialist arrangement and the various welfare and public works programs of the Cooperative Commonwealth should be significantly cut. Goldwater's unique and outspoken political views made him a prominent and controversial figure within both his own retail union and the Industrial Federation of Retail Associates of Arizona more generally, and after being ousted from union leadership in 1938, Goldwater took up commercial airline piloting as a career. It was also during this time period that Goldwater became involved in the civil rights movement spearheaded by individuals such as Du Bois, associating with NAAC members throughout the 1940s. Goldwater nonetheless remained interested in politics throughout the 1940s, and was elected to the Regional Congress of Arizona as an independent candidate in 1949, using his seat as a delegate to continue advocating for his market socialist stances, particularly emphasizing cutting the state's social safety net, deregulating worker councils and markets, and weakening the powers of both mutual aid networks and the industrial federations. Goldwater was a fringe candidate, adhering to views well outside of the political mainstream of the Cooperative Commonwealth, although he maintained a niche yet dedicated base of supporters that kept him in office, and his socially libertarian views often meant that he could loan a vote to the Socialist Labor Party. In 1959, Goldwater was elected to the All-Regional Congress of the Cooperative Commonwealth as an independent yet again, this time with the backing of Daniel De Leon University Professor of Economics Milton Friedman and his controversial fledgling movement of liberal socialism, an ideology that advocated for a return to classical liberal economics within a socialist context, where workplaces operating within a deregulated free market context would be democratically owned and managed by their workers, with Friedman arguing that such ideas were the most accurate interpretation of classical liberal thinkers and would promote economic prosperity and stability within the Cooperative Commonwealth. As such, liberal socialism advocated for a mass reduction in economic regulation and planning, substantially cutting the welfare, wealth redistribution, and other government spending programs that had been considered the norm in American politics since the Second Revolution, and limited state interference in economic or social affairs on any level or in any capacity. All of these positions were supported by Goldwater, and as such, the delegate eagerly ran on a platform of liberal socialist, being the sole self-declared liberal socialist within the General Congress of the Cooperative Commonwealth as of 1965. Now boasting a national profile, Goldwater became a much more notable and controversial figure, second only to Friedman in terms of prominent liberal socialists. His uniquely conservative economic views, as well as his advocacy for substantially reducing the military budget, reducing intervention abroad, and de-escalating the Second Great Struggle, made Goldwater an easy target for accusations of being a counterrevolutionary or asset of the Japanese, but a small dedicated contingent of supporters kept him in office throughout the Randolph administration. By 1965, the liberal socialist movement has slowly but surely grown, and in 1965 Milton Friedman opted to run for president, selecting Goldwater as his running mate. The independent presidential ticket handedly lost to more mainstream and organized candidates, but it nonetheless took up a decent chunk of the vote, and for the first time in its history, liberal socialist ideology is beginning to gain traction, both domestically and throughout the Socialist Sphere. There is now heavy speculation that Friedman is considering putting together the resources to build a Liberal Socialist Party, and should it gain any seats in the 1967 midterms, Goldwater would be the obvious choice to lead its delegation within the All-Regional Congress.
I love it! You certainly have put together some great stories for each person! Though I thought you would do one on Daniel De Leon Jr. I guess Goldwater is as good of a place to end it off now, not the timeline of course I mean this update.
The Commonwealth Daily's Person of the Year (1928-1964)
The Commonwealth Daily's Person of the Year (1928-1964)
Established by the Industrial Federation of Journalists in 1906, The Commonwealth Daily has since been the primary public newspaper of the Cooperative Commonwealth since the Second American Revolution, being produced by the IFJ's Committee for the Production and Publication of The Commonwealth Daily (CPPTCD) on a national level and relying on both journalists directly employed by the Committee and coordination with local workers' councils to write its stories distributed throughout the Cooperative Commonwealth, The Commonwealth Daily is arguably the most widely-known and respected newspaper in America, with the CPPTCD holding itself to a high journalistic standard of independence and integrity to provide objective reporting on the most important issues in the CCA. Indeed, given its establishment only a year after the ratification of the Cooperative Commonwealth's constitution and its roll as the only truly national newspaper until the formation of the first workers' syndicates in the 1930s, The Commonwealth Daily is a fundamental and trusted institution of post-revolutionary America and the cornerstone of post-capitalist journalism for millions of Americans. Since January 1928, The Commonwealth Daily has written a special edition article on a "Person of the Year", an individual who, for better or worse, had the greatest influence on the world in the past year. The Person of the Year is selected from a list of individuals nominated by IFJ workers (one must be nominated by workers from at least ten different IFJ workers' councils to be considered), who are then voted on by all of IFJ workers at large. The five names to receive the most names move on to a runoff round, also head at large, which utilizes ranked choice voting to select a Person of the Year agreed upon by a simple majority of the nation's journalists.
- General Smedley Butler of the People's Continental Army (1928): As the commanding officer of the American invasion of Canada, which had concluded with a decisive American victory in May 1928, General Butler was selected for his role overseeing the American war effort against British North America, presiding over the subsequent post-war occupation of Canada, and becoming an influential national war hero in the process. An outspoken critic of European imperialism on the international stage, Butler became an influential voice in the Olson administration's policy regarding aiding revolutionaries abroad in the Imperial Revolutionary War.
- President Floyd B. Olson of the Cooperative Commonwealth of America (1929): Having one re-election in a landslide in March 1929 and continuing to lead both the Cooperative Commonwealth and the international socialist revolution amidst ongoing American involvement in the Imperial Revolutionary War, Olson was selected primarily for his leadership in aiding revolutionaries in the dissolution of the British Empire. Other reasons cited by The Commonwealth Daily included his widespread popularity in American politics, his expansion of the People's Party to incorporate support from the declining Progressive Party, which voted to dissolve itself in late 1929, and his vocal support for the annexation of American-occupied British North America.
- General Secretary Thomas Mann of the Trade Union Congress (1930): With the victory of socialist forces in the Imperial Revolutionary War in September 1930, the Trade Union Congress, the de facto government of the Red Army in the British Civil War, and the associated socialist parties and paramilitary organizations issued a decree declaring the establishment of the Workers' Federation of Great Britain under the provisional joint administration of the TUC and delegates elected by local communes. While a constitution for the Workers' Federation was being drafted, Thomas Mann, the general secretary of the TUC and the leader of Red Army forces during the British Civil War, served as the de facto British head of government and was an influential figure at the British constitutional convention, successfully advocating for the establishment of a De Leonist parliamentary federal republic modeled after the Cooperative Commonwealth and being popular amongst the Syndicalist Labour Party, Social Democratic Federation, and Independent Labour Party. Mann was also a popular figure throughout the socialist world for leading the Red Army to victory against royalist forces and exporting De Leonism abroad to secure a foothold in Europe. Mann went on to be elected the first general secretary of the Workers' Federation of Great Britain by the Congress of People's Representation in May 1931.
- Chancellor Albert Vögler of the German Empire (1931): Following the defeat of the British Empire in the Imperial Revolutionary War, Kaiser Wilhelm II, facing significant public pressure, called for a snap parliamentary election to be held in February 1931, in which the leftist Social Democratic Party secured a plurality of seats for the first time since 1912. Nonetheless, industrialist Albert Vögler, a right-wing associate of the National Liberal Party and hardline anti-socialist, was appointed chancellor under the belief that his outsider status and desire to be publicly quiet on politics (despite frequently donating to the NLP and far-right nationalist organizations) would make him a unifying figure for the German conservative establishment. Within his first year in office, Vögler, despite his reputation for being apolitical in the past, spearheaded the passage of a slew of legislation in coordination with the Kaiser curtailing trade union rights and the freedom of speech to criticize the German government (particularly targeting free speech advocating for socialism or republicanism) while arresting prominent SDP members, oftentimes on flimsy charges, and pursuing a rapid buildup of the German armed forces, particularly emphasizing the introduction of armored infantry on a widespread scale to the German Army. By the end of the year, Vögler had become a controversial figure globally for clamping down on socialism domestically and abroad.
