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  • Back to index of Communism and Capitalism are the Same Thing: A Story
  • Communism and Capitalism are the Same Thing: A Story

    The Philosopher Between the Capitalist and the Communist

    Chapter 27 : The City in All Its Glory

    By Punkerslut

    Image by Jannes Pockele, CC BY License
    Image: By Jannes Pockele, CC BY License

    Start Date: February 18, 2014
    Finish Date: October 21, 2014

         Red bricks, wooden planks, and stone bases. If you were far away, Anarchia looked just like any other city, and you really couldn't be certain that you were approaching it instead of Moscow or Istanbul. It could be your home, like any other city. But there was a lot about it that made it very different from the other urban centers sprawled out on the globe. Just a collection of flickering lights at night and at a distance, like any other city, but the ideas and culture that breathed through it were something altogether different from all in existence at this point of time in history. Every city is made unique, in its own way, by whatever cultural or social customs it chooses to adopt and cherish. Venice was much more moist and Cairo was much more dry; Bombay was much more religious and what existed around what became Paris was much more rebellious. But to Anarchia, you couldn't really ascribe any one specific attribute: independence, individualism, collectivism, society-ism, philosophy-ism, community-ism. Every part of it was somewhat different from the rest. Every piece differed slightly from the whole.

         Like a machine with levers and pulleys, with weights and ropes, with steam and heat, with light and sparks, the city of Anarchia was very much like the others still. It had its city lamps, it street corner conversations, its open windows with garbled arguments, its highly-trafficked sidewalks of cobblestone mirroring the highly-trafficked roads of concrete and stone, and its most important asset, it had its own people. They were the Anarchist People, sometimes called Anarchists, sometimes called Anarchians, or even dignified with the title Citizen of Anarchia. They their own culture, their own customs, their own way of life, their own existence that separated them from the rest of civilization, in way that artificial boundaries of politics could never really do. But every citizen, every member of every community, still sweats, still breathes, still excretes waste, still eats food, still emits odors, still offends neighbors, still exercises greed, still believes envy, still is cautious about hope, and still is lonesome in a crowd of people who refuse to listen or understand. There was still plenty about Anarchia was the same as the rest of the planet.

    Image by m. aquila, CC BY-NC-SA License
    Image: By m. aquila, CC BY-NC-SA License

         It was here that the Philosopher was coming to, it was here that he was about to enter. The gates were made of wood and metal, like the gates to any other city, but they were also painted a dark black, and it was ornamented with white symbols sprawled across it, so that any potential invaders could see, that it wasn't black as a camouflage against the dirt and grime that comes with fighting -- it was the black of Revolutionary Anarchism, the ideal of liberation against the slavery of any government. At the right angle, you could see on one wall the words "Communism Lives!" and another wall the words "Capitalism Lives!" It's uncertain which was first, how much planning went into it, whether it was always planned or whether one was responding to the other, but nobody in the city decided to intervene and put any words about it in the middle. There, one could only see circled A's, circled E's, circled N's, silhouettes of masked fighters, the occasional impersonation of Van Gogh using nature and revolutionary themes, and sometimes even a puppet or dummy stood up on the wall, holding a small spear and shield, covered in all black clothing. This is where the Philosopher conversed with several of the city's guards, before being granted entrance.

         "At one time, there was nothing here, nothing at all," the Philosopher thought to himself, as he roamed those streets and passed by those buildings, "There are now houses instead of trees, people instead of animals. I wonder how much has really changed, I wonder if they will listen to me more or less now." He counted bricks in the buildings, measured planks of wood used for their window sills, and tried to calculate the masses of smoke coming out of their chimneys. But this particular day, the city seemed somewhat deserted, until he passed Main Street. And then he turned, looked, and saw this massive crowd of people, standing all together, although somewhat separated into halves, with one side listening to one speaker, and the other side listening to the other. The Philosopher has found Emma and Benjamin.

    Image by Juan & Diego, CC BY-NC-ND License
    Image: By Juan & Diego, CC BY-NC-ND License

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