Living Monument:
Sentient City for a Post-Socialist Proletariat
There was a time when humans longed for absolute unification, terminating class antagonism and campaigning for social status emancipation. A series of liberating acts hurled by a revolutionary society who fought in the name of equality, in both powers and rights. Overcoming global metamorphosis, they prevailed and implemented a new fundamental in the social system through methodology of horizontal society, an antithesis to the patriarchal governing system that has been second nature to men since the primordial times. Long before we realized the ideologies that were thought to be our salvation, manifested as the liberation of men, had crumbled due to their innate nature of existing, the privilege of not knowing the fine line separating liberation and oppression. From then onwards, people seemed to learn ‘what to avoid’ rather than ‘what can be done’. A summation of historical and chronological development of hierarchical abolition ostensibly has not reached the end yet, it still is morphing and constituting its epistemology whilst adhering to Marx’s Manifestos key points of eliminating individuality. This emphasizes Socialism’s basis, which is ever-evolving and ever-changing, not constraint by any ideas or principles that have been invented. Said terminology explains the scenario faced by societies that believed in the experimental nature of Socialism, where the present beliefs dominate past ones in the act of welcoming possibilities and potentialities through the unorthodox practice of horizontal society.
Reconstruction of a Society
“They still dream of experimental realization of their social utopias, of founding isolated ‘phalansteries’,
of establishing ‘home colonies’, of setting up a ‘little Icaria’ – duodecimo editions of the New Jerusalem –
and to realize all these castles in the air, they are compelled to appeal to the
feelings and purses of the bourgeoisie.”
-Quoted from The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels
It has been half a century since most nations have moved beyond Socialism & Communism. A once believed to be the pinnacle of contemporary enlightenment that brought a revolution of the ‘People’, now turned into a myth, no more than folklore of political ideologies. The very existence of Socialism in the timeline of mankind’s development deserves a tombstone, carved upon the historical timeline of human striving to live in a society where every impossibility ceased to exist. A symbolic entity which will signify the transitioning phase in every human. Ignorance is inevitable in every living soul, the only thing that drives mankind forward is a memory that constantly becomes a significant reminder, to remind us of the lessons of the past or the potentiality of the future. The ‘People’ have the absolute right to explore the undiscovered possibilities of non-hierarchical societal system in order to pave a way for a new social gospel.
Living Monument is a proposal that exterminates the current preconceived perception of how failures of Socialism have given birth to Post-Socialism. This proposal is a manifesto to justify the never-ending morphology of self-conscious, independent movement of the ‘People’, whilst shifting the meaning of the monument to a different understanding. Living Monument is a testament of a Post-Socialist Proletariat that determines to move forward believing in the power of the ‘People’ by reliving the post-Post Socialist ideology. The fundamental understanding of a memorial shifted to a more superior level, where it is not only emphasizing the historic interpretation, but it portrays the evolutions, growth, development, morphology, and adaptation of all living beings. This proposal facilitates a symbolic transfer of this described status of the monument and changes it from former obsolescence of a monument to a powerful test-bed manifested in a form of a memorial city, signifying the prominence of human involvement in dominating the past, present and the inevitable future. Living Monument is a sentient city of significant, socio-political, ethical, and historical importance to both dualistic components of post-Post-Socialist ideology, the ‘Peoples’ and the ‘Commoners’. By proposing said revelations, this project will be the ultimatum for the International Socialist Organization (ISO) before announcing the organization’s decision to disband. While symbolizing the explorations of Socialism in a new light, Sentient City will also be the home to the ISO for the future days to come.