What would Las Vegas be like if America was Communist?

I’m hoping, just due to good luck if nothing else, we’d be more like Cuba, or Czechoslovakia, or Yugoslavia during the Tito years.

And I don’t diminish the numbers Stalin killed one iota. During the 1930s, Stalin manipulated and increased a famine which was already occurring, essentially using it as a weapon against the people of Ukraine. And I for one am more than willing to use the g word and say, Stalin committed genocide in the Ukraine.

The show trials were killing at the retail level. Starvation in the Ukraine, this was at the wholesale level.
US culture with it's tendencies towards witch hunts suggests stalinist 1930s and or cultural revolution at it's height as the normal mode of governance in communist americas. Could be worse, at least it's not pol pot.
 
US culture with it's tendencies towards witch hunts . . .
I think we're very average in this regard.

Now, I have thought that the USA is a more religious than the average country, and we are compared to northern Europe. But if we look at how Catholic Italy is, and Poland, the average American may not even be more religious than the average European. And once we compare ourselves to the Middle East, to Catholic countries in Latin America, and maybe even to India (some AH discussion on whether Hinduism is at base monotheism or polytheism, and perhaps to the average Hindu, that's not the most vital distinction), so looking worldwide, we in the US might be pretty average in this regard, too.
 
I didn't say "religious", I just said prone to witch hunts. Protestant, islamic and certain types of communist(maoist-flavored) countries are the biggest areas for witch hunting.
 
Las Vegas becomes the byword for getting shipped to "the American Gulag". The place political criminals get shipped to perform hard manual labor on large land reclaimation projects. The most dreaded project to get assigned to was the Death Valley Tunnel Acuaduct intended to create a large fresh water lake in the middle of the Mohave Dessert. Other projects that soaked up human labor and lives were the Great People's Dam in the Grand Canyon. The Lake Debbs project to restore the former Lake Bonneville. The Yellowstone Geothermal Power Project.
 
Yeah. Lots of destructive labor camps there for "undesirables" like blacks, irish or italians. A Red America would be one with demographics more like appalachia or the midwest before agribusiness started bringing in immigrants.
 
I didn't say "religious", I just said prone to witch hunts. Protestant, islamic and certain types of communist(maoist-flavored) countries are the biggest areas for witch hunting.

It isn't like Catholics/people with a Catholic background and Jews weren't involved in American socialism or easily would be recruited to the cause in revolutionary times. And before you bring up Jews in the USSR, the US was a markedly less antisemitic society than Russia was.

Yeah. Lots of destructive labor camps there for "undesirables" like blacks, irish or italians. A Red America would be one with demographics more like appalachia or the midwest before agribusiness started bringing in immigrants.

You do know the base of American socialism was immigrants, right? What you're proposing is just a bunch of stereotypes about communism which have little basis in fact outside of yes, some communist regimes killed millions of people. Some didn't, as evidenced by the relative lack of killing fields (not to say these regimes didn't kill/persecute many people unjustly) in Yugoslavia, Cuba, many African communist countries, Vietnam, etc. That's not to say communist America is going to be some workers paradise or whatever, but the odds that communist America would be exactly the same as the Stalinist USSR or Maoist China is ridiculous. The odds they kill more than 4-5 million (purges, work camps for dissidents, a famine or two) is pretty low.
 
Yeah. Lots of destructive labor camps there for "undesirables" like blacks, irish or italians. A Red America would be one with demographics more like appalachia or the midwest before agribusiness started bringing in immigrants.

Wasn't it in early 20th century America that the Communist Party was comprised primarily of first-generation working-classs immigrants whilst the Socialist Party more middle professional class ?
 
I never said it'd be the same as those two, I said it'd be worse. Imagine the stalinist 30s or 70s culltural revolution extended as standard practice for the life of the regime.
 
I never said it'd be the same as those two, I said it'd be worse. Imagine the stalinist 30s or 70s culltural revolution extended as standard practice for the life of the regime.