- Secretary Clements Kadalie of the General Congress of the Workers' Union of Africa (1932): Previously the secretary of the Industrial Workers' League of Africa, an anarcho-syndicalist trade union founded in the late 1910s and the de facto leader of the IWLA's South African Revolution, Kadalie was elected by the General Congress of the Workers' Union of Africa (the government formed by the IWLA in 1929 following the overthrow of the Union of South Africa), to be its first secretary, the de facto head of state and government of the Workers' Union. Despite being a largely powerless position due to the lack of strong executive power within an anarcho-syndicalist government, Kadalie was nonetheless informally incredibly influential over the affairs of the General Congress, typically managing to get his agenda passed with strong support and being noted by The Commonwealth Daily for spearheading the reconstruction of infrastructure throughout the Workers' Union after the Imperial Revolutionary War, providing food relief to communities in the former Rhodesian colonies following their liberation, redistributing resources previously concentrated by the South African white minority, and overseeing the rapid industrialization of the Workers' Union. Internationally, Kadalie was noteworthy for his promotion of Pan-African anti-colonial solidarity through anarcho-syndicalism, hosting the first ever Pan-African Liberation Convention in Cape Town in 1932 to be attended by socialists and trade unions across the continent, as well as Pan-African leftists in the Americas.
- President Lucy Parsons of the Cooperative Commonwealth (1933): As the first woman, person of color, and anarchist to be elected president of the Cooperative Commonwealth, Lucy Parsons marked a significant shift in American politics, bringing a strong commitment to anarcho-syndicalism to the forefront of the country with a slim Socialist Labor majority to back her agenda and strengthening SLP support in the Deep South while expanding its coalition to encompass Catholics in the Northeast in the 1933 general election. Parsons' passage of the Territorial Liberation Act, which established worker self-managed public works programs to reconstruct the recently-annexed Canada, was easily the most important piece of legislation passed by the Parsons administration in 1933, playing a pivotal role in the incorporation of Canada into the Cooperative Commonwealth and promoting anarcho-syndicalist economics as a viable alternative to the Marxist-De Leonist central planning historically utilized by the CCA on a national level.
- President Bai Chongxi of the National Republic of China (1934): Having assumed power in Nationalist China in 1926 following the death of Sun Yat-Sen, the former warlord of the Guangxi province had since ruled as the right-wing and jingoistic dictator of China through the one-party regime of the Kuomintang ever since, being notable for his militant opposition to the expansionism of the Empire of Japan, cooperation with the German Empire in the First Great Struggle, and buildup of Chinese military capacity after over a decade of civil war and warlordism. Additionally, Bai's presidency was responsible for overseeing the reconstruction and industrialization of China following the Warring States Period while keeping remaining warlords in line and loyal to his rule in Beijing, particularly by constructing a railway linking Guangxi to Xinjiang in an attempt to better integrate China. In May 1934, President Bai negotiated the Shanghai Pact with the German Empire, which guaranteed the mutual defense of both countries in East Asia, established joint military exercises between the two powers to modernize the National Revolutionary Army, and lowered tariffs to increase German investment in the industrialization of China. Taking advantage of the death of the 13th Dalai Lama a year prior, Bai later launched an invasion of Tibet in August 1934, annexing the kingdom into the National Republic of China in early December and causing Mongolia and Tannu Tuva to sign a mutual defense agreement with Japan out of fear of being invaded afterwards.
- Speaker Emma Goldman of the All-Regional Congress (1935): Following the expansion of the Socialist Labor Party's majorities in both chambers of the General Congress of the Cooperative Commonwealth in the 1935 midterm elections, Goldman, a leading anarcho-syndicalist thinker and feminist who had participated in the Second American Revolution and had led the the SLP in the ARC since 1927, was a critical ally of President Parsons in passing the more ambitious aspects of her agenda in 1935, namely the Popular Defense Act and Land Sovereignty Act, and was, along with Parsons and All-Industrial Congress Speaker Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, considered a part of the "Black Triumvirate", a nickname for the leadership of the Cooperative Commonwealth spearheading the passage of an anarcho-syndicalist agenda in the 1930s. Goldman was also notable for her ability to spark controversy within the ranks of her own party, particularly against the Socialist Labor libertarian possibilist minority, continuously preventing bipartisan attempts to increase military spending and deployments overseas and being a pioneering advocate on the international stage for the legalization of same-sex marriage.
- Commander Buenaventura Durruti of the Confederal Militias (1936): The Spanish Civil War broke out in July 1936 following a coup attempt by the Spanish Army under the leadership of Emilio Mola, thereby causing the liberal government under Joaquín Chapaprieta to fight a civil war against Mola's Nationalists concentrated in the northwest and an uprising of anarcho-syndicalists under the de facto administration of the CNT trade union and Syndicalist Party in the northeast. In the case of the latter faction, the revolutionary Buenaventura Durruti became the de facto commander of anarchist defenses in Aragon against approaching Nationalist forces, being credited for preventing the total fall of northern Spain to Mola, and was a popular figure throughout the socialist world by the end of the year, especially amongst anarchists, for leading an anarchist revolution in Spain and utilizing decentralized and oftentimes democratic workers' militias to his advantage in the civil war. By January 1937, foreign volunteers had arrived throughout the world to fight under Durruti in the Spanish Civil War and the CNT had won the support of the Sudaméricano Syndicates' Union, which began lending military supplies to the Confederal Militias.
- President Lucy Parsons of the Cooperative Commonwealth (1937): Lucy Parsons became the first person to ever be selected as The Commonwealth Daily's Person of the Year twice following her re-election in a landslide in 1937. Beyond being handedly re-elected and confirming support for her anarchist agenda, Parsons led the Cooperative Commonwealth to intervene in the Spanish Civil War on behalf of the CNT (despite pushback from Emma Goldman, who went on to retire from politics in 1939), advocating for the deployment of a People's Continental Army expeditionary force in Spain that contributed significantly to repelling the momentum of German-backed Nationalist forces and paved the way for an ultimate Anarchist victory in 1939. Additionally, 1937 saw the ratification of the Second Amendment championed by Parsons in December, which implemented ranked-choice voting nationally for executive offices and opened up the potential for parties beyond the Populists and Socialist Laborites to be competitive options nationally going forward.
- Chief Justice Roger Nash Baldwin of the Cooperative Commonwealth (1938): First appointed to the Supreme Court of the Cooperative Commonwealth in August 1935, former President Baldwin had a long career of advocating for civil liberties, and was notable in 1938 for issuing the majority opinion in the case Kentucky v. Rustin, which ruled that same-sex couples had the fundamental right to marry. Support for same-sex marriage lacked significant popular support in the Cooperative Commonwealth at the time outside of the anarchist wing of the Socialist Labor Party, and the Supreme Court's ruling radically shifted national discourse on social issues as a consequence, thrusting LGBTQ+ rights in particular to the forefront of American politics. Baldwin's ruling also made the Cooperative Commonwealth the third government in the world to decriminalize same-sex marriage, after the Sudaméricano Syndicates' Union and Workers' Union of Africa, both of which operated as anarcho-syndicalist governments and thus lacked the state authority to criminalize same-sex relations.
