I'm thinking of a steampunk alternate-history story which would, among other things, involve a United States that's gone Communist. What I'm not clear on is the backstory, except that I'm leaning toward a point of divergence during or shortly after the American Civil War (which still does involve a Union victory).
So, how could it have happened?
I could of course go with Turtledove's route and have a surviving Abraham Lincoln turn Communist, but I'd like to be more creative and plausible.
I'm thinking the least-implausible route would be for the American Communist movement to be less Marxist than we've seen in our world: to decide that Christianity is great and private ownership of farms is OK. I know there were non-Marxist Communists in the OTL 1800's, but I don't know much about them.
Then, perhaps they'd ally with the Populist movement. This isn't totally implausible; Eugene Debs historically supported the Populists. The Populists historically got 8.5% of the 1892 Presidential vote, almost all in the West. To this we can add a lot of industrial workers in the East and Midwest. But still, there's a long road from that to actually taking power. What would be involved in that road?
So, how could it have happened?
I could of course go with Turtledove's route and have a surviving Abraham Lincoln turn Communist, but I'd like to be more creative and plausible.
I'm thinking the least-implausible route would be for the American Communist movement to be less Marxist than we've seen in our world: to decide that Christianity is great and private ownership of farms is OK. I know there were non-Marxist Communists in the OTL 1800's, but I don't know much about them.
Then, perhaps they'd ally with the Populist movement. This isn't totally implausible; Eugene Debs historically supported the Populists. The Populists historically got 8.5% of the 1892 Presidential vote, almost all in the West. To this we can add a lot of industrial workers in the East and Midwest. But still, there's a long road from that to actually taking power. What would be involved in that road?
