Reds: A Revolutionary Timeline

Introduction

This timeline will focus on the events and causes leading up to a successful socialist revolution in the United States in the year 1933, and the impacts that such an earth shattering change had on the course of world events. While this timeline will note all of the massive changes that occurred (and also, how much really did not change), it will not begin at the point of divergence. Instead, we will start with a glimpse of the present, in the form of a look at a popular television show at the turn of the 21st century:

The Committee's Office

The brainchild of PBS 7's Aaron Sorkin, The Committee's Office was a weekly television drama that detailed the lives and work of the men and women in the Central Committee's senior staff. The senior staff of the Central Committee are responsible for the unglamorous but crucially necessary work that keeps the government of the UASR functioning. Often criticized for having an overly optimistic picture of the inner functions of socialist democracy at the union level, it remained a huge critical and viewer success on public television for eight seasons before drawing to a close.*

Here follows an excerpt from a novelization of the pilot episode:

So begins another day at the Committee's Office. With all of the activity in the lobby this morning, it is easy to forget that this is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the seat of the All-Union Central Committee for the Union of American Socialist Republics, and not a busy subway terminal. Amidst the hussle and bussle of the early morning activity, a stately man, advanced in age, walks briskly past the security guards at the entrance. He moves quickly through the lobby, weaving past a busy clerical worker as he walks towards the receptionist's office.

As he passes the receptionist terminal, the attendant says "Nice morning, Comrade McGarry."

"We'll take care of that in a hurry, won't we Mike?" the man replies with dry sarcasm.

"Yes sir," the attendant chuckles.

The man continues his brisk pace into the inner workings of the west wing of the old Pennsylvania House. He is Leo McGarry, the Chief of Staff to the Central Committee, and a personal friend of the First Secretary.

He quickly pushes through a set of white double doors, into the inner office. A woman runs past him quickly, pausing only momentarily to exclaim, "Don't kill the messenger, Leo." "Oh why the Hell not, Bonnie?" he replies as he grabs the morning's memos. He passes quickly through the press office, making his routine morning acquaintances before calling out for his deputy. "Josh!" he yells.

Josh's blond assistant responds instead. "Morning Leo," she says.

"Hey Donna," Leo responds. "Is he in yet?"

She pauses from stirring her coffee, looking up at him coyly. "Yeah..."

"Can you get him for me?" he replies, clearly irritated.

She turns around in her seat and yells "Josh!"

"Thanks..." he sighs

"I heard it's broken," she abruptly changes the subject.

"You heard wrong," he replies, barely pausing from reading the memo.

"I heard it's-"

"It's a mild sprain," he interrupts, "he'll be back later today." Anticipating her next question, he continues explaining as he walks towards Josh's office: "He was swerving to miss a tree and he failed."

Leo walks though Josh's open door just as Josh finishes his phone conversation. "How many Cubans exactly have crammed themselves into these fishing boats?"

Josh responds as he busily jots down a note, "Well, it's important to understand, Leo, that these aren't exactly fishing boats. You hear the word "fishing boat" and it conjures up an image of, well, a boat first of all. What the Cubans are on would charitably be described as rafts."

"I get it. How many of them are there exactly?"

"We don't know."

"What time did they leave then?"

"We don't know."

"Do we know when they get here?"

"No"

"True or false: If I stood on high ground in Key West with a good pair of binoculars I'd be as informed as I am right now."

"That's true..."

"Well that's the Foreign Office's money well spent then."

"Well, having any sort of diplomatic relations with the old regime in-exile that's occupying Cuba, we might have a better idea."

"You look like Hell, by the way," Leo sighs as he begins the walk toward his office.

"Yes I do. Listen, Leo, did he say anything about it?" Josh asks timidly as he follows Leo.

"Did he say anything?!" Leo cries, "the First Secretary is pissed as hell at you Josh, and so am I."

"I know," he protests.

"We've gotta work with these people, and how the Hell do you get off strutting your--"

"I know"

"Caldwell is a good man," Leo scolds.

"Caldwell wasn't there!"

"I'm saying you take everyone on the Christian front, dump them into one big basket and label them stupid! We need these people."

"We do not need these people..."

"Josh, if this minority government can't get at least some votes from the Left Democrats, then we can't govern. You know we have a whole lot better chance dealing with them than the authoritarian statists in the Socialist Party."

So that's a little teaser for this timeline. Hopefully, I'll be able to make periodic updates on it throughout this week, but you'll just have to savor this much for now. I will give you this morsel to chew on: the POD is September 5, 1901. *Basically The West Wing, but with red flags, in case you didn't catch the reference. Excerpt

A selection of posts from the alternatehistory.com discussion titled "WI: McKinley Assassinated in 1901", dated May 1, 2009.

Quote: Originally Posted by Red American So I was just reading through The Daily Worker today when I found a very interesting article. Apparently, when a family in Detroit, Michigan SR were digging through their attic looking at old family heirlooms, they stumbled upon the diary of their great-great grandfather, a son of Polish immigrants named Leon Czolgosz.

Apparently, Leon's diary had confessed that he had attempted to assassinate the President of the old United States in early September 1901. He made his first attempt on September 5th, but was unable to get close to the old imperialist. He was going to try to catch him on the next day of the exposition, but he was arrested that night by a racist Buffalo cop who had a grudge against Poles and other immigrants.

So what would our wrld look like today if Leon had managed to assassinate that bourgeois dog?

Quote: Originally Posted by SeriousSam Well, that's interesting. If I remember correctly, McKinley's VP at the time was a noted progressive... I forget his name though. Anyway, he's not a very imprtant person in history, so I don't think you'll find too much on Wiki about him.

Quote: Originally Posted by LeninsBeard I think his name was Theodore Roosevelt... *wikis*

Yup, Theodore Roosevelt. Apparently, he was a politician of some progressive sympathies at the time, and McKinley picked him for his deputy because it would help him fight off the influence of the populists and the unions. The corporatist establishment kind of marginalized him afterwards, and he faded into relative obscurity.

If Mickinely were assasinated, then Roosevelt would become president, whcih would definitely give a boost to the progressive movement. While it might lead to short term gains for the working classes, ultimately it might butterfly away the Red May revolution in 33. It was the complete defeat of the progressive wings within the Republican and Democratic parties that ultimately gave the Socialists the long-term support base they needed.

Some Notable Events, 1901-1904

October 1901: The Social Democratic Party of America, a relatively weak third party at the time, unites with dissident elements of DeLeon's Socialist Labor Party to form the Socialist Party of America. Though the party contained elements ranging from revolutionary left-wing socialists to more moderate social democratic reformists, it adopts a largely left-wing, industrial unionist platform.

May 12, 1902: The Coal Strike of 1902. 150,000 miners in the anthracite coal fields of western Pennsylvania from United Mine Workers of America go out on strike, demanding shorter hours, higher pay and increased control over their workplaces. By June 2, the Coal Strike deepens as maintenance and clerical workers affiliated with the mines join the strike in solidarity. While owners originally welcomed a moderate strike lessen the effects of over supply, the situation turns serious by August. The owners appeal to the federal government for aid in defeating the strikers, as the Pennsylvania National Guard is not sufficient to maintain security of the mines and suppress the strike. In October, President McKinley deploys units of the US Army to suppress the strike. Dozens of miners are killed in the resulting engagement, and by the early November the strike is over, with the miners accepting a modest pay cut in exchange for keeping their jobs. These events anger progressives within the Republican Party, driving many into the political wilderness.

January 1903: In the aftermath of the Coal Strike, leadership of the still recovering UMWA shifts dramatically to the left. The Union affiliates with the Industrial Workers of the World and the nascent Socialist Party.

April 1903: After Columbia rejects the canal treaty, President McKinley sends Marines to support the Panamanian independence movement. The new Republic of Panama is established as a protectorate of the United States. Construction on canal across the Isthmus begins late in the year.

November 17, 1903: Elsewhere, the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party splits into two factions, the Bolsheviks (Majority) and Mensheviks (Minority). Scarcely a whimper of this change is heard in the US, even among radical circles, until half way through the next year.

May 1, 1904: US Army engineers begin work on the Panama Canal. Elsewhere, May Day demonstrations by labor groups swell to record numbers, beating expectations.

The 1904 US Presidential Election

McKinley, following precedent, chooses not to seek a third term in the White House. At the Republican National Convention that year, the solidly conservative Senator Charles W. Fairbanks is selected as the Presidential Nominee with little opposition. William Howard Taft is selected as the VP nominee.

At the Democratic National Convention, Alton B. Barker and Henry G. Davis are selected as the Presidential and Vice Presidential nominees, respectively.

The Socialists nominate Eugene V. Debs of Indiana and Benjamin Hanford respectively.

After a productive campaign season, the election results in a near landslide victory for Fairbanks. However, this election also serves to place the Socialists on the national electoral scene.

Other parties to contend the election were the Prohibition Party and the Populist Party

Results* Charles W. Fairbanks (R)...... 7,415,312 votes (336 electoral votes) Alton B. Barker (D)...... 4,987,123 (140) Eugene V. Debs (S)...... 705,235 (0) Silas Comfort Swallow (Proh)....248,482 (0) Thomas E. Watson (P)...... 114,070 (0)

*results unlikely to accurately reflect vote counts, due to widespread voting fraud by dominant regional parties

Some Notable Events, 1905-1908

March 4, 1905: Charles W. Fairbanks takes the office of President of the United States. General consensus among the Republican Party elite is that he will carry on the legacy of McKinley. He soon bears out this, authorizing the largest peacetime expansion of the US Navy in American history. More modest are expansions in the size of the US standing army, which is still pitifully small by European standards.

April 6, 1905: The New York state Supreme Court invalidates the state's 8 hour day law in the case Lochner v. New York. In a rare show of cooperation, both the local AF of L affiliates and the IWW affiliates agree to a combined protest and strike over the case.

February 28, 1906: Upton Sinclair publishes the novel The Jungle. In spite of the widespread clamor about the conditions of meatpacking plants, little is done by the government about it other than a few minor committee meetings.

April 18, 1906: San Francisco is ravaged by an earthquake on a magnitude unseen in American history. 3000 are killed, and over 200,000 left homeless in one of the worst natural disasters yet witnessed.

July 1907: The United Teamsters of America successfully forms a dual union, defeating the attempts of AF of L president Samuel Gompers to contain industrial unionist insurgency. This defection is a major victory in the IWW's "boring from within" strategy. The craft union International Brotherhood of Teamsters soon dissolves into the UTA after president Daniel J. Tobin resigns.

October 24, 1907: Everything is normal on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange

February 8, 1908: the International Union of United Brewery Workmen of America votes to affiliate with the IWW, in yet another defeat of the increasingly reactionary AF of L.

May 1908: Facing political oblivion, the Populists vote to fold into the surging Socialist Party of America.

The 1908 General Election

The Republican Party nominates Fairbanks to a second term. He faces off against the Democratic Party's William Jennings Bryan in his third bid for the presidency.

Presidential Results

Charles W. Fairbanks (R)...... 7,093,132 (321) William Jennings Bryan (D)...... 6,032,171 (163) Eugene V. Debs (S)...... 1,432,400 (0) Eugene Wilder Chafin (Proh)...... 248,482 (0)

Congressional Results

Republican Party...... 213 Democratic Party...... 176 Socialist Party...... 1

When the votes are tallied, it becomes very clear that the rules of the game have changed. While the Socialists had earlier been met with scorn by nativeborn elections, this election resulted in a massive influx of new members into the Socialist Party base, as well as dramatic increases in industrial unionization. Notably, the Socialists gain their first entry into the US Congress, with the capture of the newly admitted state of Oklahoma's at-large district in a closely tied three-way race.

The Democratic Party's attempt to appeal to populist sentiments is once again rebuffed, and the party fared poorly outside of its strongholds in the South.

Excerpt from American political scientist Louis Hartz's work The Socialist Tradition in America[1]

"Unions and Robber Barons"

...The socialist tradition's triumph among the American proletariat was not, as it might appear, the Red May Revolution of 1933. Such a victory, bold and obvious as it is, would be entirely impossible without a far more subtle but ultimately more earth shattering development. That small but vital turning point can be found with the eclipse of Samuel Gompers and the AF of L, and the rise of "Big Bill" Haywood and Solidarity[2].

1912 would prove to be a year of revolutionary importance in the American socialist movement. February would bring Gomper's capitulation, with the AF of L craft unions voting to fold into the American section of the Industrial Workers of the World, which would soon reorganize itself into the modern industrial union Solidarity which we know today.

May's Socialist Party [National] Convention brought the attendance of not only the largest national delegation of working class socialists, but also included many of the nation's leading liberal egalitarian intellectuals[3]...The renomination of Debs also brought the ratification of the most coherent socialist platform yet seen, narrowly defeating the moderate factions conciliatory attempts to bourgeois respectability. The election turnout in the fall would be a high water mark for socialist turnout for years to come.

[1] Author real, but the work is fiction. Sort of a historical in-joke. In our world, Louis Hartz published a work The Liberal Tradition, which defended American exceptionalism and championed the triumph of liberal democratic values in America.

[2] Officially named "International Workers' Solidarity Union", it is the successor organization to the AF of L and the American section of the IWW.

[3] Academic terminology describing the Progressives

The Internationale

On August 1st, 1912, Solidarity and the Socialist Party of America adopted an official lyrical translation of the French socialist anthem "L'Internationale". In time, the Internationale would come to be not only the anthem of working class struggles across the nation, but would eventually be enshrined in the 1934 Basic Law of the Union of American Socialist Republics as "the national anthem of the American workers, in solidarity with the workers of the world".

The adopted lyrics represent a compromise between different traditions and nationalities within the American working class. Immigrants from European countries, especially Ireland or Scotland, were much more familiar with the British English version of the anthem, translated anonymously near the end of the 19th Century. However, native born Anglo-Americans tended to favor Charles H. Kerr's translation made famous by the Wobblie's Little Red Songbook. Naturally, the eventual compromise needed to strike a balance between the many ethnic groups within the American working class.

Lyrics

Arise ye workers from your slumbers Arise ye prisoners of want For reason in revolt now thunders And at last ends the age of cant. Away with all your superstitions Servile masses arise, arise We'll change henceforth the old tradition And spurn the dust to win the prize.

Refrain 'Tis the final conflict Let each stand in his place The Internationale shall be the human race. So comrades, come rally The last fight let us face The Internationale unites the human race

Behold them seated in their glory The kings of mine and rail and soil! What have you read in all their story, But how they plundered toil? Fruits of the workers' toil are buried In strongholds of the idle few In working for their restitution the people only claim their due.

Refrain

No more deluded by reaction On tyrants only we'll make war The soldiers too will take strike action They'll break ranks and fight no more And if those cannibals keep trying To sacrifice us to their pride They soon shall hear the bullets flying We'll shoot the generals on our own side.

Refrain

No savior from on high delivers No faith have we in prince or peer Our own right hand the chains must shiver Chains of hatred, greed and fear E'er the thieves will out with their booty And give to all a happier lot. Each at the forge must do their duty And we'll strike while the iron is hot.

Refrain

The 1912 Presidential Elections

1912 proved to be a decidedly turbulent year at the conventions. The divisions within the Republican Party would prove to be irreconcilable. The arch-conservative Taft secured the nomination, which would prove to be the last straw for progressives within the Republican party. What had once been a steady trickle of progressives into the Socialist Party turned into a torrent after the defeat of Senator Robert LaFollete's candidacy. Though Taft won without trickery, LaFollete's supporters and other progressives within the party, having endured 12 years of domination by the conservative faction, finally quit the party outright.

After a long and bitter convention, the Democratic Party finally agreed to nominate House Speaker Champ Clark of Missouri. Champ Clark, a noted liberal within the party had nonetheless managed to maintain unity within the Democratic Party during his short tenure as Speaker of the House.

Amidst much enthusiasm, the Socialist Party National Convention nearly unanimously nominated Eugene V. Debs once again for President. The sense of optimism at the convention was profound; many thought that Debs might even have a chance this time.

Results:

William H. Taft (R)...... 6,296,284 (306)

Champ Clark (D)...... 4,122,721 (173)

Eugene V. Debs (S)...... 3,486,242 (52)

The 1912 Congressional Election

US House of Representatives[1]

Democratic Party...... 274 (+44) Republican Party...... 141 (-24) Socialist Party...... 18 (+17) Independent...... 2 (+2)

US Senate[2]

Democratic Party...... 51 (+7) Republican Party...... 43 (-9) Progressive/Socialist Party...... 2 (+2)

In spite of setbacks in the Presidential office, 1912 was heralded as a return of good fortune for the Democratic Party. Long the out party, the Democrats now controlled both houses of the Congress with a rather commanding lead.

The Republican Party was now at its lowest point since the post-Reconstruction electoral disaster of 1876, and also faced the high-profile defection of a large cohort of its progressive members, including the Senator Robert M. LaFollete (WI) to the the Socialist camp.

The Progressive/Socialist alliance gained another seat from Washington with the election of Maxwell Poindexter to the Senate on a joint Socialist/Progressive ticket.

[1] House seats were reapportioned for the 1912 election, increasing the size of the body to its now fixed size of 435 voting members. Hence, the change spread does not equal zero in this election.

[2] At this point, roughly half of all states used some form of electoral component in the selection of their Senators, though only a handful had a true direct election for Senators. Unless the Constitution is amended, this state of affairs is likely to persist.

Some Things Never Change

It is a sweltering September day on the Kent State University campus, as hungover and exhausted college students gratefully retreat into the air-conditioned confines of Norman Thomas Hall. Noon is far too early to be discussing modern history, they collectively mumble; but it's better than being outside, and the comfy chairs in the lecture hall will make napping easy.

For the professor, today is another great day in the academy, only slightly spoiled by ungrateful students. Dr. Demetriades quickly hangs up his fedora on the coat rack before scrawling on the white board in bold "WORLD WAR I". There's a murmur of groans from the lecture hall; World War I was so last century. The professor turns to the class and jokes, "I'm sure I can confidently assume that you've all read Chapter 14 of Zinn's People's History and the first three chapters of Hobshawn's Age of Extremes that I assigned on Friday..."[1]

It's a tough crowd for the professor-cum-comedian. He points out at random to one of the students, and asks "Can you tell me at least one of the principle causes of World War I?"

The spiky haired youth scoffs, "Shit no. This stuff is boring, reading about 'historical matrimony' and stuff."

"Historical materialism" the professor corrects him. "It may be boring to you, but these events aren't just dusty pages in a book--they actually happened, and they continue to affect where we are today."

The youth shrugs, clearly not caring.

"Okay then, what would you rather be learning about, then?"

"I dunno, something exciting, like when General Patton[2] led the Bonus Army to take Debs D.C. during the Revolution. Something like that, you'know."

The professor resists the urge to correct the young man about how Patton was only a Lieutenant Colonel at the time, and that the 'Bonus Army' and the many volunteers, militiamen and deserters that marched with them had restyled itself as the Red Army months before, and that Debs D.C. was still called Washington at the time. Instead, he points out the fact that should be so obvious: "But without his experiences in the trenches of the First World War, Patton would have just been any other career military officer. He'd have been with MacArthur shooting the strikers in Pennsylvania, not defending them. We're reading his war diaries later this week--it's all right on the syllabus.