- All-Regional Congress Delegate Leon Trotsky of Kansas (1939): Since going into exile from Russia in 1908 following the failed 1905 Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky underwent a colorful career in the Cooperative Commonwealth, leading foreign volunteers in the Mexican and French civil wars and earning national fame in the process. As De Leonism and anarcho-syndicalism became the dominant strains of socialism in the world following their successful revolutions in America and Argentina respectively, Trotsky remained an ardent Marxist and kept the flame of the more fringe and authoritarian thinking of Vladimir Lenin, who had been executed by the Tsarist regime in 1908, alive in circles throughout the socialist world and openly criticized the parliamentarianism and decentralization of the Cooperative Commonwealth. In 1922, Trotsky founded the Democratic Centralist Party as a tightly organized Marxist-Leninist party that advocated for a rigidly hierarchical and centralized state ruled by a communist vanguard to govern the Cooperative Commonwealth. While Trotsky's ideas initially found minimal support in the CCA, the passage of the Second Amendment in 1937 (ironically by an anarchist president) suddenly made third parties a viable option in national politics and Trotsky capitalized on the Kentucky v. Rustin ruling to run a campaign in the 1939 midterms decrying "bourgeois decadence" and advocating for a more hawkish foreign policy abroad, thereby winning over a number of socially conservative voters in the Great Plains and Deep South in the process. While the DCP failed to eliminate the SLP majority in Congress and was a distant third in terms of delegate share, Trotsky was nonetheless considered influential in leading the first successful major third party campaign in the Cooperative Commonwealth since the collapse of the Progressive Party and offering a new socially conservative and authoritarian Marxist option to voters.
- Prime Minister Kuhara Fusanosuke of the Empire of Japan (1940): Elected prime minister of Japan circa February 1940 from the liberal conservative Rikken Seiyūkai, Kuhara quickly set about dismantling the multiparty liberal democracy that had persisted in Japan since the 1920s. An adherent to the then-fringe ideology of liberal-vanguardism, which was developed by classical liberal economists in Germany and Austria in the mid-1930s, argued that democracy had failed to prevent socialist revolutions and that authoritarian one-party regimes were necessary to defend property rights and maintain a deregulated free market, and had risen to become popular amongst Japanese conservatives, the zaibatsu, and the armed forces, Kuhara was open about his belief that a one-party regime was necessary to prevent a socialist takeover in Japan. Upon becoming prime minister, Kuhara quickly set about passing a slew of legislation with his parliamentary majority that both eliminated government involvement in and regulation of the economy and sought to criminalize leftist speech and movements. All the while, dubious charges were often brought forward to arrest left-wing opposition leadership. The May 9th Incident, however, would signify Kuhara's total takeover of the Japanese apparatus of state, when a strike in Tokyo on May Day escalated into violence within the Japanese capital city. Claiming that the violence was an attempted socialist revolution, Kuhara deployed the Imperial Japanese Army in Tokyo, firing upon protesters, suspending parliament, and declaring martial law nationally in a self-coup. In the coming days, Kuhara rapidly and brutally broke up remaining Japanese trade unions and leftist movements, arrested pro-democracy parliamentary opposition, and unified right-wing groups under the banner of the Imperial Economic Defense Association ("Teikoku Keizai Bōei Kyōkai"; TKBK), thereby establishing a totalitarian liberal-vanguardist one-party state. Alongside radically altering the political structure of Japan, Kuhara initiated the largest military and naval buildup in Japanese history since the failed military coup attempts of the 1930s in order to deter China and America respectively, thus escalating tensions with both other major Pacific powers.
- Kaiser Wilhelm III of the German Empire (1941): Following the death of his father in June, Wilhelm III's reign marked the first change in the German head of state in forty-three years. A conservative nationalist like his late father, the Kaiser supported a continued military buildup of the German armed forces, particularly in France amidst the takeover of Spain by the Anarchists and with regards to the Imperial Navy in order to defend the European mainland from further socialist incursions. Despite largely seeking to maintain political the status quo of his father, Wilhelm III did oversee the dismissal of Albert Vögler from the chancellorship shortly after becoming kaiser following the National Liberal Party's loss of a parliamentary plurality in January 1941, appointing Franz von Papen of the Centre Party in his place. As a consequence of the elimination of the Social Democratic Party as a major force in German politics in the 1930s, Wilhelm III, while still pushing for his desired agenda to be passed through the Reichstag, interfered much less in the electoral process than his predecessor (the Centre Party, for instance, had won a plurality of seats in 1941 and the appointment of Papen to the chancellery was viewed as Wilhelm III recognizing a transition of executive power away from the National Liberals), and as such, many domestic and foreign observers cautiously speculated that the new Kaiser would oversee a limited democratization of the German Empire, where competitive elections and peaceful transfers of power could occur within the confines of parties and ideologies approved by the German monarchy.
- Supreme Leader Roman von Ungern-Sternberg of the Russian Empire (1942): Following the death of Tsar Nicholas II in August 1942, the ultraconservative monarchist warlord of Central Asia, Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, took advantage of the transition in power to lead an army to Saint Petersburg and overthrow Supreme Leader Anton Denikin in a coup within the same month under the goal of restoring the Russian absolute monarchy. In reality, upon assuming the position of "Supreme Leader", which had been created by Alexei Brusilov following the European War as the de facto military autocrat of the Russian Empire that would suspend the civilian rule of the State Duma and preserve the Tsardom in the face of leftist and republican insurgencies, Ungern-Sternberg remained the de facto Russian head of government despite his desire to restore absolutism due to the practical limitations of restoring Tsarist control of the armed forces. Nonetheless, Ungern-Sternberg collaborated with Tsar Alexis II on state policy and publicly regarded himself to be a servant of the Romanovs, obeying and implementing the decrees of the Tsar. An admirer of East Asian cultures, Ungern-Sternberg spearheaded the ratification of a non-aggression pact with the National Republic of China in November and promoted the concept of a shared national identity between Slavs and Central Asian Turks, yet remained hostile towards Japan due to its support of the breakaway Siberian Republic.
- General Secretary Bertrand Russell of the Workers' Federation of Great Britain (1943): Following his re-election as general secretary in 1936, Thomas Mann, amidst growing pressure to resign due to his old age, called for a general election scheduled for early 1938, after which he would resign from office and retire. Amidst the success of Anarchist forces in the Spanish Civil War, backed by the Workers' Federation, the libertarian Syndicalist Labour Party of Mann won a plurality of seats and were supplied confidence by representatives of the Independent Labour Party to elect Tom Wintringham general secretary. Five years later, the Cooperative Party (having renamed from the Independent Labour Party in in the late 1930s) secured a slim plurality of seats in the Congress of People's Representatives, and the party's All-Regional Congress leader, Bertrand Russell, managed to secure the general secretaryship through support primarily from Syndicalist Labour and local nationalist groups for his libertarian views that appeased anarchist representatives. Within his first year as general secretary, Russell was notable for his promotion of the Cooperative Party's unique ideology of guild socialism, with Russell reforming the British economy to allow for the formation of "guilds" (in this context, confederations of worker councils), either through the free association of councils akin to the workers' syndicates in the Cooperative Commonwealth and anarcho-syndicalist administrations, or the establishment of guilds by the national or regional governments. Furthermore, Russell's first year in office was notable for the legalization of same-sex relations and civil unions nationally (although same-sex marriage had yet to be legally recognized nationally), the implementation of a guaranteed minimum income for all British adults, and the adoption of a foreign policy that reduced military spending and called for Great Britain to only engage in the defense of its sovereignty and other socialist revolutionary administrations.
- Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher of the German Empire (1944): Starting in late 1943, the German Empire, as well as much of the capitalist European Association, entered into a recession, which caused the Reichstag to vote in favor of a snap election, a demand heeded by Kaiser Wilhelm III. The subsequent 1944 general election saw the right-wing German Conservative Party (DKP) secure a plurality of seats and form a parliamentary majority with the help of the far-right Pan-German Fatherland Party and the Agricultural League, thus causing DKP leader Kurt von Schleicher to be appointed chancellor. A veteran of the European War and the various proxy conflicts of the First Great Struggle, Schleicher was a hardline conservative, nationalist, militarist, and anti-socialist, overseeing a dramatic uptick in spending for the military-industrial complex within his first year in an attempt to boost German economic growth and committing to an unprecedented increase in the German military presence in the Mittelafrika colonial holdings in an attempt to quell local independence movements, increase the extraction of colonial resources, and pave the way for the establishment of ethnically German settlements throughout Africa. Additionally, given the anti-semitism within both the DKP and its coalition partners, the first year of the Schleicher chancellery oversaw the firing of Jews from federal bureaucratic and military positions, the passage of legislation that required Jews to identify themselves in public, and an uptick in violence against Jewish communities in Germany without intervention by the federal government.
- President Dorothy Day of the Cooperative Commonwealth (1945): Narrowly losing out to Kurt von Schleicher for The Commonwealth Daily's Person of the Year in 1944 after assuming the presidency following the death of Lucy Parsons, Day was elected to a full term as president of the Cooperative Commonwealth in her own right circa March 1945. Governing with a continued Socialist Labor majority in the General Congress, Day was able to pass significant priorities throughout the year, including the Universal Farming Act, wealth redistribution programs, and increased spending for welfare and public works programs. Furthermore, Dorothy Day adopted the foreign policy of the "Day Doctrine", which committed the Cooperative Commonwealth to exclusively deploying troops overseas in the defense of socialist governments as opposed to the active pre-emptive expansion of socialism abroad.
- Secretary of State Ammon Hennacy of the Cooperative Commonwealth (1946): A close friend of President Day, All-Regional Congress Delegate Ammon Hennacy of Wisconsin was appointed Secretary of State by Day in 1945 due to his relation with the president and support for the Day Doctrine. Previously a social worker and outspoken pacifist, Hennacy sought to bring this pacifistic approach to American foreign policy, and was responsible in 1945 and 1946 for coordinating the withdrawal of significant American forces from Iberia and Great Britain, as well as the logistics of delivering humanitarian aid throughout the socialist world, most notably to Iberia, the Caribbean, and Central America. In 1946, The Commonwealth Daily claimed that Hennacy was responsible for unleashing an "arsenal of peace" to legitimize socialism abroad, assisting in the reconstruction of Iberia from the Spanish Civil War and the infrastructure development of several syndicalist states in Latin America, which still suffered from the consequences of decades of American imperialism prior to the 1904 revolution.
- Speaker Lyndon B. Johnson of the All-Regional Congress (1947): The Socialist Labor majority in the All-Regional Congress finally came to an end after fourteen years with the formation of a Populist-Democratic Centralist coalition in 1947, under the leadership of Populist Delegate Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas. An avid De Leonist, Johnson frequently came at odds with the anarchist policies of the Day administration and wasn't afraid to critique the reforms of the Parsons Revolution, which remained popular throughout much of the country. Most notably, the more hawkish Johnson was a vocal critic of the Day Doctrine, arguing that the Cooperative Commonwealth had a moral imperative to proliferate the socialist revolution wherever possible and successfully passing a bill through the General Congress that sought to reverse the Day administration's foreign policy through an increase in military spending and foreign deployments in Europe and Latin America, which was ultimately vetoed by President Day. Johnson was also a prominent supporter for Marxist-De Leonist economics, particularly central planning, and worked with the Populist-Democratic Centralist coalition in the All-Industrial Congress to pass legislation focusing on a buildup of manufacturing industry in the rural Deep South. Lyndon B. Johnson was also noted for his ability to keep members of his congressional coalition in line, often through personal intimidation that had become infamous in the ARC.
- Chairman Henry A. Wallace of the Industrial Federation of Farmers (1948): Amidst rising inflation that culminated in the Red Recession of early October 1948, Chairman Henry Wallace of the Industrial Federation of Farmers committed to both ensuring that farmworkers would not go unemployed and that the IFF would provide employment opportunities nationally amidst an economic downturn causing many worker councils to go underwater and either be forced to downsize or dissolve altogether. By investing in the establishment of new agricultural cooperatives throughout the country throughout the fall of 1948, Wallace was both able to employ thousands and keep food prices relatively low amidst inflation. By the end of 1948, Chairman Wallace had become a national hero, particularly for his attempts to reduce food prices going into the 1948 holiday season, with "thank Comrade Wallace for full bellies this New Year's Eve" becoming a common saying in the process. Many Populists had hoped that Wallace would announce a last-minute presidential bid in the 1949 Populist presidential primary, however, he refused doing so and also passed on being selected as Louisiana Governor Huey Long's running mate in the 1949 presidential election.
- President Huey Long of the Cooperative Commonwealth (1949): Elected president of the Cooperative Commonwealth on a platform of utilizing wealth redistribution, a universal basic income, and central planning to undo the effects of the ongoing Red Recession, Long ended sixteen years of Socialist Labor rule, bringing about a new Populist coalition of Canadian and rural voters that would serve as a critical component of the party's base for the next two decades in the process. With Populist-Democratic Centralist coalitions in control of both chambers of the General Congress, Long was able to pass a slew of legislation within his first year in office, including price controls, the construction of federal highway infrastructure, a national cap on personal annual income and fortunes, and the introduction of a guaranteed minimum income. Broadly speaking, the first year of the Long administration was defined by the passage of ambitious legislation that shifted the Cooperative Commonwealth away from anarcho-syndicalist economics and back towards the Marxism-De Leonism that had been championed by Daniel De Leon and Eugene V. Debs in particular as the federal government returned to the usage of top-down central economic planning. Indeed, by the end of the year, Long had begun dismantling many centerpieces of the anarchist economic platform brought about by the once-popular Parsons Revolution by repealing Dorothy Day's Universal Farming Act in December, with bills being planned to repeal the Popular Defense Act and Land Sovereignty Act in the coming year. Through the implementation of price caps, wealth redistribution, and guaranteed minimum income, Long had managed to bring about a gradual end to the Red Recession as inflation subsided and an uptick in consumer spending allowed for new job growth. Huey Long had become an incredibly popular president in the process, notably cultivating (and arguably encouraging) a highly dedicated and enthusiastic base of supporters that rallied behind the People's Party, and restoring a federal preference for central planning over anarcho-syndicalism. Long also begun the dismantling of the Day Doctrine by resuming American military deployments overseas, particularly in Europe, and committing to an increase in military and naval spending to counter the German Empire in 1950 as the Red Recession subsided.
