Commonwealth of America

*"E pluribus unum."*

The **Commonwealth of the United Socialist States of America,** usually simply the **Commonwealth of America** or the **United Socialist States** (USSA), is a sovereign North American country comprising most of the former United States and parts of the Mexican Soviet Republic. A signatory of the Paris Conference and member of the socialist Third Internationale, the Commonwealth claims legitimacy as the sole successor of the United States even as significant holdouts of the previous regime persist in New England and the Great Plains, with the two factions locked in a state of frozen conflict since the Rocky Mountain Ceasefire of 1929. It remains close allies with the fellow revolutionary governments of the French Commune and Union of Britain whilst retaining a bitter and uneasy peace with Germany and Canada, both of whom still recognize the sovereignty of the unionists and see the USSA as an illegal regime. However, the recent symbolic renewing of **Jay's Treaty** in Montreal as a response to the growing anti-German diplomatic bloc has been regarded as normalizing the Commonwealth's relations with both the unionists and Canadian royalists for the first time, allowing limited movement and trade between the states, mutually recognizing the sovereignty of the Indian Territories in Oklahoma, and designating the District of Columbia as a zone of non-aggression for future continental diplomatic summits. Still, the unionsts' residual segregation policies have been strongly condemned by the USSA, who abolished Jim Crow in 1922, while reports of the internment of German-Americans in the midwest have made Canada uneasy, fearing military intervention by Germany, the world's sole superpower as of 1936. While the Second American Civil War may have been paused, in the eyes of the USSA, the Second American Revolution is well underway, and their unclear ambitions for the fate of North America keep the Ottawa and Washington governments in a state of perpetual readiness for a resuming of the war.

The current General Secretary is John S. Reed, and the Chairman of the NCL is Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.

## Government

The Commonwealth was signed into existence with the **Second Constitutional Convention** in Chicago, Illinois, 1921, one year after the onset of the Civil War. While the Communists largely saw themselves as preserving the democratic legacy of the Founders by taking up arms against the failed republic, the influence of the IWW-affiliated anarchists was strong enough to push the National Confederation of Labor to fully dissolve the old United States constitution and declare a new sovereign state altogether. Nevertheless, in a bid to retain legitimacy and ensure as smooth a transition to the new government as possible, much of the US framework remained, with some key differences:

1. A new Constitution of the USSA was written, preserving the original first 10 amendments whilst scrapping the rest and replacing them with a "second Bill of Rights," modeled after the demands made upon the Russian government by the failed Bolshevik rebels. Housing, sustenance, healthcare, collective bargaining, and good wages were made sovereign rights, and the 13th amendment was revised to outlaw slavery in all forms including as a form of punishment.
2. The Senate was abolished and replaced with the central chamber of the National Confederation of Labor. This was done in accordance with the new state ideology of Marxism-De Leonism, which argued that a vanguard party led by industrial union representatives is necessary to seize control of the state and guide it according to socialist ideals with the ultimate goal of establishing communism.
3. The states were preserved as political entities, with their congresses replaced by regional worker's councils. Counties and congressional districts were amalgamated into Syndicates, electing proportional representatives to their state councils, their respective union chapters of the NCL based upon their occupation, and finally the House. As a semi-direct delegate system of representation, all elected officials are subject to immediate recall by petition of their constituents, and contrary to the previous system, their job is to put the will of their voters into place rather than legislate according to their conscience. However, as levels of political apathy vary state to state, the practical application of this is not consistent across the Commonwealth.
4. The Communist Party of the USSA, formerly the Socialist Party of the US, became the sole legal political entity of the Commonwealth. Practically speaking, this did not fully outlaw opposition parties from participating in politics, rather it prevented new state apparatuses from organizing to challenge the authority of the Communist Party and the NCL to legislate.
5. Citizenship was abolished and replaced with membership in the CPUSSA, with all members fully enfranchised without regard to gender, race, or country of origin. Voting and general participation in the democratic process was made sacrosanct and inviolable, including prisoners and ex-felons.
6. The executive branch and the presidency as a whole were abolished and replaced with the Federal Council, modeled upon the system used by the Swiss Confederation. The head of state was made a collective position comprised of the Party's highest elected secretaries, who among themselves appointed a General Secretary, or informally President, to symbolically lead the Party and thus the Commonwealth. The position of Chairman was established, replacing the senate-president role to adjudicate congregations of the National Confederation of Labor. Candidates were recommended by the General Secretary to be approved by the representatives in the NCL.
7. Personal property was guaranteed whilst private property was totally abolished, with all land and means of production transferred to collective ownership through the Party and local industrial unions. A maximum wage was installed to limit the income of any elected CEOs or bosses to three times their lowest paid employees with workers given the right to seize control of their own workplaces by democratic means. Due to the new state's hostility towards private business as a means to prevent the return of capitalism, worker's self-management became the norm; approximately 50% of the economy was collectivized industry led solely by the workers, 30% was generated by for-profit co-operative enterprises, and 20% by government activity, which mostly amounted to direct employment by the state.
8. The United States armed forces were abolished in favor of the American Red Army, also known as the Second Continental Army. Militias operated by the states and unions largely replaced formal hierarchical structures in favor of officer's initiatives and small squad tactics, devolving the Red Army into semi-autonomous Regional Defense Councils who were ultimately loyal to their home and their neighbors rather than the state. A formal standing army was established, nonetheless, by the Federal Council, comprised of volunteers from every state and tasked with the defense of the Commonwealth as a whole.
9. The Supreme Court as an institution was dissolved, leaving the job of interpreting the Constitution to the legislature themselves. Ex-legal experts struggling to find work were employed en masse in both the House and the NCL as interpreters and advisers.