"We study history because it tells us about how we got where we are today. This is why I can say that the German Reich's decision to build a railroad from Berlin to Baghdad is just as important to American history as the Second Revolution was. The millions of American soldiers who died in the mud of Northern France from 1914 to 1918 radicalized American workers at home and vindicated the Socialists opposition to the war. That is why I'm asking you, humbly, to please pay attention in my class. College education may be free in this country, unlike in the Anglo-French Union, but that doesn't mean you should waste this opportunity."

The professor stepped off his soapbox, and turned to the whiteboard, and busily sketched down some important bullet points.

[1] CaptainZinn's A People's History of America, the counterpart in this timeline to his real A People's History of the United States, and Eric Hobshawn's The Age of Extremes: The Short 20th Century. Very good books, by the way.

[2] Yes, that George Patton.

Like the Snows of Yesteryear…

President Taft's 1914 State of the Union address talked of "peace and prosperity in our time", and promised that his administration's policies would be directed towards promoting those ends for the nation. As the thunderous applause in the halls of Congress died down, the grim execution of this promise lay but a few months away.

On 28 June, a group of Serbian nationalists carried out ill-planned and ill-conceived assassination in the streets of Sarajevo. Their target, Austro-Hungarian heir apparent Franz Ferdinand, was fatally shot that afternoon by the young Serb Gavrileau Princips. Austria's rapid mobilization to punish independent Serbia soon triggered a Russian mobilization. France soon followed, calling up reserves in preparation for a general European war.

Germany, the growing titan of central Europe mobilized in response to the threats against her ally Austria. Diplomatic efforts to halt the plunge towards war soon became mere token formalities given the nature of the revanchist regime in France, and as ultimatums were left unheeded a general state of war across the whole of Europe followed.

Germany soon invades the Low Countries as part of the later infamous Schlieffen Plan. Their aim is to move mass columns of troops across France's undefended Belgian border to outflank French static defenses, followed by a deep salient penetration to capture Paris and end the war in the west. The violation of Belgian neutrality provokes Britain to declare war on Germany. The Schlieffen Plan would also export this European war across the Atlantic, to Canada and even the United States, which hitherto had always committed itself to general neutrality to European affairs.

According to the 1912 Toronto Treaty, passed in a closed session of the US Senate under President Fairbanks[1], the United States would stand in solidarity with the UK if ever the neutrality of a British ally is violated resulting in a state of invasion or occupation. While the clauses of this treaty allow the US to remain neutral in most possible European conflagrations, the language of the treaty clearly applies to the Belgian question. President Taft, in a speech to a joint session of Congress argues that the terms of the treaty make the US at a de facto state of war with the German Reich.

A resolution formalizing the state of war is soon passed by a razor-thin margin, with the Socialist/Progressives standing in firm opposition along with a few dissident members of the Democratic Party and the last remainder of the progressive wing of the Republican Party. While the US is now officially at war, the President, as well as leaders of both parties agree to leave the question of the American level of participation in the war up to the new Congress after the November election; a necessary compromise to ensure the passage of the resolution.

The Schlieffen Plan requires that the French military be committed elsewhere to ensure its resolution. In a rare coincidence, French war planners oblige their German counterparts with General War Plan XVII. Under the mobilization scheme of the plan, the French military would concentrate on the narrow frontier between Germany and France and begin an assault into Alsace-Lorraine, under German occupation since 1871.

By the end of the year, neither France nor Germany succeeded in accomplishing their primary objectives. The Schlieffen Plan, for all of its precision, was logistically impossible. In spite of the efforts of the best logisticians the world had to offer, there simply were not enough roads and rail to move troops and supplies fast enough to exploit the breach. Both sides had fundamentally underestimated the ferocity of modern warfare. When the lines stabilized in the Winter of 1914-5, both the French and the Germans had completely exhausted prewar ammunition stockpiles, especially for the increasingly vital artillery.

In spite of noted successes in the Lorraine campaign, French troops were by and large stuck back in the massive frontier fortifications. On the left flank of the growing trench line, the Germany military was camped uncomfortably close to Paris, and large portions of French industry were now in German hands.[2]

The days of wars decided by brilliant leaders and decisive battles were as dead as the one million soldiers killed in the Frontier battles. In spite of the stigma of incompetence given to WWI generals, both the Allies and the Central Powers displayed a level of professionalism in stark contrast to the experience of previous wars. It could even be argued that on the whole, both sides did the best they could with the resources they had.

[1] Prior to the Cold War, many American treaties were passed in closed Senate sessions. Any records kept of the debate is classified and not a part of the normal Congressional record. While the result of any such vote is a matter of public record, there is no roll call vote, so it is impossible to determine who supported and opposed the measure.

[2] Basically, exactly like reality, except that the US is officially part of the Allies in late 1914. The deployment of troops will not come until 1915. Excerpt

From The First World War: Imperial Games, by Albert E. Kahn, Progress Publishers, Cambridge, Mass, 1948.[1]

...unlike their European comrades in the Second International, the American socialists alone remained resolute in opposition to the imperial war brewing in Europe. However, their paltry influence in the halls of the bourgeois state were not enough, even with the help of defectors from the Democrats joining them in opposition. However, in spite of the enormous momentum towards plunging headlong into an age drowned in blood, the Socialist Party was able to maintain unity on this critical issue. Progressives like LaFollete Sr., stuck with the party and voted en bloc.

...A general agreement had been reached to leave the issue of mobilization until after the November Congressional elections. In spite of the bourgeois literature on the subject during the 20s and 30s, the American populace faced the thought of fighting and dying for their country with great fear. The general sense of foreboding was very clear at the polls in November. Voter turnout averaged 8.1% higher than would be expected in an off-year election of that era. Clearly the American state was facing a similar "excess of democracy" that President Wood decried in the mid 1920s. That excess would soon be remedied by the Espionage Acts.

...Eugene Debs remarked that "regardless of which faction of the capitalist party triumphs in the election, major American involvement in the European war is inevitable. J.P. Morgan and the other Robber Barons have already loaned huge sums to the British and French governments, and they will want it repaid in full." Had Grandfather Debs known the full scale of the loan scheme, I'm sure he would have stroked. In 1919 dollars, J.P. Morgan & Co. alone lent over one billion dollars to the Allies during the war. Other financial trusts lent comparable amounts. The First World War was big business before the first American soldier set foot in France.

...The midterm election left the Democrats with a weakened grip over the House of Representatives. By this campaign, northern Democrats had abandoned attempts to exploit class conflict to gain votes. While they retained the incumbents advantage in many districts, the eclipse of the Democratic party had begun. Forced to play second fiddle on the national stage, the party increasingly devoted itself to Southern sectionalism and the cultural conservatism that benefited the Southern landed gentray. It's brief flirtations with populism and liberalism were largely over with by the 1914 election. Democratic campaign literature largely focused upon national strength and cultural conservation, portraying the Republicans as dangerously individualistic, tearing apart American culture. In practice, they began behaving in much the same way as the Old Right in Europe, the monarchism replaced with a curious brand of Roman style republicanism.

...1914, on the eve of the greatest bloodletting yet seen in history, was also the climax of the old American Left.[2] Made up disproportionately of immigrant workers and, with the exception of Oklahoma, tied strongly to industrial cities in the east, the old Left would soon be in its twilight. While the First World War put the old Left to the sword across the world, at least in America the trials of war provided the necessary conditions for the birth of a new Left in the 20s and 30s, a Left unaffected by the split riven within European social democracy.

[1] In reality, Albert E. Kahn was a journalist aligned to the Stalinist CPUSA until the deStalinization crisis in 1956. In this timeline, the extent of his journalism career are the opinion editorials that are syndicated in many American papers from the 40s to the 60s. By profession, he is a social historian.

[2] In this timeline, "Old Left" is primarily used to describe worker's movements before WWI, and those parties after WWI that were unaffiliated with the Comintern. "New Left", by contrast, refers to parties and movements affiliated with the Comintern. Old Leftists accuse New Leftists of being authoritarian and often ambivalent to democracy (often true) while New Leftists accuse Old Leftists of being baby sitters to the problems of the national bourgeoisie and ineffective reformists (again, often true).

1914 Congressional Election

US House of Representatives

Democratic Party...... 200 (-74) Republican Party...... 177 (+36) Progressive/Socialist Party...... 57 (+39) Independent...... 1 (-1)

US Senate[1]

Democratic Party...... 46 (-5) Republican Party...... 46 (+3) Progressive/Socialist Party...... 4 (+2)

[1] US Senators are still selected primarily by state legislatures, though a few western states have adopted elections for their Senators.

Excerpt from Days in Red: A Memoir, by James P. Cannon, Haymarket Books, Chicago, Illi., 1969.

...The vote on [President] Taft's mobilization bill was scheduled for the second day of new Congressional term. Fresh from his party's election victory, he expected [House Speaker] Champ Clark to comply with his bill with no debate and at all due haste. Of course, we had other plans. Solidarity's Central Committee voted unanimously to call for a nationwide general strike of all of the affiliates the week before the opening of the new Congress. I can still remember being on the picket lines in front of the steel mills that day.

...The working class unity was amazing. For the first time that I could recall, black and white, native and foreigner, agreed to put aside all differences if only for this one moment in time. Even though the horrors of the First World War had yet to be revealed to anyone so far from the fronts, the great fear of another major war, begun for seemingly no reason other than to ensure that bankers would get a return on their loans, quickly turned into anger, and at for the moment a galvanized resolve to oppose the war.

...We got exactly what we wanted; we gave them pause for debate. However, the general strike turned out to be a sword that cut both ways. Until now, the political classes had been apathetic about the rise of industrial unionism and the Socialist Party. It was all too easy to give ground and let the radicals recruit another worker than to deal with them in any concerted fashion either through terror or appeasement. Our united front had unwittingly unleashed the largest domestic terror and propaganda war by any State extant in the world at the time.

Excerpt from Patton's War Diaries, 1915-1919, by Martin Bluemenson, Ed. Washington State University Press, 1972.

August 3, 1914.

Was ecstatic today to learn that we [America] would go to war against Kaiser Billy soon. It would be a great tragedy to miss out on the great War of this generation. And to be doing it for such a noble cause[1] should be the dream of every Christian soldier to fight and die for. It will be some time before we actually can ship out, and I do feel anxious about leaving my young wife so soon, but I have talked to her about it and she feels filled with pride that her husband has such devotion to duty. An acquaintance at the officer's club informed me that such a sentiment is unlikely to last, and since he is many years my senior I am inclined to trust him on the matter. But her heart is in the right place.

I read this morning that the damned Socialist leader Debs had pledged to do everything in his power to stop the war. Such a prominent firebrand of a leader, speaking such things on the eve of war ought to be put up against a wall. But I am told that only the savage nations permit such practices, and I will leave the matter at that...

December 2, 1914

...Also informed of possible promotion today. The President had earned his mandate in the election, and I am told that a major expansion of the Army is now under way. Still, would have rather learned that promotion had come because of merit rather than a sudden urgent need for more First Lieutenants.

April 5, 1915

Currently aboard ship headed for France. The A.E.F.[2], I am told, will be deploying on the line somewhere, though for obvious reasons I still do not know where. One of the more cynical lieutenants remarked that the whole A.E.F. was nothing more than a propaganda ploy. Suspect him of being a Socialist subversive, though I am wondering if he is how he made it through West Point. He carries the air of the professional, educated soldier, though I wonder if it is indeed just cynicism on his part

June 4, 1915

Haven't written for several days. Still trying to make sense of it all. Our first action began on the 28th of May. We just arrived on the line to reinforce French push at Artois. We began the campaign with much enthusiasm; the news had told us the French were nearing a breakthrough and we were eager to push through the breach...On the front, the sound of the shelling was everywhere. I had never imagined warfare quite like this. My battalion would lead the charge. We went over the wall that morning, running through the fog over the broken earth. We covered no-man’s-land quickly, and encountered minimal resistance from the Huns. We neutralized their remaining machine gunners with minimal causalities and took their first trench with little difficulty. No sooner had we prepared to advance further we can under bombardment. First thought the Frogs had fouled up the operation. But we were soon under massive attack from the Germans. No sooner had the bombardment lifted we saw waves of gray-uniformed German soldiers charging at us. We fought them off as long as possible, but they had the advantage of numbers and terrain. We were forced to retreat, abandoning all the ground we had gained, leaving behind many of our brothers....The Germans pressed us until the 1st on the line before the skirmishes stopped. Only just now beginning to make sense of it. We went over the wall with 1,120 men, exactly, as the Mstr. Sgt. informed me. By the time fighting died down, we had just over five hundred battle ready men. At least two hundred were killed in the initial engagement, and the remaining wounded, missing and dead accumulating over the next four days.

June 30, 1915

In the battalion infirmary today. The doctors tell me that I suffered "mild exposure" to "chlorine gas" during the fighting. I suppose that means they think I should feel more gracious about my fortune. Ashamed to say that I too retreated from the yellow gas clouds. A week ago, I had no knowledge of any such horrifying weapon. It came on the winds, and wafted into our trenches, and rather than stay and suffocate we all ran. Retreated could have turned into a route, but the winds reversed just in time, and we rallied to a secondary trench. Still, had to be carried off the lines on a stretcher, in spite of my insistence that I could still walk. Breathing has been more difficult than I've ever known, like being perpetually at a run. My lungs still burn some. I suppose it's Christ's Providence that it wasn't worse. The man in the bed next to me suffocated in the night. Still feel shame over retreating without orders. But men can be fought with bullets and steel, this gas cannot.

August 9th, 1915

The horrors of this war do not cease. We marched through a ruined French village today, finally leaving the line. What I saw I'll never forget. The little French girl, in torn rags, crushed under the collapsed house, sinking in the mud; must have been killed by artillery bombardment. I can't stop thinking about my little daughters, young Beatrice, and Ruth, who I have not even been able to see, or to hold yet. What if my daughters, or my wife, or any of my family were killed, an innocent "casualty of war"? I left for France with so much resolve, but my experiences here have given me doubts about our purpose...

...Met a young lieutenant today, a one David Dwight Eisenhower. In our spare time we took to talking of things we missed back home. He tells me to call him by his boyhood nickname, Ike. I suppose it's easier than picking him out of the many Davids in the world. He's five years my junior, and unmarried, but he's bright and a welcome confidant. Apparently he shares my growing doubts about the war, doubts which we wisely keep to ourselves lest it affect the men's morale. Still, I am sure that our cause is just, even if the outcomes have been unsavory so far. Our road is not an easy one, and we must push onward.

[1] Patton refers here to the violation of Belgian neutrality by the German military. Allied propaganda heavily played up alleged German atrocities in Belgium, many of them completely fabricated.

[2] American Expeditionary Force; A division sized unit deployed to the front ahead of the main American army, still being conscripted and trained at the time, in order to bolster sagging Allied morale.

Some Notable Events, 1915

January 12: The heavy cruiser USS Montana is sunk by a German U-Boat off the Azores. Of her complement of 859 men, less than a quarter are rescued. The Taft Administration uses the sinking of the ship on training exercise heavily in the coming month's "public diplomacy" campaigns.

January 28: As one of the last acts of the "lame duck" Congress before the new term, Congress passes the "Naval Armaments Act" with a strong Democratic/Republican bipartisan majority. The Act authorizes the construction of three additional New Mexico class battleships (Tennessee, California and Colorado), along with funds to design and lay six ships of a superior class of battleship. An order for six battle cruisers of similar make is amended into the bill by allies of the Taft Administration.

February 4: An emergency joint meeting of the National Executive Committees of the Socialist Party and the Solidarity Union convenes in Chicago. All nationally elected officials of the Party, as well as top union organizers and delegates from all the union and Party locals are present. The leadership of the joint committee presents a motion to the membership to stick with the Party's electoral platform and continue opposition to Taft's war. By the end of the week, the debate is still raging over whether the resolution permits acts of "industrial sabotage" such as strikes. The final resolution passed by a narrow margin supports syndicalist tactics, with the proviso that all acts of sabotage be peaceful and avoid damage to property.

February 28: Bill Haywood publicly announces the beginning of a campaign of anti-war strikes by Solidarity affiliated industrial unions. Members of the United Mine Workers, the Longshoreman's Union, the American Railway Union, and the newly formed United Steelworker's are the first unions to answer the call. Within a week, much of industrial production and transportation throughout the important hubs of the nation has ground to a halt. Eugene Debs and other leaders begin long speaking tours to mobilize opposition to the war.

March 4: In response to labor unrest, President Taft calls out the National Guard to restore order. The ARU strike is suppressed first, on the legal pretext that the strike has interfered with the transportation of the US Mail. The leadership of the ARU is arrested on felony charges related to the obstruction of the mail service. Two new laws are introduced into Congress, which would later become the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act respectively.

March 5: President Taft outlines his administration's agenda for the coming year to Congress. Two new cabinet level positions will be created: the Department of Public Diplomacy, and the Department of Industrial Coordination. The former will be charged with what could only reasonably be described as propaganda work, the latter will serve as a means of managing the top-heavy trusts and cartels that have been the subject of frequent attacks from Socialists. While the administrations critics within the Democratic Party charge the president with threatening the institutions of the American Republic with these new expansions of executive power, they soon withdraw their criticism. The President's plan is seen as a necessary evil required to fight both the war abroad and the enemy of insurrection at home. A national conscription bill is also included within the agenda, as well as provisions to equip and support an expanded Army of two million men.

March 16: The general strike begins to peter out, as the propaganda war waged by the Taft Administration and its allies in the press and industry turn public opinion against the strikers. The ARU votes overwhelmingly to end the strike, which has proven futile in the face of concerted armed opposition from the national government. Within a week, the Steelworkers and Miners leave their picket lines as well.

March 20: Eager to move his agenda forward, President Taft concedes to a power sharing agreement with leaders of the Democratic Party. A National Unity Coalition is formed within Congress, and Taft agrees to reshuffle his cabinet secretaries to include Democrats. The compromise also puts the kibosh on the Department of Public Diplomacy. Instead, a special office to fulfill the role is to be created within the Department of Justice, under direct supervision from a Congressional oversight committee.

April 3: The President's mobilization bill, dubbed the "American Preparedness Act", passes over a filibuster attempt by Robert LaFollete Sr., in the Senate. While parliamentary tricks to extend the length of the legislative day indefinitely, and thus force LaFollette and supporters to run afoul of rules limiting the number of times a Senator could take the floor in a legislative day are sufficient to end the filibuster, opposition is significant enough to provoke an amendment to the Senate's rules on debate, introducing the cloture rule.

April 4: As the government mobilizes for war, Representative Upton Sinclair (S-NJ) is voted "Opposition Leader" by Socialist and Progressive Caucus in the House. In later years, as coalition governments become the rule in a Congress divided three ways against itself, the position becomes solidified within the House rules. On that same day, 20,000 volunteers of the American Expeditionary Force depart for France.

April 20: Conscription campaigns begin in the US.

May 1: Several abortive strikes are attempted by Solidarity affiliated unions to commemorate International Labor Day. The so-called "Espionage Act" is quickly signed into law, and a number of leaders of these strikes among the Lady's Garment Worker's Union and the Teamsters are soon the first victims of repression under the Act.