- "The Italian revolutionary" (1950): Following the outbreak of the Italian Civil War in May 1950 and its subsequent escalation into the Global War between the Cooperative Commonwealth, German Empire, and their respective spheres of influence, fervent support for the Italian Popular Front, which had recently been expelled from the Italian mainland to Sardinia, amongst Americans caused the Industrial Federation of Journalists to make the unprecedented decision to vote for a collective group as their Person of the Year of 1950. Referring to the "thousands of Italian men and women fighting for, and those who have already given their lives to, the cause of liberating their country from the reactionary rule of C.M. De Vecchi and declaring an Italian socialist republic", the nomination of "the Italian revolutionary" as The Commonwealth Daily's person of the year was intended to signify the importance of the uprising of Italian socialist parties, trade unions, and militants against the country's German-backed far-right one-party regime of Prime Minister Cesare Maria De Vecchi with regards to world affairs in 1950. Initially sparked in May when leftist protests against rising costs of living and continued authoritarian rule over Italy despite the death of longtime dictator Emilio De Bono in 1947 escalated into combat between leftist partisans and the Italian armed forces and the subsequent takeover of Rome by the former, the Italian Civil War quickly became the next frontline of the First Great Struggle between the Cooperative Commonwealth and Germany when both sides opted to deploy expeditionary forces on behalf of the leftist Popular Front and De Vecchi regime respectively. While the Popular Front initially managed to secure control over most of southern Italy thanks to American intervention, the enforcement of a naval blockade around the Italian Peninsula by the German Empire in July threatened supply lines and allowed for Germany to go on the offensive in Italy. This blockade, however, ultimately resulted in the sinking of the American C.C.S. Lincoln by the Imperial Navy in August, thereby causing the Cooperative Commonwealth to declare war on the German Empire and sparking the Global War between the two world superpowers as members of the Friendship of Mutual Assistance and European Association were quickly drawn into a conflict coming to encompass much of Europe. With the emergence of direct hostilities between Germany and America, the Imperial Navy was able to engage with the Cooperative Commonwealth Navy's missions to Italy, thus cutting off the Popular Front from significant foreign aid and causing the fall of socialist holdouts on the Italian mainland and Sicily with the fall of Palermo circa November 1950. The Popular Front nonetheless remained in control of Sardinia, where it administered a provisional government and served as a launching pad for FMA naval and aerial operations throughout the Mediterranean Sea.
- Secretary General Rudolf Rocker of the Sudaméricano Syndicates' Union (1951): The Sudaméricano Syndicates Union had been thrust into the Global War with the German pre-emptive attack on the Iberian Confederation of Councils on August 11th, 1950, thus causing both Sudamérica and the Workers' Union of Africa to come to the defense of their fellow anarcho-syndicalist government in accordance with the mutual defense obligations of the International Workers' Association. Yet throughout 1950, Sudaméricano involvement in the Global War was largely confined to an expeditionary force and material aid to their Iberian allies and a handful of limited naval engagements with the Imperial Navy in the South Atlantic. This changed on June 5th, 1951, when Brazil, under the military dictatorship of Mascarenhas de Morais, launched a pre-emptive attack on Buenos Aires on behalf of its allies in Berlin, thereby joining the Global War with the hope of quickly eliminating socialism from South America and asserting itself as a rival power in the Americas to the Cooperative Commonwealth by attacking the SSU while it was focused on the Iberian Front in Europe. Under the secretary generalship of Rudolf Rocker, however, Sudamérica raised several soldiers' councils and militias to rapidly amass defenses in the country's north against Morais' Operation Braganza. Originally from Germany, Rocker had been forced into exile in the early 1890s for his anarchist organizing, ultimately settling in America after the Second Revolution in 1904 before leaving for Argentina in 1922 to participate in and write about the country's anarcho-syndicalist revolution and subsequently participating in the post-revolutionary All-Union Congress of Sudamérica. On multiple occasions, Rocker intermittently served as the secretary general of the SSU, the official head of state and government of the Union whose responsibilities were largely procedural, while nonetheless becoming one of the most influential anarcho-syndicalist thinkers domestically and internationally in the process, most recently being elected in 1950. Upon the invasion of Sudamérica by Brazil, the All-Union Congress voted to empower Rocker with executive authority over both the armed forces and foreign affairs, therefore being responsible for arming and encouraging the formation of soldiers' councils, deploying units of the Workers' and Farmers' Army to the frontlines of the Rio de La Plata Front, and negotiating the provision of tanks and warplanes to Sudamérica with the more industrialized Cooperative Commonwealth. Furthermore, Rocker was influential in spearheading the coordination of wartime production and industrial output between the All-Union Congress and various Sudaméricano workers' syndicates, thus successfully defending the SSU from Brazilian invasion while preserving the anarchist economic and political structure of the country in the process.
- General Douglas MacArthur of the People's Continental Army (1952): Appointed in 1951 to oversee the American war effort in the South American Theater of the Global War shortly after the entry of German allies in the Americas under the de facto leadership of Brazil into the Global War, MacArthur became, alongside General Harry Haywood in the European Theater, one of the two commanding officers of the CC war effort. As Panama became bogged down between the Allied offensive against Coalition forces, MacArthur coordinated amphibious assaults of Colombia and Venezuela, securing Barranquilla as a beachhead on April 12th, 1952, from which the Allied invasion of Colombia could be launched. Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, was captured by an amphibious invasion planned by MacArthur only three days later, and with much of the Venezuelan and Colombian coastline under Allied occupation, an offensive towards the Amazon Rainforest and, by extension, Brazil, could begin. Three months later, General MacArthur captured the Colombian capital of Bogota, after which the Colombian government fled into exile to Brazil, thereby bringing the bulk of both Colombia and Venezuela under Allied military occupation and placing their rural interiors under the de facto military administration of the Brazilians in the process. By the end of the year, MacArthur's offensive from Bogota had entered the northernmost reaches of Brazil as American troops became bogged down in the Amazon Rainforest, and Douglas MacArthur became a national hero for liberating Colombia and Venezuela while bringing Morais' regime close to decisive defeat.
- Prime Minister Kuhara Fusanosuke of the Empire of Japan (1953): The Empire of Japan and its allies were brought into the Global War in November 1951 with the Russian invasion of the Siberian Republic, a Japanese puppet state, followed by the Chinese invasion of Manchukuo only a few days later. While the joint Sino-Russian invasion of the Japanese sphere of influence initially made impressive gains, with much of Siberia and Manchukuo falling under the occupation of Russia and China respectively and Mongolia and Tannu Tuva even being annexed into the National Republic of China, the deployment of the Imperial Japanese Army on the Asian mainland and the introduction of widespread conscription of Japanese nationals and colonial residents alike ultimately managed to halt further gains by Coalition powers by the end of the year. Meanwhile, the Imperial Japanese Navy devastated China's relatively meager naval capacity within the first year of combat and spearheaded an invasion of German and Dutch colonies in Southeast Asia, and despite the Imperial Navy's Pacific Fleet putting up a decent fight, both colonies fell within the span of four months, allowing for Japan to focus entirely on China and Russia by March 1952. Throughout the summer and fall of 1952, the Kuhara regime pursued an aggressive offensive to retake Siberian territory from the Russian Empire and expel the National Revolutionary Army from Manchukuo, all the while overseeing the firebombing of the Chinese coastline in order to weaken it in preparation for an invasion. by the winter, the Imperial Japanese Army had entered Russian Siberia. The declaration of the Russian Republic, a liberal-vanguardist regime ideologically modeled after Kuhara's one-party state, by the Caucasian warlord Viktor Pepelyayev circa May 1953 and the subsequent outbreak of the Russian Civil War proved to be the turning point of the Asian Theater, with Kuhara overseeing the final defeat of Russian forces in Siberia and later ratifying a peace agreement with Pepelyayev's Republican regime. With Japanese forces no longer tied up with Russia, Kuhara could focus entirely on China, occupying Beijing on October 9th and declaring the restoration of the Qing Dynasty as a Japanese puppet state within occupied coastal territories. Bai Chongxi fled inland and continued fighting against Japan for another year, but thanks to the leadership of Kuhara Fusanosuke, the Asian Theater of the Global War had effectively ended, Russia had collapsed into a civil war between Tsarists and liberal-vanguardists, and Japan stood as the dominant power in the east. Despite being a major component of the Allied war effort, however, The Commonwealth Daily did not shy away from criticizing Kuhara, noting war crimes committed by the IJA in the invasion of China, rising poverty and starvation rates throughout the Empire of Japan since the May 9th Incident and economic reforms under TKBK rule, and the purging of political opponents at al levels of the state in Japan by Kuhara.
