Was a worldwide Communist revolution ever possible?

on another tangent. We seem to be stuck in the year 1920 because 1) There was a revolution going on in Russia 2) there was a power vacuum in Germany and 3) anytime before that everybody was just too busy fighting WWI.

So how would the situation be if the war and subsequent collapse of Germany did not occur, or if the Russian revolution occurred before WWI? Completely ASB thought: If Militant Labour would have started a revolution in the UK, or for that matter just in Scotland in 1909? Would worldwide Comm-o-nist uprisings follow?
 
It probably was possible under the right circumstances. Say the United States never enters World War II at all. The Russians defeat Germany and are able to convert all of continental Europe to communism. Britain is invaded and occupied by the Soviet Union later on. They are able to make all of the colonies of Africa into communist satellites as well.

After the war in Europe, more colonies become independent and communist governments, especially in the Middle East. The Soviets also instigate communists insurgents in Asia to create revolution. After nothing short of a nuclear war with the United States and Canada, a world wide communist revolution is possible after this.
 
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Is making your story as real and seemingly plausible to your viewer as possible....
 
Most probably impossible. If both Germany and Russia fell to Communism, other nations would fall harder to the right. Revolution breeds counter-revolution.

But, IF a majority of world powers became Communist (the UK, US, for example), many other nations would fall, in theory if not always in practice, to Communist governments to try to keep up in the new world order. Sort of like most nations today claim to be some sort of democracy, despite not all of them being one, because the leading powers are democracies or 'promote' democracy.
 
Most probably impossible. If both Germany and Russia fell to Communism, other nations would fall harder to the right. Revolution breeds counter-revolution.
I would say that it creates extremes and delegitimises the existing power structures. I agree that there would be a growth of the far right, the growth of reaction, but also workers and socialists become more militant and driven away from reformism. There's an anecdote from Italy some time after the February Revolution, where over 50,000 workers went to a rally where Russian revolutionaries came to give speeches about their new regime and the workers cried out slogans like 'let's be like Russia' and they praised Lenin and the Bolsheviks (much to the dismay of the Mensheviks who were speaking). So revolution in one nation drives the people of nearby nations with similar conditions to extremes, right and left.
 
If Rosa Luxemborg's Spartacist Uprising in Germany in January 1919 had worked, then perhaps Europe could be easily engulfed by Communist Russia and Communist Germany. Capitalist France and Britain wouldn't be able to do much to stop them.
 
If Rosa Luxemborg's Spartacist Uprising in Germany in January 1919 had worked...

This was very unlikely, though. Luxemburg herself was aware the uprising was premature, and only reluctantly participated in it. Germany was not Russia--a much larger middle class, a much larger reformist labor movement, far fewer land-hungry peasants (including peasants-in-uniform), etc.
 

TinyTartar

Banned
I don't think so. I can see Germany, Italy, France, going Communist after WW1, and Eastern Europe I can see being made Communist with Russian Bayonets like in OTL except 25 years early.

I don't think Britain could have plausibly gone Communist, nor do I think America could have.

I think Spain had a chance in their civil war but that is about it.

Communist revolution on a worldwide scale would be an epic catastrophe, of course, but luckily, I just don't see it as plausible.
 
This was very unlikely, though. Luxemburg herself was aware the uprising was premature, and only reluctantly participated in it. Germany was not Russia--a much larger middle class, a much larger reformist labor movement, far fewer land-hungry peasants (including peasants-in-uniform), etc.

Germany actually had a larger proletariat and industry than Russia did. When Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels drew up the Communist Manifesto, they had Germany or Britain in mind for a communist revolution to begin. They had large industrial sectors, large working class and a large capitalist economy.

Russia on the other hand, was still transitioning from feudalism to capitalism when Lenin and Trotsky took over. Russia was not ready for communism, Germany and Britian kinda were. So, it would have been more likely that Germany could have been a more functioning communist state than Russia's early years.
 
Germany actually had a larger proletariat and industry than Russia did. When Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels drew up the Communist Manifesto, they had Germany or Britain in mind for a communist revolution to begin. They had large industrial sectors, large working class and a large capitalist economy.

Russia on the other hand, was still transitioning from feudalism to capitalism when Lenin and Trotsky took over. Russia was not ready for communism, Germany and Britian kinda were. So, it would have been more likely that Germany could have been a more functioning communist state than Russia's early years.
More importantly, I think, is the way that a lot of the German proletariat was tied to the reformist Second International. When the Red Ruhr uprising occurred and the workers in the Ruhr armed themselves, it was the Social Democrats who told them to disarm and the workers followed those commands. It was the same in Britain, with the workers tied to the Labour Party, and in many respects in Italy as well. The trade union leaders in these nations weren't revolutionaries and organised workers, at the very most, wanted to control the factories they worked in and not seize state power. Revolution by ballot.
 
It is certainly possible in the 20's, had The Soviets provided support to Kun's regime and had they won the Polish-Soviet War, with Lenin's testament not being suppressed,

Furthermore, its possible in '68 too. Have more popular resistance as part of the Prague spring, have the near-revolution in France succeed in 68, have the US take a waaaaay more militant stance towards the BPP then they already were, and you'll have mass insurrection on a scale never before seen.
 
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