The Slave Passport

Did This Obscure Bolshevik Prefigure the Vax Pass?

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I thought I was done with sharing my thoughts on Igor Shafarevich’s The Socialist Phenomenon.¹ But this one is too good to pass up. Emmanuil Semenovich Enchmen (1891-1966) was an early Bolshevik biologist. A one-time colleague of Pavlov, his career was cut short in the early 1920s after his ideas were declared incompatible with Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy. But what ideas they were. Get a load of this:

In his The Theory of the New Biology, E. Enchmen, citing Marx as his authority, comes to even more extreme conclusions. His work, which is reminiscent of Fourier in spirit, contains a highly ambitious plan for the biological regeneration of mankind through a change in the structure of consciousness which will be brought about by a series of so-called organic cataclysms. “The Revolutionary Scientific Council of the World Commune will accomplish organic cataclysms both in the masses of rebels and, systematically and by means of force, in the conservative organisms of the recent oppressors and their minions.”² As a result of these cataclysms, almost all received ideas in the human consciousness will be erased. “All theories of logic, cognition, scientific methodology will disappear, as will all social and sociological theories which still label themselves ‘humanitarian,’ and all the old biological theories.” All are to be replaced by fifteen concepts which the author calls “analyzers.” (Shafarevich, SP, pp. 249-250)

Technocratic utopian vision? Check.

Destruction of all existing norms and knowledge? Check.

Remaking human nature though mass coercion? Check.

Schizoautistic? Sure looks like it.

There’s enough in this one paragraph for a whole season of Black Mirror.

Here’s more of Enchmen in his own words³:

… past mankind divided into thousands of groups of differently reacting people—groups of more or less “educated” and “cultured,” and completely “uneducated” and “uncultured.”

Like all diversity-hating ideologues, Enchmen can’t stand human individuality. He sees all disparities as problems which need to be fixed. He may as well have written “past mankind divided into millions of units of differently reacting individuals.” Some people have no interest in becoming “cultured.” Not everyone wants to be, or has the ability to become, a well-read intellectual with proper table manners, or a Bolshevik theorist with a socio-emotional handicap.

All will unite under the Communist economic system and become absolutely equal through the penetration into all human organisms of a new, completely identical combination of fifteen analyzers …

It takes a special kind of person to see the kaleidoscopic range of human potentials and actualizations—in all their creative beauty and tragic failure—and wish instead to see society become a human ant colony.

... that the epoch of Communism will be regarded by Communist mankind not according to the modern artistic formula “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” but as an epoch of the complete equalization of all human organisms strenuously involved in “continuous joy” …

He puts “continuous joy” in scare quotes for a reason. Again, it takes a special kind of person to find joy in being an utterly replaceable cog in the machine, with nothing to distinguish oneself from any other. Ahh, the continuously joyful life without meaning.

... that the Communist economy will be based on a system of “physiological passports” for all human organisms ... that such a “physiological passport” will serve for the organism, using modern language, as a “ration card” both for work and consumption in the broad sense of these words.

I doubt any of our current technocratic overlords have read Enchmen, or even heard of his New Biology. But greatly deranged minds think alike. It takes a special kind of person to find “continuous joy” in a totalitarian bureaucracy in which every facet of one’s life is controlled and regulated—where all aspects of “work and consumption” are tightly controlled by that fancy new “bio passport.”

“You have missed your last mandatory booster appointment. Your personal ESG account had been debited 50 points. It will be debited 10 additional points for each additional day you go unprotected. Save lives, stay boosted!”

“You have exceeded your monthly bug-meal allowance. Your account has been debited 10 points. Your allowance will be renewed in 8 days. Stay healthy, eat sustainably!”

“You have exceeded your monthly fuel allowance. Your vehicle will now be remotely locked until the start of the next fuel cycle. Save the planet, eco-travel!”

This is the best representation of this vision I’ve yet to come across:

And its sequel:

Enchmen would be very pleased to see that his work was not in vain. The dream lives on.

1. See here, here, here, and here.

2. E. Enchmen, Vosemnadtsat' tezisov o teorii novoi biologii (Eighteen Theses on the Theory of the New Biology, in Russian), Piatigorsk, 1920, p. 43.

3. Enchmen, p. 34.