New Reality Seeds

[combatmedic]

Karl Marx moves to America

POD 1835
The 17 year old Karl Marx kills another student in a duel. Forced to flee to America, he settles in Virginia where he becomes friend with George Fitzhugh. Fitzhugh hires Marx as An assistant in his legal business. Marx proves hopeless with book-keeping, but as his English improves he shows remarkable facility at research and legal argumentation.

Karl Marx becomes a respected lawyer-about-town and marries a prosperous planter’s daughter (which makes him a slave owner through his wife).

He names his first child Jenny.

Seeing people like himself, his wife, and his dear friend George castigated by Abolitionists, Marx takes up his pen to defend slavery as a positive good. He advocates for “socialized slavery”, a reformed system that will give the poor/blacks full employment and eliminate the dangerous class conflicts he sees threatening America. He also stresses the need for the South to industrialize, and argues for the use of slaves as factory and mine workers. People begin to really pay attention…


POSSIBLE OUTCOME

Alt-Marxist ideas become popular enough for small parties to form.

Because the new ideological movement advocates for social reforms and improvements in conditions for working-men, Alt-Marxism gains some support in the North, esp. in cities like Chicago. Seeing the new Republican Party as the most progressive option with any chance of winning, the Northern Marxists join it. They thwart Lincoln's bid for the nomination in 1860. Seward gets the nod instead. When states start pulling out, Seward blusters and threatens, provoking further secessions. But then he tries to negotiate, and within a year the mostly bloodless ''rebellion'' has played out.

Marxist parties surge in importance in the Confederacy during the social and economic disorders of the 1870s.
A Marxist gov't takes power in the 1890s after a multi-state slave revolt (which was coordinated in part by Northern Abolitionists.)

CURRENT YEAR

1956 AD

Great powers

CSA
representative democracy/socialist

CR 3, C4 for most non-whites ("civilized" Indians may suffer some social prejudice, but no legal disabilities), effective CR 5 for slaves.

Slaves do have some rights and protections under law, roughly comparable to serfs in a medieval society (or Soviet proles in Homeline's past). Many slaves work in factories and mills. Many are owned by the government and by corporate bodies. Slaves may be married. They are allowed to read, but their reading material is strictly censored. Subsidized healthcare and food benefits have improved their overall material quality of life. Most slaves like in tenement houses/''estates.''






USA
representative democracy
CR 3
Without most of the South, the USA doesn't have Jim Crow. But without Reconstruction the federal guarantees on civil rights are actually somewhat weaker.




All-Russian Soviet Imperium

corporate state/socialist
CR4

Without the Bolsheviks, the Provisional Gov't managed to cling to power for a decade, before faltering the face of Anarchist aggression from the left and Tsarist agitation from the right. Socialists compromised with the Romanovs to create a corporate socialist state. The Tsar rules, but not as an unchecked autocrat. Railways, heavy industry, and much agriculture has been placed under the control of state-owned corporations. Workers have representation through soviets, though in practice its the state industrial bosses and the Tsar who direct policy.

Note that the socialists aren't much influenced by Marx . Narodniks and other groups have developed along different lines. Probably more agrarian than industrial.

[Astromancer]

One note on the second Marx world. Karl marx was anti-slavery and passionately so before he got to college. Nicely twisted and evilly warped otherwise.

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

One note on the second Marx world. Karl marx was anti-slavery and passionately so before he got to college. Nicely twisted and evilly warped otherwise.

Sure.
I also considered other things: his age, social influences in a new setting, no Young Hegelian university crowd, no Bruno Bauer, an ATL connection with George Fitzhugh, marriage to a different woman, etc.
Please keep in mind that he leaves Europe when he's only seventeen in this timeline. Plenty of men have grown up to hold quite different opinions than they held when they were in their teens. I'm sure we can both think of people who changed their minds, one way or the other, about slavery.

And of course he becomes a pro-slavery socialist in this timeline, not an apologist for the status quo of chattel slavery. No, he wants to improve slavery. To transform society for the good of working people (as he sees it). Establish a new order.

One could perhaps move his family to America by some means, when he was rather younger.
I like to use the duel because it really happened.

[Astromancer]

Worlds where Jumpers have interfered would make good adventures. Try...

Babbage-7

The Babbage designation is used by Homeline to label worlds where computers develope early. Babbage-7 seems to be a dramatic case of this. Someone has backed Charles Babbage financially and hired one of the finest Swiss clockmakers to realise his ideas. It's 1825 and the Difference Engine is opperational. They even have a printer to put the results into hardcopy.

Given just how early this is, Homeline wants to know what's going on on this Q5 world. Has Centruum found a way to get to Homeline's Quantuum?

Further more, a steal plant which sounds like the Bessemer process seems to be opening 30 years early? What's going on?

You may slot in a Jumper to taste.

[Flyndaran]

Jumpers helping to push such barely possible items from the Edge of Tomorrow supplement and its ilk might be interesting too.

Steam cannons plus advanced metallurgy or super large wood versions could make for some strange High Seas campaigns in near Roman eras.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Jumpers helping to push such barely possible items from the Edge of Tomorrow supplement and its ilk might be interesting too.

Steam cannons plus advanced metallurgy or super large wood versions could make for some strange High Seas campaigns in near Roman eras.

Do you mean Fantasy Tech 1: The Edge of Reality, or is there some other supplement I'm not aware of?

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Do you mean Fantasy Tech 1: The Edge of Reality, or is there some other supplement I'm not aware of?

I didn't think to check the title before posting. Yeah, that's the one I meant.

[PTTG]

Barabbas-2 sounds hilarious. I had a similar idea but it was more focused. I imagine that it could overlap quite effectively.

To the north, a gray country, barely holding on to liberties that slip away a little more each day. To the south, a prison state, propped up by a distant and imperialistic nation of faciocapitalists. But here, in the glorious North Korean Republic, freedom still reigns, thanks to the eternal perseverance of the valiant Kim Jong Un...

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by PTTG

Barabbas-2 sounds hilarious. I had a similar idea but it was more focused. I imagine that it could overlap quite effectively.

To the north, a gray country, barely holding on to liberties that slip away a little more each day. To the south, a prison state, propped up by a distant and imperialistic nation of faciocapitalists. But here, in the glorious North Korean Republic, freedom still reigns, thanks to the eternal perseverance of the valiant Kim Jong Un...

That's indistinguishable from North Korean rhetoric, isn't it?
;)


Which naturally makes it great for a horror setting.

[Astromancer]

Trying another Jumper twisted world.

Holland-5

The Holland designation covers worlds where the history of the Netherlands or the Dutch people is radically altered. Holland-5 seems to be a world where a Jumper decided to change things. This world achieved a wind powered industrial revolution!

The British are racing to catch up and is beginng to use coal and steam engines. The French seem to be blindsided. The present year is 1700. Louis XIV has abdicated his throne and the Anglo-Dutch alliance has requiered the Spainish to take a new monarch that is neither a Bourbon or a Habsburg.

Both Centruun and Homeline want to know what is happening on this Q6 world.

The local TL has been a mixture of 5, 4+1, and 4+2! for some years now. Every state in Europe is trying to catch up to the Dutch technological lead. Meanwhile, the Dutch and the Brits are advancing with surprising speed throughout Asia. Japan has dropped their isolation policy and is useing diplomatic missions to the UK and the Netherlands in an attempt to study and/or steal technology for themselves.

Basically: early 18th century steampunkish cloak and dagger.