Communist revolution happens in the west instead of the east?

[RealNewsIsFakeNews]

What if, instead of communism blowing up in Russia and Eastern Europe, the communist revolution happens somewhere in Western Europe or more broadly, the western world? How would this affect Europe and the world as a whole?

 

[fasquardon]

What if, instead of communism blowing up in Russia and Eastern Europe, the communist revolution happens somewhere in Western Europe or more broadly, the western world? How would this affect Europe and the world as a whole?

To be honest, I struggle to imagine a communist revolution ever happening in a country that wasn't dominated by peasants. The closest to a successful revolution in OTL was Germany's, which was a long way from taking over the country and would never lead to what we know today as "Communism".

Indeed, what we know as "communism" is very much a product of Tsarism+Lenin+Civil War. So any other sort of violent socialist overthrow of the old order that happens before or instead of the Russian Revolution will look quite different.

fasquardon

 

[chankljp]

What if, instead of communism blowing up in Russia and Eastern Europe, the communist revolution happens somewhere in Western Europe or more broadly, the western world? How would this affect Europe and the world as a whole?

Well, wasn't that exactly what Karl Marx had predicted? With him fully expecting the communist revolution to take place in developed, industrialised capitalist economies instead of the underdeveloped parts of the world.

I guess that if for some reasons his predictions turned out to be correct, perhaps similar to the Kaiserreich TL, with the fall of a capitalist liberal democracy to a violent communist revolution, right-wing authoritarianism (Or at lease 'managed' democracies) will be much more widespread, since liberalism and giving the population too much say in government will be seem as a failure that invites in instablity.

 

[Bougnas]

Wouldn't a 'communist' Western Europe/World make this economic ideology successful? These countries were too strong and influential.

 

[GiantMonkeyMan]

To be honest, I struggle to imagine a communist revolution ever happening in a country that wasn't dominated by peasants. The closest to a successful revolution in OTL was Germany's, which was a long way from taking over the country and would never lead to what we know today as "Communism".

But in Russia, the revolutionary movement was strongest not in the rural regions but in the cities amongst the factory workers.

Wouldn't a 'communist' Western Europe/World make this economic ideology successful? These countries were too strong and influential.

They certainly wouldn't have had to crash course industrialisation and modernisation of agriculture.

 

[connorCD]

Communism was more prevalent in Russia because of the rather poor conditions in that nation and how the communist party would exploit that. Therefore, it was more ripe for revolution that most of the western world. Your best chance pre-USSR would probably be France with the Paris commune, but then again one could easily call that event "doomed from the start."

 

[NiGHTS]

Have the USSR not exist, but still have some sort of big economic collapse occur, then have political leaders still be really reluctant to change anything, and then eventually some sort of revolution could occur. Or at least socialists just get elected on a mass scale.

 

[fasquardon]

perhaps similar to the Kaiserreich TL

Kaiserreich is a decently well balanced game scenario, but as far as plausibility goes, I'd say it was a bit of a joke.

But in Russia, the revolutionary movement was strongest not in the rural regions but in the cities amongst the factory workers.

True, but Russia still wasn't a developed economy. All of the world's successful communist revolutions have been in modernizing peasant economies. Not only were the regimes of such economies less solid, but the peasants themselves played a key part in the success of the revolution.

I don't think this is an accident. Especially when within these countries, there is an oft repeated pattern where the Communists start by trying to mobilize the working class, get some success, are crushed mercilessly, and then (sooner or later) bounce back when they bring themselves to appeal to the peasants as well as the workers.

fasquardon

 

[mianfei]

Actually, a Communist revolution in one of the smaller Western European nations in the 1910s would have not been implausible had ruling classes there been more intransigent about democratisation.

In Sweden, for instance, the Conservative Party was as hostile to universal suffrage as the conservative parties of Eastern Europe, but because with Sweden’s cool summers (and possibly consequent greater early industrialisation due in part to greater comparative disadvantage in agriculture) the landowning class had much less power than, say, in Germany. As a result, the big industrial businesses in northwestern Europe were forced to compromise with the working class’ demands, as shown by Göran Therborn in his 1977 The Rule of Capital and the Rise of Democracy.

In fact, Therborn and Dietrich Rüschemeyer along with Geoff Eley (Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850-2000) and another book I read some time ago but cannot fish out, demonstrate that liberal democracy as it is presently known is as wholly proletarian as Marxism. So late as World War II, what are generally thought of as “democracies” almost always excluded racial minorities and before World War I only a few fishing- and forestry-based states allowed women to vote (and even these naturally more individuoegalitarian environments had given women the vote only within the previous quarter-century).

If a Communist revolution had taken place in one of the smaller European states, it would have definitively been overthrown if it had attempted to spread such a revolution in accordance with Marxist doctrine. However, if it had compromised with Marxist doctrine such states could simply have been ignored by the bigger powers.

 

[Dr.Kafka]

Actually, a Communist revolution in one of the smaller Western European nations in the 1910s would have not been implausible had ruling classes there been more intransigent about democratisation.

Austria could have likely seen a successful communist revolution after World War I if the SDAPÖ leadership had been more radical. In the early years of the First Republic period, workers' and soldiers' councils were popping up all over the republic. It's not hard to imagine a world where Bauer and Adler are less successful in tamping down communist support and revolution results. The success of a communist Austrian revolution may have ripple effects in Bavaria and Hungary, but I'm not sure the presence of a viable communist neighbor would have been sufficient to fix the problems underpinning the downfalls of those two states.

 

[DrakonFin]

I don't think this is an accident. Especially when within these countries, there is an oft repeated pattern where the Communists start by trying to mobilize the working class, get some success, are crushed mercilessly, and then (sooner or later) bounce back when they bring themselves to appeal to the peasants as well as the workers.

