Koslovics

The Koslovics were a prominent human political movement in the 22nd century representing a resurgence of communism, specifically a variant based on a widely-circulated manifesto by the Martian political theorist and revolutionary Vladimir Koslov. Originally a mere faction of a wider neo-communist movement on Mars, the Koslovics eventually eclipsed all of their rival groups. The Koslovics were active throughout the Sol system, and even had influence on Earth itself through a handful of nations and militant groups opposed to the United Nations' increasing rule. However, it was on Mars that they were most prominent, establishing the largest singular polity the planet had seen up until that point and considerably building up the planet's industrial capacity in the years preceding the Interplanetary War. While the end of the Interplanetary War in 2070 marked the end of the Koslovic movement as a formidable force, the ideology and its various offshoots saw various resurgences over the coming centuries. The movement's influence was such that any extreme left-wing movements have frequently been labeled as "neo-Koslovics" over the next centuries (usually in a pejorative sense), whether they profess to follow Koslov's ideology or not.

Overview
"The choices before us are infinite in variety, indeed, they reach further and branch faster than the human mind can cope with. But the greatest decision of all is a binary one. This is the nature of the dialectic. We can choose to harness the power of the algorithm and the nascent potentiality of the true artificial intelligence. With these technologies, we can bring about a truly egalitarian order. Or we can choose to maintain the same broken capitalist system that has exploited laborers for thousands of years. You can only choose to advance the revolution, or you default to counter-revolution."

- Vladimir Koslov, from a speech given at the Second Interplanetary Development Council

In its core, the Koslovic ideology blended classical Marxism with space-age techno-utopianism which had taken root on Mars at the turn of the 22nd century. Despite its firm roots in the past, the Koslovic ideology was widely hailed in its time as the ideology of the future and had many sympathizers even on Earth. The Koslovics aimed for the emancipation of the working classes on the off-world colonies, followed by the establishment of a pan-human communist state. Koslov postulated that the scarcity still present in the interplanetary economy was artificial, and a post-scarcity utopia was already within reach. Their grievances were not entirely illegitimate, as Earth-based megacorporations held disproportionate power across the Solar system, often more so than many national governments, while the UN was largely unable (or unwilling) to regulate their excesses or ensure humane working conditions for their laborers. This also earned them the support—either overt or tacit—of many of the laborers who endured squalid working conditions on various off-world outposts, but also the sympathies of various academics and activists on Earth, before the movement's violent activities and the rise of Earther patriotism spurred by the rise of the UNSC starting in 2164 turned public opinion against them.

The Koslovics were notoriously eclectic, comprising dozens of local movements ranging from street thugs and rioters to the full-fledged Martian military. Although there were various localized groups and distinct worker revolts across the Solar System around this time, many of them unconnected to the Koslovic ideology, they were generally understood as being part of the overall Koslovic movement; as well, Koslovic agitators would frequently co-opt unrelated movements under their banner.

History
The Koslovic ideology was born in the early 22nd century at the hands of Vladimir Koslov. Koslov was an Earther who immigrated to Mars at a young age in the second wave of the planet's colonization, but rapidly adopted Mars' cultural character. He lived through a through a rapidly-changing Martian society, experiencing and actively participating in the first wave of offworlder political philosophy. Koslov's work was emblematic of the zeitgeist of the first half of the 22nd century, wherein old ideologies which had failed on Earth were being reevaluated and updated for the space age; more specifically, Koslov's treatise hailed itself as the final development of communism; something that fixed the flaws of its forebears while updating its ideals to the postindustrial age. Koslov presented the thesis that, with the technological and social advances of the past century, communism was finally not only viable, but inevitable, due to a rising juxtaposition between an underprivileged underclass and the exploitative practices of various interplanetary megacorporations.

The early era of space colonization had ensured that a fairly large amount of power remained on the interplanetary workforce, as they were invaluable experts doing work no one else could. In a 2119 manifesto, Koslov and his cohort highlighted the spaceborne workers' importance to Earth's economy, and encouraged them to rise up against Earther capitalist interests before those corporations could undermine the factors that made the interplanetary workers' position so exceptional. The Koslovics predicted the trend of lowering wages as space travel grew more accessible, along with the buildup of private militaries to secure corporate interests following any signs of colonist unrest. For their models of social and political reform, the Koslovic ideology both drew from the cultural character of the colonies along the Argyre Planitia, Hellas Planitia and the Mariner Valley. They were inspired by the relatively successful implementation of industrial cooperatives on those colonies, seeing them as a sketch for "true" interplanetary communism, but postulated that the colonists should go further in pursuing economic independence from Earth-based corporations.

Around the 2120s, various factions emerged among the Martian socialists, with some believing that laborer cooperatives and unions should become stronger while still working in the framework of interplanetary capitalism, and this was a common view on Mars and especially the Belt. The Koslovics went further, declaring that interplanetary capitalism should be abolished altogether; it was not enough that the cooperatives were worker-owned when they were still effectively under the power of large multiplanetary corporations, and thus would likely be undermined at the first opportunity. However, most of the Martians and Belters remained largely complacent up until things started taking a turn for the worse; the Koslovic movement only started gaining momentum once the wealth inequalities on the colonies truly began to turn into massive and irreconcilable rifts largely thanks to the ZGene crisis and overall recession.

With Earth's national governments mired in internal unrest and an all-encompassing climate crisis, the Martian colonies began to fall under the influence of the Koslovic ideology one by one, as colonists irrespective of borders drawn by the old Earth nations were attracted to the dream of building a future free of past baggage. National militaries, the UN's colonial peacekeeping forces or corporate security found themselves wholly ill-equipped to handle the rapid escalation of the situation. The revolutionaries' seizure of corporate assets and widespread purges of UN sympathizers and corporate executives left the Koslovics effectively in control of Mars by the end of the 2140s. Despite the regime's brutality toward dissidents—real or alleged—Koslov's leadership spurred major advances on Mars. The regime is considered by some to have jump-started Mars' shipbuilding tradition by severely bolstering the planet's spacedocks in an attempt to rival those of the Earth nations.

Despite its Martian origins, Koslovic's ideology was designed for pan-human appeal. The success of the Koslovics on Mars inspired dissident movements across the system, though none were as prominent as the Martian Koslovic state, and numerous rebellions were stifled by corporate security forces or Frieden death squads. Though they never gained control of the entirety of Mars, the Koslovics did exert major influence across the planet, and even sponsored off-planet rebellions on Luna, the Jovian Moons, various asteroids, and even Earth itself.