The last communications that refer to parliamentary democracy (literally: people’s power talked to pieces) stem from the twenty-third century and are contained in a document called the Pedifesto, found in the Ulan Bator archives. This document helps us to reconstruct this peculiar institution. The purpose of parliamentary democracy seems to have been to relieve people of all responsibility for political decisions. The method was called elections—a process by which the people periodically and voluntarily transferred all political freedom of choice to a small select group. Elections existed to pick such a small group out of a bigger one, consisting of candidates (more or less literally: people with clean vests). In order to organize and preprogram this selection, there were strange organizations called political parties. Let’s take a closer look at the aforementioned document.

The Pedifesto originated in the year 2287. The general situation was as follows: the transfer of floral and faunal life into the oceans was practically finished, but the continents were still overcrowded because the population of the planets had not yet begun. Genetic surgery on humans was supposed to help relieve this pressing problem. Strangely enough, the first step was to replace the legs, which had become superfluous, with wheeled extremities. This was probably done in the hope that greater mobility would lead to better dispersion of humanity. However, the loss of two legs and feet was felt to be humiliating. Two parties emerged. One party took the position that one should, despite difficulties, insist on the perpetuation of feet. This party was called “Root and Dignity Party” (Wurzel-und-Würde, Weh-Weh, lit. boo-boo). This party wrote the Pedifesto. The other party took the position that feet could be retained—but only if people were prepared to assume the costs of populating other planets (Mars foremost among them). This party was called the “Up-and-Out-Party” (Hinan-und-Hinaus, Ha-Ha). From the Pedifesto, we know that the latter won the election. The title Pedifesto makes sense when we recall an older document that is no longer extant, the Communist Manifesto. This lost but oft-cited document appears to have taken the position that a human being must use his hands—as he reaches into things, as he handles and understands them—in order to overcome his conditioning by things. The word “manifesto” expresses the importance of hands. The Pedifesto should be understood as a continuation and upending of the Communist Manifesto. It states that humans are rooted in the earth with their feet (“earth” means ground as well as planet), and that they will lose their human dignity if they lose their grounding (bodenlos). In order to understand the civil war that broke out after the Pedifesto, however, we must bring up another category of parliamentary democracy, namely, “Right” (emphasis on the unchanging) and “Left” (emphasis on the changeable).

The Communist Manifesto was Left because it emphasized the changes in the material world brought about by hands. Conversely, the Pedifesto was Right because it emphasized the presumably unchangeable rootedness (down-to-earth quality) of the human being. It was immediately clear that this categorization was imprecise and primitive. The changes that have been achieved are based on the assumption that hands are an unchangeable given. In this respect, the Manifesto should be considered to be on the Right. The Pedifesto is based on the assumption that the human being can come unstuck from the ground. In this respect, it should be considered on the Left. What we learn from the available documents, in fact, is that all parties on the Left eventually came to be Right, especially when they were able to seize political power, and that all parties on the Right were originally Left. Since election campaigns were confrontations between Right and Left candidates, this primitivism and illogic of the category “Right/Left” is indispensable for understanding parliamentary democracy and its catastrophic demise.

Studying the Pedifesto reveals something else. There is another word for parliamentary democracy, namely demagogy (people’s chatter). Back then the former was used melioratively, the latter pejoratively; however, the Pedifesto shows that they are synonyms. A mocking “Ha-Ha” directed at the opposition party can clearly be heard emanating from the Pedifesto. It is the response to the cries of Boo-Boo resounding from the opposition party. Democratic debate, sometimes also termed freedom of speech, consisted mainly of Ha-Ha and Boo-Boo sounds broadcast by the media. These sounds pulverized all information about the overcrowding of the continents. The problem in need of resolution fell into oblivion, and the parties fought each other with meaningless words (slogans, Schlagwort).

As we know, in 2295, these words were replaced by nuclear weapons. The problem of overcrowding was resolved. After the continents were redeveloped and repopulated, and after the planets had been colonized, all political decisions came to be made by means of computation of all individual choices. However, since the end of the twentieth century, parliamentary democracy and demagogy had, at least technically, become obsolete. As early as 1968 a “Leftist” is known to have said, arguably based on the Communist Manifesto, “If we didn’t have computers we would have to invent them for the council constitution.” The method for feeding all individual choices into central computers was fully developed and available by 2287. The civil war, with all its indescribable suffering, could thus have been prevented. But this is thinking nonhistorically, because in order to replace parliamentary democracy with computation we had to redefine the concept of freedom. However, that was possible only after the civil war.