- Location
- Colwyn Bay/Manchester
- Pronouns
- He/him
I've been reading a fair bit about them lately, so I thought I'd throw out a few potential PODs
SLP-SDP Split:
Which side got the SLP name seems to have been a bit accidental, perhaps without that the SPA could have got off the ground earlier.
Further back, the general cause was feeling DeLeon was becoming autocratic, so what could the consequences of his absence (perhaps due to Van Patten not faking suicide?), and the immediate issue to do with the failure of his unionism strategy - if a more successful one had been pursued, what could the consequences be of a more socialist-inclined unionism in America?
1919 Splits
I'm not sure the split of the SPA can be averted by 1919, but the split within the Left Wing over the tactics of it probably can be. But the consequences of that probably boil down to "the Worker's Party exists a few years earlier and hasn't lost quite as many members in the interim".
It feels like the obvious choice for a POD with significant consequences, but I'm not sure there's one there.
Longer/Later/Averted US WW1
It seems fairly clear that American socialism's dreams of major party status were really dealt the killer blow by the late 1910s Red Scare - they just managed to hang onto hopes and dreams for a generation afterwards. This was of course a product of the American entry into WW1.
Jello Biafra in her now SLP-published work (ok, that acronym could be confusing in this context) has of course suggested that Socialism would have been stronger with a greater US participation in the war, and @Thande has argued that was what Turtledove was going for in TL-191 as well. There's likely some truth to the idea that the combination of the suspicion of those who were anti-war and the lack of the dead on Flanders Fields left Socialism weaker than any other would have - but were the 1910s already an unsustainable high tide mark for American Socialism? Oklahoma, the most promising state in 1914, was beginning to see a decline before everywhere else due to Socialist support for Mexicans, I believe.
And of course this one has far large consequences internationally.
The more vague thought I've had is that given how German the Socialist Party was, and the existing anti-Germanness of the Democrats that fed into their actions after entering the war, could a Republican entry into the war have seen less of that, and thus been not quite as dangerous for the Socialists?
SLP-SDP Split:
Which side got the SLP name seems to have been a bit accidental, perhaps without that the SPA could have got off the ground earlier.
Further back, the general cause was feeling DeLeon was becoming autocratic, so what could the consequences of his absence (perhaps due to Van Patten not faking suicide?), and the immediate issue to do with the failure of his unionism strategy - if a more successful one had been pursued, what could the consequences be of a more socialist-inclined unionism in America?
1919 Splits
I'm not sure the split of the SPA can be averted by 1919, but the split within the Left Wing over the tactics of it probably can be. But the consequences of that probably boil down to "the Worker's Party exists a few years earlier and hasn't lost quite as many members in the interim".
It feels like the obvious choice for a POD with significant consequences, but I'm not sure there's one there.
Longer/Later/Averted US WW1
It seems fairly clear that American socialism's dreams of major party status were really dealt the killer blow by the late 1910s Red Scare - they just managed to hang onto hopes and dreams for a generation afterwards. This was of course a product of the American entry into WW1.
Jello Biafra in her now SLP-published work (ok, that acronym could be confusing in this context) has of course suggested that Socialism would have been stronger with a greater US participation in the war, and @Thande has argued that was what Turtledove was going for in TL-191 as well. There's likely some truth to the idea that the combination of the suspicion of those who were anti-war and the lack of the dead on Flanders Fields left Socialism weaker than any other would have - but were the 1910s already an unsustainable high tide mark for American Socialism? Oklahoma, the most promising state in 1914, was beginning to see a decline before everywhere else due to Socialist support for Mexicans, I believe.
And of course this one has far large consequences internationally.
The more vague thought I've had is that given how German the Socialist Party was, and the existing anti-Germanness of the Democrats that fed into their actions after entering the war, could a Republican entry into the war have seen less of that, and thus been not quite as dangerous for the Socialists?