May 20: The US Atlantic fleet is deployed to Scapa Flow, to join the British Grand Fleet under Admiral Sir John Jellicoe. Anglo-American naval cooperation, with the US as the junior partner, becomes key to British naval strategy.

June 1: US Marines invade Haiti under the pretext of restoring order to the Republic. The Republic of Haiti enters protectorate status, along with Cuba, Puerto Rico and Panama.

June 8: The Office of Public Diplomacy begins the largest domestic propaganda campaign since the outbreak of the Civil War over fifty years before. The campaign seeks to break the power of unions and the Socialist Party to disrupt the war mobilization, as well as to mobilize public opinion towards the punishing of the German Reich. German atrocities in neutral Belgium becoming a heavy feature in the campaign.

July 20: In spite of Green Corn rebellions in Oklahoma and labor unrest in the cities and mines, conscription remains on schedule. The Taft Administration projects that half a million soldiers will be armed and deployed in France by the end of the year, with another million arriving by summer of the next year. The American Expeditionary Force is expanded to 3 divisions with the arrival of 2nd Infantry Division and the 1st Marine Division. Three more divisions will arrive at the front by late August.

August 1: Eugene Debs narrowly escapes prosecution under the Espionage Act for a labor organizing speech he made in his native Indiana. The speech, carefully crafted to avoid prosecution, nearly runs him afoul of the new law. However, a sympathetic judge dismisses the case. Stirrings of discontent begin over the Espionage Act, which had previously escaped attention.

September 22: Six divisions in the AEF join the French Army in the Second Battle of Champagne. The German Army, sensing the coming offensive, prepares additional defensive positions at Champagne. The battle soon turns into a bloody quagmire. Three days of intense artillery bombardment prove insufficient to break the German defenders, and under pressure of German counterattack, the offensive begins to lose momentum as causalities mount. Simultaneous British offensives at Loos fair little better.

October 5: The American 1st Infantry threatens a final break through at Champagne. However, the offensive loses tempo in the mud, and the the French commander-in-chief Joffre soon orders a halt to the offensive. Captain George Patton earns his second purple heart in the offensive.

October 30: German counter-offensives begin at Champagne. The beleaguered forces of the AEF and the French Army are forced to give back all the ground taken in the battle before the lines stabilize on the 5th of November. After similar defeat at Loos, British Field Marshall John French is forced to relinquish his command of the British Expeditionary Force to General Douglas Haig.

November 18: German unrestricted submarine warfare begins, in a dual effort to weaken Anglo-French strategic positions as well as demoralize the thousands of American troops that cross the Atlantic daily.

December 2: A secret memo is distributed throughout ranking officers of the AEF, seeking cooperation from qualified American officers with a British military project. A number of young officers soon transfer out of the AEF into a new "Special Logistics Task Force". This task force would form the nucleus of the American Tank Corps in the coming years.

Excerpt from Salt of the Earth, by Henry A. Wallace, Pathfinder Press, Nashville, Tenn., 1963

The war, I think, changed everything. I am candidly certain that had not over one million young American boys bled the soil of France red, then life as we know it today would be radically different. I'm sure it is the peculiar navel-gazing of old men and historians to ask what would have happened if some important event were to have been undone, but I cannot help to succumb to the temptation. One thing I do know for sure is that my own part in the war changed my life forever. The deaths of my comrades in the trenches of France, and the militarization of society at home are an irrevocable part of me, and without them, I do believe I would have remained a simple farmer, happy with the smell of good tilled earth.[1] I'm sure I would have been happier for it.

...During the 1916 Red Scare, President Taft and all of the kings of mine, rail and factory declared that the Army deployed in France was becoming a "boot camp for communist, socialist and anarchist subversion". I do not know much of other regiments, but that was certainly true of mine. My fellow enlisted men were my teachers in the great school of Socialism, and much of what I am today I learned there. When the "dangerous subversives" and "bomb-throwers" are the only men decrying the insanity of attacking machine guns with the chests of men, of sending men to dark and bloodied battlefields for the purpose of conquest and plunder, of killing our brothers so that the Imperialist scramble can continue unhindered; then we all come to find that perhaps we who went along with the bloodshed were the insane ones, not those who denounced it.

...The events of today give me trouble. When I see Foreign Secretary James Burnham's dangerous game of cat and mouse with Nikita Khrushchev over which direction the Comintern will sway; or when watching the nervous tension in the news broadcasters and official government spokesman as they tried to calmly explain to us that the missile deployments in Ireland[2] had brought us two minutes away from midnight, I sense that we are in an age that is every bit as pivotal as the First World War.

[1] This, my friends, is called irony. In this timeline, Wallace is a political leader, somewhat parallel to reality. [2] Wallace refers here to what would later be called The Irish Missile Crisis, a gambit by First Secretary Nixon to counter attempts by the Anglo-French Union to prevent some, shall we say, interesting political developments in a certain British Commonwealth country.

Some notable events, 1916

January 29: German zeppelins bomb Paris, the first ever strategic use of air power. This exercise of air power greatly impresses American Secretary of War Leonard Wood, who witnessed the bombing from the balcony of his Paris hotel while on a conference visit with the French General Staff.

February 14: In a series of police crackdowns eventually known as the Valentine's Raids, US Marshalls, in cooperation with state police in New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, arrest the many prominent leaders of the Progressive Socialist Party as well as other left-wing activists. Among the notables arrested are anarchist orator Emma Goldman, PSP Chair Eugene Debs, Albert Wagenknecht, "Big Bill" Haywood, and Louis C. Fraina.

February 20: A major German offensive begins at the French fortress-city of Verdun. Within four days, the French defenders retreat to their second line of defense. The French Second Army moves forward to reinforce the defense, still heavily outmatched by the German army, and must hold the line until further American and French reinforcements can be mustered.

March 3: The one millionth American soldier arrives in France. In spite of heavy casualties at the front, US Field Marshal John Pershing assures the press corps that the American Expeditionary Force is well on its way to fielding two million men in France by fall.

March 20: By Act of Congress, the United States Air Force is officially established as a separate branch of the military. The new Air Force combined elements from the Naval Air Service and the Army Flying Corps, with the former taking precedence. The Act specified a predominantly naval rank structure, to the chagrin of Army elements in the fledgling Air Force.[1]

May 1: May Day strikes break out across the United States, Canada, the UK and France. Many are quickly resolved through police action, but it is evident that war weariness is quickly besetting the Entente.

May 16: Battle of Verdun - the French army begins its ultimately unsuccessful counteroffensive to retake the fortress of Douaumont.

May 20: US Marines invade and occupy the Dominican Republic. A new constitution is soon imposed, transforming the Republic into another protectorate of the United States.

June 1: Battle of Jutland - The German High Seas Fleet faces the British Grand Fleet and the American Atlantic Fleet in the only major fleet engagement of the First World War. Tactically, the battle results in a minor victory for Germany, but ultimately the High Seas Fleet remains penned in port by the Kaiser to avoid catastrophe.[2]

July 1: A joint Franco-American offensive begins at the Somme. The Allied artillery barrages prove insufficient to crack German defenses, and the initial assault soon becomes bogged down. By late July, the British Army under Haig is fully committed on the northern flank of the Somme to support their allies.

August 6: The first dedicated combat squadron of the United States Air Force joins the AEF in France, attached with the more experienced British Royal Flying Service. By November, a further ten combat squadrons are raised and deployed in France.

September 7: The tank makes its debut at the Somme. The initial results in the British sectors are underwhelming, but the hope of breaking the deadlock of trench warfare remains. An American Tank Corps is soon founded, with a handful of British Mark I tanks on loan while more can be built under license.

November 7: United States General Election: Democrat Woodrow Wilson ekes out a narrow electoral victory over incumbent Robert Taft. However, The Republican Party regains control of the Congress, creating a potential political crisis in the middle of a major war. Wilson, a long-time advocate of parliamentarism, uses the opportunity to advocate the development of fundamental reforms in American presidential governance. He proposes an amendment to the Constitution to formalize the ad- hoc power sharing agreement pioneered by Democratic Speaker Champ Clark and former President Taft.[3]

November 20: The Battle of the Somme ends with Field Marshal Pershing's decision to call off further offensive actions. The battle is inconclusive, and the German army soon retreats from the line of battle anyway to well prepared fortifications behind the line. Over one million men on both sides are dead, wounded or captured by the end.

December 1: Major fighting ends at Verdun with no clear victor.

[1] Rank structure as follows: Ensign, Lieutenant, Captain, Major, Lieutenant Commander, Commander, Rear Ardian, Vice Ardian*, Ardian*, Air Marshall* (* denotes ranks planned, but never commissioned during the duration of the First World War)

[2] Major capital ship losses at Jutland. Britain: armored cruisers Black Prince, Warrior, Defence, and Minotaur; battlecruisers Invincible, Indefatigable, Lion, and Valiant; battleships Hercules and Neptune. United States: battleships Michigan and Utah. Germany: cruisers Frauenlob, Elbing, Rostock, and Wiesbaden; battlecruisers Seydlitz and Moltke; battleships Thüringen, Nassau, Kronprinzand Pommern.

[3] Precise Results.

1916 General Election

Presidential Results

Woodrow Wilson (D)...... 6,000,125 (277) William H. Taft (R)...... 7,121,896 (254) Alan L. Benson (S)...... 2,706,894 (0)

Congressional Results

US House of Representatives

Republican Party...... 199 (+22) Democratic Party...... 161 (-39) Progressive Socialist Party...... 75 (+18) Independent...... 0 (-1)

US Senate

Republican Party...... 48 (+2) Democratic Party...... 44 (-2) Progressive Socialist Party...... 4 (+0)

Excerpt from "Party Government in Crisis" by E.E. Schattschneider, in American Political Science Review, Vol. 32, No. 1, February 1938.

Predictably, the rise of the Progressive Socialist Party as a third force in American party politics created dramatic consequences for party-government in the Congress. The work of previous theorists of the party in government demonstrated the effects certain facets of the revolution in party politics more than adequately. Notably, the work of Fenwick et al. have theorized the enormous upheavals that the existence of three parties in Congress (particularly the House) have caused in the American constitutional system. Demonstrably, the existence of a sharply defined separation of powers within the government was a system that reflected the strongly non-partisan preferences of Founders such as Washington and Madison, and has adapted poorly to a regime of two powerful political organizations competing for control of the apparatus of government.

...Presidential government, while hindered by the existence of political organizations independent of the formal positions and councils of government, nonetheless could still function even with the consequences of divided party authority and potential divided government. As Representative Clark noted, while the government could still function being pulled in two separate directions, the addition of a third independent force made such functions impossible.

...However, the resulting crisis in party-government between 1912 and 1918 could not be explained solely in terms of constitutional factors of separation of powers. As we must understand, in seeming paradox, party-government does not just form within the councils and halls of government. The party is larger than its members within the government, and as will be demonstrated with reference to the specific cases of the 1917 New York City Mayoral election, the characteristics of the party and the form its membership takes can have drastic consequences upon the performance of the party in government.

...1917 saw the first eclipse of the Tammany Hall machine in New York politics. As was demonstrated, the Progressive Socialists' ties to both organized labor and a large pool of enrolled members to the party eroded traditional dominance of the political machine's system of organized legal corruption. The Socialists and the union's provided the same services to their members that the machines did; they offered opportunities for gainful employment, helped cover rent shortfalls for party workers, offered legal services to members and medical care to injured workers. But more importantly, the party's membership rolls enabled it to mobilize its electorate in much the same way as the Tammany Hall machine. However, it did so without resort to the totality of legal corruption of the machine, and the egalitarian drives of its leaders created effective political organizations more of the vein of a fraternal order than of a cloistered, highly stratified secret society. Morris Hilquit's move into the mayor's mansion on January 1st, 1918, was the first blow in the final death knell of machine politics in the former United States.

Excerpt

Proposed text of the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

§ One: The executive power shall be vested in the President of the United States; and in the Cabinet of the United States, consisting of the various Secretaries in charge of the executive departments and the First Secretary.

The First Secretary and Secretaries of the Cabinet shall be elected by the House of Representatives without debate on the proposal of the President. The person who receives the majority vote of the House of Representatives shall be appointed by the President.

Members of the Cabinet may serve concurrently as members of the House of Representatives.

§ Two: The House of Representatives may express its lack of confidence in the Cabinet only by electing successors by majority vote of the members and requesting the President to dismiss the Cabinet. The President must comply with this request and appoint the successors.

If a motion of the First Secretary for a vote of confidence is not supported by a majority of members of the House of Representatives, the President may dissolve the House of Representatives, and order new elections to occur within twenty one days of dissolution.

§ Three: Save the following provisions, the House of Representatives shall be elected for four years. Its term shall end when a new House convenes. New elections shall be held no sooner than forty-six months and no later than forty-eight months after the electoral term begins. If the House be dissolved, new elections shall be held within sixty days.

The House of Representatives shall convene no later than thirty days following election.

1917: The Year of Disasters

January 22: In one of his last public speeches as president, William H. Taft publically congratulates President-Elect Wilson. He goes on record stating that though he and Wilson are from different parties, Wilson shares in his vision of a just international order, and believes that he will continue to fight the war in Europe with the same resolve as he would have. He calls upon leaders within the Republican Party to endorse Wilson's proposed constitutional reforms, and delivers scathing denunciations to the "defeatists, traitors and anarchists" in the Progressive Socialist Party.

March 4: Woodrow Wilson is inaugurated as President of the United States. By the end of the day, Wilson is in conference with House Speaker James Mann (R-IL) to reorganize the Cabinet power sharing agreement.[1]

March 5: The February Revolution[2]: Beset by army mutinees, and a general strike by the Petrograd soviet, Czar Nicholas II of the Russian Empire formally abdicates the throne to Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich, who wisely declines the throne. A provisional government is soon formed under Georgy Lvov, representing a liberal-social democratic alliance.

March 22: The Wilson Administration formally recognizes the Russian Provisional Government, declaring the United States to be a stalwart ally of the new Russian Republic.

April 2: An Allied combined offensive begins under the direction of French Generalissimo Nivelle. A preliminary attack by the British First, Third and Fifth Armies begins at Arras, while French and American forces mass to assault Chemin de Dames ridge. The two columns hope to break through within 48 hours, link up, and sweep unopposed into Germany.

April 9: The first good news for the Allied armies since the start of the War; to the pleasant surprise of the British and French general staff, Nivelle's offensive manages a preliminary break through in the German lines at both Arras and Chemin de Dames. The American Tank Corps proves decisive at Chemin de Dames. Elsewhere, the German military desperately attempts to prevent defeat from turning into disaster.

April 18: German counteroffensives begin on the Franco-American and British salients. The German goal is to prevent the encirclement of much of their Western front forces via a British-French link up at Hirson, near the Belgian border.

May 1: The British offensive grinds to a halt near the town of Valienciennes. General Haig's attempts to use the Cavalry corps to exploit the break through have been thwarted by Ludendorff's own cavalry. With supplies unable to move quickly in the moonscape of shell craters and trenches, the artillery cannot maintain support of the infantry, which subsequently bogs down in the mud. Elsewhere, The French and American armies continue pressing forward at Champagne.

May 18: President Wilson's amendment for governmental reform is approved with strong majorities by both Houses of Congress. The amendment is now sent to the state governments for ratification.

May 27: Nivelle ends offensive actions in the Champagne corridor, bringing his planned offensive to an end. The operation is a significant, though limited success. The lines stabilize approximately twenty miles from the Belgian border. The German army avoids complete disaster, and manages to evacuate and escape encirclement.

June 6: A proviso is attached to the proposed 17th Amendment to the US Constitution, delaying the operability of certain provisions of the reforms. In its amended form, the 17th Amendment's sections pertaining to House of Representatives elections will not come into effect until the 1920 general election.

July 16: Disaster strikes for the Russians on the Eastern Front. Mutinies on the Austrian front vividly demonstrate the rot within the Russian polity, which has remained uncured by the February Revolution. The Provisional Government continues to refuse negotiated settlement, while anti-war factions of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party and the Social Democratic Labor Party continue to gain ground in the soviets.

July 20: S-R Party leader Alexander Kerensky replaces Lvov as the Premier of the Russian Provisional Government. The new cabinet heavily favors the S-R Party and the Constitutional Democrats.

August 2: In an attempt to maintain the initiative after Arras, British General Haig begins a third offensive at Ypres. However, the resulting Battle of Passchendaele is a significant disaster for the British Army. Little ground is gained, in spite of the support of tanks and mass artillery assaults. German morale appears to be holding, in spite of defeats. The town of Passchendaele is taken by early November only with staggering loss of life.

October 1: The State of Montana ratifies the 17th Amendment. With 3/4ths of the States in approval, the ratification of the amendment is complete.

November 7: Workers of Petrograd, under the leadership of Bolshevik Vladimir Lenin, begin a coup d'état against the Russian Provisional Government. Within the week, the largely bloodless coup succeeds, leaving the system of worker's councils (soviets) the primary authority in Russia. The various ministries of the Russian Provisional Government are brought under the authority of the Central Executive Committee of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets.

November 20: The Battle of Valenciennes: the British Army masses tanks in an attempt to break the German lines and thrust into Belgium. The advance reaches almost thirty kilometers on the first day, but subsequent German counterattacks, and the innate mechanical weaknesses of British tanks make further assaults impossible.

November 28: In yet another disaster for the Allies, the new revolutionary government in Russia offers a peace deal to Germany.

[1] President Wilson's cabinet (* denotes office added on October 2nd)

First Secretary*: James Mann (R-IL) Secretary of State: Robert Lansing (D-NY) Secretary of Treasury: Joseoph Fordney (R-MI) Secretary of War: Leonard Wood (R-MA) Attorney General: Thomas W. Gregory (D-TX) Postmaster General: Albert S. Burelson (D-TX) Secretary of the Navy: Theodore Roosevelt (R-NY) Secretary of the Interior: Knute Nelson (R-MN) Secretary of Agriculture: Gilbert N. Haugen (R-IA) Secretary of Commerce: Joshua W. Alexander (D-MO) Secretary of Industrial Coordination: William S. Vare (R-PA)

[2] Dating confusion: Russia still operated under the Julian Calendar, and thus dates were 13 days behind the Gregorian Calendar date used in the rest of Europe. Thus, the February Revolution actually happened in March, and the October Revolution actually happened in November. 1918: Things Fall Apart

January 1: In New York City, two separate inaugurations for the office of Mayor are held: one for the winner of the popular vote, Progressive Socialist Morris Hilquit, and another for the Tammany Hall backed candidate John Hylan. The government of the State of New York declares that the mayoral election was a fraud, and suspends the City of New York's charter, effectively declaring Hylan the winner. By days end, Hilquit finds himself arrested by the city police. The confederation of Socialist Party locals for New York City agree unanimously to endorse a general strike in protest to the power grab.

January 4: The barricades are up all over New York City as the police desperately try to restore order to the city paralyzed by a general strike. Students, family members and even the elderly are out in force in the streets in support of the strikers. Worker's councils are organized in the wards of New York City, and factory committees spring up in occupied workplaces, declaring the expropriation of the expropriators. In Albany, the Governor, hesitant over the blowback from the last iron-fisted measures deployed to contain “unsavory” developments in NYC, hesitates upon deploying the New York National Guard to suppress the strikers.

January 9: By morning, the NYC Police have totally lost control over Manhattan Island to the strikers. The boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens remain in marginally more control, but the Bronx as well is on the verge of total rebellion. That evening, a congress of delegates from the worker's councils and factory committees declares the formation of the Manhattan Commune. They unanimously elect Mayor-elect Hilquit to preside over the Commune, to which he somewhat reluctantly agrees.

January 11: President Wilson intervenes directly in the Hylan-Hilquit affair. The New York National Guard is placed under federal control. An ultimatum is issued, demanding that the strikers disperse, and allow the “legitimately elected” government to return. The Progressive Socialist Party, and the Solidarity trade union both immediately condemn the President's actions as dictatorial. The central committee narrowly votes to endorse a nationwide general strike in opposition to suppression of the Commune, hoping to bring President Wilson and the New York state to the bargaining table.

January 15: Armed strikers begin fighting pitched battles against National Guard units in both the Bronx and Brooklyn. By day’s end, several dozen are killed or wounded, but deployed National Guard units simply lack the manpower to make significant gains. Meanwhile, the nationwide general strike comes into full force. Following the leads of their New York comrades, worker's delegations in the cities of Chicago, Pittsburgh, Seattle and St. Louis declare their own communes

January 19: President Wilson, conscious of how quickly similar events degenerated in Russia, agrees to meet with prominent members of the Socialist Caucus and leaders of the trade union congresses to reach a compromise deal. Matters pertaining to the war, or its conduct are strictly off the table.

January 25: A preliminary truce is reached. Strikers in New York agree to permit the flow troops and war material to and from New York to the fronts in France. In return, Wilson agrees to certify Hilquit as Mayor of New York. Still unresolved is the emerging dual power conflict between the city government and the communes formed in the Burroughs of New York.

February 14: A final compromise is reached, and the general strike ends. No reference is made by either party to the war in the compromise. However, the communes and the dual power arrangements in the various cities are to be legitimated in the various city charters. In New York, the communes become the primary jurisdiction in each of the Burroughs, taking over various powers from the city government. In return, the factory occupations end unresolved, but the factory committees and worker's councils are allowed to remain. In Chicago, the commune will officially supplant the city government, provided that the commune renders full cooperation with the laws of the State of Illinois. In St. Louis and Seattle, the jurisdictional problems remain unresolved, and an uneasy dual power relationship develops. The mayor, whose election started the six week long ordeal, previously one of the strongest moderate leaders in the Progressive Socialist Party, finds himself drawn into the radical camp.

March 1: Bolshevik Russia signs the Treaty of Brest-Livotsk with the German Reich and Austria-Hungary, formally ending Russian involvement in the war.

March 21: British, French and American forces begin a new round of offenses in the Somme area, in what would later be known as the Second Battle of the Somme. Due to the constant flow of reinforcements and material from the Eastern Front, Allied gains are slow and torturous.

April 8: British and American troops begin the first offensives of the Battle of the Oise. German counterattacks force the Allies to abandon initial gains by May.

May 1: German offensives begin at the Allied flanks at the Somme and the Aisne. In spite of Allied tank superiority, the German army is able to threaten breakthroughs in key sectors of the front.

May 21: The Allies begin a strategic withdrawal from their under-prepared forward lines back to the lines from the start of the previous year in the front from the Somme to the Aisne.

May 29: The German offensive comes to a halt. All major operational objectives remain unmet, the units exhausted, and resources stretched to their breaking point. For the General Staff, it has become clear that eventual defeat is inevitable, even without the strain of fighting a two front war.

July 4: Allied armies have nearly recovered all of the lost territory from the Somme-Aisne offensives by this date. Massed tanks at Le Coteau, Vervins and Hethel breach the Hindenburg line for the first time. The American Tank Corps at Vervins is most successful. The 301st Tank Battalion, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel George S. Patton, successfully advances almost forty kilometers in two days. The breach is successfully exploited by American infantry, forcing German army to retreat to reserve positions along the center of the front.

August 8: By this date, German forces have almost completely retreated to the Belgian border. German General Eric von Ludendorf fears that a final collapse of the army in the field is immanent. Nevertheless, the German army holds on, and Allied assaults begin to stall under the weight of logistical strain and flagging morale. For the first time since the beginning of the war, the artillery guns fall silent, unable to be sustained across the shelled, scorched and broken earth leading to the front.

September 11: Kaiser Wilhelm forms a liberal government under Chancellor Max von Baden in order to sue for peace.

October 1: Mutinies in the German Army and Navy herald the beginning of the German Revolution. Fearing disaster on the scale of Bolshevik Russia, the Kaiser abdicates and chooses a life in exile. The German Reich, now a de facto republic under the leadership of the SPD, sues for peace.

November 3: As the German situation continues to deteriorate, an armistice agreement between the Allies and the German Reich is finally reached. The cease-fire with Germany brings a final end to conflict in Western Europe, though the many conflicts spawned by the Great War, principally the Russian Civil War, continue to rage on. Overtures towards a formal peace treaty soon begin.

November 5: With the war on its way to resolution, the last mid-term Congressional election is held in the United States. President Wilson's national unity coalition is retained, with a substantially reduced majority, as tensions built up from years of war, scarcity and repression get their outlet at the polls. Several state legislatures and governorships are captured by the Progressive Socialist Party, and a substantial number of states are left with no workable majority in their legislatures.*

November 20: The German Communist Party (KPD) is officially founded by dissidents from the majority Social Democratic Party (SPD), signaling the growing rift in the international socialist movement.

Congressional Election 1918

US House of Representatives

Republican Party...... 179 (-20) Progressive Socialist Party...... 150 (+75) Democratic Party...... 100 (-61) Independent...... 6 (+6)

US Senate

Republican Party...... 45 (-3) Democratic Party...... 37 (-7) Progressive Socialist Party...... 14 (+10)

Ten Days that Shook the World

On February 1st, 1919, a book was published that would forever catapult its author into celebrity (or infamy, depending upon who you ask). That book was Ten Days that Shook the World, and its author was a young American radical journalist named John Reed. Reed, who had witnessed Red October first hand, helped to galvanize the resolve of an American left broken by state repression and threatening to fracture from internal dissension.

Copies of the book were distributed by Socialist Party and union locals all throughout the United States, and its first printing sold out immensely quickly. In a delicious bit of irony, a book about advancing the cause of socialism and revolution would become one of the more profitable books of the year for publishers.

Reed, previously an unknown in the Socialist Party, would find himself elected to the National Executive Committee. The NEC would soon vote to send delegates to the founding congress of the Communist International.

For leaders at home, a more pressing matter was at hand. The Progressive Socialist Party itself was an unwieldy organization. The war had radicalized many of its more moderate elements, but the leadership's hard left stance threatened to cause a mutiny among moderate members of the party, especially former Progressives. Morris Hilquit's timely defection to the left, and Congressman Berger's assassination at the hands of the Wisconsin state police had certainly helped stave off disaster, but there was still much work left to be done. Facing a choice between work in the Comintern, or healing the divisions at home, Reed ultimately chose to use his considerable celebrity even among non-socialists to fight for socialist unity among his own ranks.

In June of 1919, John Reed, along with his lover Louise Bryant, comrade and respected editor Max Eastman, Opposition Leader Upton Sinclair, and young party activist William Zebulon Foster, began a long speaking tour of the country leading up to the September emergency national convention. Their aim was to convince socialists and workers across the country, fresh from their relative victory at the polls, to not become complacent, and stick with the revolutionary enthusiasm necessary to sustain the PSP as a mass-based revolutionary organization, to avoid succumbing to reformism the same way that many of their international brothers had leading up to the First World War.

At the convention two major issues would be up for debate. First and foremost would be the party's central platform. The leadership was eager to supplant the German Social Democrats as the tip of the spear of the proletarian vanguard, and sought to adapt the party organization to follow a more Bolshevik model. Second, the leadership wanted the National Convention to vote to formally join the Comintern. A new international, they were convinced, was the only proper forum for cooperation among the Left. It was during this campaign by Reed as well as dozens of other party activists that New Yorker and new found radical Morris Hilquit coined the terminology of New Left and Old Left. As he addressed a crowd after his safe release from prison and returned to public service, he told the crowd "Our sons, and our grandsons...and their grandsons too, will remember the formation of the Manhattan Commune, and speak of it in the same sentence as the illustrious Paris Commune that gave us our anthem, and our spirited resolve for a new world. And for that brave new world we must fight to build, a new Left, unfettered by the chains of our past, must be the tip of the bayonet in our charge. Our old Left will no longer do; we must remake ourselves before we remake the world."

This snippet, repeated over and over again by The New York Times and other publications, was but one of the many pieces of ammunition that were fired in this age of mutual militancy. For a time, it seemed like the inevitable final confrontation between the opposed camps of labor and capital would be at hand in America as well. So this situation would remain. For the next 14 years, the conflict would remain unresolved and undiminished.

Nevertheless, the Progressive Socialist Party achieved what almost none of its international brothers could. The National Convention voted strongly to align with the new Comintern, and to accept the hard left's analysis that little would be achieved through parliamentary reformism. The party platform still maintained that socialism could be won at the ballot box, at least in part, but fully accepted the general strike and the worker's council as alternative weapons. The platform made it clear that the party would accept nothing but the full enactment of its maximal program; there would be no negotiation for half-measures with either the Republicans or the Democrats. But most importantly, this would be achieved without a disastrous split in the party's ranks. The moderates agreed to stick with the party, and bide their time for now.

The split was patched over, but only time would tell if it would endure long enough. Reed, no less than anyone else, knew full well that he sat on a ticking timebomb.

Demographics

America's entrance into the First World War spurred a series of immense demographic changes. America's conscript army was raised primarily from city dwellers, predominantly recent immigrants. With several million young hands removed from the factories to be sent to France, the manpower shortages in America's cities spurred the beginning of a great exodus of young men from the farmlands of the West and Midwest back to the very cities their fathers and grandfathers had fled from.

In part, this exodus was made possible by relatively good harvests in the period from 1912 to 1918, and the increasing mechanization on some farms. Young men, used to the self-managed rhythms of farm labor, unaccustomed to collective solidarity and generally firm believers in the virtues of hard labor, threatened to break the urban labor movement in the early years of the War.

The arrival of a tide of rural workers to the industrial cities was absolutely crucial to breaking the February-March general strikes organized by Solidarity in opposition to the declaration of war and subsequent mobilization. These young natives, often intensely xenophobic, were the perfect scabs.

But the backlash that would result was inevitable. By the Fall of 1919, recent migrants from the rural areas of the United States were more highly represented in the labor movement than immigrants. The very reason that made them the best scabs available in 1915 was also the very reason why they would make the quickest converts to communism.

The regime of industrial management was entirely alien to them. Having been raised with the expectation of self-regulated labor, which they would benefit from the fruit of, industrial capitalism became quickly intolerable. Working under a sadistic foreman for long days for very little gain, a slave to the tempo of the machines and the pattern of the clock, these young men (and women too, though in smaller numbers), found their way into the labor movement, heading to the hard left with greater propensity and frequency than other groups.

This trend would continue well into the 1920s, as their younger brothers joined them in the nation's great industrial cities during what would later be called "The Roaring 20s".

The War would also see women's penetration in the labor force dramatically increase. Hoping to capture this new constituency of independent working women, President Wilson had pushed for and eventually received the passage of the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution, granting women the right to vote in all state and federal elections. Ratified in May of 1920, it would come into effect simultaneously with the 17th Amendment, dramatically reshaping both the nation's political structure and electorate in one stroke.

The 1920 US Presidential Election

Against all better judgment, incumbent President Woodrow Wilson would seek re-election this year. He faced a strong challenge at the Democratic Convention from John W. Davis, who would marshal the conservative base against Wilson's reform minded agenda. Although unsuccessful this time, Wilson would be the last progressive minded candidate to win the presidential nomination from the Democratic Party.

For the Republicans, the fight at the convention was less intense. With the knowledge that Republicans would likely maintain control of the House, there was far less to be won by securing the presidential nod. In spite of strong opposition from Senator Warren G. Harding, ultimately Wilson's Secretary of War and Army Lieutenant General Leonard Wood secured the nomination. Calvin Coolidge, a small government conservative, was chosen as the Vice Presidential nominee. In the campaign, Wood fought to distance himself from Wilson's administration, and pointed to his exemplary service as Secretary of War as proof that he was qualified to lead a nation.

The Progressive Socialist Party's convention would nominate Eugene Debs, just released from prison, for the fifth and final time. The party, freshly allied with the forces of international communist revolution, expected to see a hit at the polls, but Debs' seeming incorruptibility and vice-presidential nominee John Reed's youthful enthusiasm managed to contain major damage.

Results

Leonard Wood (R)...... 12,234,123 (339) Woodrow Wilson (D)...... 7,336,100 (127) Eugene V. Debs (S)...... 8,913,154 (65)

The 1920 US General Election

House of Representatives

Republican Majority Government

Republican Party...... 214 (+35) Independent...... 4 (-2) Opposition

Progressive Socialist Party...... 132 (-18) Democratic Party...... 85 (-15)

US Senate

Republican Party...... 52 (+7) Democratic Party...... 31 (-6) Progressive Socialist Party...... 13 (-1)

With the caucusing of four independents from Southern states, the Republican Party manages to form a majority government, sweeping aside the legacy of the wartime national unity governments. Thomas Mann returns as First Secretary (breakdown of the cabinet below). The Democratic Party, at the lowest point since Reconstruction, is threatened with eventual demise, even in its previously unassailable strongholds in the South.

President Wood's Cabinet, 1921-1925

Vice President: Calvin Coolidge (R-MA) First Secretary: James Mann (R-IL) Secretary of State: Charles Evan Hughes (R-NY) Secretary of Treasury: Joseph Fordney (R-MI) Secretary of War: John W. Meeks (R-MA) Attorney General: Harry M. Daughtery (R-OH) Postmaster General: Hubert Work (R-PA) Secretary of the Navy: Edwin Denby (R-MI) Secretary of the Interior: Knute Nelson (R-MN) Secretary of Agriculture: Gilbert N. Haugen (R-IA) Secretary of Commerce: Herbert Hoover (R-NY) Secretary of Industrial Coordination: William S. Vare (R-PA)

Excerpt from Storming the Gates of Heaven: A History of the Comintern, by Albert E. Kahn, Progress Publishers, Cambridge, Mass., 1962.

The Second World Congress of the Comintern laid out the basic doctrine of the international communist movement from early July to late August of 1920. To the modern eye, the decisions made at the Second Congress seem frightfully premature. While Lenin sent his 21 Conditions for approval by the Congress, he and his comrades were still bitterly engaged in the Russian Civil War. Yet the delegates prefaced their speeches with talk of the imminent world revolution, while all of the major capitalist powers had encircled Russia with bayonets, and threatened to strangle that very revolution in the cradle. Still, the deputies at the Congress maintained sufficient foresight to at least tackle the issues of the future of the movement.

...The severity of the 21 Conditions would prove too much for most delegations. The inability to compromise on certain areas of doctrine, such as the strict adoption of democratic centralism, or the requirement for the complete expulsion of members deemed to be reformist, would deepen the already disastrous rift in the international Left. This hardline of the First Period policies would be made all the more disastrous with the Third Period policy of denouncing moderates as "Social Fascists", but for now, it served to create two competing worker's party in nearly every advanced capitalist nation. And in the new Communist parties it molded, it created insidious weapons for internal witch-hunts and factional squabbles.

...The American delegation to the Comintern faced the same unenviable choice as the French Section. While the use of state terror had destroyed much of the Progressive Socialist Party's moderate faction, either by pushing them to the Left or out of the movement altogether, even many on the Left were hesitant to completely endorse the 21 Conditions. While many conditions were rather agreeable, the second, seventh and seventeenth conditions proved particularly worrisome. The party was simply in no shape for the internal purge necessary to put "tested communists" in every important decision. Similarly, a drastic restyling of the party was most unsavory at a time when the existing party name was finally gaining strength among the proletariat.

...In the end, the American delegation gave their unanimous recommendation to adopt the 21 Conditions and join the Comintern as a full member. However, that decision would ultimately be put to the test at the Progressive Socialist Party National Convention, to be held in the Chicago Commune in January of 1921. The debate would be heated, and threatened to split the party in two. The rump of the reformist faction, severely depleted of delegates and speakers, clustered around president of the former Typographical Union Max S. Hayes, and vehemently opposed joining the Comintern. The moderate Left, committed to revolutionary socialism in spirit, but facing many reservations with the 21 Conditions, also criticized the proposal. They centered around the leadership of famed academician Walter Lippmann, and the hero of the Manhattan Commune, Morris Hilquit. The hard Left, represented by the party leadership, fought back with just as much tenacity.

...In the course of the debate, Debs, in ill health, cast aside his traditional role as unifying leader figure, and gave his endorsement, with reservations, to the 21 Conditions. Comrade Reed, the boyish face of the future, personally presented Leon Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin's personal remarks to the American proletariat, offering their reasons in favor of the Comintern and the conditions it imposed. He ended his speech with his own reflections of his time in Russia during the revolution, and the decisive moment the question of whether to strike in Petrograd was considered. "This decision," he argued, "Will be no less momentous than that fateful decision by the workers of the Pulitov Plant, in Petrograd, to consider their shivering and starving children's plight, throw caution to the winds and a spanner in the Pulitov works. That one decision [...] set off the chain of events that toppled an Emperor, ended a war, and established the first worker's republic the world has ever seen. Fortune favors the bold, my comrades."

...It was Lippmann who spoke after Big Bill Haywood. While he congratulated the stout Wobbly on his work organizing the industrial unions and fighting against the imperialist game of the First World War, he offered his own annotations to the late German communist Karl Liebknecht's criticism of the excesses of the Bolsheviks, relating them directly to the matter of the Comintern's conditions. The specter of a "red bureaucracy" just as sinister as the old, he argued, lay within this focus on doctrinal pieties and democratic centralism: "If Rosa Luxemburg, the fiery and defiant leader of the German Communist Party and seasoned revolutionary, finds herself deposed and purged from the very party she helped forge because the central committee felt her politics deviated from the program established by the Comintern, then how safe are any of we from internal bloodletting?" Indeed, his words would prove all to true over the next two decades. The purge would become the favored weapon of communist organizations the world over until the beginning of the Popular Front.

...Ultimately, what stole the show and sealed the decision was a speech by the most unlikely of party members. Former Senator LaFollette arrived at the convention fashionably late, excusably so. Recently pardoned by President Wood for conviction under the Sedition Act, the former Republican and moderate fellow traveller of socialism came to the convention a broken man. Freshly divorced, penniless and emaciated from his stay in federal prison, LaFollette proved to be another strange convert to the Left. He spoke of how his trust in the American dream had been shattered by the events of the last six years, half-cursing the naivete of his past. As a pariah now, he accepted his fate handed down from on high, but did not shrink from fighting against. Shocking everyone, he spoke in favor of the Comintern and endorsed the 21 Conditions. In the end, the Left prevailed. The moderate Left agreed to ratify the conditions, though they urged solidarity and fairness in their application. And the majority of the Right, though they voted against acceptance of the 21 Conditions, agreed to abide by them and to not quit the party. On February 15th, 1921, newly rechristened Workers Party of America formally joined the Communist International.

KGB World Factbook

Union of American Socialist Republics Flag:

Motto: Workers of the world, unite! (official), E Pluribus Unum (traditional) Anthem: "The Internationale" Capital: Debs, D.C. Official languages: English, Spanish, French, several dozen recognized native languages Demonym: American Government: Federal socialist republic - Head of State: President David McReynolds (SPA) - Head of Government: Premier Alix Olson (SEU) Legislature: Federation Assembly - Lower house: Congress of People's Deputies - Upper house: Council of the Union Formation - Declared: May 1, 1933 - Recognized: August 8, 1933 - Current constitution: February 24, 1934 Area - Total: 11,445,211 km2 (2nd) - Water (%): 6.76 Population - 2009 estimate: 338,361,574 (3rd) - Density: 29.5/km2 (175th) GDP (PPP): 2008 estimate - Total: $16.051 trillion (1st) - Per capita: $47,440 (6th) Gini (2007): 12.1[1] (1st) HDI (2007): ▲ 0.981[5] (very high) (2nd) Currency: American dollar ($) (UD)

Excerpts from George Patton: Proletarian Soldier[1], By Oliver Lark, London, Doubleday, 1977.

Of one thing there is no doubt, and that is the simple fact that George Patton lived an extraordinary life. Born into an aristocratic conservative family in California on November 11, 1885, Patton would go on to serve with distinction in the First World War, advancing to the rank of Colonel in the American Expeditionary Force. While serving, he helped pioneer the use of armoured warfare, innovating tactics and strategies would later become staples in the American military. Facing the hardships and horrors of life in the trenches, Patton, like so many others of his generation, came home a changed man. He soon renounced his birthright, became estranged with his wife and family, and joined the Worker's Party of America, all within a few short months of returning from France in 1919. Patton, along with his close comrade David Eisenhower, had set the pattern for so many World War veterans. They went off to war committed to their nation's cause, and came home subversives.

...The sheer number of career military officers in the United States Army who professed belief in Socialism after the Great War is simply astounding. While no reliable figures can be found to establish the exact percentage, estimates range from fifteen percent to as high as twenty-eight percent! Whatever the rate, it is clear just how much the American polity and her military were rotting by 1920. Patton was hardly alone in his beliefs in the army, and as his letter's show, he formed a discussion club among trusted comrades from the army to correspond on politics.

...In one such letter, Patton writes to Eisenhower, confessing about his experiences in the Great War. "Dear Ike," he writes:

It was at Chemin-de-Dames that it hit me with the force of revelation. Our Mk. IVs had bogged down in the German auxillary trench, and the Jerries soon came down on us with artillery, followed by an infantry attack. We soon ran out of ammunition for our tank's machine guns, and we had to fend off the last of their assault hand to hand, with knives and bayonets. The kids we bayonetted, they couldn't have been older than sixteen or seventeen. I felt old, and worn out. And as relief came, and we finally had a moment of peace, I suddenly realized I had no idea why I was here, or why I was butchering young German boys, or why they were doing the same to us. I didn't know whether I could believe in my country anymore, or even believe in God.

While the exact details of Patton's conversion from Christian soldier to atheist communist remain to the imagination, the documentary evidence suggests that it occurred shortly after the end of the Chemin-de-Dames campaign, while Patton was on a three-day pass in Paris.[2] Patton's letters, and own recollections preserved on archival film suggest that during that time, Patton met up with a French socialist group. One of the few details that are known is that the group was composed of some number of dissident intellectuals, as well as a number of veterans of the French army, discharged as amputees. Patton, now semi-fluent in French, conversed with this group about the political issues of the war and economics for for anywhere from a few hours to whole evening, depending on the account.

...The first self-reference of socialist belief would not come until a diary entry some three months later. He writes tepidly in favour of socialism and its "brotherhood of man," and suggests at an imperial nature in the First World War, impugning the motives the national leaders of the Allies as well as the Central Powers. In perhaps the strongest language seen from this previously gentlemanly character, he calls the current president, Woodrow Wilson, a "pompous old jackass" and "a capitalist running-dog." Where he picked up such an obviously German construction is impossible to tell.

...Like many radicals of his generation, it was the Bolshevik Revolution that ultimately steeled his convictions in socialism. His correspondence after the war contains many recollections and conversations about the aforementioned event. One such letter was written to John Reed, praising his work on Ten Days That Shook the World, and propositioning a collaborative history of the Russian Civil War, a project that later became the infamous three volume history compendium, written with Reed and Leon Trotsky, the charismatic exile from the very regime he helped build. A History of the Soviet Union, From Birth to Betrayal, is perhaps the most oft-cited history of the early Soviet period, and became one of Patton's fixations from 1928 to its final publishing in late 1932, just before the American Revolution.

[1] One of the great things about writing in character is that you can explore the interactions of various points of view. In this case, the (fictional) writer, a British author with no sympathy for socialism or revolution is mischaracterizing Patton, who was no proletarian by any stretch of the imagination. But hey, it's a snappy title, likely to sell lots of copies among military buffs in the Anglo-French Union. [2] The author here is being hyperbolic, and it will be important to keep that in mind.

Events of the Wood Presidency, 1921 to 1925:

1921

January 28: The Italian Communist Party (PCI) is founded in Livorno, as part of the growing split in international socialism.

February 1: In the ongoing Russian Civil War, Bolshevik troops occupy Tblisi. The Menshevik government of the Georgian Democratic Republic is captured, but sporadic fighting continues around the capital and in the countryside.

February 8: Sailors at the Bolshevik controlled Russian naval fort of Kronstadt mutiny. They deliver a list of demands to the Bolshevik government that include increased restrictions on the Cheka secret police, a return to soviet democracy, and free elections, among others.

February 18: The Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic is officially declared in Tiblisi. In reality, the government is a puppet of Moscow.

March 4: Leonard Wood is inaugurated president of the United States in Washington DC.

March 14: The Kronstadt mutiny is crushed by a force of loyal Cheka volunteers and Red Army officer cadets, demonstrating the severe instability of the Bolshevik government at this point. In Moscow, the Council of People's Commissars formally implements the New Economic Policy.

March 28: The Budgeting and Accounting Act of 1921 is formally ratified by the US government.[1]

April 11: In Britain, the miner's, railway, and transportation unions announce the beginning of a strike. The government threatens to suppress the strike with military force.

May 1: In a symbolic act of national reconciliation, President Wood issues a general amnesty to all radicals convicted or deported over violations of the Espionage or Sedition Acts. Eugene Debs, released in an earlier pardon deal, meets with President Wood at the White House to "cordially discuss the national affairs of the United States." Wood's attempts at reconciliation prove to be deeply unpopular within his party.

May 19: First Secretary James Mann passes away from a sudden stroke. President Wood seizes the opportunity to launch a palace coup within the House Republicans, hoping to push aside the designated incumbent, Speaker of the House Fredrick Gillett, in favor of noted liberal Leonidas C. Dyer. Such a noted reactionary, he argues, will only serve to further arouse class conflict in the United States.

June 1: Leonidas Dyer is appointed to the officer of First Secretary. In the coming days, he reshuffles the Cabinet, removing William Vare, Secretary of Industrial Coordination, and Charles Hughes, Secretary of State, in favor of James J. Davis and Frank B. Kellog, respectively.

June 4: President Wood formally signs a joint-resolution officially ending the formal state of war between the United States and Germany, Austria and Hungary.

July 29: In Germany, a lowly formal corporal from the German Army signal corps is elected leader of the so-called National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP).

October 1: A peace conference between the United Kingdom and Éire begins in London.[2]

November 7: The National Fascist Party is established in Italy.

December 1: The Irish-British peace conference concludes, formally recognizing the Republic of Éire, an independent nation incorporating 26 of the 32 counties in Ireland.

1922

January 18: The London Naval Conference begins, hoping to arrest the potential arms race between Britain, America, France and Japan.

February 1: A challenge to the 18th Amendment, which established women's right to vote in the US, is rebuffed by the US Supreme Court.

March 11: In Mumbai, a young Indian lawyer and independence leader named Mohandas Gandhi is arrested for Sedition.

March 20: The USS Langley (CV-1) is commissioned as the first aircraft carrier in the US Navy.

April 1: Josef Stalin is appointed General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. His new nickname among the party leadership loosely translates to something like "Comrade Rolodex"

May 1: In another inroad to reconciliation, President Wood and First Secretary Dyer sign legislation formally declaring May 1st to be a federal holiday, dubbed "International Labor Day". Later that day, Dyer lays out a progressive legislative agenda before the House. The platform contains legislation establishing a fifty-hour standard work week with guaranteed overtime pay, nationalizing the majority of country's railroads, establishing a first ever progressive income tax, creating a national health service and a cabinet level Department of Health, establishing cabinet Departments of Education and Labor, and a law recognizing the right of labor unions to organize. The platform is controversial and ambitious, and a crisis of leadership soon erupts.

June 11: President Wood gives the first ever national radio address. In his speech, he urges moderation and reform to fight the tide of class warfare and militancy within the country. In his words, "the choice is reform or revolution; the rascals in Congress would sooner see revolution before tear away their claws from their acquired power."

July 8: The Fordney-McCumber Tarriff act passes the Senate with a 2/3rds majority, completely undercutting President Wood's threatened veto. In an attempt to compromise and push forward his agenda, First Secretary Dyer steers the act through the House.

August 16: A limited version of Dyer's "Progress Platform" is enacted by the US House. It contains provisions establishing a cabinet Department of Education and Labor, regulates food and drug standards via the Department of Industrial Coordination, and establishes a 50 hour standard work week.

October 28: The Italian Fascists stage their "March on Rome", steering Benito Mussolini to power. The Constitution is soon suspended, as a general terror campaign begins on enemies of the Fascists. Elsewhere, the Red Army occupies Vladivostok, signalling an end to major fighting in the Russian Civil War.

November 1: UK General elections occur, precipitated by Conservative withdrawal from the National Coalition. The Conservatives win a razor thin majority government.[3]

December 28: Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Transcaucasia sign a treaty of union, creating the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

1923

January 8: The limits on capital ship construction established by the Washington Naval Conference are rejected by the US Senate. Capital ship construction continues as planned in 1920, with 8 Lexington-class battlecruisers and 8 Odin-class battleships (so named in honor of Cabinet Secretary Knute Nelson's Norwegian heritage) in various stages of construction.[4]

March 6: Vladimir Lenin suffers his third stroke, and subsequently retires as Chair of Soviet Government.

March 18: First Secretary Dyer's pet law, making lynching a federal crime punishable by death manages to pass over a Senate filibuster attempt, thanks to Vice-President Calvin Coolidge's deft use of parliamentary tactics to outmanuever democratic opposition. In the House, the law passes in spite of major opposition within the House Republicans, thanks to the unanimous support of the law by the Worker's Party. Dyer and Wood both agree that this is perhaps the first green shoots of their reform policy.

May 8: The World War Adjusted Compensation Act, AKA the Bonus Bill, is signed into law.

June 1: The National Forests are significantly enlarged by the Clarke-McNary Act, in a strong tri-partisan vote. President Wood and First Secretary Dyer agree that the "unthinkable option" just might be in order now.

August 2: Warren G. Harding, US Senator, passes away of an apparent heart-attack. With one of the more powerful-conservative voices in the Senate absent, Wood delivers his ultimatum to the Congress: support the "Progress Platform" as originally intended, or split the Republican Party. Dyer announces that a failure to act will mean a drastic reshuffling of the Cabinet: moderate Republicans will form a coalition government with the Worker's Party in both the House and Senate, and he will force through the Platform anyway. Such a coalition, he calculates, will have majority support in both the Senate and the House.

August 8: Upton Sinclair, Opposition Leader, goes on record in favor of the First Secretary's terms. He is willing to accept junior partnership in a coalition government in exchange for reforms more drastic than those outlined in the Progress Platform. Industrial workers across the US go out on strike in support of the re-alignment.

September 16: First Secretary Dyer finds himself caught in a bind. The votes he needed to pass the reforms have quickly dried up, scared off by labor unrest and second thoughts, while simultaneously the votes he needs to go through with his ultimatum have vanished in both houses of Congress. With his gambit failed, and his political legitimacy destroyed, Dyer resigns before the motion of confidence can be filed.

October 1: Frederick Gillett is elected First Secretary by the House of Representatives. True to form, reshuffles the cabinet upon taking office, re-moving Dyer's appointees and re-instating Mann's snubbed Secretaries.

November 8: In spite of the major differences in ideology, Gillett passes some of the legislation sponsored by Dyer's government, including a law greatly restricting the use of child labor in manufacturing. Elsewhere, Adolf Hitler begins the ultimately unsuccessful Beer-Hall Putsch.

1924

January 21: Vladimir Lenin dies; in the leadership vacuum left by the passing of such a living legend, the slow purging process by Josef Stalin soon begins.

January 27: Petrograd is renamed Leningrad; Lenin's body is embalmed and interred in a mausoleum against his explicit wishes.

February 1: Ramsay MacDonald becomes the first Labour prime minister of Britain.

February 16: The United Kingdom formally recognizes the USSR. The US, under President Wood's directive, soon follows suit.

March 8: The Castle Gate mine disaster in kills over one hundred miners in Utah, prompting major outcries for mine-safety across the US. Across the US, the National Guard is called out to suppress miner's strikes.

April 1: Adolf Hitler is sentenced to 5 years in jail for his participation in the Beer Hall Putsch. He serves only 9 months.

April 7: In a rigged election, the Italian Fascists cement a 2/3rds control of the Italian Parliament.

May 8: Debate begins in the US Congress over the formation of a national investigatory police.

July 1: The National Bureau of Investigation is founded. J. Edgar Hoover is appointed the head of the undersized, underfunded institution with investigatory authority only over the distribution of condoms and pornography across state lines.[5]

August 6: An act of Congress is passed, granting all Native Americans within the territorial boundaries of the United States full citizenship rights.

October 27: The Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic formally joins the USSR.

November 4: United States General Election: President Wood is re-elected by a comfortable margin. First Secretary Gillett forms a Republican minority-government.

1925

January 8: Benito Mussolini assumes dictatorial powers in Italy.

February 18: The Worker's Party sponsored national newspaper, The Daily Worker, reaches parity with The New York Times in circulation.

March 4: President Wood is inaugurated President for his second term.

[1] Basically the same as reality. Many things noted here that happened in some form in reality will be included in updates, simply because they're historically important enough.

[2] Very similar to reality, except that Ireland is recognized as a Republic from the start.

[3] More precise results, for those of you who are wondering:

UK General Election Conservative Party...... 340 seats (+10) Labour Party...... 146 (+89) Liberal...... 68 (+32) National Liberal...... 47 (-80) Other...... 14 (+1)

[4] This will probably be the only time I do this, but I feel I must invoke "Rule of Cool" here. Naming battleships after states is rather lame, so I felt I had to put a stop to the US Navy's absurd naming conventions. Anyway, here are some vital stats for battleship aficionados to drool over in the meantime.

Type: Lexington-class battlecruiser (similar to reality) Displacement: 48,550 tons (empty) Length: 270 meters Beam: 32.1 meters Draft: 9.2 meters Propulsion: Turbo-electric, four shafts, total 180,000 shp Speed: 33 knots Armament: 8 x 406mm/50 cal (4x2) 16 x 152mm/53 cal 4 x 76mm/50 cal Armor: 178mm belt, 130-230mm barbette, 305mm conning tower, 280mm turret, 152mm side, 76-152mm deck

Type: Odin-class battleship Displacement: 58,200 tons (empty) Length: 252 meters Beam: 34 meters Draft: 10 meters Propulsion: Turbo-electric, four shafts, total 180,000 shp Speed: 27 knots Armament: 12 x 406mm/50 cal (4x3) 16 x 152mm/53 cal 12 x 76mm/50 cal Armor: 380mm belt, 380 barbette, 406mm conning tower, 460mm turret, 152mm side, 203mm deck

[5] Basically, not all that different than reality. It's amazing that something so big can start out so pathetic.

The 1924 US Presidential Election

President Wood, in spite of the rancor, manages to win the Republican Nomination, though he is forced to take conservative Herbert Hoover as his running mate.

The Worker's Party nominates Upton Sinclair and Walter Lippmann for its ticket. The party hopes to strengthen its foothold among northern workers and further edge out Democratic voters in the north.

As for the Democratic Party, the nomination of Bourbon Democrat John W. Davis has done little to help the party's electoral prospects. In many cases, party leaders see the participation in national elections as pro forma. So long as the party controls the southern State governments, all is well.

Results

Leonard Wood (R)...... 13,012,123 (303) Upton Sinclair (W)...... 9,753,111 (116) John W. Davis (D)...... 6,486,324 (112)

The 1924 US Congressional Election

House of Representatives

Republican Minority Government

Republican Party...... 200 (-14) Independent...... 1 (-3)

Opposition

Worker's Party...... 158 (+26) Democratic Party...... 76 (-9)

US Senate

Republican Party...... 50 (-2) Democratic Party...... 29 (-2) Worker's Party...... 17 (+4)

Excerpt from Storming the Gates of Heaven: A History of the Comintern, by Albert E. Kahn, Progress Publishers, Cambridge, Mass., 1962.

Lenin's corpse was hardly even cold before the power struggle began in the USSR. The struggle for dominance between Leon Trotsky and Josef Stalin[1], at first limited to the Soviet Politburo, would eventually come to be played out on a dramatic world stage, becoming one of the pre- eminent international ideological conflicts of the 20th Century.

...At the Sixth World Congress, held from July to August of 1925, the delegates agreed that a major restructuring of the International's strategy was in order. The complete failure of revolutionary movements to spread socialism through central Europe had seriously affected the legitimacy of worker's movements all accross the world. The unfortunate outcome, as might be guessed, was that this failure damaged the credibility of internationalists within the Soviet state, and ultimately gave Josef Stalin, the unscrupulous Russian chauvinist and political manipulator that he was, just the leverage he needed to secure total mastery of the Soviet state.

It was at the Sixth Congress that Bukharin outlined Stalin's thesis of "socialism in one country". The programme laid out before the Congress by Zinoviev generally finalized the disastrous splits within the international left; Comintern parties would abandon their insurrectionary tactics and underground organizations to stand for parliamentary elections, but they would still offer only limited cooperation with socialist parties. In the United States, this resulted in the dissolution of the underground Communist Party apparatus into the mainstream Worker's Party, and a general turnover of leadership within the party.

...John Reed reluctantly complied with Zinoviev's order to resign his position as Executive Secretary and stand for a by-election to the US House in Greenwich Village, a constituency he won and held until his eventual retirement from politics in 1945. A more pro-Moscow Troika would placed in the party's leadership, consisting of Reed's successor, C.E. Ruthenberg, the inimitable Wobbly leader "Big Bill" Haywood, and Earl Browder. This move led directly to an internal conflict between the party's organization apparatus and the parliamentary party, under the tenure of Opposition Leader Upton Sinclair and his whip, William Z. Foster.

That year's national convention would dramatically illustrate this tension. The parliamentary faction, which generally favoring increased party pluralism and syndicalism, quickly began to resent Moscow's increasingly heavy hand in internal party politics. The pro-Moscow party organization fought to tighten standards of membership, and bring the parliamentary faction under Moscow's directives. The central flashpoints that year was the choice of many syndicalist groups, many anarchist or left communist, to begin entry into the party, including the famous German emigré and self-professed anarcho-syndicalist Rudolf Rocker. The Muscovites generally opposed allowing such groups to join the party, decrying them as "infantile leftists". The parliamentary faction, with the support of much of the union's rank and file, was much in favor of a united left front.

The other was the question of parliamentary tactics, especially on the electoral front. Prior to this date, with the exception of a few of the most concentrated industrial regions, the Worker's Party had generally avoided campaigning in the South for tactical reasons. The party's limited resources would make a campaign in the South futile due to the combined weight of completely dominant reactionary Democratic Party. Not even the national Republican Party, which commanded resources far more vast than than the Worker's Party could hope to field, could successfully crack into the South. Campaigning among Negroes was similarly futile; though population of former slaves in both the North and South were incredibly receptive to socialism, throughout much of the South voting was an absolute impossibility, even in federal elections. Regrettably, even as these words are written the battle for full suffrage and equality for the American Negroe in the South is not yet fully won.

...The outcome of the convention was mixed, and neither faction came away with a clear victory. The Muscovites "Southern Strategy" had ultimately prevailed. The party would have a candidate standing in each and every one of the 435 House constituencies, and the unionization drives would now focus on organizing rural and urban Southern workers, both black and white. On the other hand, the Muscovites were forced to accept, against the Comintern's directives, that syndicalists, left communists and even anarchists be counted among the "tested communists" the Comintern demanded be placed in the party's offices.

[1] In the popular imagination in our world, the complexities of the post-Lenin power vacuum are most often reduced to a long conflict between Stalin and Trotsky. For whatever reason (Trotsky had been an opponent of Stalin since almost the very beginning, and was one of the last leaders to be co-opted or silenced), Trotsky became the poster-boy for the dissident left. And as you can imagine, for a movement and eventually a state that attached itself to Trotsky, that enduring myth would color everyone's perceptions, even an academic's.

Events of the Woods/Hoover Presidencies, 1925-29

1925

March 8: The American section of the Young Pioneers communist youth group is formally founded in New York. Essentially a political, urban Boy Scouts, the group becomes an important facet of inner city life quickly after its founding.

April 8: F. Scott Fitzgerald publishes his (eventually) famous novel, Under Red, White and Blue, to mixed critical reception and moderate commercial success.[1]

May 1: Turn out at annual May Day parades and demonstrations is a disappointment this year. The steadily growing economy and reduced unemployment have in many ways deflated militancy on the Left. The Worker's Party and the Solidarity labor union face the first decline in total membership after almost two decades of steady growth in membership.

May 17: National news suddenly turns to a small town in Iowa, over a teacher's defiance of state's anti- evolution law. The impending trial is expected to have national ramifications.

July 4: Independence Day celebrations across the country suddenly turn very somber, as news spreads of an assassination attempt on President Wood. The lone gunmen is killed while attempting escape. Wood, already in poor health, is gravely wounded by two shots to the chest from the assassin's revolver.

July 11: Herbert Hoover is sworn in as President. Due to a miscommunication about President Wood's death, Hoover is accidently sworn in almost a full hour before the President's passing. Due to this, and other unsightly coincidences in the affair, conspiracy theories begin to form around the assassination in later years.

August 1: The National Revenue Act of 1925 is signed into law by President Hoover. The Act greatly reduced federal income taxes across the board, especially on higher incomes. The federal government still maintains a modest surplus after the tax reductions, allowing the government to continue retiring some of the war debt from the First World War.

August 18: In the USSR, Leon Trotsky resigns his position in Sovnarkom as the People's Commissar for War, under mounting criticism within the party over, among other things, his earlier criticism of Zinoviev and Kamanev as well as his thesis on permanent revolution.

October 3: A Congressional joint resolution authorizing a constitutional amendment to ban the production, sale and distribution of alcohol is soundly defeated. The Prohibition movement begins a long, slow death in American politics, lingering in some areas for decades but losing most if not all of the former national attention it had received.

October 25: Walter Francis White, Executive Secretary of the NAACP, cautiously endorses the Workers Party's new emphasis on anti-segregation and anti-racism. W.E.B. Du Bois, Publications Director for the NAACP, is not so tepid. He begins publishing a series of essays in Crisis, the NAACP journal, championing an alliance between "the forces of labor liberation and the forces of Negroe liberation"

December 11: At the Fourteenth Party Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, the Troika between Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev disintegrates. Zinoviev and Kamanev criticize Stalin over the increasingly dictatorial nature of his leadership of the Party. Stalin, now allied with Bukharin, Molotov and Kalininn, begins strengthening his grip on the Politburo.

1926

January 16: A BBC radio play about a worker's revolution causes a panic in London, dramatically revealing the great tension between labor and capital in the UK.

February 4: Eugene Debs, five time presidential candidate and spiritual leader of the American socialist movement, passes away in his sleep. With the unifying force of Debs gone, many fear that the Workers Party will soon splinter.

April 28: A coal miner's strike begins in Britain. The conflict soon boils over into a full general strike. While the labor's taking to the streets is far short of a revolution in progress, the quick degeneration of the situation proves that fears of labor uprising are not totally without merit.

May 14: The British general strike ends with a negotiated settlement.

July 17: The Automobile Worker's Union is founded in Detroit, Michigan.

August 1: President Hoover cautiously endorses First Secretary Gilett's proposal for legislation that would, in effect, legitimate the existence of industrial unions and enforce collective bargaining contracts. With unions entrenched in every major American industry, the need for arbitration becomes manifestly apparent.

October 11: A decree issued by Mussolini's government in Italy orders the arrest of all parliamentary deputies of the Italian Communist Party.

October 14: The Labor Standards Act, legitimating industrial unionism, passes the U.S. House 287-111. However, the legislation faces an uncertain fate in the more aristocratic Senate.

December 1: Compromise deals over the Labor Standards Act fail, resulting in the defeat of the Act 36- 58 in the Senate. In response, the House votes on a constitutional amendment resolution to strip powers from the US Senate. Gilett hopes that the controversy, and the threat of a constitutional convention called by the states, might give the Senate reason to reconsider. Ultimately, the controversy goes nowhere.

1927

February 1: Norman Thomas, a former Presbyterian minister and New York City councilman, is elected to the US House in a by-election. A powerful orator and an enthusiastic activist, he quickly becomes a powerful figure in New York labor politics.

May 17: Charles Lindbergh, a daring airmail pilot, is pronounced missing and presumed dead, after his plane fails to arrive in Great Britain. An attempt at the first solo flight across the Atlantic will not be made again for several months.

June 1: In the USSR, Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev, former adversaires, form a United Opposition against Stalin's growing hegemony in the Communist Party.

June 8: Actor William Haines, the number one box office draw of the year, openly discusses his homosexuality and his relationship with his partner Jimmie Shields in an interview with the Daily Worker. The national news attention following is more one of curiosity than condemnation.[2]

July 16: American troops are deployed to China to protect vital American commercial interests.

October 6: The silent film era ends with the release of The Jazz Singer.

November 8: Leon Trotsky and Grigory Zinoviev are formally expelled from the Communist Party. Trotsky and his associates refuse to capitulate, and soon face the prospect of internal exile.

December 6: The Soviet Communist Party, at its Fifteenth Congress, issues an official edict condemning all deviation from the party line. Josef Stalin is effectively undisputed master of the Soviet state.

1928

January 30: Leon Trotsky is arrested by State Security. He assumes a state of passive resistance, and is exiled to Alma Ata in the following month.

March 2: In accordance with "Second Period" Comintern policies, the Workers Party of America adopts the name "Workers (Communist) Party".

April 4: Max Eastman, editor of the Daily Worker, publishes an article in the paper in support of Leon Trotsky, and heavily criticizes Josef Stalin's growing leadership cult. Calls by the Comintern for his expulsion from the party begin almost immediately.

April 8: The United States Republican Party begins issuing its first official membership cards. President Hoover accepts the first card, becoming the first "official" member of the Republican Party. Membership dues, collected during the primary season at party rallies, will be used to fund the national Congressional campaign.

May 4: Aviatrix Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to successfully fly across the Atlantic.

June 18: American troops stationed in China begin a general withdrawal.

July 2: A papal edict is issued, aimed at the growing involvement of US Catholics with the socialist movement. It harshly condemns socialism and laborism, and instead encourages humility and charity as an alternative. Known members of the Workers Party are to be explicitly denied communion.

August 6: First Secretary Gilett publicly announces his retirement from leadership of the Republican Party and from politics in general. Majority Leader Nicholas Longworth is elected to head the government for the remainder of the Congress.

November 6: US general election. President Hoover is reelected to a second term, and Republican Party returns a solid majority in the House of Representatives. Cooperation between the President and the First Secretary is expected to be high.(3)

December 18: In one of its last acts, the lame duck 68th Congress approves construction of a hydroelectric dam in the Boulder Canyon on the Colorado River.

1929

February 11: Leon Trotsky, along with his wife and son, is expelled from the USSR, to Istanbul, Turkey.

March 4: Herbert Hoover is sworn into his second term as President. Nicholas Longworth forms a Republican majority government.

[1] The Great Gatsby. Under Red, White and Blue was F. Scott Fitzgerald's preferred title, but he arrived at it too late to in publication to change the name of the book.

[2] I was surprised to learn this, but apparently the Roaring 20s was a period of relative acceptance of homosexuality unmatched until the mid to late 1970s. I'd chalk it up to innocence rather than a progressive social attitude, but at any rate a major interview with an already openly gay individual seems like a decent point of departure for the development of different LBGT politics.

The 1928 US Presidential Election

Herbert Hoover handily wins the nomination from the Republican Party. The Republican Party national secretary, a close confidant of the president, sets the party's sights on the South, hoping to crack the Democratic Party's dominance of the region once and for all. Campaigners, organizers and a slew of hopeful Congressional candidates descend upon the South during the campaign season. Many run under the banner of the Conservative Party. However, the Conservative Party is little more than a regional auxiliary to the Republican Party to avoid much anti-Republican sentiment left over from the Civil War.

The Worker's (Communist) Party again nominates Upton Sinclair for President. His running mate, young New Yorker Norman Thomas brings a helpful human face to the ticket. Thomas' success at organizing with churchs and religious groups bolster the party's campaign, as it mirrors the dominant Republican's turn towards the South. The party hopes to rally Southern populists, tenant farmers, exploited blacks and white industrial workers into an effective coalition to take control of the House of Representatives.

The ailing Democratic Party further entrenches, and again nominates Bourbon Democrat John W. Davis. The party finds itself beset on two fronts, and struggles to hold onto its remaining House seats, as well as the Southern state governments.

Results

Herbert Hoover(R)...... 19,345,891 (337) Upton Sinclair (W)...... 12,125,054 (130) John W. Davis (D)...... 6,521,324 (64)

The 1928 US Congressional Election

House of Representative

Republican Majority Government

Republican Party...... 246 (+46) Conservative Party...... 41 (+41)

Opposition

Worker's Party...... 112 (-46) Democratic Party...... 36 (-40) Independent...... 0 (-1)

US Senate

Republican Party...... 49 (-1) Democratic Party...... 21 (-8) Conservative Party...... 8 (+8) Worker's Party...... 18 (+1)

Excerpts from "Review: Towards a Permanent Republican Majority" by George Catlin, in American Political Science Review, Vol. 24, No. 1, February 1930.

Nathan Fines' recent study of American political trends gives us a bold prediction: as a direct consequence of political dynamics, demographic trends and most of all economic cycles, the American Republican Party will be uniquely situated to dominate American political life for the foreseeable future. Fines' thesis is bold indeed, and while the Republican Party's landslide general election victory and the political success of the Hoover-Longworth Administration's[1] political programme may seem to the pedestrian observer to be proof positive, we must be more cautious in evaluating the strength of such a profound claim. Nevertheless, Fines has come prepared, marshalling an impressive range of evidence with remarkable clarity.

...One of the strongest planks of Fines' thesis is his analysis of the Republican Party's successful strategy of co-opting both the political programmes and organization methods of their adversaries at the polls. Since the final midterm Congressional election in 1918, the Republican Party's chief adversary has been the communist Workers Party. As Fines' so eloquently put it, "the socialist opposition has been the most able and thorough schoolmaster in the art of mass politics in the entirety of the Grand Old Party's existence." Indeed, the Republicans have made able use of their education. The modern Republican Party, organizationally, is the mirror image of the mass-based membership Worker's Party[2]. The Republican's impressive resources have allowed for the mobilization of an impressive membership group, and a powerful electoral apparatus to mobilize support for the party on election day.

The Republicans have done more than learn new organizational methods from the opposition, though. While many high-profile attempts at political realignment failed under the Wood presidency, the Republican Party has spent most of the 20s experimenting with adopting facets of the Worker's Party's "Minimal Programme". Hoover's first term led to limited success on that front, adopting landmark workplace safety legislation, it was ultimately First Secretary Longworth's decisive reorganization of the parliamentary Republican membership leading up to and after the 1928 election victory that have allowed the social democratic reforms of the past year. Hoover's controversial election platform, which called for the nationalisation of the rail roads and comprehensive federal disaster relief programmes, are, as Fines' polling data demonstrates, a key factor to winning over many Midwestern and Southern farmers to the Republican Party. In spite of high profile opposition within the party, both measures passed under Longworth's strong parliamentary leadership.

...However, there remain some problems with Fines' thesis. A permanent Republican majority rests on extrapolating current economic and demographic trends. A dramatic increase in the rate of urbanisation, or a weakening of economic standard of living growth could very easily upset the Republican Party's prospects for the future. Similarly, Fines' prediction of the total demise of the Democratic Party within the next decade is beset with reasonable doubts. Identification with the Democratic Party is still very strong in the American South, in spite of the success of both the Republican and Worker's parties' penetration of the electorate in the last election. The Republican's Southern auxiliary, the Conservative Party, simply may not have the staying power to uproot such an enduring tradition.

[1] The new trend in this late period has become one of naming the President and the First Secretary together for a given administration. [2] The author here omits the Solidarity labor union's position within the Worker's Party apparatus in the analysis, as he doesn't find it an important distinction.

Turning and Turning in the Widening Gyre

"Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."

-Irving Fisher

The Roaring Twenties, as they'd been called, had been revered as a new Golden Age of Civilization. The growth of science, the arts, education and standards of living across Europe and the United States had been unprecedented in history. The Weimar Republic, in spite of difficulties imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, had presided over an age of tolerance, humanism and culture envied the world over. Britain and France had recovered much of their strength, depleted from the trenches of the First World War. The colonies remained mostly docile. And the United States, the continued revolutions in the arts promised to transform the dull drudgery of daily life for all time. Radio and cinema became the new universal language, and new developments in a strange scientific contraption called a "television" promised to bring the cinema to the home within a decade or two.

But the Golden Age was not to last. It would soon collapse under its own internal stresses. The dreamers of the Roaring Twenties were abruptly woken up on Thursday, February 6th, 1930. What had seemed like a normal business cycle abruptly accelerated. In the panic on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, a record 14 million shares were traded on Black Thursday.

Though the actions of a few high profile investors had temporarily averted panic that day, the news of the growing crisis continued to spread across the United States. The panic could not be contained. The following Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost almost 45 points (12 percent). The panic only continued the next day, losing a further 14 percent that Tuesday.

The Stock Market Crash of 1930 would become the opening act of what would be known the world over as "The Great Depression". The Great Depression would herald a decade of despair and revolution. Empires and republics alike would topple under the weight of the economic collapse. Fascism rise to power in Europe, ravaging the world with horrors never matched in all of human history.

Governments would soon scramble to contain the crisis. In the United States, a controversial tariff act, the Smoot-Hawley Act, was reluctantly signed into law by President Hoover in June of 1930. The Act not only contained the largest increases in tariffs ever proposed, but also contained measures effectively outlawing trade unions, which had been tolerated but never fully endorsed by the federal government since the First World War. International trade would soon grind to a near halt, and the act further inflamed the seething tensions between capital and labor.

August of 1930 would see a wave of major bank failures in the United States. The faltering of credit and finance was followed quickly by deflation. The Federal Reserve and the Longworth Government were unable and unwilling to abandon the Gold Standard, and through a combination of ill-advised action by the former and inaction by the latter, the money supply would only further contract in 1931. The ensuing deflationary spiral and new waves of bank failures deepened the crisis.

The crisis originated in the United States, and ultimately the US was among the nations hardest hit by the Great Depression. By the time the Depression reached its nadir in June of 1933, industrial production had fallen by almost 50 percent. Half of the 25,000 banks in the United States had failed. GDP fell by 35.2 percent. Total unemployment reached a high of 28 percent, and non-farm employment reached 43 percent. Over 1 million families lost their farms, and average family income fell by almost half.

The nadir of the Great Depression would coincide with the fall of Washington D.C. during the brief Second American Civil War and the rise of the Nazis to absolute power in Germany.

The preceding excerpt was from the introduction of a chapter titled "The Great Depression and the Revolution" from a generic high school American history textbook, circa 1988.

The Opening Salvo: 1930 Senate Elections

One peculiar artifact of the constitutional system of the late United States was the off-year Senate elections. In spite of Woodrow Wilson's attempts, he was unable to significantly change the operations of the Senate. While it usually assumed a secondary role to the House, it's electoral cycles still followed the same 6 year, staggered terms, with one third of the house up for election every two years. And in the middle of the Great Depression, this off-year election suddenly mattered again.

The only major reform made to the Senate had occurred early in 1929, in which the Senate, at the recommendation of President Hoover, with "urgent insistence" of First Secretary Longworth, re-adopted the rules for moving the previous question, 113 years after they had been excised as "redundant". Now that a simple majority could control the Senate, the results of the election made it abundantly clear that the Republican Party would soon be in deep trouble.

By this point, nearly 3/4ths of the states had adopted some form of electoral component for Senate elections, ultimately serving to increase the volatility of the Senate's membership.

Results

Republican Party...... 36 (-13) Worker's Party...... 29 (+11) Democratic Party...... 27 (+6) Conservative Party...... 4 (-4)

'Tis the final conflict: The Workers (Communist) Party Convention

In sharp contrast to the bitter accusations at the Republican convention, and the catatonic snoring at the Democratic Party convention, the Workers Party convention reflected a great deal of optimism and euphoria. The party's membership rolls, declining for years had practically exploded. New locals from all across America, even in the Deep South, had been chartered and sent delegates to the convention.

Still, there were numerous issues to be settled. The slate of Congressional candidates had to be approved, the party platform adopted, and most importantly, the leadership candidates would have to be selected. The most important of which would be the man who would run for president; he may very well be the party's first president, and if a peaceful, democratic changing of the guard was to occur, the right man for the job would need to be selected.

