A Red Dawn: American Revolution and Rebirth
- Thread starter Aelita
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- 1930s out of date reds! retconned
Glad someone did this, but you've placed the parties a bit further right than I would've expected them to be. Additionally, the Political Compass has some serious flaws as an instrument of analysis (although I still have it in my sig because it's the best political spectrum ranking I'm aware of that actually has an attached test). From the election guide I was envisioning something more like this:
Where "Social Right" is right-wing social authoritarianism (e.g. in favour of union of church and state and/or racial segregation, with Hitler being an extreme example) and "Social Left" is left-wing social authoritarianism (e.g. in favour of separation of church and state and/or the tearing down of racial barriers, with Stalin being an extreme example). It's not enough just to distinguish between regulations and lack thereof; it's also important to distinguish the purpose of the regulations.
Of course this is pretty meaningless without historical graphs of the positions of the parties, but I still don't have as much information on their historical positions as I'd like to have before I begin making a graph.
edit: having thought this through a bit I might have actually put the Socialists a bit below the SEU but I'm too lazy to remake the graph right now. Maybe later.
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Honestly, I don't think these things can really portray things very well. Maybe easier on a three dimensional projection. Even on a 'honest' spectrum of political possibilities, the American, and even 'Western capitalist democratic' spectrum is practically quite narrow and small.
Looks kind of like a pro-"Golden Mean Fallacy" of politics. Honestly, that's the problem with these charts; they're all searching to privilege a certain strata of political thought over others, graphically, and I am quite the partisan (though hopefully not, awfully sectarian).
Also:
There were was a bureaucratization and institutionalization in some places of the Spanish Revolution in collectives where anarchists directed more 'remote' and 'less enthusiastic' workers to the class struggle. Is it one of the best historical examples? Of course, and we should recognize it as such. But history isn't the same thing as canonization.
Never fear though, because we are discussing more strongly developing the anarchism of the American Revolution, and really giving some umph behind the flag established under it. (I'm personally thinking an "League of American Libertarians" and "Syndicalist Federation of Solidarity" could be a kind of "American CNT-FAI" strongly participating in parts of the revolution, especially in its 'revolutionary heartland', the Communes of Chicagoland, the OTL Steel Belt, and Greater New York.
Also:
There were was a bureaucratization and institutionalization in some places of the Spanish Revolution in collectives where anarchists directed more 'remote' and 'less enthusiastic' workers to the class struggle. Is it one of the best historical examples? Of course, and we should recognize it as such. But history isn't the same thing as canonization.
Never fear though, because we are discussing more strongly developing the anarchism of the American Revolution, and really giving some umph behind the flag established under it. (I'm personally thinking an "League of American Libertarians" and "Syndicalist Federation of Solidarity" could be a kind of "American CNT-FAI" strongly participating in parts of the revolution, especially in its 'revolutionary heartland', the Communes of Chicagoland, the OTL Steel Belt, and Greater New York.
This is true. On the Rational Spectrum the mainstream of American politics are represented in the pink area:
But yeah adding another dimension probably helps somewhat. Even economics are pretty difficult to categorise on a simple left to right scale; for example, Hitler's economics would be pretty difficult to characterise because he had a pretty strong welfare state for those who weren't Jews or other minorities which implies socialistic capitalism but he also had strong union between business and government which implies corporatistic capitalism. He definitely was not laissez-faire, which is what's generally considered as being between the two (and is on the Rational Spectrum as well), but classifying him as either an economic left-winger or an economic right-winger would be massively oversimplifying his policies, in my opinion.
@wolf_brother: That scale still has one of the exact same flaws as the Political Compass, namely it assumes only one degree of economic regulation is possible. This is obviously not the case - corporatism is economic regulation, too, but it's in exactly the opposite direction as socialism. However it's probably a better representation than the Political Compass is.
edit: lol beaten by Primus
Actually, its from a game. Prevalence refers to the number of game countries that have that form of government.
I was using it as the best I knew of. Thanks for showing me this one.