And that's a very remote possibility, as remote as libertarian-style, eternal Gilded Age capitalism finding the right politicians and business leaders to give everyone both prosperity and freedom. Most likely, American communism is repressive and still kills a few million people after the "Second American Civil War", and underdevelops America (yet not to the degree as Eastern Europe, since the US was already an industrialised country by the time socialism had any chance), but what it doesn't do is mass murder people based on ethnicity or religion. The United States is a fundamentally different culture than Russia or China, and was accepted to be a nation of immigrants. The Socialist Party opposed many elements of Jim Crow (since they didn't want blacks used as scabs in labour disputes) and Eugene Debs wrote in opposition to Jim Crow laws several times. Revolutionary America would likely get Southerners like Huey Long and Thomas Watson on their side--they were populists and could easily shift their opinion based on how things are in Washington, the North, and beyond--given the South is easily comparable to Latin America (and has been since colonial times), it's easy to see such populist politicans rule there. OTL Jim Crow-era Southern political machines like Boss Crump's in Memphis, Tennessee used blacks as an important local force (one African American family supported by Crump, the Ford family, produced Harold Ford Jr. as well as several state politicians arrested for corruption), so I don't see why this wouldn't continue in communist America, even if Jim Crow policies are mostly abolished. And although later immigration will be restricted (if it even exists as a major force), since the left in the US had mixed views on it, pre-existing immigrants (notably Jews and Finns from the Russian Empire) were a major force in the Socialist Party and Communist Party.

Like how Communist Russia was a reflection of the Russian Empire and Communist China had elements of both Imperial and Republican China, Communist America would have a lot of American elements in it. It would expouse itself as a "true democracy" despite being full of undemocratic elections which would no doubt base themselves on local politicians who saw the way the wind was blowing and became communists. There's a lot of basis for many diverse forces, which might reorganise themselves into a sham political system (like for instance North Korea has) and regularly hold elections, where the Communist Party gains perhaps 70-80% of the seats nationally and locally while the Socialist Party and maybe a few local parties gain the remainder. Anyone complaining about that would certainly be killed, but it's otherwise a stable system and a very American approach to communism (combined with a couple "Socialist" amendments to the Constitution) which would result in no more deaths than the American South did post-Reconstruction. Oppose the machine, you will be beaten and potentially killed; support the machine, you might be rewarded--that was a fact of life in many places until recently in the US.
 
Karl Marx's concept of the "lumpenproletariat" is all the justification you'd need for ttl's CPUSA to decide that say the USSA would be better off without blacks and act accordingly with things like "The Last Vegas labor and redemption center"./
 
Karl Marx's concept of the "lumpenproletariat" is all the justification you'd need for ttl's CPUSA to decide that say the USSA would be better off without blacks and act accordingly 1with things like "The Last Vegas labor and redemption center"./

Good thing the blacks were part of numerous labour organisations, used by numerous socialist groups, and would prove good support for power-hungry Southern populists and others, as I suggested with Boss Crump (who wasn't the only Southern political machine leader to use blacks). And given 1920-1940 (most likely time for a revolution) had the lowest percentage of African Americans in US history (under 10%, only 10.5-13 million total), you can't get the ridiculous death toll of 100-150 million you suggested (US didn't have 100 million until the 1920 Census, and didn't have 150 million until the 1950 Census). Is it possible for an African American genocide in communist USA? I can't deny it, but it would almost certainly take a far different left-wing to carry out such an atrocity than the people we can reasonably believe would be part of a Red America.
 
Well there's class traitors, wreckers, italians, irish, dixie whites, kulaks, etc to carry out 100-150 million dead. No reason for them to stop with blacks.

Really, try being realistic instead of whitewashing what a communist regime would be like.
 
Well there's class traitors, wreckers, italians, irish, dixie whites, kulaks, etc to carry out 100-150 million dead. No reason for them to stop with blacks.

Please point out why Italians, Irish, or Southern Whites might be killed when all three groups can easily be won over and basically would be, since quite a few Italians and Irish were on the "left", albeit often enslaved by local political machines which certain Socialist Party groups like the Jews and Finns were not. You do know the Bolsheviks were a minority faction yet seized power regardless and managed to incorporate a lot of former opponents? And that Stalinist-style repression isn't inevitable, especially given the American tradition of democracy (which didn't exist in Russia), which with machine politics we can assume would lead toward a guided democracy (with a puppet Socialist Party and maybe a few puppet local parties led by the Communist Party?). And the South was full of potential support, from Huey Long and other Southern populists to Appalachian miners.

Regarding killing blacks, I already pointed out the reality of what American socialists and communists thought of the matter. Even adding some elements of Southern populism, like Thomas Watson in his later years, to the mix, you don't anything worse than pre-existing segregation, and as I said, you have local politicians who can use blacks as part of their power base like Boss Crump did in Memphis.

