Peoples’ Union of America

The **Peoples’ Union of America**, or the **PUA** for short is a socialist nation in the continental United States, formed after the Second American Civil War. It borders the Southern Union, Legion of America and Canada.

Despite the Second American Civil War ending in a partial victory for the socialists involved in the conflict, the brutality that enveloped the war, coupled with an out of touch post-war government has lead to drastic after effects for the country, with many analysts stating that progress in the Union has been stagnant and outdated for years on end. Despite the government being ousted in 1927 with a new, more effective government in power, rising factionalism alongside an economically weak country surrounded by enemies has lead to many fearing for the existence of the Union, and the idea that it might collapse if war breaks out again is not that unpopular.

## History

### History of American socialism

(Main article: History of the United States)

The United States, much like Western Europe, became one of many hotspots for the growth of the far-left since the early 1800s.

### The Second American Civil War

(Main article: The Second American Civil War)

### A Post-War Hardline Approach

With the news that the United States government, now seated in Hawaii, officially declared an end to the Second American Civil War in mid-1922, the overall reaction of the public was a mix of relief and revolutionary optimism, excited about the growth and changes the Peoples' Union would bring.

The fantasy of the Union being anything close to a workers paradise was quickly cut short as the war ended, if only because the Union was in worse shape than anyone could've imagined. Without vital farmland, most of which was now in the hands of the new American Commonwealth, the specter of famine, once almost non-existent was coming back. Although some countries recognized the Union, primarily the new German State, many originally did not owing to the fact that it, alongside the new states born out of the civil war were seen as pariahs.

Once the war had ended, the new government, replacing Eugene V. Debs as ruler with Alfred Wagenknecht, a hardline Marxist who managed to win the election over the collective fear the people and government had of another war and possible foreign invasion by Canada, but his remembrance is one of constant failings, owing to the future New York Putsch of the mid-20s.

With so many Americans gone, and dealing with over 200,000 refugees, alongside the absence of most American arable land, Union leadership was shaky at best. While promising reforms were initially carried out during and after the war such as desegregation, upholding the rights of unions, guaranteeing equal rights for women and men, in reality the government was too weak to uphold any of these decisions. With food increasingly scarce, and as rationing grew, many opposition groups formed against the government, and with little legitimacy, the Peoples’ Union found itself slowly unraveling.

In the first few months after peace had been achieved, the revolutionary fervor that gripped much of the country finally died down, and in its aftermath the people were faced with a gargantuan task: rebuilding a broken and divided country with limited resources. While Wagenknecht was clever to avoid political infighting within the government even as arrests of anarchists became frequent and brawls broke out, it was his eventual iron-fisted rule that would prove to be his undoing.

### Growing difficulties

Wagenknecht, for better or for worse, would be quick and cautious in the rebuilding of the Union. New York, while having little legitimacy, made clever use of the post-war economic condition of the world. Many countries were struggling without American aid, and as the Union had America’s most industrial cities with many resources, the Union was able to sign various trade agreements all over the world, with Germany, Mexico, France, Portugal and even Canada in exchange for emergency food aid throughout the summer, and slowly fears of a famine went away, in the immediate time being.

The new Marxist administration, despite the country being founded on Syndicalist principles aimed to move the country more towards a communist society, with their intentions revealed in September 1922, claiming that the rumors of famine were now eliminated, and the Union can move forward as a communist society, announcing the Five Year Plan, intended to fully transition the American economy and promote the industrial potential of the state, all by 1927.

The plans were quite grand for the stark situation the government found itself in, but the president was quite confident in the ability of the union to become a powerful North American country by 1930. He was almost too confident, however. The truth was, although the importation of food was helping the public alleviate the possibility of a famine, it was always a temporary solution. The Union simply didn’t have enough money nor power to stabilize their imports and exports of materials, much less fully transform the economy coupled with thousands of refugees, population loss and brain drain by 1930.

As such, the 1920s was a period of intense stagnation with a drop in the overall standard of living. Supplies were on the line, and reports issued by the new government on industrial quotas were falling far below expectations the president had. That alongside the increasingly centralized state apparatus, the imprisonment of anarchists and syndicalists, many of which in the past had participated in, and were loyal to the revolution. As the government grew out of touch with the public, various anti-government groups formed in hopes of replacing the Marxists in power, ranging from communists to anarcho-syndicalists.

Outright reactionary and anti-socialist resistance, for the most part, was dead. Even in areas which had previously been far from supporting the revolution like Iowa and Minnesota, the war had changed everything, and thanks to the exhaustion many had faced and from the escalation the government was using against its non-leftist rivals, anyone who openly opposed socialism either silently accepted the status quo, fled or was imprisoned. But no one could deny the growing powder keg that was the Peoples’ Union, rife with instability and many obstacles that, come 1927, would rock the country to its core.

### The Spring Putsch

#### Background

There were many reasons why 1927 was the year in which the government was forcibly removed from power. The first of which came in February, when the Union’s currency, the American Dollar, severely dropped in its value, which was never truly stable since the war ended, and the long standing fear of its crash finally came in 1927. This drop also lead to a significant plunge of New York’s imports and exports, including on food material and supplies. Without it, and without any necessary changes made to improve the Union’s own capacity for its agricultural industry thus far, the fear of a famine returned. In March, the first protests against the government broke out in Minneapolis, where bread lines were growing, and pent up frustration was finally released early that month.

Classified documents on the Five Year Plan, detailing its failure on its attempt to transform the American economy, portraying minimal growth in the five years since it began, were leaked to the public. Before then, the people were collectively made to believe that the Five Year Plan was starting to be a success, and the Union was finally moving away from being a static, unstable and authoritarian country, but the leaked documents proved otherwise. Unable to stop the spread of the government catastrophic failure to guide the country, the protests, somewhat contained to Minneapolis, quickly grew to Chicago, Bangor and Boston. Thousands became distraught over how the revolution changed, and many politicians denounced the government, calling it tyrannical.

#### The rise of the anti-government movement

In this tide of political unrest, two politicians would come to the forefront of the anti-government movement, being instrumental in its downfall and the Spring Putsch. The first was Elmer Allison, being a known supporter of the Socialist Party of America for years even before the Second American Civil War. Originally he stayed with the Communist Party and was a supporter of Wagenknecht until a few years before, when he broke from the party, disappointed at the Marxist-led government. He instead spearheaded the creation of a new faction in the Communist Party, the Reformist Bloc, aimed at mending ties between syndicalists and communists, liberalize the country and place special emphasis on the country's agrarian and farming communities.

Then there was Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, long-time labor organizer, activist and veteran of the civil war, where she spearheaded the creation of a Woman's Battalion in New York City in the initial days of the revolution. She was infamous for her work, and was avoided in the subsequent government purges, if only due to her status and how she was beloved by the public. She quickly turned against the government once peace came in 1922, and vocally opposed the imprisonment of anarchists and the purging of syndicalists from the government. Due to frequent threats from the government she eventually went silent on the issue, focusing more on women's rights in the new Union until the protests, where she once again rallied people not only against the government but to her side, eventually forming the Libertarian Party, a Revolutionary Syndicalist party aimed at removing the Hardliners from power, decentralizing state power and enacting lasting social change.

#### The March Protests

Emboldened by the growth of Allison and Flynn, New York City, previously a pro-government hotspot, was rocked to its core when hundreds in Brooklyn took to the streets, demanding the president's resignation. Over a period of two days, the protest would be crushed, but the outraged generated against the president and his cabinet would not cease, no matter how hard they tried to put down the discontent. As Elmer Allison and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn rose to the forefront of the anti-government movement, New York could only look on in horror as it grew far beyond anyone's control. After the unrest in Brooklyn was suppressed, the government knew all too well that their support was thinning, and that any wrong move could make even their most staunchest allies move away from them.

Cautiously, the government watched these protests as they spread from the capital to Montepelier, Indianapolis and Columbus, calling for the government to surrender. Ultimately, as these protests intensified with the help of both Flynn and Allison, Wagenknecht started to feel the weight of the demonstrations weighing on him with over 10 cities being the site of major protests.