- General Harry Haywood of the People's Continental Army (1954): Appointed to command American military forces in Europe upon the outbreak of the Global War in 1950, General Harry Haywood's war effort had effectively been confined to southern France since the expulsion of the Italian Popular Front from Sicily. 1953 marked two significant developments in the European Theater, however, these being the securing of an Allied beachhead nearby Naples in February and the collapse of the Russian Empire into civil war forcing Roman von Ungern-Sternberg to withdraw the vast majority of his forces from Coalition efforts in western Europe. By 1954, southern Italy was under the control of the provisional government of the Italian Socialist Republic and fighting had moved north towards Rome, while Allied forces from Iberia had reached the shore of the Loire. Under the command of General Haywood, Allied forces successfully captured Rome on March 3rd, 1954 while Paris was captured on May 18th. Only a month later, the French Fourth Republic surrendered to the Allies thanks to Haywood defeating its remaining holdouts to Paris' north and a socialist provisional government for France led by exiled French leftists was installed by the Cooperative Commonwealth. Meanwhile, the summer of 1954 saw the Italian Socialist Republic continue to push northwards, eventually linking up with Allied forces in France by early August and confining De Vecchi's regime to Venetia, where it effectively became a de facto Austro-German puppet state. Thanks to the war effort led by Harry Haywood, the socialist revolution had been brought to Europe and the Global War transitioned into its final stages as the German Empire led the defense of Central Europe from the Friendship of Mutual Assistance in the west and the Japanese-backed Russian Republic in the east. Out of desperation, Germany dropped an atomic bomb on American forces under the command of Haywood at the Battle of Nancy on November 11th, although Haywood himself was not present at the battle.
- President Huey Long of the Cooperative Commonwealth (1955): The Global War would officially come to an end on May 10th, 1955, in large part thanks to the actions of American President Huey Long. In retaliation to the atomic bombing of Nancy, Long adopted a policy of utilizing tactical atomic bombs on German positions in order to punch through Coalition frontlines starting in December 1954. The targeted atomic bombings of Frankfurt, Essen, and Hanover circa January 1955, however, marked a significant escalation in the utilization of the recently-developed technology, with Long becoming responsible for introducing the strategy of destroying cities via nuclear weapons to the world. Nonetheless, Long's atomic bombing of German positions along the frontlines in the Rhineland, combined with simultaneous British amphibious assaults in the German northwest and an invasion through Jutland from Allied-occupied Denmark, finally allowed for German defenses in the west to collapse, and following the capitulation of the United States of Greater Austria to the Allies with the fall of Vienna on February 10th, the German Empire saw the writing on the wall and opted to unconditionally surrender to Long's forces on February 20th, 1955, thereby ending the Global War in Europe. With the European Association defeated, Huey Long reoriented the American war effort towards defeating Brazil, dropping atomic bombs on coastal cities in the country's north while a Sudaméricano-led coalition of Allied socialist powers scaled up along the country's coast from the south. With the fall of Rio de Janeiro on April 9th, Brazil surrendered and hostilities in the Global War concluded. With the German Empire defeated and under Allied military occupation, Long found himself positioned as the leader of dominant global superpower of the post-war order and utilized this status to exert considerable influence over the Treaty of San Francisco. Most notably, the Long administration advocated for the partition of Germany and Brazil and the occupation of previous Coalition powers defeated by socialist forces by the People's Continental Army to oversee the reconstruction of Latin America and Europe as they were integrated into the American sphere of influence under socialist regimes. Following the ratification of the Treaty of San Francisco, Huey Long was notable for laying the groundwork for post-war American foreign policy, beginning the Friendly Revolution by committing significant investments to reconstruction and economic recovery programs to occupied territories in Europe, South America, and Africa in order to aid in the development of pro-American syndicalist republics. Meanwhile, as the Empire of Japan emerged as the dominant power in East Asia and the most powerful post-war capitalist state in the world, Long adopted a foreign policy of opposing further expansion of the Japanese sphere of influence and reoriented American armed forces towards containing Japan, thereby setting up the Cooperative Commonwealth and Empire of Japan to be the two rival superpowers of the second half of the Twentieth Century and initiating the global tensions that later escalated into the Second Great Struggle.
- Secretary of State Anna Eleanor Roosevelt of the Cooperative Commonwealth (1956): First appointed as the CC Secretary of State once Huey Long became president in 1949, Roosevelt had spent the bulk of her tenure overseeing American policy with regards to the Global War and collaboration with the Allied powers. In the aftermath of the conflict, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt's priorities shifted towards overseeing and formulating policy for the Friendly Revolution, a slew of legislation that served as the cornerstone of the post-war Long administration's foreign policy whereby the Cooperative Commonwealth would fund the reconstruction and economic revitalization of occupied territories with the intent of strengthening the new socialist regimes being built throughout the world as close American allies. Throughout 1956, Roosevelt coordinated the distribution of billions of dollars in relief throughout occupied territories and was a leader in the development of specific Friendly Revolution legislation that focused on investing in West Africa to build up post-colonial non-extraction-based economies and investing globally in food relief and infrastructure reconstruction. Additionally, Roosevelt was noted for directly and indirectly corresponding with local socialist authorities in occupied territories to draft De Leonist constitutions modeled after the political structure of the Cooperative Commonwealth, thereby being responsible in large part for exporting the American socialist political and economic framework throughout the post-war world.
- President Tommy Douglas of the Cooperative Commonwealth (1957): The former vice president of Huey Long and the first Canadian president of the Cooperative Commonwealth, Tommy Douglas' first year in office after an election in March 1956 that reaffirmed the expansion of Populist support in rural communities and western Canada in particular was defined by American involvement in the Peruvian Civil War, the first proxy war of the Second Great Struggle between America and Japan. While the outbreak of and deployment of American troops in the conflict had been overseen by the waning days of the Long administration in February 1957, it was Douglas who was responsible for managing the most significant initial deployments of the People's Continental Army in Peru, with the socialist American Popular Revolutionary Alliance making substantial gains in by the end of the year, as Japanese support for Manuel A. Odría's military dictatorship in the north was limited to supplies and funding until 1958. The first year of the Douglas administration was also notable for the passage of the War on Intoxication Act in November, which increased funding for law enforcement and criminal penalties for the possession and distribution of alcoholic beverages, and increased investment in the still young American nuclear weapons program as a means to deter the Empire of Japan, which secretly conducted its first successful nuclear weapons test in 1958.
- Minister-President Otto Grotewohl of the North German Democratic Federation (1958): The first minister-president of North Germany following the ratification of the country's constitution and subsequent end to its management by American and British occupation zones, Otto Grotewohl was elected by the Volkskongress' Communist Workers' Party (KA) majority following the March 1958 general election and was notable for leading the largest of the post-Imperial German states while also serving as a bulwark against the Russian Republic and its sphere of puppet regimes in eastern Europe. An activist for the Social Democratic Party in his youth, Grotewohl had been repeatedly imprisoned by Imperial authorities following the organization's criminalization in the 1930s, working a series of odd jobs throughout Germany while being active in underground trade union politics into the Global War. Remaining in Germany, unlike many prominent North German politicians that had fled into exile due to their political views in the 1930s and 1940s, gave Grotewhol a degree of credibility amongst the country's post-war populace, thus resulting in his selection as the leader of the KA going into the 1958 election, ironically against a restored Social Democratic Party, which adhered to a syndicalist De Leonist platform in contrast to the the orthodox Marxist ideology of the Communist Workers' Party. Upon assuming office, Minister-President Grotewohl was responsible for a country still adjusting to socialist rule and under Anglo-American military occupation, with many North Germans still bitter towards the former Allies, particularly the Cooperative Commonwealth, for destruction wreaked by the invasion of Germany during the Global War and the country's subsequent partition. Indeed, despite the prohibition of monarchist and pan-German nationalist parties, the capitalist Liberal People's Party managed to gain a substantial number of seats in the Volkskongress. Nonetheless, Grotewohl boasted the support of a working class historically much further to the left than Imperial political leadership, and prioritized the extensive reconstruction of North Germany through communist central planning, employing hundreds of thousands in workers' councils and state-owned industries, while also being a critical force in encouraging popular participation in political and economic governance and expanding suffrage as the occupying Allied forces transitioned North Germany over to civilian rule in collaboration with the Grotewohl ministry. In terms of foreign policy, Otto Grotewohl's first year as minister-president was significant for the entry of the North German Democratic Federation into the Friendship of Mutual Assistance defense pact and the ratification of the Treaty of Bremen, which prohibited the stationing of nuclear weapons in North Germany by the Cooperative Commonwealth or Great Britain and North Germany agreeing to not pursuing a nuclear weapons program of its own.
