In 1917, one of the largest and seemingly most permanent empires in the world collapsed. The Russian Empire had been ruled by the Romanov dynasty for more than three centuries. Yet within months, Tsar Nicholas II had abdicated, imperial rule had ended, and the Bolsheviks had seized power from the provisional government that replaced it.
Two Revolutions
There were actually two Russian revolutions that year. The February Revolution brought down the monarchy after strikes, demonstrations and food shortages erupted in Petrograd. When soldiers were ordered to suppress the crowds, many refused and joined them. Once the government could no longer rely upon the army, the empire quickly disintegrated.
The Bolsheviks took power later, during the October Revolution. The Provisional Government had continued Russia’s participation in World War I, delayed the redistribution of land and failed to restore food supplies, economic stability or public confidence. The Bolsheviks gained support through a direct promise: “Peace, Land and Bread.”
The old order had collapsed.
A completely different political and economic system was about to take its place.
The Soviet Union emerged as a one-party socialist state in which private ownership was largely replaced by centralized state control over production, labor and resources.
More than a century later, humanity may again be approaching a period of fundamental change.
But what kind of change?
The similarities today
The world today is not Russia in 1917. Most people are not living under an absolute monarch, standing in bread lines or deserting from a world war. Modern democracies provide rights and political participation that did not exist under the tsars. History never repeats itself exactly.
The Same Feeling
But many people today feel much as millions of Russians felt before the revolutions: exploited, hopeless and afraid.
Under the Romanovs, political power was concentrated in one ruling family and protected by the nobility, the military, the bureaucracy and the secret police. Ordinary people had almost no meaningful influence over the decisions governing their lives. The tsar claimed virtually unlimited authority over Russia, while a small elite controlled much of the country’s land and wealth.
Power today is not concentrated in one royal family. It is distributed among governments, banks, corporations, billionaires, financial institutions and technology companies. People can vote, protest and change governments, but many of the most important decisions remain constrained by markets, debt, private ownership and profitability. Political parties may alternate in power while the fundamental economic structure remains largely untouched.
People can vote for different politicians, but they are rarely asked whether access to food, housing, healthcare and the Earth’s resources should remain dependent upon purchasing power.
Serfdom
Serfdom has formally disappeared, but economic dependence remains. Most people must sell their labor to obtain the money required to live. They are legally free to leave an employer, but they are not free from the need for income.
Rent, mortgages, debt and living costs can keep people working under conditions they would never freely choose if their survival were secure.
This does not mean that modern employment is identical to Russian serfdom. It means that legal freedom can coexist with severe economic dependence.
The Romanovs treated political power as their inherited property. Today, individuals and institutions treat enormous parts of the Earth as financial property. Land, housing, minerals, forests, water sources and productive infrastructure can be controlled by a minority, even though everyone depends upon them. In both cases, concentrated control over essential resources gives a relatively small number of people enormous power over the lives of others.
Many people therefore work harder while falling further behind. They struggle with rent, mortgages, debt, food prices and insecure employment while watching a small minority accumulate extraordinary wealth. They are told that the economy is growing even when their own security is shrinking. Governments say that there is not enough money for essential services while finding enormous sums for banks, corporations and weapons.
Today’s fear also has dimensions that the people of Russia in 1917 could hardly have imagined. People fear climate change, ecological collapse, expanding wars, technological surveillance, artificial intelligence and automation taking away their livelihoods. They fear that their children will inherit a planet less stable, less fertile and more violent than the one they knew.
The similarity is not that our world is identical to tsarist Russia. It is that once again, many people feel trapped inside a system they did not choose, cannot meaningfully influence and no longer trust to provide them with a secure future.
The Romanovs claimed Russia.
Today, the monetary system claims the planet.
People work hard while falling further behind. They struggle with rent, mortgages, debt, food prices and insecure employment as AI takes over, while watching a small minority accumulate extraordinary wealth. They are told that the economy is growing even when their own security is shrinking. Governments say that there is not enough money for essential services while finding enormous sums for banks, corporations, weapons and wars.