#### The April Surrender

Protestors entering into April grew in number and became bolder each day demanding change. In the early weeks of the month, Flynn and Allison entered an unruly alliance together in hopes of breaking down the Marxist government, to strengthen American society. Protestors became emboldened by the continual resistance of the government. On the 7th, Anarchists set fire to a government building in Boston. In Chicago, Syndicalist trade unions organized a citywide strike on the 9th. As the market completely froze in New York on the 12th, the dominoes of political collapse fell in wide succession. With the years of slow economic progress halted, people began banding together to remove Wagenknecht and his cabinet. Protests spread to every corner of the country, and no state was exempt. Previously silent individuals or those who opposed socialist rule participated as a way to change society for the better.

By the 20th, the president sent in the full force of the military into Manhattan to quash the protestors and re-establish order. After three days of intense, street-to-street fighting, the military pulled out of the city, and Wagenknecht, now relocated to Maryland, realized the futility of fighting back. On the 25th, he, and dozens of Hardline politicians resigned in unison. What remained of the government called for a nationwide general election to be held in the coming weeks, and protests began to die down as a provisional government took temporary control of the government.

### Kollontist Era & liberalization

With the resignation of then president Wagenknecht and most of his cabinet, snap elections were called to the public in early May, and in fhe first post-war election in the Union’s history, the Socialist Party, moving towards more liberal forms of socialism, won by a slight landslide, being lead by Elmer Allison. While the Socialist Party stayed in favor of thousands of Americans, the Libertarian Party quickly became the biggest opposition party to communist rule. Unsurprisingly, Elmer Allison and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn quickly separated following the Putsch, while Flynn becoming more vocal about her discontent with the state of the Union.

For Allison however, various reforms allowed the Union to finally prosper and grow, even if it was slow-moving. Allison removed many restrictions regarding freedom of speech and the press, and released many political prisoners, a notable portion of them being Anarchists. Allison, while moving closer to the Third International also moved the economy towards the global market, establish trade relations for the first time with Texas, Mexico, Portugal, Ireland and even France. The Union before was seen as a pariah country, but these reforms would help soften international relations with New York. As many countries see still suffering from the fallout of the United States, they were more than eager to restart trading in the region.

Allison in 1929 created what he called the Prosperity Campaign, aimed at fully reversing the damage the Hardliners and the civil war had caused. He hoped to reverse the Brain Drain, the damage & fears of famine caused by collectivization, and normalize ties with most of the rest of the world. In the 6 years since the campaign had begun, Allison’s campaign wasn’t succeeding, despite initial enthusiasm from the population. Incentives to increase the birth rate went nowhere, and aims at undoing the collectivist policies yielded little result. While the Union normalized diplomatic ties with many more countries, rationing was still a necessity, despite the president himself saying that the practice would be fully abolished by 1934.

#### Growing political instability

While Allison and his Kollontist regime is arguably still popular, being dubbed as the “friendly moderate”, more and more people have become disillusioned with the government. Allison’s regime has been continually accused of imprisoning his opposition and still censoring media, papers, and the radio. Furthermore, his unsuccessful Prosperity Campaign has only driven thousands to the side of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, who herself has turned quite radical, to the Anarcho-Syndicalist faction of the Libertarian Party. With little progress, many fear a new putsch or political collapse is imminent, one which would be even more bloody than the first.

## Government structure

The political nature and structure of the Peoples’ Union largely resembles that of the defunct United States government. The Peoples’ Union is a secular democracy with universal suffrage, with elections being held every four years. The process of elections have stayed unchanged, with institutions such as the Supreme Court now being directly elected by the people and confirmed by the Senate, instead of being chosen by the president. The electoral college for its part was abolished during the signing of the constitution. Notably, due to the absence of many states, the Senate and House are smaller institutions, while after the 1927 Putsch, the executive power and role of the president was weakened.

Despite Allison’s liberalizing efforts, many political parties, notably the Democratic and Republican Parties are banned and are deemed “state security threats”. There are number of small parties, but the largest by far is the Socialist Party and the Libertarian Party. Smaller but prominent political parties include the American Communist Party and the Social Nationalist Party.