Suppose that the Southern States had won the Civil War?

Post Reply New Topic

Christie suspension.* Indeed, but there is still a difference between production and quality. Plenty of things made, not many of them very good (with the exception of the T-34 perhaps, which was outstanding, and not solely because of its suspension system, and the AK series, which is the capitalist nightmare - cheap AND long lasting.)

Are we saying that the Southern states are the moral equivalent of the USSR?

beejay - you turkey! I've only read the first eight books of the series and you dump a big spoiler in the plot!

Not really a problem, as Turtledove is such a great writer, I re-read his work. Actually, purchased and read the eighth book before the seventh book arrived.

More the counter-factual potential future industrial equivalent.. I think. The implication appears to be that a slave-based economy ould never effectivly industrialize, and that the closest equivalent to a slave-economy is that of the USSR. The difference is of course that the CSA starts with a clear two-race division. White or black, master and servant. The USSR lacked such a polarisation.

Surely a potential industrialised CSA would be limited by the availability of raw materials as much as the enthusiasm of the workforce though.. or its ability to locate/coonquer/trade such materials?

Big deal. They made the best tank and the worst automobiles and just about anything ordinary people might use on a daily basis. Their multi-story apartment buildings fell apart after their first winter and their plumbing sucked. Overall the Soviet economy was dismal to disastrous. Worst of all, their collective farming could not feed the population very well. Thirty percent on the fresh fruit and veggies was produced on the five percent of the land that the State allowed the collective farmers for their own person use. The remaining 95 percent of the cultivateable land produced well below its potential because of corruption and mismanagement. Any centrally controlled economy is going to fail and the Soviet economy failed which is why the Soviet Union no longer exists. They were not defeated in war, they collapsed from their own corruption and stupidity.

ruveyn

However, they managed to maintain their empire for some 70 years as a Communist state. Even if our theoretical CSA only kasted for 70 years, that still places its demise neatly in 1935.. so its existence in one form or another crosses over a great deal of the world-shaping events that lead to WW2... and thats assuming that they would rely wholly on a slave economy for that whole period (and perhaps tries to hold on to too many parallels with communist russia that simply arent there... unless you postulate a slave-uprising overthrowing the "American aristocracy" in a similar vein to the October revolution etc.) Even then, theres no reason to believe that the CSA would rejoin the north (at least not willingly).
I'm not sure that Communist Russia is a brilliant parallel at all. Surely there are other nations with a heavy slave use that could provide a better model?

The example of the Soviet Union supports the thesis that slavery/serfdom does not serve the modern industrial economy well. Modern technology based industrial economies seem to function well enough as mixed economies, with some "socialist" tropes to offset some of the gloomier aspects of the industrial economy. Think of "socialism" or the welfare state as providing air fresheners to the Dark Satanic Mills.

ruveyn

Check out the alternate history novels of historian Harry Turtledove:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Turtledove

I liked the Guns of the South, in which modern day white separatists from South Africa introduce the AK47 to General Lee, allowing him to turn the war around. The novel reflects how the South was not uniformly racist and pro-slavery.

One of the Turtledove novel editions has a great picture of (possibly) B-17s flying over New York, emblazoned with the confederate cross. Love that picture.

Turtledove is novice at alternative history from what I have been told.

Well, he does have a Doctorate (as I remember...incorrectly or not), but it's in Byzantine studies... He did do some teaching, I think.

He knows enough to get some fiddly details right, but he's mainly a storyteller....