Today’s fear also has dimensions the people of Russia in 1917 could hardly have imagined.
People fear climate change, ecological collapse and the depletion of the natural systems upon which civilization depends. They fear existing wars expanding into a larger global confrontation. They fear AI and automation taking away their livelihoods, technological surveillance taking away their privacy and their children inheriting a planet less stable than the one they knew.
They see extraordinary technology and productive capacity all around them, yet feel increasingly powerless within the system controlling it.
They are told that artificial intelligence and automation represent progress, while knowing that their access to food, housing and security still depends upon employment and money. Technology capable of relieving humanity of exhausting labor is therefore experienced as a threat. If a machine can perform their work, they may lose not only the work but also their income and their ability to live.
As in Russia before the revolutions, a growing number of people no longer believe that the existing order represents them, protects them or offers them a credible future. They sense that something is fundamentally wrong, even when they disagree about the cause.
Some blame billionaires. Some blame governments, corporations, immigrants, foreign powers or political parties. Some believe capitalism has failed and demand socialism or communism. Others blame excessive government and call for an even freer market.
The dissatisfaction is real. But what exactly needs to change?
Beneath the ideologies
The problem goes deeper than any particular government, corporation, billionaire or political ideology.
Capitalist and communist societies have appeared radically different, but both have organized human life through money, wages, economic obligation and centralized control over resources. Both have required people to work for access to the necessities of life. Both have treated the Earth primarily as property to be controlled and distributed by those holding economic or political power.
The recurring problem is not simply who controls the monetary system.
It is the monetary system itself.
Money makes access to life dependent upon purchasing power. Food may exist while people go hungry. Houses may stand empty while people remain homeless. Medicines may be available while patients cannot afford them. Essential work may need to be done while willing people remain unemployed because hiring them is not profitable.
The monetary system also requires continuous economic growth and consumption on a finite planet. Resources are extracted and converted into financial value, while ecological destruction is treated as an external cost not related to the monetary system. Products are designed to be replaced, useful goods are discarded, and resources are wasted whenever preservation or distribution is less profitable than continued production.
Artificial intelligence and automation reveal another contradiction. We are developing machines to reduce the need for human labor while maintaining an economy in which most people must sell their labor to survive. Technology that should liberate humanity can therefore produce unemployment, poverty and an even greater concentration of wealth.
The change we need cannot be limited to higher wages, different taxes, new politicians or transferring corporations into state ownership. Such reforms may reduce suffering, but as long as resources remain owned, access remains conditional, and decisions remain constrained by money and profitability, not much will change.
Humanity must move beyond an economic system based on money, trade, debt, profit and ownership.
The alternative is a global resource-based economy.
In such a system, the Earth’s resources would be recognized as the shared inheritance of humanity and stewarded for the benefit of all life. Production and distribution would be based upon available resources, ecological limits and measured needs rather than purchasing power and financial return. Automation would reduce unnecessary labor for everyone instead of threatening people with poverty. The necessities of life would be provided through access rather than sale.
That would be a transformation far deeper than the one attempted in Russia. It would not merely change who controls the system. It would change the fundamental relationship between humanity, technology and the planet itself.
If we are considering change of that magnitude, the Russian revolutions have essential lessons for us.
Changing the owners
The Bolsheviks succeeded because the Russian system had already lost its legitimacy. War, hunger, inequality, administrative failure and military collapse had made continued obedience increasingly impossible.
This offers the first lesson: systems ultimately survive because people continue to participate in them and believe there is no workable alternative. When that belief disappears, apparently permanent institutions can unravel with extraordinary speed.
A Free and Cooperative Civilization
But the Russian Revolution also teaches us that replacing the monetary system cannot be achieved simply by attacking the ruling class, capturing governments or declaring a new economic order. That may destroy an old structure, but it does not automatically create a free and cooperative civilization.