OkayFrom the election guide I was envisioning something more like this:
Where "Social Right" is right-wing social authoritarianism (e.g. in favour of union of church and state and/or racial segregation, with Hitler being an extreme example) and "Social Left" is left-wing social authoritarianism (e.g. in favour of separation of church and state and/or the tearing down of racial barriers, with Stalin being an extreme example). It's not enough just to distinguish between regulations and lack thereof; it's also important to distinguish the purpose of the regulations.
Of course this is pretty meaningless without historical graphs of the positions of the parties, but I still don't have as much information on their historical positions as I'd like to have before I begin making a graph.
edit: having thought this through a bit I might have actually put the Socialists a bit below the SEU but I'm too lazy to remake the graph right now. Maybe later.
I'm not so sure. I'd consider myself one, and my views aren't THAT out of touch, and Europe was arguably dominated by them in the 70s....
No problem.
Opps, I meant democratic socialist countries. I don't know if Europe in the 70s really qualifies as democratic socialism though. It seems more like socialistic capitalism.
Fair enough, although I'd bet those places didn't do as well as the self-organized ones. Nevertheless, for all it's faults, for all that it happened in one of the worst possible environments for it, it can claim something very few ideologies can: The IRL implementation very closely approximated the claims it made in theory.
Yay! Anarchism always was more important than it's usually given credit for. And since one of the PODs is to avoid one of the biggest mistakes of the "Propaganda of the Deed" phase, it should be stronger ITTL than OTL.
Money
One thing that hasn't really be dealt with it seems (I probably missed this) is that the world is increasingly *socialist* in the most literal sense. For this to be the case, it means that the productive forces need expanding.
We need a good, updated version of the standard of living, what's happening with economic development, etc etc. This all leads to the declining use of 'money' as opposed too, say, labor-power time credits that cannot be traded or marketized, can not be freely accumulated for things like like currency trading is today.
Taking a few cues from Venezuela I noticed that the issue of inflation there is 'bad' but...not nearly as destructive socially because so many of the working class receive goods 'in kind', free or subsidized distribution of basic commodities.
In a socialist N. America, the amazing productive powers organized originally by capitalism would be put to use to do things like elimnate unemployment, provide production for use-value, not surplus value, etc etc. It seems that this would mitigate the returen of nasty-capitalism in any form in the post 1960s period where different parties seek to govern...governing what..exactly? If more and more decisions are made by defacto syndicates of Solidarity, local government, planning boards, the we are talking about a weaker and weaker state on it's way toward communism.
Just a thought.
David Walters
Marxists Internet Archive
One thing that hasn't really be dealt with it seems (I probably missed this) is that the world is increasingly *socialist* in the most literal sense. For this to be the case, it means that the productive forces need expanding.
We need a good, updated version of the standard of living, what's happening with economic development, etc etc. This all leads to the declining use of 'money' as opposed too, say, labor-power time credits that cannot be traded or marketized, can not be freely accumulated for things like like currency trading is today.
Taking a few cues from Venezuela I noticed that the issue of inflation there is 'bad' but...not nearly as destructive socially because so many of the working class receive goods 'in kind', free or subsidized distribution of basic commodities.
In a socialist N. America, the amazing productive powers organized originally by capitalism would be put to use to do things like elimnate unemployment, provide production for use-value, not surplus value, etc etc. It seems that this would mitigate the returen of nasty-capitalism in any form in the post 1960s period where different parties seek to govern...governing what..exactly? If more and more decisions are made by defacto syndicates of Solidarity, local government, planning boards, the we are talking about a weaker and weaker state on it's way toward communism.
Just a thought.
