The Modernist World
The article Mars Attacked (thanks baron_waste) about the astounding world of 1963 got me thinking, particularly since the first response to the setting was "Huh? 1963? Well, yes, the year is 1963, but this is 1963 as imagined in the science fiction of, say, 1936.".
So I created an alternate history scenario, which I will later expand into a story, to look at these questions. More generally, I began creating a retro-futuristic world that is plausible, rather than dated or self consciously anachronistic. It would be the kind of world that Hugo Gernsback envisioned and William Gibson later satirized. It would be as if the Modern Project never failed. That states were fairly successful in redesigning the social order along rational and scientific lines. And it wasn't a bloody, totalitarian nightmare.
In this time line, the First World War lasts longer than usual, to about 1921. I haven't thought about all the particulars as to how this has happened, but to my mind it seems plausible that the war could have gone on for a few more years. Considering the wave of revolutions that followed/ended the war historically, I would posit that these revolutions would be even larger, more popular and occur in nearly all of the belligerent nations. Materially exhausted and politically bankrupt, the old order mostly just falls without too much fighting, like the revolutions of 1989. Political violence and instability continues until about 1930, by which time the revolutionary governments are firmly in control of a now unified Europe. The very success of the initial revolutionaries and sweeping out the old order and ending the war, precludes extremist groups like the Bolsheviks from gaining much support.
While retconing is usually used so Marvel can squeeze out another Wolverine comic book, the Bolsheviks had mastered it long ago with respect to actual history. How else could they later claim to lead a revolution that they had no hand in creating, arriving late in the game to stage a coup against the Provisional government crumbling under the weight of the Russian war effort. Most of the crowd that followed Lenin into the Winter Palace came to plunder the largest liquor cellar in history. Through the Russian Civil War, Lenin ruthlessly purged his non Bolshevik allies to remove any ideological alternative to his project.
Even before the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks were an insignificant member of the Second International. They were extremists in an age when most socialist and labour parties had decided to pursue reform through the ballot box rather than bloody revolution. Of course the First World War changed all that, and most of the social democratic parties decided to support their respective national governments rather than adhere to the principles of international working class solidarity. After the war, these discredited social democratic parties became a less serious alternative revolutionary communism, and a less serious opponent for inter war fascist movements. The Bolshevik rise from an extremist faction of the prewar Second International to the leader of international communism was unlikely, to say the least.
But what if the Bolsheviks hadn't been so lucky? What if somebody else lead the revolutions? What would communism look like without Lenin's theories?
Anyway, the story is set in the 70s, in a unified Europe that has been run by the heirs to these revolutionaries, but free from the pernicious influences of Lenin, who died in Switzerland of the Spanish Flu, and whose obscure theories are only of minor academic interest. The economy is centrally planned and the standard of living is reasonably high. While such an economy has inherent problems, what made it so bad in the USSR was that the Bolsheviks were incompetent too, and arrested anyone who pointed that out. Le Corbusier redesigned Paris to make it more efficient, and most European cities have followed his lead.
Politically, these societies are semi-free. Freedom of expression, religion (if discouraged), association, rule of law, etc, but you can only vote for one party, although they provide multiple candidates for each post, so the state is not completely unresponsive to the public. This society is supposed to represent Modernism taken to its logical extreme, something that never happened in our world. Rationalism and utilitarianism applied to all problems, with initiative taken out of individual hands and put under the control of huge planning bureaus - coordinatorism.
I have other ideas about how the rest of the world has been affected by this, but this is the concept at the heart of the setting.
Thoughts? Comments? Criticisms?
So I created an alternate history scenario, which I will later expand into a story, to look at these questions. More generally, I began creating a retro-futuristic world that is plausible, rather than dated or self consciously anachronistic. It would be the kind of world that Hugo Gernsback envisioned and William Gibson later satirized. It would be as if the Modern Project never failed. That states were fairly successful in redesigning the social order along rational and scientific lines. And it wasn't a bloody, totalitarian nightmare.
In this time line, the First World War lasts longer than usual, to about 1921. I haven't thought about all the particulars as to how this has happened, but to my mind it seems plausible that the war could have gone on for a few more years. Considering the wave of revolutions that followed/ended the war historically, I would posit that these revolutions would be even larger, more popular and occur in nearly all of the belligerent nations. Materially exhausted and politically bankrupt, the old order mostly just falls without too much fighting, like the revolutions of 1989. Political violence and instability continues until about 1930, by which time the revolutionary governments are firmly in control of a now unified Europe. The very success of the initial revolutionaries and sweeping out the old order and ending the war, precludes extremist groups like the Bolsheviks from gaining much support.
While retconing is usually used so Marvel can squeeze out another Wolverine comic book, the Bolsheviks had mastered it long ago with respect to actual history. How else could they later claim to lead a revolution that they had no hand in creating, arriving late in the game to stage a coup against the Provisional government crumbling under the weight of the Russian war effort. Most of the crowd that followed Lenin into the Winter Palace came to plunder the largest liquor cellar in history. Through the Russian Civil War, Lenin ruthlessly purged his non Bolshevik allies to remove any ideological alternative to his project.
Even before the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks were an insignificant member of the Second International. They were extremists in an age when most socialist and labour parties had decided to pursue reform through the ballot box rather than bloody revolution. Of course the First World War changed all that, and most of the social democratic parties decided to support their respective national governments rather than adhere to the principles of international working class solidarity. After the war, these discredited social democratic parties became a less serious alternative revolutionary communism, and a less serious opponent for inter war fascist movements. The Bolshevik rise from an extremist faction of the prewar Second International to the leader of international communism was unlikely, to say the least.
But what if the Bolsheviks hadn't been so lucky? What if somebody else lead the revolutions? What would communism look like without Lenin's theories?
Anyway, the story is set in the 70s, in a unified Europe that has been run by the heirs to these revolutionaries, but free from the pernicious influences of Lenin, who died in Switzerland of the Spanish Flu, and whose obscure theories are only of minor academic interest. The economy is centrally planned and the standard of living is reasonably high. While such an economy has inherent problems, what made it so bad in the USSR was that the Bolsheviks were incompetent too, and arrested anyone who pointed that out. Le Corbusier redesigned Paris to make it more efficient, and most European cities have followed his lead.
Politically, these societies are semi-free. Freedom of expression, religion (if discouraged), association, rule of law, etc, but you can only vote for one party, although they provide multiple candidates for each post, so the state is not completely unresponsive to the public. This society is supposed to represent Modernism taken to its logical extreme, something that never happened in our world. Rationalism and utilitarianism applied to all problems, with initiative taken out of individual hands and put under the control of huge planning bureaus - coordinatorism.
I have other ideas about how the rest of the world has been affected by this, but this is the concept at the heart of the setting.
Thoughts? Comments? Criticisms?