Really, try being realistic instead of whitewashing what a communist regime would be like.

I am being realistic, since I said an American communist regime would kill perhaps 5 million people in addition to those killed by communists in the Second American Civil War. I'm not whitewashing anything, since I know the "red" quality of the regime would be akin to the red of human blood, and I know they would very likely promote a lot of policies which wouldn't be ideal, to say the least. But you are doing the exact opposite and giving the idea that 100-150 million might die in a country which didn't even have 150 million people until 1950. That's utterly ridiculous. You clearly haven't examined the conditions of Gilded Age/early 20th century US and the existing socialist/communist movement, as well as the historic nature of the US and the compromises which the revolution will inevitably make. That, IMO, is a good clue as to how a communist revolution will turn out in any given country, barring something like communism being imposed by force as the USSR did on Eastern Europe in the late 40s.

It's all on you to refute my points instead of going by some ridiculous generalisation of communism which fails at explaining OTL communist regimes, let alone a hypothetical American communist regime.
 
It would undoubtedly be a massive desert prison camp centered around Lake Mead, the only water source for miles, with escape meaning certain death and the camp being watched over by a surly, cigarette-smoking captain known colloquially as Mr. Sir.
 
. . . you don't anything worse than pre-existing segregation, . . .
We could get unlucky. Even with machine politics being taken over pretty much whole cloth, a communist regime is still going to be top down in many ways, and emphasizing true belief rather than competence in office, much more than our current system.

They could make clunk moves. For example, moving African-Americans to a separate agricultural, manufacturing, mining villages for their own good. And things could spiral downhill from there.
 
I personally like to test drive more hopeful possibilities. For example, communists like to talk about "thesis" and "antithesis" producing a "synthesis." Which is just a fancy spancy academic way of talking about a good healthy interchange between theory and practice.

And so, . . .

Maybe the communists are pro-union, including yes the sex workers' union. They allow consumer credit, but an end to most rip-offs. Get public housing largely right. And in general do a good job providing and organizing the necessities of life, while allowing even encouraging a cash economy for the non-necessities. And accept and push a vibrant and messy mixed economy.

Perhaps avoiding the major pitfalls is not all that likely, but still possible. :)
 
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We could get unlucky. Even with machine politics being taken over pretty much whole cloth, a communist regime is still going to be top down in many ways, and emphasizing true belief rather than competence in office, much more than our current system.

They could make clunk moves. For example, moving African-Americans to a separate agricultural, manufacturing, mining villages for their own good. And things could spiral downhill from there.

Sure, but it's hard to be worse than systems which already existed. If every black person in 1940 was killed, that's 13 million dead, about 9.8% of the population. Stalin deliberated targeted some ethnic groups for worse than the manufactured famine in Ukraine, and didn't kill nearly this number of people. And regarding African Americans, Southerners relied on them for many services. Communism in the US won't mean black liberation, but I doubt will mean black genocide. If the wind is blowing in a way that means a communist revolution, then some white Southerners (no doubt including names recognisable to anyone familiar with the US South 1890-1950) will be able to gather a lot of blacks under their banner, because these people knew how to gather whites under their banner and would want power against other whites.
 
OTL communist regimes wouldn't attempt to purge the majority of the population because they didn't have northwest europe/it's overseas idealistic streaks. A native and not soviet-imposed German communist regime would have acted like how I propose the US would.
 
OTL communist regimes wouldn't attempt to purge the majority of the population because they didn't have northwest europe/it's overseas idealistic streaks. A native and not soviet-imposed German communist regime would have acted like how I propose the US would.

From what I know about the pre-war SPD, German Revolution, USPD, and early KPD, this already seems like an extremely pessimistic take on a communist revolution. In the US, where I'm more familiar with the players and potential players (populists and machine leaders who would support socialism/communism if the wind was blowing right), this is even more ridiculous. American socialism would be based on Marxism as well as modifications to American conditions like the USSR incorporated elements of the Russian Empire, PR China did with the old Republic of China/Qing Dynasty, etc. In the case of the US (and also hypothetical communist Britain, France, Germany, etc.), that likely means a "guided democracy", enforced in part by some constitutional amendments hammered through during the revolution.

Please tell me why this should be otherwise, since the OTL American Socialist and Communist movements suggest assertions like the mass murder of Irish, Italians, Catholics and even blacks is nonsensical.
 
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