Reality Rosa: A world where Communism works

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Hannes665

Great write up, shows how Communists may have gain more power but like David J. said.... Whys is Communism working anyway in this world?

The Non-Euclidian geometry of the place (At least I think you need to change some mathematical fundamentals) is making it subject to the influence of Things Man Was Not Meant To Know.

Just remember to check the New Socialist Man for that Innsmouth Look.

[LoneWolf23k]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

So...why is Communism working anyway?

Successful Communism is a Self-Aware Meme that developped on Rosa; it actively affects human thinking to make them cooperate honestly with Socialism...

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by LoneWolf23k

Successful Communism is a Self-Aware Meme that developped on Rosa; it actively affects human thinking to make them cooperate honestly with Socialism...

Socio-babble instead of techno-babble?
Nice.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Rocket Man

...
As far as why is this working -- I suppose because in a theoretical infinity of alternate universes, it had to work SOMEWHERE, if only on the "million seeds equals one potato" principal...

No, the proper analogy is planting a billion potato seeds (sic) and getting one to sprout a tomato plant.
True communism won't work with humanity under earth normal forces as we know them.
This alternate requires the human genome or more esoteric universal forces to be just different enough to allow such ideology to work but similar enough for no other effects to be discernable under cursory scrutiny.

[Greg 1]

Originally Posted by Rocket Man

As far as why is this working -- I suppose because in a theoretical infinity of alternate universes, it had to work SOMEWHERE, if only on the "million seeds equals one potato" principal.

I think that is a great idea. Your setting is social sci fi and I like the originality. So what if it may be a little implausible? Many great game settings are a little implausible.

[Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2]

Originally Posted by Molokh

Nice write-up. More detail than I can remember from my history classes for comparison. BTW, what happened to Bilarus' in the early days? Did it join the red side immediately? What more can you tell about the White Guardia?

All in all, this is a commie world I actually like, especially the calendar. (I need more info on the language before I can make my mind. I get the impression that it's a flective language, which IMO isn't all that easy.)

I felt you needed an answer. The only reason I know anything about Belarus is from my studies of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, so I spent a good long while studying up on the subject, especially the history to the present.

Quite frankly, I can't think of another nation other than the Native American Nations or the African peoples of South Africa that has been as badly abused by their more-powerful neighbors as Belarus. It looks like everyone around them considered the territory something to be carved up to suit their whims while the people were expendable resources. Not to mention the Soviets using them as a body shield against the Nazis. (I looked up Operation Barbarossa and I suspect that Stalin weakened the Soviet defenses there on purpose, to slow down the Nazis in dead bodies while he moved industries in Russia to safety in the Urals.) Many congratulations for rebuilding so well!

But I believe it was mentioned that in this new timeline, the native cultures were encouraged rather than suppressed. So Belarus might enjoy an early renaissance of their national identity. Not to mention a new prosperity based on being at a good position for trade and industrial growth (and NOT losing the bulk of their population to the Nazis - it helps to have enough people to exploit the land's natural wealth properly).

As for the White Guard - would they have their monarchist bent? If so, they might actually try to promote a pretender to a Belarus Throne, likely a Romanov. Otherwise, they might evolve into the "lunatic fringe" of the new worlds' politics. Since they were never a unified movement in the first place, I suspect they would fragment and fade away - revolutionary movements (or counter-revolutionary ones) don't do well in times of prosperity.

Anyway, that's the best guess.

[JAW]

Originally Posted by LoneWolf23k

Successful Communism is a Self-Aware Meme that developped on Rosa; it actively affects human thinking to make them cooperate honestly with Socialism...

"Self aware meme"??? Is the "communism meme" supposed to be aware of itself rather than the humans being aware of it? This is analogous to saying that a gene could be self avare - like blue-eyedness gene being aware of itself...

But other than that self aware bit it's totally sensible.
1. Rosa develops a refined version of communism that is bit easier to believe in.
2. Many people believe in it.
3. By change the revolution does not fail.
4. It becomes estabilished.
5. Even people that do not believe in it "play along".

Now the resulting society might not be exactly "true communism" by the book by marx (or even by the book by Rosa) - but rather some kind of society that develops it's own customs and people call it communistic. The details how it exactly works... That's for the PCs to find out and the GM to partly make up on the fly. Of course the GM can't work out every detail how the society works - but making up how the people act and think in it in general should not be too hard.

And of course NPCs (or PCs in scenrio where the PCs come from "reality rosa") from that world would be baffled about how capitalism can work in our world as well as it does.. "What - no daily food riots?"

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by LoneWolf23k

Successful Communism is a Self-Aware Meme that developped on Rosa; it actively affects human thinking to make them cooperate honestly with Socialism...

That's not the biggest problem, though I think your meme has to be making socialist leaders wise , selfless and pure of heart at least as much as making people co-operative.

The mathematical alteration I was talking about was something that would make the problems of a planned economy solvable with less than Transhuman Space technology and a lot of advances in economic theory. We obviously can't predict our economy that well here in 2008 in Reality Dullsville. If we could we wouldn't be having this economic crisis.

I'm not even sure planned economies work that well in the TS world for everything that advancing tech does to improve info gathering and computer modeling it seems to do two things enabling the world to change faster.

Ugly as it is sometimes, the thing that makes capitalism work is that it's a self-regulating system. Nobody has to understand what's going on at the moment much less plan for the future with perfect foresight. Everybody just has to keep trading stuff for other stuff.

If there is some great socialist breakthrough that makes Communism work it needs to be something that makes collectively owned economies self-regulating.

[tantric]

There is something similar on AltHistory.com

Red Eagle Rises

What is presented here isn't Communism as it manifested on our world, so there's no reason to think it wouldn't work. In fact, this TL addresses many of the problems that crippled the USSR and PRC. It reality isn't much different from European Socialist Democracy, except for the centralized and controlled banks (hmmm, might be a good idea after all). Homeline Communism has been crippled by totalitarian regimes led by genocidal lunatics - but even so, the Soviet and Chinese economies went from peasant agriculture to modern industrial states in a very short time.

What this TL misses is the Germany would get the Bomb first. With the resources of Russia and German engineering (no one flees from the Nazis), they would be the technological leaders of the world. Hell, many British and American scientists of the time were socialist sympathizers, and might have defected to avoid persecution.

[sn0wball]

A really interesting read. Congrats. Compared to the pseudo-German often used in roleplaying texts, you obviously did your homework on this. I have only two nitpicks. It would be a Räterepublik, not a Rätenrepuplik. Also, Ostanhebung sounds a bit weird. Ostaufbau might be a better term, at least that was the one being used after the reunification to describe transfers to the former GDR.

If you can read German, Das Luxemburg-Komplott by Christian von Ditfurth should interest you. This a novel set in an alternate history by a German historian, where Rosa Luxemburg survives, too, although with completely different consequences.

As far as the question why communism is working in that timeline, I don´t think that is a proper question to ask. Why is Nazism working in some many timelines ? Why did ancient civilisations survive against all odds in others ? Alternate timelines do not seem to need answers to these questions. They do not follow the socio-economic assumptions of our timeline. Is communism not working in our timeline ? It is not like we have somehow scientific proof in our timeline that communism cannot work. I don´t think that sociologists would honestly attest that a timeline such as this is outright impossible.