The Ascendancy

 Hi All,

A prologue to a story.

Day 10 , month of Frimas , year 31 (from the founding of the revolution).

The Equality for All People's Republic of the Socialist Ascendancy 

140 light years from Earth

The Regents of  the Worker's Council of Public Safety was in theory nothing more than  a sub-committee of the People's Politburo, which was in turn accountable to the Party Conference, elected by party members (those members being admitted, by the Worker's Council itself). However because the Ascendancy was a Marxist-Leninist- Equalities state,  in practise the Council was the supreme decision making decision in the Republic.  The members held no actual executive positions,  although they were often given self important titles as befits them, but decided the strategic direction of internal and external policies .

The Regents were in a good mood;  the department of 'cooking the books ' had produced a 110,000 page pamphlet , summarising various key statistics and how they showed the success of socialism . For not only was the birth rate increasing by 113%  (under ' workers decree' 770) fusion reactor production up by 13,460%,   chemicals by 17,744%,  silver, gold, platinum ,oil, gas ,coal , iron and  steel production by5, 220%, the battleship programme by 15,533% , the production of guillotines by 11,554% (the rate of 'counter revolutionary' executions necessitating such production figures), agricultural production by 44,506% and an unemployment rate of 0%, a growth rate of 1,245,056,000% and inflation - outlawed by workers decree 661- was at 0% .

The  Regents could also celebrate a general election win. The day before there had been a general election for the National Assembly, the Parliament of the Republic. Voting was open and  not by secret ballot, compulsory for the entire population and not just Party members , but the   result was yet another victory for the Party . The Party had won another landslide with 100% of the seats, 100 % of the popular  vote, on a 100% turnout of the entire population (the state votes on behalf of children, minors, prisoners, the mentally ill and anyone who was too ill enough to vote), with a 100% swing toward the Party.  Only 545,000  people out of 2, billion  didn't vote and they had all died during the election, but no one had voted for them after they had died.  The Council  decided that these people needed to be tried for the counter revolutionary activity of dying before voting and also that the leaders of their communities for not voting on these dead people's behalf should also be arrested, tried and executed; counter revolution was an act of terrorism against the Party, who were the vanguard of the people and the people were the vanguard of the state.

There was some trepidation in the room. While the Republic ruled over 15 star system and contained at least 8 planets which should be a breadbasket and while socialism was the perfect economic model, for reasons unknown (officially it was put down to counter revolutionary bourgeois as other human governments and most alien government traded with the Republic),  it had been reported that half of the citizens were malnourished  and the other half were  eating cats, rats and floor , claiming that there was no food. The Minster for food-  one of the 1% of the population who was a party member and who dined on steak, caviar and wine- had dismissed such talk as wicked propaganda  and had suggested that people could eat their own dead as human meat was 'just like chicken'.   Even the Worker's Ascendant- the official newspaper of the Party- had called for him to be tried for counter revolutionary activity.

The Secretary General for the Revolutionary Peace  suggested that as the bourgeois was responsible then the Republic should take back what was their own. In short s/he (gender specific words are mostly illegal under worker's decree 6) proposed a raid on bordering systems to fill the entirely non existent  gap in agricultural products....and also to promote revolutionary democratic equal socialism among the oppressed people of the outside world. A list was drawn up of  potential systems: Zarafah, Geri, Jaffraf, Ziraph, Gurfanuntz, Kiang, Okapi, Graffa, Varr, Naria, Chard 450, Saguaro and Northumbria . As Zarafah was the nearest system, it was decided to take that one first and if successful other peaceful revolutions would take place.

They only needed to take Zarafah and the rest would fall like dominos.