An apartment study in Paris, 1893. Two men sit opposite each other, notebooks open, fountain pens idle.

Henry George:

Brother Fyodorov, your “Common Task” stirs the heart, yet it soars past the field where most suffer. How can mankind marshal cosmic labors while the very ground beneath its feet is held for speculative tribute?

Nikolai Fyodorov:

And I ask, Mr. George, how can your Single-Tax free the poor if it leaves them to die and be forgotten? Justice that ends at the grave is thin. The earth must serve not only the living but the dead awaiting restoration.

George:

Restoration presumes leisure enough to dream. Give labor its full wage—untax toil, tax land—and you create the surplus energy your resurrection requires. Unshackle production first; temples to immortality will follow on sturdier foundations.

Fyodorov:

Yet land value springs from the toil of generations now dust. Your tax returns their gift solely to present tenants. I would enlist the living as custodians—engineers of universal resurrection—so every field becomes a workshop for returning our fathers.

George:

A noble metaphor, but policy must strike earthly ledgers. Take the rental value for public revenue and you end proletarian misery without confiscating the fruits of personal industry. Is that not a step toward the fraternity you envision?

Fyodorov:

It is a step sideways, maintaining the frontier between self and all. I seek to erase that frontier. Imagine your public revenue devoted expressly to museums-laboratories where citizens labor, not for pay, but for the rebirth of those who gave us life.

George:

Then let the revenue serve that purpose—education, science, public works. But to collect it, you must first concede that land, as Creation’s common endowment, cannot be portioned for private toll. Will you preach that from your pulpits?

Fyodorov:

Gladly. Land must be stewarded, never owned. Yet I would add: the cosmos, too, is our patrimony. Your economics stops at the atmosphere. Dare to levy the planets—make Mars and Venus subjects of the same communal right.

George:

One reform at a time, my friend. Secure justice on this sphere; future generations can draft celestial tax rolls. But promise me you will ground your prophecy in laws men can enact this very year.

Fyodorov: