The Socialist Party in Turtledove's TL-191 Series

[History_Pintobean]

In reading through the massive TL-191 series of books by Harry Turtledove, it becomes apparent (even though I'm only on The Great War: Breakthroughs book) that the Union is supposed to become the equivalent to the Soviet Union while its southern neighbor ends up becoming this world's equivalent to Nazi Germany.

However, it would appear that the Socialist Party never truly carries out a revolutionary transformation of the Union which IMHO would make the USSR-vs-Nazi Germany parallel work a lot better. Sure, Upton Sinclair becomes president following a wave of industrial strikes immediately after the Great War's end, which in turn allows the Socialist Party to gain control over the House of Representatives and so forth. Sure, the Socialist Party dominates U.S. politics for over twenty years. And sure, the Socialist Party members (leaders and rank-and-file) talk and act like Marxists in their constant references to class struggle, Red propaganda, the proletariat, etc.

But as far as I can tell, the Socialist Party doesn't overturn the capitalist economic system (case in point - the Great Depression still hits the U.S., which suffers greatly while businessmen still reside actively within the north). Besides using fiery Marxist rhetoric to justify their actions, such as with the crushing of the Canadian revolt, it doesn't seem at all like the USSR on U.S. soil.

This IMHO makes the Settling Accounts book series problematic. Harry Turtledove tries very hard to make the Second World War a fight between a Marxist Union and National-Socialist Confederacy. But its not the same, owing to the way he portrays the Socialist Party prior to the outbreak of a second world war in 1941.

My question to you is this: (to those who've read more then me, of course) would you consider the Socialist Party the equivalent to the Bolshevik Party and the Union the equivalent to the USSR? Or is the Socialist Party reformist (i.e. was Turtledove aiming to make them seem more like the German SPD) and non-revolutionary?

I'm curious to see your opinions on this topic.

 

[Abhakhazia]

The Socialist Party, like most parties in any 2 or 2 1/2 party system like what the TL-191 U.S. is very factioned. We have reformist western Socialists that are basically just 1920s progressives. Then we have the socialists from the urban industrial districts that are way more revolutionary.

I think the Soviet Union/U.S. parallel is extremely loose. I think the U.S. could become some sort of Communist state if a loss happens in the First Great War, and radical socialists gain power and coop the party for their own, radical purposes.

 

[Turquoise Blue]

Big-tent. Kinda like the UK Labour Party. We had militants (Communists way back ran with Labour's endorsement), reformists and inbetween.

But the people who took power were always reformists. Same with the Socialist Party in the USA. Sinclair, Blackford, Smith and La Follette were reformists.

 

[Seleucus]

IIRC, the Socialist party never even did anything that Socialist. No response to the Depression with public works programs, Keynesian stimulus, etc.

Though then again, given what happened in Europe (the UK Labour Depression-era government practiced austerity to balance the budget and tried to retain the Gold Standard), this could be reasonably justified.

 

[King Nazar]

I thought Turtledove was trying to copy UK politics by having the Socialists be the approximate equivalent of Labour. Republicans are the Liberals and Democrats are the Conservatives.

 

[Turquoise Blue]

IIRC, the Socialist party never even did anything that Socialist. No response to the Depression with public works programs, Keynesian stimulus, etc.

Though then again, given what happened in Europe (the UK Labour Depression-era government practiced austerity to balance the budget and tried to retain the Gold Standard), this could be reasonably justified.

Blackford is kind of a MacDonald mixed with OTL Hoover.

 

[VidaLaVida]

If you want to get ideological about it, you could say that it is consistent that American Socialism developed along this line, and that it's unlikely that it would've resulted in a full-fledged USSR equivalent coming forth from the Union.

The Soviet Union developed along the lines of Lenin and Stalin, who interpreted Marxism in a way to not only advocate armed, violent revolution, but that it should be made to happen rapidly by a group of leaders who (since the masses couldn't be trusted to choose what was right for them) would steer everything to the right course. Hence, brutal overthrow in the revolution, breakneck industrialization, and dictatorship.

But in the TL-191 USA, Abraham Lincoln is the main intellectual father of American Socialism. And as is seen in How Few Remain, he had his own take on Marx. He may have warned of the possibility that exploited workers would sooner or later get so fed up with capitalism that they'd overthrow the system. But he also advocated revolution as a last resort, and was open to socialists earning power through the ballot box. Hence, Lincoln leading his wing of like-minded Republicans out of the party, and Socialists working within institutional frameworks, rather than overthrowing them, to campaign for change.

So if you look at it this way, it makes sense that the Socialist party evolved this way, and the party more resembles British Labour than the Bolsheviks. There's already enough unrealistic parallelism in the series as it is: forcing the American equivalent of Leninism-Stalinism would've just made it even worse.

 

[Trotsky]

My question to you is this: (to those who've read more then me, of course) would you consider the Socialist Party the equivalent to the Bolshevik Party and the Union the equivalent to the USSR? Or is the Socialist Party reformist (i.e. was Turtledove aiming to make them seem more like the German SPD) and non-revolutionary?

I'm curious to see your opinions on this topic.

No, and no.

The parallelism is there only so far as there is a country bigger than its fascist neighbor that also happens to have left-leaning politics that still doesn't get much of its agenda passed. That's about it.

 

[jycee]

No, and no.

The parallelism is there only so far as there is a country bigger than its fascist neighbor that also happens to have left-leaning politics that still doesn't get much of its agenda passed. That's about it.

This is pretty much it. It wasn't intended to be full scale parallelism, simply the in so far as having a socialist neighbor to a fascist one. The US is still a democracy and by the end of the series the Democrats are back in power. Still a few things have changed from OTL.

Unlike OTL, where Socialism (or any affinity towards it) became taboo in the US because of the extremism of the USSR and the subsequent Cold War. In TTL the large tentpole Socialist Party absorbs the more militant variants of socialism. A few characters even comment on this. Thus if you take it to the postwar years, socialist rhetoric would likely be accepted in everyday conversation rather than being stigmatized. Also, the books make it read as if the Smith/LaFollette administrations would be essentially the New Deal of OTL and not much more. But it is likely something akin to Truman's Fair Deal, which never happened in OTL, also took place shortly after.

The biggest change, also comes in part from the Democrats. In TTL, they centralize quite a bit of power before the Socialists get to the white house. They are also the more militant of both parties. And both are equally bureaucratic; a behavior they inherited from trying to be German-like.

Give the more extreme elements of both parties the spotlight and you get a very USSR-like place. But because both parties a big tentpole parties these elements are quieted out by more moderate stances. By the last book, you still get characters commenting how the Republican's might make a comeback, as a middle-of-the-road and political reformist party. (which David used for his TL191 After the End).

 

[Colin]

I've always been fascinated by Turtledove's socialist party given the way that in OTL it is inconceivable that any party with that name would have any power in the US. That said Turledove's Socialists are essentially democratic and nowhere near the Bolshevik's. Although the WW2 parallels between CSA and the Nazi's are there, (painfully so) at the beginning of the series its much less clear with the North being a bit like France and the CSA being hard to parallel until its experience of defeat makes it more like Germany post WWI