The Bolsheviks replaced private economic power with centralized state power. Money, wages, hierarchy, coercive labor, police authority, prisons, armies and scarcity remained. Ownership was transferred, but the deeper relationship between people and resources was not fundamentally transcended. The state became the commanding owner, while ordinary people remained dependent upon decisions made above them.
Transferring the world’s resources from corporations to governments would not be enough today either.
State ownership is still ownership.
Replacing billionaires and corporate boards with ministers and political committees would simply place the same commanding power in different hands.
The objective cannot be to decide who should own the Earth.
The objective must be to recognize that the Earth cannot legitimately be owned.
No New Enemies
A global resource-based economy must be something very different from a twentieth-century revolution.
It cannot be built around enemies. The rich cannot become a new aristocracy marked for destruction, and workers cannot become instruments of another political elite. If violence, hatred and revenge become the foundations of the transition, they will also become foundations of the civilization emerging from it.
Not Only in Banks
The monetary system exists not only in banks, corporations and governments, but in our habits, fears, ambitions, identities and assumptions about human nature. Removing particular people while retaining that consciousness would merely reproduce the same system under new names.
No Monetary Tsar
There is no monetary tsar sitting at the top whom humanity can overthrow. Governments, banks, corporations and wealthy individuals exercise enormous power, but they all operate within a system maintained by the participation of nearly everyone.
This does not absolve anyone of responsibility for exploitation or ecological destruction. It means that removing the people currently benefiting from the structure will not remove the structure itself. Unless the system and the thinking supporting it are changed, new elites will emerge.
A Disciplined Minority
A resource-based economy also cannot be imposed by a disciplined minority claiming to represent everyone. Humanity must understand what it is choosing, why the existing system has become obsolete, and how access, stewardship, decision-making and personal freedom will function afterward. Otherwise, uncertainty will create resistance, resistance will invite coercion, and coercion will create another authoritarian state.
How Change Happens
Fundamental change has rarely begun with a majority of the population consciously designing and demanding the next system. New ideas, technologies and social arrangements are usually developed by relatively small groups. The majority becomes involved later, once the emerging system becomes visible, useful and increasingly difficult to resist.
The monetary system itself was not created through a global referendum. The concept of ownership,different forms of accounting, debt, currency, banking, wages and private property developed over thousands of years. They were introduced and expanded by merchants, rulers, landowners, governments and financial institutions. The majority gradually adapted because money became embedded in taxation, trade, employment and access to resources. Eventually, participation was no longer experienced as a conscious choice. It was simply how society worked.
The Transition
A global resource-based economy may begin in much the same way: not because billions of people simultaneously understand and approve every detail, but because a relatively small number of people begin constructing something that works better.
They may establish Free Layers, moneyless communities, shared production systems and new forms of resource stewardship. As these alternatives demonstrate that they can provide greater security, freedom and ecological stability, more people will participate. What begins at the margins can gradually become the new foundation.
The critical mass behind such a transition does not necessarily have to be a numerical majority. It must be large, capable and credible enough to make the alternative function. Once that happens, much of the population may simply adapt to the new reality, just as previous generations adapted to money, industrialization, electricity, digital communication and countless other transformations they did not personally initiate.
But there is a decisive difference between initiating change and imposing it.
A minority may develop the vision, build the first working systems and inspire wider participation. It must not appoint itself as humanity’s new ruling class. The purpose of the pioneers is not to capture power and command everyone else. It is to demonstrate an alternative that people can understand, enter voluntarily and eventually help govern as equal stewards.
The transition does not require everyone to awaken at the same moment. It requires enough people to awaken, begin building and make the alternative real. The majority can then adapt—not through force, but because the new system has become safer, simpler and more intelligent than the one it replaces.
Build before breaking
The Russian Revolution also demonstrates the danger of destroying institutions before viable replacements exist.
