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"When freedom exists there will be no work."
- Graffiti found in Berlin, 1984.

Having departed from the hall, under the cool lattice of the branches, and having been compelled into excited contemplation atavistic and aesthetic, in their rattling, liturgical language, the men began to debate.

“Kerensky is the worst sort of socialist. A tepid humanist. The entire Provisional Government is a decoration.” Daniil said.

“Not that the Bolsheviks are any better. You’ve attended their rallies, yes?” Vladimir asked.

“Several. And there remains a paradox hanging over their entire proposed system. Capitalism has failed because of greed, and communism will triumph because of a lack of it. A lacuna that crashes all their idealism.”

“Mm-hm. Omnism at least has some practicality to it.” Vladimir said.

“Yes, exactly. It’s the natural dialectic outcome, synthesizing capitalism and communism. And not according to Marx’s foolish evolutionary materialism. It’s the product of men who’ve labored, not from some academic who spent his life in a library.” Daniil expounded.

“I rather like their ten-year plans. Rebalancing power between man and state, as is just, in perfect mutualism. Each empowers the other. The state protects and the man provides.”

“Truly the interlocking of parasites!”

“Of course, the question remains. Would you take up arms for it?” Vladimir asked.

“I will die only for nothing. That way my name will never be smeared.” Daniil said.

“You old fatalist.”

“No matter. Life will carry on as it always has and always will - badly.” Daniil said.*

“Have hope. Hope makes life a worthwhile process.” Vladimir said.

“Ah, so does vodka.”



“Marx ascribed an almost mythical purity to the proletariat - a class to which he did not belong. If a non-communist society nevertheless adhering to his revolutionary principles arose, Marx would have no doubt been executed with the rest. A critical apparatus had begun to coalesce around Capital before the Red Terror abruptly discredited the idea of a communist world superpower. Even socialism was regarded with apprehensive suspicion. Thus, omnism arose as the answer to Russia’s ills. A capitalist ideology built upon union power and worker’s rights, it captivated a continent and tamed a frothing revolutionary dictatorship (and not one by the proletariat).

However, disillusionment and terror equally with imperialism and radicalisms cannot be attributed as omnism’s sole enabling factor. Demonstrations of practicality in government asserted omnism as functional, superior, and, indeed, inevitable, in the minds of Russians. The Decade Plan, a highly ambitious and widely lauded work of statecraft, and its successes at completing the agrarian-industrial shift further cemented national and international support for omnism. By 1935, six of the powers that had engaged in World War One saw the irrepressible flourishing of omnist leagues and, with Germany, a mutiny and subsequent revolution. Every new link in the chain of victories inexorably swelled omnism into the collective soul. Promises of the cessation of war attracted the shell-shocked Lost Generation, which would assist in alleviating the trauma and cynicism of post-War art.”
~ Faustus: A History of Continental Philosophy, by Joseph Wiedermann

* Orwellian Russians? Seemed fitting.
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