## History

The most direct origin of the Commonwealth can be traced back to 1905 with the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World. Big Bill Haywood, one of the founding members, described the unprecedented congregation of hundreds of anarchists, socialists, communists, and even radical social democrats as "the first continental congress of the working class." Alongside Haywood as some of the organization's early leaders were Daniel De Leon, Lucy Parsons, Thomas Hagerty, Mother Jones, and the man regarded as the father of American socialism: Eugene V. Debs. The IWW became a driving force in American politics as resentment towards industrialists such as Rockefeller, Carnegie, and JP Morgan began to reach a boiling point. They established offices in every major city, distributing pamphlets to disgruntled workers instructing them on how to unionize their workplaces and join the IWW. Their actions were largely ignored by the federal government until they began to advocate for "self-determination in the black belt" which infuriated southern politicians who feared mass insurrection. Debs was arrested on one occasion and then promptly released due to a lack of punishable offenses to much celebration across the country.

The IWW initially refused to engage in electoral politics, viewing parliamentarianism within capitalist countries as a waste of time, but leaders began to shift their position in the 1910s when De Leon's position that the IWW should act as an overarching political vanguard which used all methods at its disposal, including electoralism, in a bid to build socialism across the entire country, won out among the organization's executive committee. Eugene V. Debs, who was already affiliated with the minor Socialist Party of America, was their natural candidate, and in 1912 the IWW petitioned all of its members to vote for the Debs-Seidel presidential ticket. Their intense grassroots campaigning galvanized much of the industrial working class but also caused the other parties to dig in and double down, viewing the election as one between Americanism and socialism. Debs siphoned significant support from Taft and Roosevelt but still lost to Wilson fairly decisively, causing many Republicans and Progressives to resent him as a spoiler candidate.

Under the Wilson administration, a new wave of anti-labor laws intended to stem the tide of the IWW's growth were fast-tracked through the legislature and signed into law under the pretense that anarchist activities were beginning to threaten national security. Under the threat of mass suppression by private Pinkerton armies, the IWW slowed down its activities, allowing the Socialist Party and the American Federation of Labor to take the spotlight. IWW leadership, predominantly anarcho-syndicalists, were extremely hesitant to collaborate with the AFL, who were seen as more reformist and social democratic than radical. Debs' growing influence within the larger socialist movement, however, allowed him to broker a pact of collaboration between the two industrial union organizations, convincing leaders from both sides to set aside their differences and form a united front against the capitalist-imperialist menace. Many progressives who were initially distrustful of the IWW were brought over to the socialists by the inclusion of the AFL, whom they viewed as a productive moderating force for the anarchist bloc. Many prominent socialists were elected across the country, including Upton Sinclair in California, Huey Long in Louisiana, and Floyd Olson in Minnesota.