- General Douglas MacArthur of the People's Continental Army (1959): Despite his old age, Douglas MacArthur was appointed to command American forces in the Peruvian Civil War upon the beginning of CC intervention in the conflict in 1957, becoming one of the most prominent figures in the American war effort in Peru in the process. While MacArthur had made considerable territorial gains throughout 1957 and the spring of 1958, the intervention of the Empire of Japan on behalf of the Odría regime in the north bogged down FMA and APRA forces around Lima by the end of the year. General MacArthur nonetheless remained a popular figure throughout the socialist world, even as the Peruvian Civil War became a war of attrition, for his leadership of international socialist forces in the conflict. Additionally, MacArthur was notably an advocate for escalating American involvement in the Peruvian Civil War, repeatedly calling for a heightened conscription of American forces to be sent to Peru and even going as far as to suggest a blockade or invasion of Ecuador, which was the primary Japanese ally in South America through which supplies and troops to Odría flowed.
- Emir Saud bin Abdulaziz Al Rashid of the Rashidi Emirate (1960): Having reigned over the Rashidi Emirate since 1908, Saud had overseen the transformation of the emirate from a backwater kingdom to the world's top oil exporter that had grown obscenely wealthy in the process, using its newfound status as a regional power to conquer Ottoman Hejaz during the Global War and become the dominant government on the Arabian Peninsula in the process. Despite radically changing in terms of economic standing in the world, however, Rashidi Arabia under Saud remained a conservative absolute monarchy, increasingly an oddity in the mid-20th Century, and the House of Rashid maintained a tight grip on power while enriching themselves from oil revenue, only implementing minimal reforms, such as the highly limited legalization of labor unions, in order to appease the international order. Nonetheless, despite being ideologically antithetical to the socialist world, Saud remained in power by being a neutral supplier of oil in the post-Global War world, and this neutrality was essential to maintain in order to keep oil prices low in the socialist West, especially as Iran aligned itself with the Empire of Japan. Emir Saud upended this delicate balance of cordial relations with the West in September 1960 by ratifying an agreement with the Empire of Japan whereby the Rashidi Emirate would impose trade embargoes on Friendship of Mutual Assistance and International Workers' Association member states and liberalize its economy to allow for Japanese investment in return for Tokyo's guarantee of Rashidi sovereignty and an elimination of all tariffs on Rashidi exports to Shanghai Co-Prosperity Sphere member states. By bringing his kingdom into the Japanese sphere of influence, Emir Saud effectively handed Japan control over, alongside Iran, Russia, and Siberia, the bulk of the world's largest oil-producing economies and cut off the socialist world from one of the final remaining neutral major oil exporters in the world. As a consequence, the socialist world saw sudden inflation in gas prices throughout the fall of 1960, causing a decline in the popularity of many domestic governments throughout the West and causing the Cooperative Commonwealth in particular to frantically attempt to increase its oil production.
- President A. Philip Randolph of the Cooperative Commonwealth (1961): A return to the more moderate libertarian possibilism of the Socialist Labor Party in contrast to the anarcho-syndicalism of Lucy Parsons and Dorothy Day, A. Philip Randolph spent his first year in office passing the Freedom Budget, a collection of legislative priorities intended to recover the Cooperative Commonwealth gas price inflation and combat economic racial inequality. By the end of the year, the Randolph administration had passed two key pieces of the Freedom Budget, which allocated funding to the construction of nuclear power plants, invested in the formation of farming communes in black communities, and implemented communal price control mechanisms for agricultural products. While not necessarily the product of Randolph, 1961 also saw a gradual decline in gas prices as American oil production increases began to enter full swing, although President Randolph made it clear that his administration would prioritize ending American reliance on fossil fuel in order to reduce dependency on oftentimes unfriendly foreign powers for energy needs to be met, an agenda that he was able to rally much of the Socialist Labor Party and even a number of Populists behind.
- President Francisco Julião of the Cooperative Confederation of the Equator (1962): The first elected president of Equador in 1958 after the country's formation from the American occupation zone in northern Brazil, Julião handedly won a second term in 1962, running on a platform of agrarian De Leonism on behalf of the Farmers and Workers' Socialist Party (FWSP). Governing a country formed out of Brazil's impoverished northeast, where a privileged elite had dominated economic and political control prior to the defeat of the Morais regime, Julião had benefited from governing a country that was highly receptive to the implementation of syndicalist rule. Within his first term in office, Francisco Julião oversaw the collectivization of the latifundia as farming cooperatives, the redistribution of elite wealth to the country's working class and peasantry, and the extensive implementation of modern infrastructure throughout Equador, in large part thanks to funding from the Friendly Revolution. As a consequence of the popularity of these policies, The Commonwealth Daily noted Julião being re-elected in a landslide in 1962 and securing a congressional supermajority for the FWSP in the process while boasting a strong and dedicated base of support nationally, with the Equatorial president being noted for his popular brand of agrarian Marxism-De Leonism that emphasized investment in agricultural development over industrialization and saw farmers as the basis for its revolution rather than the urban working class that syndicalist movements were historically built upon, which was now being replicated throughout Latin America and West Africa in particular. President Julião was also noted for his diplomatic ventures in 1962 in an attempt to assert Equador as a regional power, signing trade agreements with Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, and Sudamérica within the year.
- President A. Philip Randolph of the Cooperative Commonwealth (1963): The year 1963 marked a number of significant developments for the Randolph administration with critical domestic and international implications. In May 1963, President Randolph oversaw the launch of the De Leon 1 into orbit as the first manmade satellite in human history, and only a month later, the Randolph administration controversially began supplying Julius Nyerere's East African Ujamaa Union with weapons despite opposition from the Populist-Democratic Centralist coalition controlling the All-Regional Congress. Once the Empire of Ethiopia, a Japanese ally, intervened in the East African Civil War in November, A. Philip Randolph escalated American involvement to the deployment of a small expeditionary force on behalf of Nyerere. In September 1963, Randolph intervened in the New Zealander Civil War by deploying an expeditionary force (this time with Populist and Democratic Centralist backing) to fight on behalf of the Aotearoa Liberation Front, and by the end of the year, Japan had done the same on behalf of Charles Upham's military junta, thus turning the New Zealander Civil War into yet another proxy war of the Global War.
