Socialists

From Turtledove

Socialists are people who believe in the ideology of Socialism, codified by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in The Communist Manifesto.

In the United States, they formed the Socialist Party. One of the earliest adherents was Abraham Lincoln. Following the Second Mexican War, he led the left wing of the Republican Party into union with the Socialists with a series of fiery speeches on the proper relationship of labor to capital. Word was matched with deed over the next few decades, as the nacent party instigated or participated in a series of bloody industrial strikes, along the way finding political allies such as the IWW. However, despite steady electoral gains between 1882 and 1914, the Socialists campaigned very much in the shadow of the dominant Democratic Party, never coming close to winning the US presidency.

Despite the internationalist appeal of Socialist politics, the loose alliance of socialist parties in France and Germany, the Labour Party of Britain, and the US Socialist Party could do nothing to stem the rising tide of bellicose nationalism following the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. In all belligerant countries, including the USA, the local socialist parties faced the choice of supporting the war or being annihilated at the polls. The proletariat that they had previously organised and represented was called into battle.

During the Great War, Socialists, with the support of the Central Powers, led the Red Rebellion in the Confederate States and the Russian Revolution in Russia. Both were eventually defeated. The Socialist Party became the largest party in USA in the 1920s and gradually grew from radical to more moderate.