The Comintern had always been apathetic to the notion of American exceptionalism: that socialism in the United States could be achieved at the ballot box, without a violent overthrow of the old order. At the convention, four candidates with very different backgrounds decided to step into the ring for the honor.

Opposition Leader Upton Sinclair of New Jersey was the universally acknowledged front-runner. A brilliant writer and parliamentary leader with impeccable leftist credentials, Sinclair had been the party's Congressional leader since 1914, and perhaps the spiritual leader of the party after Grandfather Debs' passing.

Sinclair's closest rival for the position was party General Secretary Earl Browder, a powerful statesman and effective organizer with strong ties to Moscow and the Comintern. However, his position as Stalin's favorite has caused some in the party to be suspicious of him. Even with Stalin's general esteem within the American left, there is growing resentment at his heavy handed international leadership.

The admitted underdog at the convention was Rep. John Reed of New York. His popularity among leftists and non-leftists is considerable, but his openly admitted sympathies for Trotsky have caused a great deal of controversy, as has his cooperation with Trotsky on a volume of Soviet history. While pro-Trostky members are a substantial minority within the party, even many who are sympathetic see Reed as a source of unnecessary controversy with the Comintern.

The dark horse of the ensemble is the young and charismatic Norman Thomas, also from New York. A rising star within the party, he tempers his unabashed leftism with a strongly humanistic leadership style, and open Christian sensibilities. The debate was intense, and ultimately much of the substance of the debate was over leadership qualities rather than any major doctrinal differences. Nevertheless, some key issues of policy did come up. Browder favored the total revocation of the tax exempt status of religious groups and the total abolition of private schools. Thomas strongly objected to such heavy-handed practices, and favored a casual re-integration of parochial school students into mainstream schools. Sinclair and Reed favored the collectivization of small business properties into worker owned enterprises, whereas Browder argued for nationalization.

When the votes were tallied on the first ballot, Sinclair and Thomas were roughly neck and neck, with Browder falling behind considerably, and Reed taking only a mere fifteen percent of the votes. With Browder and Reed eliminated in the second ballot, the two threw their support to Sinclair and Thomas respectively. With the second ballot, Thomas clinched a narrow victory for the nomination. With Sinclair's own assent, and Thomas' strong support, Sinclair received and accepted nomination for Vice-President.

The 1932 US Presidential Election

The 1932 general election campaign was the longest and most intense campaign season for both major parties yet recorded. Everyone knew how much was at stake for both camps, and without accurate polling data, the prospect of victory was uncertain for either camps.

Assuredly, The Daily Worker predicted landslide victories for Thomas as often as The New York Times predicted landslide victories for Hoover. Sometimes, they even cited surveys to support their predictions, but doubtlessly, such surveys would be laughed at by any modern statistician.

Hoover, at any rate, knew how much trouble he and his party were in. His back door plea to controversial Democratic Party presidential nominee Huey Long to drop out of the race to avoid splitting the anti-communist vote was met with Long's explicit indifference to whether capitalism or socialism was the order of the day in the United States.

Thomas and Sinclair toured the country by train, delivering speeches to unemployed (and workers desperately hanging onto their jobs) in every state. Ultimately, it was their continued insistence for a full-employment program that was their biggest asset in the election, more than any of their other planks of their platform. Nationalization of industry and the development of a planned economy may have been appealing planks to party workers, but ultimately, it was not enthusiasm or disgust that most workers received those ideas, but total ambivalence.

Results

Norman Thomas (W)...... 21,205,786 (381) Herbert Hoover (R)...... 14,143,945 (13) Huey Long (D)...... 7,652,125 (137)

(color schema changed)

The 1932 US Congressional Election

House of Representatives

Workers Party Majority Government

Worker's Party...... 265 (+143)

Opposition

Democratic Party...... 81 (+45) Republican Party...... 80 (-166) Conservative Party...... 9 (-32)

Senate Election Results

Worker's Party...... 39 (+10) Democratic Party...... 29 (+2) Republican Party...... 24 (-12) Conservative Party...... 4 (+0)

Revolution A-Knockin' At The Door: The Ensuing Panic

Those who had been associated with the old order--businessmen, political leaders, intellectuals and government ministers--had thought they had been prepared for the worst with the election. The sheer scale of the Workers Party's victory, and the many Democratic lawmakers who had pledged cooperation with First Secretary-apparent William Z. Foster's future government had frightened far too many important people. While they were prepared to endure British style Labourism, the scale of the victory, and the millions of workers out in the streets had set many into a panic.

To anyone with an objective view of history, their panic was largely unwarranted. While the Workers Party was disciplined, and had a solid majority in the House of Representatives, and the control of a large majority of state governments, without control of the Senate or the courts, the party's goals would have to advance at a frustratingly slow pace. There would have been socialism in the United States, but it wouldn't have been the full blown Bolshevism that so many feared.

The military, however, was completely unwilling to take that chance. Longworth's lameduck government, more importantly, was entirely willing to accept the heavy handed measures that General MacArthur had proposed to the mid-November emergency Cabinet meeting. They terrorized themselves with nightmares of Bolshevik monsters running through their minds, and soon enough, they chose to take the course that would make them self-fulfilling prophets.

Finally, on February 1, 1933, President Hoover reluctantly relented, and under the provision of Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution, he declared the United States to be in a state of unlawful insurrection, and declared martial law. Habeas corpus would be suspended, and leaders of the Workers Party were to be arrested under the terms of the Sedition Act for "encouraging insurrection and the wilful destruction of property", and made ineligible for holding federal office under the terms of the Fourteenth Amendment. Legal pretexts aside, what the President and General MacArthur had essentially done was suspend the Constitution and place the country at the mercy of a military junta.

How the putschists hoped to maintain control of the country with only the modest US military, with perhaps 250,000 active service members in the Army, and another forty-thousand serving in the Marines, with maybe another quarter-million in the National Guard can only be guessed at. Regardless, on that day, the Second American Civil War began.

That very same day, a band of some forty-thousand army veterans, calling themselves the "Bonus Expeditionary Force", had just made the decision to march on Washington D.C. to petition the government to redeem their promised service bonuses at an early date. Hungry and out of work, little did these beleaguered veterans know that in the coming months, they would be at the center of the world's attention.

A Spanner in the Works: The US General Strike of 1933

The actions of February 1 by the MacArthur military junta would not go long unanswered. While President-elect Thomas and Workers (Communist) Party General Secretary Browder were quickly apprehended by the NBI, much of the party's central executive committee had gone underground quickly enough. With the Congress permanently suspended, and the Cabinet committed to using whatever measures to contain the situation, it was quickly agreed that the time for subtle measures had long since past. On February 4, a telegram was relayed from the Workers Party central office in Chicago to every party and union local across the country. The unsigned telegram, likely written by "Big Bill" Haywood, simply read, "General strike ordered. Resist capitalist oppressors at every turn. WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!"

Nearly ten million workers answered the call by the end of the week. Every major industry, from textiles to steel, from auto manufacturing to power generation, had ground to a near total standstill. In Detroit, Michigan, the automobile workers occupied the majority of the plants belonging to Ford as well as General Motors. The workers of Pittsburgh, supported by the striking municipal police, declared the second Pittsburgh Commune. And in the Chicago Commune, the spiritual heart of the American labor movement, the Commune's government declared the expropriation of all the heavy industry in the city.

In New York City, the five Communes* declared their relationship with the reactionary state government in Albany to nullified, and declared the formation of the New York Autonomous Socialist Republic. Like in Pittsburgh, and in sharp contrast to the Communard's last struggles, the New York police supported the cause this time.

On February 9, a delegation of union leaders from all the constituent members of the Solidarity labor union met with the several dozen Workers Party congressman who had escaped arrest in the Chicago Commune. In two short days of furious discussion, they drafted the Labor Declaration of Independence. Strongly echoing the classic document, the Declaration demanded the restoration of the Constitution, the seating of the Workers Party in the Congress, the arrest and treason trial of all the leading members of the military junta, including General MacArthur, President Hoover, and First Secretary Longworth. As was agreed, only when these demands were totally met would the call for strike be rescinded.

The junta was apparently not impressed by the workers' ultimatum. The National Guards of every state were called out and placed under the direct control of the Cabinet. Army units were being mobilized to strike at the centers of power controlled by the strikers. Naval personnel were armed and pressed into service at vital port cities to force an end to strikes in Portland, San Francisco, San Diego, Norfolk, Boston and Annapolis. To maintain order in the South and deal with the Long-led insurgency within the Democratic Party, members of the KKK were being organized into "freedom corps" led by US Marshals and loyal state troopers.

On February 14, the first of these Freedom Corps struck at Baton Rouge, Louisiana. A Marine battalion, supplemented by six hundred armed Klansmen auxiliaries, marched on the state capitol building, arriving just after Long had arrived to speak before the emergency session of the state legislature. State troopers loyal to the Kingfish tried desperately to hold off the onslaught, the building was quickly surrounded. A detachment of Klansmen, armed with BARs and Thompson submachine guns entered the state House chamber, where the Governor and many of the state legislators had taken refuge. What followed has since been known as the "Bloody Valentine Massacre"; 111 members of the state legislature, along with Governor Huey Long, were assassinated for their support of the Workers Party and their opposition to the military junta. By week's end, much of the Louisiana state police had been successfully purged, and much of the civil service made to sign loyalty oaths to the federal government.

Similar purges were carried out among dissidents throughout the Southern United States. Freedom Corps, armed and sanctioned by the federal government, bullied reluctant state governments to support the military junta, massacred several rallies of striking workers, and under took a ruthless purge of the (mostly black) membership of the Workers Party in the Southern states.

The situation was little better in the North. While Southerners had to endure the ham-handed efforts of inept National Guard regiments and vicious paramilitary groups, MacArthur had pledged the full weight of the US Army to be used on the "open revolution" in the North.

Army divisions were dispatched to suppress the Chicago, Seattle and Milwaukee communes. National Guardsmen were mobilized to retake Pittsburgh, and a daring Marine landing on Long Island was planned to put an end to the festering New York situation once and for all. MacArthur had hoped that the forty thousand plus army veterans of the "Bonus Army" could be bought off and armed as paramilitaries, but when this overture was rebuffed on March 1, he ordered 3d Cavalry Regiment, under the command of Lt. Colonel George S. Patton to march on their current camp in Pennsylvania and disperse them.

If all went according to plan, the "insurrection" would be crushed within two months, and the country could return to normalcy within a few years. What the leaders of the coup did not take into account was the extraordinary rot within the armed forces, and the daring of a few junior officers to take the first step.

* The five Burroughs of New York

Our Bullets Are For Our Own Generals: The Birth of the Red Army

Curious as it may be, but the future of American democracy rested on a peculiar case of nepotism. By surrounding himself with friends and loyal confidants (such as Major Eisenhower or his comrades from the Socialist Club of the early 20s) during his command of the 3d Cavalry Regiment, Patton was able to make the first bold step in defeating the ambitions of the reactionaries. Moral, even among the professionals of the Cavalry, was abysmally low as they set out to disperse a group of former comrades who wanted nothing more than bread to feed their families. The enlisted men and non- commissioned officers had, more likely than not, voted socialist in the last election. And at least half the officers had no stomach for the duty their government had given them.

Patton, seizing the initiative, order many of the more loyal officers to lead a small scouting detachment away from the main van as the regiment neared it's meeting place with the Bonus Army. There, rather than carrying out his orders, Patton announced in front of his men and the veterans, that he would be mutinying against the unlawful dictatorship in Washington. He rallied the veterans to join with his men to fight for freedom, democracy and socialism. On March 12, 1933, his rag-tag group of cavalry troopers and World War veterans declared themselves to "the Red Army", and marched on the Pennsylvania National Guard Armory. The Pennsylvania National Guard brigade sent to intercept the Red Army mutinied as well, and fraternized with the Red Army. On March 18, the Armory surrendered without a fight, and Patton set about arming, organizing and drilling his soldiers into proper units.

There would be no time to spare, either. Pittsburgh was under siege by the 1st Infantry Division and elements of the Pennsylvania National Guard. The Red Army was forced to break camp and march double-time to relieve their comrades. Factory militias and city police could not hold out long against trained and well-armed soldiers. The ensuring Battle of Pittsburgh would be the first major battle of the Second Civil War. The battle, fought from March 28 to April 4, was a draw, with both sides taking considerable casualties, but it served to prove on thing: the Red Army could stand up against professional army units on equal terms.

As everyday passed by, and more workers took up arms and organized their own Red Army units, the hope of a restoration of the Constitution and a return to normalcy grew ever more dim. Even with the high profile successes of Patton's group in Pennsylvania, almost everywhere the military still held the upper hand.

As April wore on, the battles grew in intensity. During that month, the Red Army in Ohio (composed of mutinying regiments of the Ohio National Guard as well as many volunteers) lost and retook Cincinnati twice. Similar battles took place all along the rail lines linking Chicago to Pittsburgh to New York. On the 15th, Springfield, Illinois, fell to the US Army, and the 1st Marine Division landed on Long Island. The US Army's only major armored formation, the 1st Cavalry Division under Colonel Adna Chaffee, was dispatched to Chicago, with direct orders to "crush red guards insurrectionists protecting the seat of the rebellion, and prepare* the city for assault by 3rd Inf Div."

April 26 would be American democracy's darkest hour. The 1st Cavalry moved into the outskirts of Chicago that very morning. Pittsburgh came under attack by the 1st and 4th Infantry, and even "Blood and Guts" himself admitted that they only had a slim chance of holding onto the city facing such artillery superiority. A squadron of battlecruisers were moving into position to provide support for the 1st Marine's assault on Queens.

But suddenly, the dawn broke over the horizon. On the 27th, Chaffee led his tanks into Chicago waving a red flag. The howitzers of the divisions attacking Pittsburgh exhausted their ammunition, and in face of counterattacks by the Red Army were forced to retire. And the guns of the battlecruisers Lexington, Saratoga, Ticonderoga and Gettysburg fired, not on the Red Army emplacements, but on the positions of the 1st Marine Division.

On the morning of the 29th of April, hemmed in by Patton's well-executed encirclement, the 1st and 4th Infantry Division's surrendered. Later that afternoon, the 1st Marine division surrendered as well. The tide had turned.

* Euphemism for siege and artillery bombardment.

May Day: The Revolution Consummated

With news of the victories of the previous day flooding into the Workers Party office on the 30th, William Z. Foster decided that it was now time to seize the initiative. Previously, they had been fighting just to restore the old order, and the old Constitution. Now that they had proven they could hold their own against the forces of reaction, it was time to surge forward. He quickly gathered the party leadership that remained, including Big Bill Haywood, John Reed, Upton Sinclair, Louis Fraina, James Cannon, Crystal Eastman and John Dewey.

That evening, he gave them a controversial plan of action: they would declare a formation of a new nation and a provisional government, dedicated to socialist principles and democracy. It was dangerous, but it was bold, and it might give them just the impetus they needed not only to win the Civil War, but also to cast aside the old order once and for all.

The debate was furious, and the assembled political leadership could not reach a sufficient consensus to go ahead or not, until the surprise entrance of Leon Trotsky late in the evening. The old revolutionary, having traveled from his home in Mexico to the US at the first stirrings of trouble, and had arrived to offer his counsel and support to his friends in America. Upon hearing of the debate at hand, Trotsky took his friend Reed aside and urged him to set aside caution and move forward. With Reed's support in the next vote also came Cannon's and Eastman's. Reaching a consensus that night, they agreed to make a radio broadcast and send telegrams to all the locals declaring the formation of a provisional government.

At 9 A.M. the next morning, Foster delivered his address, syndicated across America. With a stirring speech, he urged workers across America to remain strong in their resolve to fight for democracy. He quickly outlined the party's decision to form a provisional government, and added that this May Day, the holiest of holies for the American labor movement, would mark the birth of the Union of American Socialist Republics.

The Formation of the Provisional Government

On May 3, 1933, 265 members of the Workers (Communist) Party met at the Balaban and Katz Chicago Theatre. Each member had been, or was standing in for, elected to the House of Representatives in last general election. Upon convention that morning, they adopted a resolution authorizing the formal creation of a provisional government for a Union of American Socialist Republics until such time as a formal constitution could be drafted and adopted. Declaring their quorum to be "a congress of People's Deputies", they elected a Central Committee to lead the government.[1]

The Provisional Revolutionary Government claimed sovereignty over the whole of the United States and all of its territories. However, at founding, its real control was far more limited. The New York Autonomous Socialist Republic, the Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin Socialist Republics, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the Chicago, Seattle and St. Louis Communes had all officially endorsed the declaration of the provisional government.[2] Similarly, Red Army units everywhere swore their allegiance to the provisional government, and attempted to cobble together a unified chain of command. State governments and local administrations elsewhere remained mostly under the control of the military junta.

But attempting to reduce the control of the nation at this point to lines on a map would be a futile exercise that would conceal the real truth: there was no line in the sand. Dozens of different paramilitary groups operated on both sides of the lines of battle, for both factions. The oft forgotten battle by guerillas on both sides was at least as important as the major armies organized by either faction.

Fresh from victories at the end of April, now came the difficult task of winning the Civil War. At the first Central Committee meeting on May 4, First Secretary Foster laid out a list of immediate goals for the new government. Of prime importance, he argued, was the capture or smashing of the state machinery. Citing Marx's The Civil War in France, he argued that the survival of the Revolution depended upon co-opting what part's of the bureaucracy, federal and state, that they could, and disrupting or destroying what could not be controlled. The government's first decree, then, would be the emergency nationalization of state and local bureaucracies under their control, particularly police forces.

Next, a centralized chain of command for the Red Army would need to be established. Martin Abern, as People's Secretary for Defense, would be the effective civilian commander of the armed forces. Though with limited military experience, Abern was a superb organizer, and a man ably suited to the task of fulfilling the Central Committee's directive to form a General Staff and organize the logistics for the fledgling armed forces.

The final part of Foster's strategy was foreign policy. To speed the new government's recognition and secure aid from the Soviet government, John Reed was appointed People's Secretary for Foreign Affairs. As the first step in what would later be known as the Foster-Reed Doctrine[3], Reed was hurriedly dispatched to Canada, to hopefully secure mutual neutrality between Canada's depression addled but still highly conservative government and the provisional government. The eventual meeting with the Canadian Foreign Minister on the 15th, though unofficial, at least secured conditions for neutrality for the time being.

Some potential windfalls would arrive on the week starting May 15. On that Monday, a delegation of 34 Democratic members of Congress, led by the ambitious Harry Truman of Missouri, arrived in Chicago and requested to join the provisional government. Whether their motives were pure or cynical will likely never be known. Nevertheless, their actions did create some controversy. While it would give the provisional government much needed legitimacy, Foster feared that admitting such potential opportunists to the government would ultimately undermine the revolution more than it would help.

Upton Sinclair responded to Foster's stonewalling with an end run around the hardliner head-of- government. On Wednesday, Sinclair, introducing himself as President of the Union of American Socialist Republics[4], welcomed the Democratic delegation to the provisional government, and seated them in the Congress of People's Deputies.

