From dead machines assigned their place in production by capital, the proletarian masses must learn to transform themselves into the free and independent directors of this process. They have to acquire the feeling of responsibility proper to active members of the collectivity which alone possesses ownership of all social wealth. They have to develop industriousness without the capitalist whip, the highest productivity without slavedrivers, discipline without the yoke, order without authority. The highest idealism in the interest of the collectivity, the strictest self-discipline, the truest public spirit of the masses are the moral foundations of socialist society, just as stupidity, egotism, and corruption are the moral foundations of capitalist society.
All these socialist civic virtues, together with the knowledge and skills necessary to direct socialist enterprises, can be won by the mass of workers only through their own activity, their own experience.
~ Rosa Luxemburg
As he tore the final pages from the typewriter, Adolf Hitler couldn’t help but grin. It was a triumphant moment. A work of his own, one that would cement his position in the German Communist Party, and then in Germany itself. It would have to be a position of unassailable leadership. He knew that now.
Brandler would be the first to go, and Thaelmann was clearly skilled but may one day get ideas above his station. The party was like a military unit, and only he knew how to run it. Those who were willing to follow would be put to good use, those who would subvert his control, or proved to be counter-productive, could always be “recalled to Moscow” like poor old Ruth Fischer.
He was sitting in what had been her old office and it amused him to wonder if she had his room at the Hotel Lux, staring at the walls, doing nothing, whilst he made up for her wasted time and lack of accomplishment. It was the greatest proof that history was dialectical, that such poetry could exist and occasionally a person could revel in their accomplishments. If only for a moment.
Goebbels entered the room with the usual enthusiastic grin he always seemed to develop whenever he was in the room. He raised his fist into the air and Adolf repeated the gesture. It was good to see that some order had been introduced to this badly drilled organisation. As for Goebbels himself, Adolf couldn’t help but wonder why the man was so taken with him, but the propagandist can a keen eye for the public mood. If he could make the people view Adolf as he did, then the road to revolution would be all the easier.
“Is it finished?” The anticipation was clear in Goebbels’ voice.
Hitler nodded and smiled.
“The people will read this, and they will know what has to come next.”
Goebbels’ strange grin grew even wider and Adolf couldn’t help but feel affection for the man. He was efficient and he was loyal. The perfect template of what the party would need to become for him to succeed. For the reckoning that he would unleash on the individuals who had tormented him, jailed him, sent him off to die. He would destroy them, and their systems with it, and then he would usher in the new world. A new, purer, world, where the real people of Germany would be in control of their country. True control, rather than the sham elections the Weimar republic indulged in to distract them away from true power.
---
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The result of the elections had been...disappointing.
The party had gone backwards and the reactionaries of the DNVP had now shed their fictional opposition to selling out the country to foreign interests. He had no interest in the Reichstag of course, but the time for total revolution was still far off and a loud voice for the workers in the bourgeois institution would be vital in the meantime. Thankfully the party could see that now.
Fischer had been the loudest advocate for the party to flippantly commit suicide. She had had to go first, but there would surely be others that would have to be removed. Those who could not see his vision.
It had taken him twelve years to arrive here. He could wait a few more yet. Goebbels picked up the last of the manuscript, the work of over a decade of struggle.
“We’ll get this printed out in the thousands, and have them on every stall. People will finally know the truth!”
The truth being spread, from my hand.
Adolf felt that had a good ring to it.
His old days as a bohemian vagrant had been about that illusory search for truth, and Adolf couldn’t help but think of Franz, his old mentor back in Vienna, directing him towards causes. He had certainly been correct about the popularity of futurism but would he have know that they would all turn out to be fascists? Mussolini, that buffoonish puppet of the rich who the Italian futurists now all seemed to blindly adore as if the man was anything other than a joke. Could he have become a fascist if he had remained in Vienna?
The thought made Adolf shudder.
He had determined his own fate, and now he had climbed to a position where he could determine the fate of his people, and his class.
There was still much work to be done.
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Thanks again to
@Utgard96 for the wikibox help.
