The Second Revolution could have never reconstituted the whole of the United States in one go, especially not in those regions that were still held by [ECUMENICAL AGGRESSOR] at the time of the Orpheum Theatre Declaration, nor was it intended to. The National Radicals (NRs) for their part did not even expect that the bulk of the country would fall in line behind them as quickly as it did, though with hindsight and an understanding of just how thoroughly Operation Killswitch had damaged the other pretender governments it seems inevitable to us now that they would. By 2058, the current federative diarchy of the states of Sunbelt and Heartland had established itself, and with very few exceptions those local governments that did not immediately fold themselves directly into the new NR government had at least on paper acknowledged it as the legitimate successor of the original United States of America.

The “on paper” part is important though. While the NRs were busy adapting to the impracticality of hard one-party rule, giving way to the current “Majority Party” government now known as the “Grand Coalition of the Republic” with all its various cliques, hangers-on, and questionably integrable elements all debating the finer points of the Easternization Program and the scope of the then soon to come American Cultural Revolution, the working groups of the Northeast, Upcountry, and Far West congealed into what were effectively warlord states who, as is often the case in these instances, became far less eager to be fully subservient to the government in Memphis now that they could stand on their own two feet.

The ideology of the NRs in the briefest is that of a Consultative and Democratic Dictatorship, the norm in much of the civilized world. Democratic functions in theory operate along a twin tracked model of an internally democratic Majoritarian Party employing a form of Mass Line. In practice this takes the form of cliques within the Party that represent various interests, both public and intra-party.
Within the NR party proper there are eight cliques, and within the “Majority Party” system more broadly there are 13-16 The variation here is whether one counts the interests of the municipal groups as a singular mass or distinct from one another. As there are four total this necessarily changes the number if you count all of them. These cliques are based primarily upon the degree of incorporation with the Party Core, and then from there distinctions in policy.

The Core or Central Clique of the Party are those affiliated with the NR vision of governance without qualifiers and without addons. This vision is one of directing the National Radical “governance revolution” into establishing a party of natural governance, a vanguard of the American people where all democracy occurs within the single party and ultimately fuses with the state and civil society.

The further away from the core the more qualifiers are attached. “Inner Party” cliques such as the Movement for National Reconstruction and the Political Synergy Clique broadly align with the vision of the Total Party-State but with particular carveouts for their own pet institutions such as the military and republic gendarmerie or of maintaining a multiplicity of internal forms of governance between the states. Such forms of unitary patron states or poly-federalism come just short of the Core’s vision.

“Middle Party” Cliques such as the Political Harmony Clique and the New Era Scientific Development Movement advocate for an effective multi-party system within the NRs themselves, with the non-elected functions of the state existing as a kind of commissarial office to ensure that all parties reflect the “diversity of revolutionary orthodoxy” not that any kind of political vision outside the NRs should be allowed to exist. They also, as an aside, are the strata of the Party that most vigorously advocates for annexing the shattered remnants of Canada into the United States.

“Outer Party” Cliques such as the Dynamist Conference of America, Political Engineering Clique, and Movement for American Socialism advocate for the division of the legislative and consultative offices, handing the second over to non-NR parties, effectively establishing the Grand Coalition as a permanent fixture of American politics rather than as a stop-gap measure towards the establishment of the Party-State itself. Inspired by China’s consultative conference in particular, the Outer Party believes that while orthodoxy should be strict within the Party (making them closer to the Core than the Middle Party on this point) that the idea of absorbing all civil society into the Party itself is premature at best. To this end they often adopt a form of constitutionalism, advocating not the return of the old US Constitution (which is still in writing and spirit the supreme document of the land) but of a revised constitution. On this point there is overlap here with the Inner Party who desire constitutionalism to codify their own special interests into law permanently.

Beyond this are what are called the “Unintegrated Interests”, which is to say those groups whose existence and platforms in some way conflict with the Core’s program of a Total Party-State. These would be the twin caucuses of the Communist Party, We Are Sorry for the Inconvenience, and the Prohibition Party.

Closest to the Party Proper would be the Apricot Caucus of the Communist Party. The larger of the two groups, the Apricots desire the reestablishment of the old American two-party system with them playing the second part of course. The Apricots argue that the national revolution represented the final culmination of the more general “bourgeois revolution” that the first United States failed to fully bring into being on the continent and thus is broadly speaking at the very least a “legitimate government” to operate under. Communist Party Orthodoxy states that the culmination of the progressive bourgeois revolution almost came in the United States during the early republic, the end of the civil war, and the end of World War II respectively. However, the potentially historically progressive character of the American national bourgeoise was undermined first in the defense of slaveocracy, then in the name of compromise and an institutional coup within the republic after the Civil War, and then in the complete takeover and attempted dissolution of the US entirely by rentier interests during the solidification of the late Anglo-American Banking Empire. Under a new two-party system the Apricots wager, perhaps correctly, that they could contest in the public sphere the claims of the NRs that they are the natural vanguard of the American people. In the present moment such an electoral coup would be impossible, but in 20-30 years who knows? To this end they are, despite not being NRs themselves, very supportive of the current state and constitute a part of the “Majority Party” at least on paper. They also agree with the Middle Party on annexing Canada.

The Plum Caucus does not agree. They broke off from the rest of the party (though kept their seats) when the current line of the Apricots was established. The Plums could not agree to what they saw as an “unqualified legitimization” of the second republic. They conceive of their situation as merely representing the interests of American Communists such that no “white terror” might be brought against them until such a time that the “real” party of the masses can fully constitute itself. In practice though this just means that they vote present most of the time and hang around the congressional snack bar a lot.

In an interesting wrinkle to this, the Movement for American Socialism was also once part of the core Communist Party, though they broke off for the opposite reason. When the Apricot Line was established they switched to the NRs, believing instead that it could be turned towards an explicitly socialistic program. As one can guess this has led to lots of grumbling about “left and right deviationists” by Communist Party cadres.

What are the eight cliques of the Majority Party system? What are the goals of the Core party? What are the goals of the Inner party? What are the goals of the Middle party? What are the goals of the Outer Party? What are the differences between the Apricot and Plum caucuses of the Communist Party? What are the goals for the Apricot caucus? What are the goals of the Plum caucus? Can the current Majoritarian system of under the National Radicals be described as a consociational system?