Marx-4

Current Year: 1978

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.”

-Karl Marx

 The world of Marx-4 is another dreary and frightening dystopian world serving as an unnerving reminder of what our world could have been like.

In Marx-4, the steely, intimidating gaze of Joseph Stalin peers over the streets of New York from a massive stone bust of the previous great leader of the Soviet Union, complete with a plaque extolling the glories of his reign, erected in the block that formerly held Rockefeller Center.

The disguised informants of the NKVD secretly mingle among the civilians in every city, constantly reporting their observations to their Party leaders and ruthlessly rooting-out any suspected subversion or heterodox thought. One must always be careful what one says on the streets of Marx-4, as the Party is always watching you.

Commissar Reagan, formerly the Governor of California before the war who was allowed to integrate into the new ruling body of America due to his apparently convincing adoption of Party ideals, now makes near-daily broadcasts of speeches to the people of the western territories of Soviet America via the official government TV-channel, in which he extolls the worth of obedience and faithfulness to the Party in this New Age of America. However, behind the impenetrable walls of secrecy between the civilian population and the government, Reagan is under rigorous observation and scrutiny. Despite his overt dedication to the Empire, higher-ups within the government suspect the Commissar of being the single most powerful and most ingrained individual that is allied with the underground Anti-Soviet movements in America.