The anti-capitalist coalition under the banner of the Socialist Party continued to expand their base relatively steadily until Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip shocked the world in 1914 by assassinating the archduke of Austria-Hungary, setting into motion the events that would spark the war to end all wars, the First Weltkrieg. Though the majority of Americans were indifferent and had no interest in joining the war, Debs and the party latched on to the opportunity to spread their anti-war message, denouncing the conflict as simply being waged by the petty whims of the international ruling class at the expense of the working class. Many Americans sympathized with his message, causing the ranks of the Socialist Party to swell and even rehabilitating the IWW in much of the public's eyes, especially on the west coast and in the midwest. This was the last straw for the staunchly anti-socialist groups, who initially opposed the war but now saw opportunity in supporting it to politically isolate the leftists. In late 1915, Senator A. Mitchell Palmer, one of the most prominent voices against the rise of the IWW earlier in the century, left the Democratic Party and announced his bid for the Republican party nomination, stating that Wilson had failed the nation by allowing anarchists to take control of the country and influence foreign policy. He found broad support among the southern Democrats who had despised Debs since he spoke out against segregation in 1908, and even more importantly the industrialist class, with tycoons such as Rockfeller and Carnegie setting aside their pacifist sympathies in hopes of snuffing out the leftist movement before it was too late.

The Palmer-Burleson ticket found widespread support among moderates and conservatives nationwide, particularly concentrating their efforts in the deep south where resentment towards the socialists was strongest. By 1916, tensions had increased as the British Royal Navy, supported by the French, had established an extensive blockade on America's eastern coast, fearing that they would do the unthinkable and join the war on Germany's side if Palmer were to be elected. Indeed, as the increasingly stringent blockade began to hamper the economic activities of the wealthy, they lined Palmer's pockets with campaign funds, allowing him to travel state to state denouncing the Entente for their anti-American activities - and tacitly supporting the German Empire. In response, Debs petitioned the IWW and AFL to prepare for a tough campaign, announcing the surprise choice of feminist and anti-war writer Voltairine de Cleyre as his VP pick; de Cleyre was a young and outspoken woman, and despite her inexperience and the concerns of the more chauvinist unions in the movement, she was supported by the leaders of both factions, who saw her as a fresh voice in a national movement which was in desperate need of a unifier. Incumbent President Wilson found little mainstream support, with most of the public resentful towards his indecisiveness towards the war.

In a razor thin race, Palmer was elected president of the United States, and the country began to prepare for imminent war. The Entente, fearing a pre-emptive strike, even further tightened its blockade and began stationing troops on the Canadian border, threatening instant retaliation should the Dominion's borders become threatened. While the socialists pled with the government not to intervene in the war, it was a foregone conclusion, as the sinking of the *Lusitania* by a French submarine was enough for Palmer to sign a treaty with Kaiser Wilhelm and declare war against the Entente. Chaos immediately swept the states as most did not seriously believe that Palmer would join the Central Powers, and as a wave of anti-war demonstrations gripped the nation, the federal government sent in the military along with private mercenaries to suppress any socialists, Anglophiles, or other "anti-American" individuals. After a summer of terror as Palmer continually tightened his grip on the confused country, reports came in that Russia had fallen to the Bolsheviks, immediately intensifying the Red Scare in Europe and North America as citizens feared that a similar overthrow of the government could happen to their countries as well. The 1917 Espionage Act clamped down hard on the movement, and shortly after the Socialist Party was officially declared an illegal organization spreading pro-Bolshevik and pro-Entente propaganda. Despite being warned to cease all agitation, Debs was arrested in 1918 on charges of sedition for encouraging workers to dodge the strike; de Cleyre, Norman Thomas, Emma Goldman, and Upton Sinclair were also among the prominent socialists to be arrested. Later that year, as it became apparent that the end of the war was nowhere in sight due to Germany's routing of Entente forces in continental Europe and a series of failed invasions of the Ottoman Empire, the international left were struck yet another devastating blow as the White Army, supported by Germany, defeated the Bolsheviks, sending their leaders into exile and reinstalling the Tsar.

1919 was the turning point. Despite rumors of peace on the horizon as the British and French began to struggle to keep up with the seemingly unstoppable German army, matters in America were dire as opinion had largely turned against Palmer due to the public's perception of him as a tyrant and traitor, loyal to only the private interests who got him elected. The Supreme Court upheld the Espionage Act, but it became increasingly impossible to enforce as even the Bureau of Investigation had become hostile to the federal government. Though the socialists still operated in the shadows, without Debs their actions were disorganized and ineffective until the return of John S. Reed, a journalist and member of the Socialist Party who had received acclaim both at home and abroad for his publishing of *10 Days that Shook the World,* a novel detailing the events he had witnessed in the course of the failed Bolshevik Revolution. His grim recounts of how German and American-backed death squads had systematically hunted down and publicly executed all suspected rebels shocked the nation, who were swayed by the parallels drawn by Reed between the new Russian dictator Anton Denikin and their own president Palmer. In the winter of 1919, Reed, in spite of warnings from pinkertons that he would be arrested for doing so, gave a rousing speech in Chicago, Illinois demanding the withdrawing of the US from the war, the overturning of Debs v. United States, the resignation of Palmer, and the immediate release of all members of the Socialist Party. The speech, here excerpted, was broadcast to millions of Americans by radio and reprinted in full by every major newspaper:

"We, as Americans, have a unique place in the world. We remain the only nation to have fought for our own sovereignty rather than waiting for some king or emperor in a distant country to give it to us by asking politely. We remain the only nation to have been founded upon the ideals of freedom and equality; freedom from tyranny, equality of opportunity. Yet we stand here today in a nation which has sadly betrayed those ideals. We've given up our sovereignty in favor of submission - subservience to the robber barons who kept our children enslaved in the industrial dungeons, to the zealots who dared invoke the name of God to justify their selfish hatred of their own neighbors, to the so-called "elected" politicians who have by now long given up the pretense of representing our wishes as the American people. They have taken it upon themselves to decide what our wishes are! Unless the esteemed statesman Mr. Alex Palmer is hiding some crystal ball under the Department of Justice, I think it's safe to say that farmers in Minnesota and factory workers in Michigan know damn well better what their wishes are than some charlatan in Washington!

"And so we see that our pristine democracy which we have spent so many decades building and preserving has now gone to the dogs. It seems, to all of our great shame, that American democracy adds up to practically the same as in Athens so many years ago: Freedom for the wealthy, for the fortunate, for the powerful, for the worst of us, and tyranny and death for the people who do all the working and living and paying and dying in these, our United States! When we fed the poor, they called us saints. When we ask why - in what Rockefeller insists is the richest country in the history of the world - there are still poor people, they arrest us on charges of hurting the feelings of the war profiteers and their lackeys in Congress. If their skin is indeed so thin, then maybe they should get out of politics, where they should never have been in the first place.

"President Palmer fancies himself a regular Anton Denikin. He looks at the Kaiser's palaces, at Leopold's private armies, at George's navy which delivers death to any poor shore on which it lands, at the Sultan's lavish parties he attends whilst presiding over an empire of graveyards, and the man says to himself, 'Gee, that could be me someday!' But my brothers and sisters, let us not pass too much blame upon the poor, poor, enlightened statesman. For it shall be self-evident to any who has seen the bread lines in New York and the broken down factories in Massachusetts that he has fallen victim to the same lie that we all have: The working class have failed to see themselves as what they are, as exploited proles being played for suckers by the powers that be, and instead have surrendered to the illusion that they are merely temporarily-embarrassed millionaires.

"The only embarrassment here is the betrayal of all for which we claim to stand. Washington stood tall at Bunker Hill and refused a crown; Lincoln refused to bend to the white moderate and risked it all to defend his dream of a fairer America; Roosevelt broke up Northern Securities; Palmer betrayed a nation! He claims to defend a Constitution which he has tattered to shreds. He drags us into a war he'd never fight himself. He warns us of internal subversives yet conveniently ignores the ones which pull his very strings! He has saddled the gentle laborer with chains, put a tag on our lives and marked us up! But no mistake: His time is coming, the American people are awakening, and if he doesn't want to be the one to refresh Jefferson's tree of Liberty, then he will release all of our comrades and end the persecution, he must see the Red Flag waving and raise the white, and he must stand aside as we stand up and break the chains! Break the chains!"