I believe avoiding this very dynamic has been used as an argument for land reform in several countries. Make the majority of the farmers owners of their plots of land, even if small, instead of landless labourers, and that can be expected to reduce the support for revolutionary movements in the countryside. This was exactly the route Finland took after our civil war, based on the Agrarian and Social Democrat ideas and platforms. The irony of this development is that the beginnings of a land reform, generally speaking, were already in the works before the attempted-revolution-cum-civil-war, and the process might have well taken a very similar route in a Finland that became independent after the Russian revolutions but never had the OTL abortive "Finnish revolution" at all.

 

[Anti-GrammarNazi]

If London, Paris and Berlin fall to a violent communist overthrow, there is a very real chance that something like the Business Plor actually happens in the US:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot

 

[RMcD94]

Very likely communism will be nothing like the USSR. Most of the population is educated and not under serfdom or equivalents.

I guess much more likely is the free market still exists for almost everything but workers own their factories. Corporations banned, coops are the only allowed form?

Every worker with a say.

 

[LNSS]

Kornilov coups Kerensky's government and persecutes the Bolsheviks. This causes the Left across Western countries to remain somewhat united, as it's not split into a pro-Moscow side and a more independent one. It also butterflies the First Red Scare in America, and Fascism is left without its most effective scapegoat.

Eventually, the whole house of cards built during the Gilded Age comes crashing down in a Great Depression analogue — the American Socialist Left, much stronger than IOTL, seizes power in the United States. With the beating heart of world capitalism now dismantled, and it's apparatus of power now in the hands of the proletariat, Socialism With American Characteristics is spread through the Americas by the CIA (Communist International Army). Britain and France also fall because why not.

 

[mianfei]

Kornilov coups Kerensky's government and persecutes the Bolsheviks. This causes the Left across Western countries to remain somewhat united, as it's not split into a pro-Moscow side and a more independent one. It also butterflies the First Red Scare in America, and Fascism is left without its most effective scapegoat.

If Kornilov had persecuted the Bolsheviks and set up a military dictatorship in Russia, the whole of interwar European politics would have been radically different (and another topic unto itself as there exist many possible trajectories for a military-ruled Russia after 1917).

Nonetheless, I do not see how it would have pressed workers in the rest of Europe to aim more strongly for Communist revolution, unless it prolonged the war and left the Allied Powers in much deeper trouble in the treasury and on the battlefield. Even then there is no certainty Communist revolution would be the long-term result: Britain, France and especially Italy all had forces who would have fought as strongly against Communism as the Po Valley landlords and major industrialists fought for Mussolini a few years later.

Were the Central Powers to win after a military-ruled Russia pulls out of the war and loses its border territories to independence, its possible that Germany would have tried to prevent the democratisation that occurred in Britain and other nations. This of itself could have led to a Communist revolution if empowered conservative forces were too intransigent, but the possibility is remote and potential trajectories many.

 

[fasquardon]

Nonetheless, I do not see how it would have pressed workers in the rest of Europe to aim more strongly for Communist revolution

I think he's more arguing that the lack of a successful Russian Revolution means that the OTL split between democratic socialists and socialists embracing the new Leninist path doesn't happen. Of course, the problem is, Communism as we know it starts with Lenin, so while the Socialists are more united in this sort of scenario (meaning they are at least a decade ahead of their OTL trajectory), none of them will be Communists.

I believe avoiding this very dynamic has been used as an argument for land reform in several countries. Make the majority of the farmers owners of their plots of land, even if small, instead of landless labourers, and that can be expected to reduce the support for revolutionary movements in the countryside. This was exactly the route Finland took after our civil war, based on the Agrarian and Social Democrat ideas and platforms. The irony of this development is that the beginnings of a land reform, generally speaking, were already in the works before the attempted-revolution-cum-civil-war, and the process might have well taken a very similar route in a Finland that became independent after the Russian revolutions but never had the OTL abortive "Finnish revolution" at all.

Yes! Land reform is as underestimated as education is in its role for pushing development. Had Russia gotten its land reform right when Alexander was freeing the serfs, it would have transitioned out of the peasant economy stage much faster and likely never been at serious risk of revolution.

fasquardon

 

[Dr.Kafka]

Communism as we know it starts with Lenin, so while the Socialists are more united in this sort of scenario (meaning they are at least a decade ahead of their OTL trajectory), none of them will be Communists.

I don't think this quite matches up with current or contemporary conceptions of communism. Leninism as we know it starts with Lenin, but it's not as if there weren't contemporary anti-Leninist communists. It would be hard to argue that Rosa Luxemburg was not a communist, yet she was no Leninist. I mean, communism is right in the name of "council communism," which was the dominant strain of communism in several of the countries mentioned in this thread. If you were looking at a divide within communism, it would be more accurate to look at the divide between Marxist and non-Marxist communism

 

[mianfei]

I think he's more arguing that the lack of a successful Russian Revolution means that the OTL split between democratic socialists and socialists embracing the new Leninist path doesn't happen.

Such a split not occurring would make Communist revolution more and not less likely, partly because if ruling classes became less willing to reform. This might well have happened had the gold standard survived until the advent of lithophile metallurgy in its modern form in the 1920s. Fully developed lithophile metallurgy would create downward pressure on Enriched World wages because lithophile metals:

1. are many orders of magnitude more abundant than easily smelted chalcophile metals and would thus have replaced them wherever possible
2. form from hundreds of millions of years of intense weathering and are therefore concentrated in the ancient lands of the Unenriched World and cratonic parts of the Tropical World

However, my main point was that without World War One forced who would have used all possible power against a Communist revolution would have been powerful enough to make workers cautious (at the very least) about overthrowing the prewar political system.