That Thursday, Emma Goldman, the brilliant and passionate anarchist orator, would make the most difficult decision of her life. She had been a committed anarchist all of her life. In her exile in Russia she'd seen the promises of Bolshevism be betrayed one by one. And upon her return to America, she had formed the Syndicalist Federation, a pressure group within the Solidarity trade union to oppose the official Leninism of the Workers (Communist) Party. The question before her was unenviable: would she and other anarchists stick to their principles, and oppose the new government? Or would they abandon them to secure the lesser evil, to join the provisional government with the hope of steering it towards a more desirable end.

The Syndicalist Federation made its decision. Emma Goldman, voting with the majority, endorsed joining the provisional government. After meeting with Foster later that week, she and 7 other anarchists would be granted frontbencher seats in the Congress. Goldman herself would take leadership of the People's Secretariat of Labor. While no doubt Foster thought of Goldman as nothing more than a useful idiot, Goldman was determined to do everything in her power to keep the American Revolution from suffering the same tragedy as the Russian Revolution.

[1] Membership of the first Central Committee as of June, 1933

First Secretary: William Z. Foster People's Secretary for Foreign Affairs: John Reed Attorney General: Crystal Eastman People's Secretary for Defense: Martin Abern People's Secretary for Labor: Emma Goldman People's Secretary for Finance:Earl Browder People's Secretary for Trade and Industry: Walter Lippmann People's Secretary for Agriculture: Henry A. Wallace People's Secretary for Education: John Dewey People's Secretary for Rail: James P. Cannon [2] A brief explanation of the various styles used by states and municipalities. "Autonomous Socialist Republic" is a term currently unique to New York City, which refers to the federation set up the 5 Communes of New York with deliberate autonomy from the State government. "Socialist Republic" refers to state level governments set up in opposition to the established government, which has most often suspended its constitution. By contrast, any state referred to by its OTL name, such as the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, means that the elected stage government has been seated and has chosen to side with the provisional government. "Commune" refers to any city sized organization set up on a model echoing the classic Paris Commune.

[3] The Foster-Reed Doctrine is the eventual name for the official foreign policy of the UASR from 1933 to 1939. While often seen as an American restatement of the Stalinist position of "socialism in one country", the doctrine is a deliberate compromise between "socialism in one country" and the Trotskyite position of permanent revolution. Realizing that the upheaval caused by the Revolution, the doctrine seeks to make the containment of Fascism the primary goal of the Comintern. This policy is a deliberate act of appeasement to both the Western capitalist powers and the ever more estranged allies in the USSR.

[4] With Norman Thomas assassinated, Upton Sinclair, as Vice-President-elect, would be the legitimate president of the United States as of March 4. However, this is the first indication that he intended to carry over that position to the Provisional Government. This, and the deliberate makeup of the first Congress of People's Deputies with members elected to the House in the 32 election would establish a pattern of continuity between the old government and the new that would eventually be expanded and formalized in the 1934 Basic Law of the UASR.

The Reds Go Marching On: The Ongoing Civil War

On May 16, Lieutenant Colonel Patton[5] received his first orders from the Revolutionary Defense Committee. The provisional government had decided that the capture of Washington D.C. would be of prime importance to the legitimacy of the revolution. Furthermore, a capture of Washington would significantly hinder the coordination of the Whites. To accomplish this, Patton was to take the four divisions (including the surrendered 1st and 4th Infantry) and some eighty thousand men under his command and march to Manassas, Virginia and take control of the bridges and ferries of the Potomac River. The West Virginia State Red Militia, numbering some thirty thousand irregulars and ten thousand military reservists, would secure Patton's flank and make preparations to march on Richmond. Finally, the Pennsylvania Red Guards[6], camped at Harrison, Pennsylvania, would move to take Baltimore, Maryland.

From the very beginning, the operation met with significant difficulties. Patton's advance was hindered by the slow advance of the West Virginia irregulars, and MacArthur seized the opportunity to further foil these plans. Patton was forced to fight push through bloody delaying actions, as MacArthur's cavalry attacked his supply lines and Virginia militias staged pitched battles at points of opportunity along the advance. The Pennsylvania Red Guards reached Baltimore late, finding the city abandoned of its defenders to reinforce Washington.

Finally, on June 1, MacArthur sprung his final gambit. With Patton's troops arriving at the Manassas low country exhausted, MacArthur threw all five of his divisions at Patton, hoping to encircle and crush the Red Army quickly before turning and dealing with the Pennsylvania Red Guards.

By the end of the first day, Patton had yielded the town. While his own 3d Cavalry Regimented had stopped the encircling division, the first day of battle was bloody, with both sides suffering as many as five thousand casualties. On the second day of battle, Patton's troops dug in in the hills around Manassas, weathered an artillery bombardment, and fought off a direct assault. This continued for the third and fourth day, continuing the bloody stalemate of the battle. But by then, Patton's own trap had been sprung. At dawn on the fifth day, the 3d Cavalry regiment, supplemented by local pro-Red paramilitaries, swept passed the enemy scouts and attacked MacArthur's artillery. Patton's own artillery, in position and zeroed in on the less prepared White positions, began its own barrage. With the enemy artillery suppressed and the White Army battered, Patton launched his counterattack that afternoon. By the end of the sixth day, most of the units guarding Washington would surrender. On June 8, 1933, Washington D.C. fell.

While the government had already since evacuated, the capture of Washington would be a powerful victory, which would reverberate through the whole country. Responding to the news, on June 12, the American Pacific fleet at San Diego mutinied. Most of the coastal cities in California quickly declared their allegiance to the Provisional Government soon after. Finally, on June 16, the state government evacuated as the Red Guards took the state capital of Sacramento. On June 17, with the new state legislature finally seated and the Governor resigning in disgrace, the State of Oregon formally endorsed the provisional government.

By the end of June, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont and Virginia had all, with varying degrees of peacefulness, endorsed the provisional government. While the Civil War was not yet over, the tide had definitely swung in favor of the Reds.

[5] The provisional government has not had its ducks in a row sufficiently to begin handing out promotions yet, and with the nucleus of the Red Army formed by professional soldiers, no one is going to be taking titles for themselves. Which is why someone who is technically a Lt. Colonel is in command of a Corps.

[6] Red Guards is a term stochastically adopted by National Guard units that sided with the provisional government and the Red Army instead of the military junta

A Red Dawn Breaks

It is July 2, 1933, and on this sweltering summer day, John Reed is walking briskly through the Capitol building. It's only been three days since the Provisional Government had relocated to Washington, and amidst the hustle of aids and busy moving crews, Reed's face is flushed with anger. He bumps into a Democratic people's deputy as he marches up the stairs. He mutters to himself, "Of all the confounded...I just get back from Mexico and this is what I hear upon my return..."

He reaches what had once been the office of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and enters without knocking. Leaving the door open, Reed barks, "You son of a bitch!" at the man sitting behind the desk.

"You know Jack, I'd appreciate it if you would close the door and keep our disagreements private," Foster deadpans.

"Fine, Will, I'll close the door, when you explain to me just what the hell is going on."

"Jack, at least sit down if you want to hear me out." Foster motioned to the leather chair across the desk from his. "Can I offer you anything to drink? The Speaker kept a bottle of thirty year old Scotch in here, and seeing as he's probably half-way to Cuba by now, I don't think he'll be needing it any time soon."

"Will, now is not the time for pleasantries," Jack hissed as he reluctantly took the seat. "I want to know why in God's name you're making deals with reactionaries."

Reed pours two glasses anyway, handing one to Reed. "I see you've heard. I must say, your ears must be quite keen to learn of official Party business all the way in Mexico. I trust your meeting with Foreign Secretary Casauranc went as planned."

Jack glared at him, "Yes, the Mexican government has agreed to formally recognize the UASR. You'll find the details in my report at the next Central Committee. But, before that, I need to know why J. Edgar Hoover is going to be at the next Central Committee meeting."

"Jack, you're a wonderful idealist, but you're a poor politician. Hoover offered his services as director of the NBI, and I couldn't refuse. Do you know how many traitors he brought in with him? The NBI managed to arrest half of the Cabinet, including the First Secretary, and turn them over to us."

"And that's why you're trusting him? Jesus Will, you really don't have much room to talk about naiveté."

"Trust him? God no, I wouldn't trust that bastard as far as I could throw him. But the thing about Hoover is that it doesn't matter who is in power as long as he's part of it. That's why I can use him."

"The man's a snake-"

"Jack, he's our snake now."

"I still wouldn't like to see him run free, let alone put him in charge of the People's Secretariat for Public Safety. We can't trust him, and we can't trust any of the G-Men he's bringing with him."

Foster chuckled, "I'm sure you've heard the old saying 'Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer'. We can worry about their ideological loyalties later. For now, simply wishing to be on the winning side will have to be enough." He took a sip of his whisky, savoring it. "I say, I hate his guts, but I must admit, Tilson left us some fine spoils of war."

Reed cautiously sipped his own Scotch. "Fine, we'll let that matter stand. I heard the Soviet ambassador arrived last week. Did he say anything about formal diplomatic recognition yet?"

"Well, off the record, of course, he has indicated that Stalin has been playing it cool since the start of the Revolution, to avoid enflaming reactionary sentiment."

"Typical."

"We can't afford it either, Jack. Anyway, the Soviet government will issue formal diplomatic recognition once they are certain that the Provisional Government has control over all 48 states."

"Reasonable, I suppose."

"Most of the West has already come along peacefully anyway. All that's really left is the Deep South, and that's where the remnants of the White Army, and couple hundred thousand White Militia are holed up. We've heard whispers that the whole Army is going to evacuate to Cuba, but nothing so far on that front. The loss of most of the Atlantic Fleet at Norfolk--which, I might add, the NBI assisted us with--will hinder that possibility. They'll have to commandeer every fishing boat in New Orleans to make it possible."

"What of the partisans throughout the country. They don't seem to be anywhere close to willing to surrender."

"We're preparing a plan for that as well. And with Hoover's help, we may pull it off. The SecPubSafe is going to be forming special task forces to root them out. With modern wiretapping and surveillance techniques, we'll be able to pinpoint where they hide, and then dispatch armed secret police to deal with them." Foster leaned back in his chair, "That's about all that's new on my end. I know I've been looking forward to your report on the colonial question. Got a brief on it?"

Reed finished his whisky. "From what the reports tell me, the only real option we have right now is just to cut the colonies loose. The domestic economic situation is too bad to be worth trying to hold on to. At the very least, we can use some of the colonies as a bartering chip to defuse reactionary pressure." "How so?"

"Well, in the preliminary report, we recommend turning over Hawaii to the UK, Alaska to Canada, and letting the Philippines fall to whomever can claim it fastest. Nicaragua has already expressed interest in partnership and trade with us. Cuba and Panama will likely remain under White military control for the time being, but Haiti and the Dominican Republic are likely candidates for full independence, though I have heard some intelligence that suggests that the Communist Party might use this opportunity to strike in Haiti."

"The whole business leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but we have precious little choice."

The Civil War Ends

On August 1, facing impending encirclement by the Red Army, the remnants of the US Army began a full scale evacuation to Cuba. In the next week, close to three hundred thousand soldiers and irregulars would make the journey by whatever means they could. Over a thousand are thought to have perished in the overloaded and unseaworthy boats during the journey.

On MacArthur's orders, the White Army overthrew the Cuban government, taking control of the machinery of state to serve the American government in exile. Close to half of the Cabinet had accompanied the White Army, along with dozens of Republican lawmakers, state governors and other officials. Hoover himself, however, would not be among them. He had chosen a more noble exile in Britain.

By joint-resolution, General Douglas MacArthur was appointed President of the United States of America on August 8, 1933. On that very same day, Canada, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom formally recognized the Union of American Socialist Republics. The maneuvering necessary to achieve this outcome was no small feat on the part of the Foreign Secretariat. In exchange for Alaska, the maintenance of current trade relations, plus (admittedly meager) reparations for the nationalization of property in America owned by Canadian citizens, Canada would recognize the new government, and pressure its British comrades to do so as well.

Britain accepted Hawaii and other minor US possessions, as well as similar reparations for the nationalization of British property. However, Britain's foreign policy at this time can easily be seen as a case of keeping one's enemy's closer. The British Admiralty had already been planning for months developing a war strategy for the outbreak of a naval war with the UASR. The operations, which assumed an American invasion of Canada, a blockade of the Panama Canal Zone, and the deployment of American troops to assist a Soviet invasion of Central Europe, would be the paramount concern of the British General Staff until the outbreak of the Second World War.

The Soviet government publicly received the news of victory of their American comrades with much fanfare, but in the inner circles, the reaction was much more cynical. America, even at the nadir of its depression, would soon come to dominate the Comintern. And the American's hospitality to Trotsky further complicated relations between the two socialist states. While talk of rehabilitating Trotsky's image was considered, it was quite clear that it was too late for that. Foster may have been a reliable ally of Moscow before the Revolution, but now as head of government, his alliances with Trotskyites, Syndicalists and Social Democrats had totally smashed the uniformity to the Comintern's "third period" policy.

However, their American comrades had little time to worry about a potential power struggle in the Comintern. A constitutional convention was currently in the works, attracting everyone's attention. The new government would have to not only take over all the functions of the old, but also many new ones. If the revolution were to survive more than a few years, a massive economic recovery plan would be necessary. Counterrevolutionaries were still being dealt with across the countries, and trials for captured members of the military junta needed to arranged, appeasing the loyal opposition. And the issue of how to deal with the courts, who had condemned the junta and generally declared their neutrality in the civil war, had yet to be decided. But, for now, there was a general sense of mirth in the country. The Civil War was over, a people's government had been seated, and the promise of a brighter tomorrow beckoned.

The Constitutional Convention

On September 2, 1933, delegates from worker's councils across America converged on Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Their aim would be to write the constitution that would guide America forward in this new revolutionary age. After a ceremonial tour of Independence Hall, the almost six hundred delegates convened at the Academy of Music building, and set about their task.

Eugene O'Neill, the distinguished author and playwright, was elected to preside over the convention. On the first day, delegates voted near unanimously to accept two guiding instructions. The first was that the current Provisional Government would serve as the basic template for the governmental structure. The second was a desire to preserve continuity between the old government and the new one. Thus, it was agreed that the last Congress of the United States would by law and right be the first Congress of the UASR. Similarly, Upton Sinclair would be both the last president of the United States and the first president of the UASR.

What would eventually be referred to as the Basic Law was drafted over a three month period from early September to mid December. The first draft, jointly authored by Walter Lippmann and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, made very modest changes to the existing state of affairs. The semi- presidential system of the latter years of the United States would be preserved, and while the lower house of the legislature would be granted additional authority, the Senate would remain much as it had before. Additionally, the Lippman-Roosevelt plan essentially reincorporated the old court system in toto, including the body of common law inherited from the English legal tradition. The draft's timidity, coupled by its refusal to say much on the subject of the economy essentially doomed it from the start.

A counter proposal was made, authored by Thomas E. Dewey, James P. Cannon, Langston Hughes, and Ruth Benedict, which ultimately would serve as the prototype of the final constitution. The "Left Plan", as it would later be called, completely redefined the American tradition of separation of powers. The distinction between executive and legislative powers would be cast aside. A single body, the All-Union People's Assembly, would encompass all the legislative and executive powers of the Union government. The lower house of the parliament, the Congress of People's Deputies, would be the primary lawmaking body. It would elect the Central Committee, which would serve as the primary executive body, functioning in a manner very similar to the Cabinet of a Westminster parliament. The upper house, the Council of the Union, would serve as a deliberative and investigative body, and would have the power to delay acts of the lower house, as well as conduct oversight of the Central Committee. In turn, the Congress would elect the membership of the Council.

The Left Plan would also greatly restrict the independence of the judiciary. All federal judges would be appointed to terms of fixed duration. And the common law tradition itself would be totally overturned in favor of a Soviet-style civil law system, including inquisitorial trials.

Though the Left Plan enjoyed greater support then the more moderate Lippmann-Roosevelt Plan, it did not totally escape controversy. It would eventually be amended fairly extensively. The proportional representation model would be modified to a mixed member model, with half of the people's deputies being elected from single member constituencies apportioned to the republics by population, and the other half elected from national party lists. The Council of the Union was altered to have half of its membership selected by the provincial governments. The directly elected President of the Union, a near total figurehead before, would now preside over the Council of the Union. The elected office of vice-president was abolished, replaced by a deputy president elected by the Council of the Union.

The Declaration of Human Rights, an integral part of the Left Plan, was amended to include many of the "bourgeois liberties" such as a right to an adversarial trial, that official Marxism-Leninism derided. Sections in the Declaration on economic rights, such as public ownership of natural resources, and worker's control of the means of production, were clarified. And finally, the shift to a civil law system was removed in favor of a compromise position, a "new common law" which would effectively start jurisprudence from scratch.

The final draft of the Basic Law would include a variety of ways for amendment. The Council of the Union could amend the Basic Law by a 2/3rds vote, with the concurrence of the Congress of People's Deputies and 2/3rds of the Union Republics. Or, by a simple majority vote, both chambers could call for a national referendum on a proposed amendment. Or, 2/3rds of the Union Republics can at any time call for a constitutional convention to revise the Basic Law or propose amendments for ratification by referendum. In any case, all amendments are made directly to the text, and a revised version of the Basic Law is published after any such amendment.

The Basic Law was eventually ratified on February 11, 1934, with 3/4ths of the republics agreeing to ratification. The last holdout, Utah, would eventually agree to ratification on December 2 of that year. The ratification of the Basic Law would mark the conventional ending point of the Revolution. On the very next day, the Provisional Government formally dissolved itself, and the government of the UASR was formally sworn in. President Sinclair took the oath of office at noon, and the Congress of People's Deputies opened its first official meeting soon after. After the adoption of the rules, Premier Foster formally submitted the budget to the floor, and upon the vote of the Congress, issued the first official government decree, directing the republics to form official provincial governments with all due haste so that the Council of the Union could be convened.

In the coming days, the Congress would the other half of the Council of the Union, call for a national special election to be held in April to fill the almost one hundred and twenty vacant single- member constituencies and to elect the national party lists. Four parties would stand for the special elections: the Workers (Communist) Party, the Left Democrats, the Right Democrats, and the remnants of the Republican Party.

The election would heavily favor the Worker's Party, since the Democratic Party split into pro and anti-socialist factions. The Left Democrats (officially the Left-Wing Caucus of the Democratic Party), under the leadership of Harry Truman aggressively campaigned against the official Democratic Party candidates in all of the by-elections, hoping to dethrone the old leadership's control of the Democratic Party apparatus. And those few Republican politicians who had not gone into exile or found themselves in front of a people's tribunal and (eventually) a firing squad sought to derail the new government and force a constitutional crisis.

1934 Special Election

Congress of People's Deputies, single-member districts

Workers (Communist)...... 379

Left Democrats...... 38

Right Democrats...... 18

Republican Party...... 0

Congress of People's Deputies, national list

Workers (Communist)...... 31,453,112 votes (268 seats)

Left Democrats...... 12,034 ,056 (102)

Right Democrats...... 4,720,3 42 (40)

Republican Party...... 3,010,568 (25)

Congress of People's Deputies, total

Workers (Communist)...... 647

Left Democrats...... 140

Right Democrats...... 58

Republican Party...... 25

-End of Part One-