Despite several threats upon Reed's life immediately after the speech, he was neither murdered nor arrested, and the federal government neglected to respond in any official capacity. Two weeks and five rallies later, Debs, de Cleyre, Goldman, and Thomas were all released from prison, and a spectacular congregation of the IWW, AFL, and any independent unions was held in Chicago. There, Debs declared the permanent union of the IWW and AFL with the founding of the National Confederation of Labor, intended to be one big union through which all workers in America could have their voices heard. Furthermore, with the influence of the rising star Jack Reed, the Socialist Party was finally dissolved and replaced by a Communist Party modeled after the fallen Bolsheviks. Debs was immediately elected General Secretary of the Communist Party and thereafter announced his intention to run - and win - the presidency, ending Palmer's reign of terror and bringing America out of the Weltkrieg.

The battle lines for the 1920 confrontation were quickly drawn. Fearing the Communists would rouse enough public sympathy to reverse the Red Scare, the Democrats and Republicans bound together to run a "National Unity" ticket; they ultimately nominated John N. Garner, aka Cactus Jack for president, a conservative Democrat well-liked by the religious right, with lawyer Elihu Root, who had strong ties with the capitalists as a regular counsel in anti-trust suits, as his running mate. While 1916 and 1912 had been divisive, 1920 was shaping up to genuinely be a referendum on American democracy, as it pitted the resentful anti-segregation working class against a coalition who promised the republic a return to normalcy after 8 years of political turmoil. Both candidates supported a withdrawal from the war, but while Garner advocated for a treaty of good will between France, Britain, and Germany to peacefully end the Weltkrieg, which had claimed untold millions throughout its bloody 6 years, Debs passionately argued for an immediate cessation of hostilities with no concessions to either side, fearing the alternative would subject them to unpayable war debts which would cripple American industry and the working class. In July, tensions increased due to rumors that Garner and Root had asked General MacArthur to support them in a coup to remove Debs should he win. In response, the National Confederation of Labor released an official statement declaring that they would defend the integrity of the election by force if necessary. Militias rose up across the midwest and Pacific coast, organized by Communist Party partisans distributing propaganda that the military was planning to arrest Debs again. These militias, though initially nominally peaceful, quickly began to clash with national guard forces sent to disband them, which critics decried as a violation of the Second Amendment. Clashes between syndicalist militias, police, and counter protestors continued throughout the following months in every state, resulting in a period of irregular warfare now called the Red Summer. The violence caused by the militias, encouraged by the Communists, was perceived as an existential threat by many politicians in the deep south. Groups such as the KKK began to organize en masse, arguing that they could no longer rely upon the federal government to defend them against the radical socialists in the north who threatened their way of life. They nominated their own candidate for president on an independent ticket: William Dudley Pelley, a pro-German American nationalist and hardline fundamentalist who denounced the Communists as servants of the Devil with Debs as their Antichrist.

November 2nd finally arrived, but those hoping for a quick and decisive result so as to end the violence were sorely disappointed. Full-blown battles broke out at polls across the nation with many Communists and "Pelley-ists" attacking each other nigh on sight and Garner voters either watching from the sidelines in horror or joining in on the brawls. Though both the Debs and Garner campaigns claimed to have received enough votes to win the electoral college, neither could certify the result due to the pandemonium rapidly spreading across the country, leading to a week of fighting in the streets as officials desperately tried to count every vote amid rampant accusations from both sides of ballot stuffing and arbitrary discarding. On the evening of November 11th - a date remembered as 11/11 - both major candidates claimed victory nigh simultaneously, while Pelley demanded the election be canceled and rescheduled. An hour later amid the confusion, General Douglas MacArthur and several other members of the United States military high command, supported by a division of infantry bearing Union patches, marched to the White House, forcefully removed the terrified Palmer who was found hiding under the Oval Office desk hiding from rioters, and swore in John N. Garner as the 29th president of the United States of America. His first stroke of the pen was an executive order which outlawed the Communist Party, the NCL, the IWW, and the AFL, and declared martial law until order could be restored, effectively placing MacArthur in command of the nation and the armed forces. Debs, his running mate James P. Cannon, and Reed, their campaign manager, fled their election headquarters in Philadelphia, narrowly evading arrest at the hands of junta supporter Dwight Eisenhower by fleeing to the NCL center of operations in Chicago. Though doves working for both Debs and MacArthur urged them to try and reach a peaceable solution, it was clear by the following evening that the worst had come to fruition: a second American Civil War was imminent. In a speech to loyal unions, Communist Party members, and militiamen across the country, Eugene V. Debs declared the United States a "dead nation" and urged the workers of America to rise up in what he called the Second American Revolution.