David Walters
Marxists Internet Archive
wolf_brother
Banned
Rereading this, I just realized that the promised map of the UASR including the various autonomous socialist republic was never posted 
We're exploring the development of "polycentricism" in formal government and constitutionalism as well as decentralization and devolution of the centrally planned economy after the TTL "Third" Left (post-Lenin left called itself the "New Left" vice the "Old Left" of the original DeLeonists and Second Intl politics) leads to a reinvigoration of workers' councils, neighborhood assemblies, and begins the immense task of integrating newly-developed telex and computer information technology into real time organizational tasks of the socialist democratic society. The Internet in America ITTL perhaps begins as SOLIDNET for Solidarity Net, with ARPANET being a small contribution, basically inspired by the networks that were in progress of being developed by Allende's administration in Chile.
ITTL, social networking technology and software is developed organically as part of the process of thorough grassroots, spontaneist, participative democratic and social planning initiatives.
So yes, the state will "wither", though not necessarily automatically or without any struggle. The class struggle between the proletariat and hierarchical bourgeois or bougeoisoid relations and their basis in privileged and bureaucratically organized groups or institutions remains, and is the leading task of revolutionaries even after the social revolution expropriates the old bourgeoisie and rips down their bourgeois state apparatus.
P.S. Jello made an old chart and figures for (adjusted) GDP, HDI, GINI, etc. The UASR in 2010 is undoubtably the leading world economy and significantly more egalitarian that the most equal of Scandanavian "welfare states." Something ends up developing among the lower level institutions that later ends up in many ways being a realization of something like Michael Albert's participatory economics. Kibbutzim are highly communistic from the outset, and urban communes to organize many provisions of goods and services automatically or in-kind for workers in the factories. The Communal Councils are some of the most active socialist institutions following the revolution. There are markets and still a currency, though I imagine its quite limited in use. There is little to buy, and I imagine the currency is dispensed both by place of work and by community as a kind of luxury stipend or something.
Rereading this, I just realized that the promised map of the UASR including the various autonomous socialist republic was never posted
Would this be for 2010, 0r 1936-ish? Because right now there is, and correct me if I'm wrong, only the NYC ASR and the Black Hills ASR.
I was especially curious about the Black Hills ASR, as given the kinds of powers that the national and (relevant) provincial governments seem to be devolving to it, would it effectively become a province in its own right, including the right to send representatives to Washington-Debs D.C.?
This all sounds great and I am a huge fan of this timeline. I have always wondered how a socialist country would prevent stagnation and this timeline is a wonderful example of a well-functioning democratic a socialist country. It would really be nice to have a update sometime soon though, as the last one was quite a while ago, and I don't want to see this tl itself stagnate!
Scipio
Scipio
We're still developing the administrative-federal system. There's not a strict 1:1 correlation for United States states versus UASR union republics. Furthermore, several states are intra-federalized, such as the Texan Socialist Federal Soviet Republic (we're considering California as well). Other states may be amalgamated, like the States of South Dakota and North Dakota, which become the Socialist Republic of Dakota. Though state governments, especially in the South, where the LDP or even the DRP are decently represented, stray less from the classic constitutional model (though the Basic Law guarantees a "democratic, socialist, and revolutionary form of government" to all inhabitants of the UASR): there's still a "State of Georgia", though increasingly the more conservative-yet-modern distinction is "Commonwealth". The District of Colombia becomes a proper federal district, with the DC Greater Metro Area being ceded to it, and becoming quite the proletarianized and industrialized model socialist capital (despite suggestions to move it to Chicago, which is too close to potentially hostile Dominion of Canada, still an integral part of the British Empire as of the revolution). Not to mention the various indigenous ASRs corresponding to OTL reservations (sufficiently large ones might later be considered for union-republic-dom).
Also, union-republics lose state power to both the federal government and the revolutionary institutions like Solidarity and the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the State Planning Commission, as well as sub-union-republic entities like soviet constituencies and the various communal and collective forms.
There's also a Second Mexican Revolution in 1933-34, so I have to consider how the American revolutionaries will impact and influence the Mexican formations.
Oh, and I don't know if Washington's name will be very Second Revolution. There's a lot of Haywood, Browder, Huey Long, DeLeon, Debs, etc. If you're dead, your name is up for being assigned to things.
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