- Professor Alan Turing of the University of Manchester (1964): The first non-political or military individual to be selected as The Commonwealth Daily's "Person of the Year", Alan Turing was recognized for his substantial role in the development of the first personal computer, which entered into production under coordination between the Industrial Federation of Mathematicians and Industrial Federation of Technicians of the Workers' Federation of Great Britain in 1963 and became popular amongst British and American consumers alike starting in 1964. Having first begun pioneering theoretical computer science in the late 1930s, Turing began developing his first computing machines in the 1940s thanks to considerable university and state funding alike, and with the outbreak of the Global War in 1950, Turing's research gained even greater investment once the British military enlisted him to work on developing a codebreaking device against the German Empire. Upon the conclusion of the war, Turing returned to developing computational mathematics in coordination with his peers, industrial federations, and guilds, becoming the leading voice in the fledgling field of computer science as British and American researchers informally competed to develop the first personal computer. With the invention of the microprocessor, in large part thanks to Turing's research, in 1963 by British researchers, the Workers' Federation quickly set about producing the first personal computers available for general usage (a handful of computer circuit boards had been developed throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, however, these were only popular amongst a niche group of hobbyists), initially distributing them for office work and later selling them to the public starting in early 1964. While still relatively niche, by the end of the year, personal computers based off of the research of Turing were being sold throughout both Europe and America, revolutionizing work and information storage for many and contributing to a boom in computer development throughout the socialist world as researchers in the Cooperative Commonwealth in particular built upon Turing's designs.
Thank you very much! I thought this would be a fun way to explore this TL, so I’m glad the end result is enjoyable!
I was initially left without words for this because - goddamn - that took a hard left turn.
So, I guess he basically took up the position that Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon took IOTL of being somewhat reasonable, but terribly consequential conservatives.
Likewise, thanks to him, I guess that the funding of underdeveloped places, welfare, and gross domestic product/consumption are also now all rendered as partisan issues thanks to him - and I very much hope that the first one doesn't get racialised more than it is now!
Reminds me of a great quote about Wallace:
“If George had parachuted into the Albanian countryside in the spring of 1962,” said his former adviser John Kohn, “he would have been head of a collective farm by the fall, a member of the Communist Party by mid-winter, on his way to the district party meeting as a delegate by the following year, and a member of the Comintern in two or three years.”
“Hell,” he concluded, “George could believe whatever he needed to believe.”
With that being said, I would almost suspect that Wallace would be a perfect line-towing Marxist-Leninist climber rather than the ol' race-obsessed Dixiecrat we all know (and hopefully don't love). Especially considering Wallace was initially a liberal New Dealer and was seen as remarkably moderate on the race issue during his tenure as judge. He only took the hard turn when he lost the race for Governorship to hardcore race-baiting. But then again, the page does mention a wave of Dixiecrat victories against the People's Party, so maybe he still has to race-bait to survive politically. Either way, great infobox!
Prolepresidents!George Wallace could just have been reflecting his base's sentiments in strongly disagreeing on welfare funding. economic subsidies, & syndicalist decentralisation, as well as their social conservatism. With a predecessor who exactly did the first three - what he did did check out the boxes of the DCP's base.
But damn if it isn't weird reading this; the spectrum the stances in regards to political decentralisation and states' rights is all but flipped between the conservatives and their political opponents, and it's the Marxist-Leninists - of all people - who became fiscal conservatives, Christian nationalists, and pro-consumption! Talk about setting the contradiction yourself that you've been writing about and preparing so much to fight against!
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To an extent, this is certainly the case, although because this TL is primarily told through the lens of Wikiboxes of each president and there hasn't been a Democratic Centralist one yet, there's been this emergence of conservative socialism as a third major faction in the Cooperative Commonwealth in the background since the 1940s. Wallace is just the first of these conservatives to be elected to the presidency and have a chance to implement his agenda at the national level. That being said, he will have a huge impact on how at least the DCP goes about conducting politics, namely by running populist, socially conservative campaigns that focus on "culture war" (that wouldn't really be a term ITTL, but you get the idea) issues and rely on mobilizing voters in the "Redneck republics" (basically the white-majority republics in the Deep South).
Again, a lot these issues have been becoming politicized for the past two decades in the background, it's just that this anti-social spending movement hasn't really gained power until now. To a lesser extent, however, the People's Party has been slightly more conservative on racial issues than the Socialist Labor Party, with the Populists being less in favor of programs intended to provide aid or economic opportunities to minority groups, or supporting wealth redistribution programs that just so happen to disproportionately benefit minority communities due to them still being affected by the legacy of race-based economic inequality prior to the Second Revolution, and stuff like police reform or giving minority communities greater self-determination are off the table for the Populists. That being said, however, the difference between the Populists and Democratic Centralists on race issues is night and day. The Populists at least largely acknowledge that racial inequality is, to some extent, still a problem in the Cooperative Commonwealth, whereas the DCP's party line is either a class reductionist view of social issues or, as is the case with the Dixiecratic Centralists, viewing the economic interests of different racial groups as in competition against each other, a position that is carried over from a number of pre-Revolution labor movements.
Well, the thing is, being a line-towing Marxist-Leninist ITTL is being a race-baiting social conservative. The history of "Marxism-Leninism" ITTL is kinda weird, but the short gist is that after Lenin's killed sometime following an alternate 1905 Russian Revolution, Trotsky flees to the Cooperative Commonwealth, and alongside a number of other Russian exiles who would've become prominent Bolsheviks in OTL, promotes the ideas that a strong professional leadership ruling through a party that operates along the principles of democratic centralism is necessary for a successful revolutionary government, that rigid top-down central planning is necessary to enforce rapid industrialization and economic development, and that a permanent revolution of proliferating socialism through foreign intervention is needed. Ironically, the idea of a professional class guiding economic and political governance attracts a lot of former capitalists, who see Leninism as their best bet at restoring their positions of power once it becomes clear that the syndicalist economic system isn't going away, and a lot of them integrate their more conservative social views into the Democratic Centralist Party, which is already appealing to conservative southern whites due to its support for economic development in the rural South and its class reductionism causing the DCP to either ignore or be outright hostile towards progressive social causes taken up by the SLP and Populists. The early DCP is pretty explicitly Trotskyist (albeit with a somewhat conservative bent on a handful of important social issues), but this Old Guard is gradually overshadowed by the rising Dixiecratic Centralist wing during the late 1940s and 1950s, which is explicitly conservative on social and religious issues, particularly race, and views a strong centralized state as the best way to combat "bourgeois decadence". The Dixiecratic Centralists, including Wallace, are still loyal to the founding Marxist-Leninist tenets of the DCP, these being professional vanguardism, central planning that emphasizes industrial development, and a hawkish and interventionist foreign policy. The closest OTL comparison would be the left-wing nationalist wing of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.
Thank you very much!
Basically, yeah! The DCP's base has been steadily leaning conservative since the 1940s, so Wallace essentially tows the party line pretty well. He pisses off the more socially moderate-to-progressive technocratic wing of the party in the process, hence why they break off to form a party of their own in 1965, but the technocrats had always played second-fiddle to the Dixiecratic Centralists and Trotskyist Old Guard, and ranked-choice voting for executive offices means that losing the technocrats isn't too big of a blow anyway. Wallace is still the next closest candidate to their economic ideology and views on centralized state authority, after all.
Something that I always wanted to explore in this TL is the idea that, in a multiparty socialist democracy where the Overton Window spans basically all socialist ideologies and capitalism isn't palatable, authoritarian leftists, such as Marxist-Leninists, would probably find themselves on the "right-wing" of the country's political factions. They'd be the ones supporting the greatest degree of hierarchy, as well as the ones most likely to support a strong and centralized state that would have the power to enforce socially conservative values in the first place, and historically Marxist-Leninist regimes did tend to have more socially conservative positions (the USSR, for example, considered homosexuality to be a "social illness" and "bourgeois degeneracy" in OTL). In a socialist America, that means that these authoritarian leftist movements are the ones that win over a lot of the people who would've formed the base for the Dixiecrats in OTL.