The Bolsheviks possessed a powerful method for taking control, but no mature infrastructure capable of delivering abundance, democratic participation and individual freedom across a vast society devastated by war. Scarcity then justified centralization, emergency measures and repression.
Today, we have possibilities Russia did not have: global communications, real-time resource inventories, satellites, advanced logistics, renewable energy, automation, robotics, artificial intelligence and the technical ability to coordinate production according to measured needs rather than profitability.
But those capacities must be developed into working alternatives before the old system fails.
The new world must become visible before the old one disappears.
Prosperity Without Property
The Bolsheviks had “Peace, Land and Bread.” A resource-based movement also needs a proposition people can immediately understand:
Prosperity without Property
Security without employment.
Access without money.
Housing without debt.
Technology serving everyone.
Earth’s resources stewarded for the benefit of all.
People must see that they are not being asked to sacrifice themselves for another political experiment. They are being invited to participate in creating a civilization that no longer makes survival dependent upon money.
Must catastrophe come first?
The most important lesson may concern timing.
World War I helped create the conditions for the Russian revolutions. It caused mass death, hunger, inflation, military mutiny and administrative collapse. It destroyed what remained of the population’s confidence in imperial rule.
Does humanity need another world war before it becomes willing to change?
We already have wars, and they are devastating for everyone directly affected by them. But they have not created a single global breakdown comparable to what World War I did to Russia. Much of the world continues to function well enough for the existing order to appear permanent.
But another world war today would not merely repeat World War I. Nuclear weapons, autonomous weapons, cyberwarfare, biological threats and attacks on energy, communications, agriculture and water systems could destroy the infrastructure upon which billions of people depend. Combined with climate change and ecological degradation, such a war could make large parts of the planet increasingly difficult to inhabit.
World War I helped destroy an empire while leaving enough of the country and the planet intact for another political order to be built.
A new world war could destroy not only the existing order, but the foundations required to build anything after it.
This time, war might not create the conditions for revolution.
It might eliminate them.
Learning Instead
The Russian revolutions teach us that an old world can fall far faster than anyone expects. They also teach us that destroying it is much easier than creating something genuinely new.
If no credible alternative has been prepared when the monetary system loses legitimacy, fear, nationalism, authoritarianism and conflict may fill the vacuum. The task is therefore not to provoke collapse. It is to make the alternative visible, credible, tested and understandable before collapse—or technological obsolescence—forces the decision upon us.
Again and again, revolutions have removed rulers without removing domination. They have changed governments, property arrangements and official ideologies while preserving hierarchy, scarcity, coercion and concentrated power.
That is how revolutions repeat themselves.
The transition to a global resource-based economy must therefore be a manifestation rather than a conquest: not one class defeating another, but humanity recognizing that the system itself has become obsolete.
No executions. No civil war. No dictatorship claiming to act on behalf of the future. No state becoming the new owner of humanity and the Earth.
The revolution must occur in human understanding first, followed by organized construction, voluntary participation and eventually global voluntary agreement. It must replace the struggle over ownership with shared stewardship and economic dependence with unconditional access to the necessities of life.
Global Awakening
It may be called a global awakening, spiritual awakening, enlightenment or simply awareness of how deeply the monetary system has colonized our minds. Its values of competition, ownership and accumulation do not exist only in banks and markets. They exist within us, teaching us to grasp and hoard resources while regarding other human beings as competitors.
Earth Belongs to no One
Changing the system therefore also requires changing our relationship with the world and with one another. We must awaken to the understanding that Earth belongs to no one, that we are all responsible for it, and that every individual is a steward of humanity’s shared inheritance. Collaboration must become the new credo, replacing the pursuit of personal accumulation.
Global coordination will still be necessary, but centralized control will not. We need transparent global information about resources and ecological limits, while decisions remain distributed among communities, regions and openly accountable councils. AI can help us understand the whole, but it must remain a tool rather than become our ruler.
The safeguard against a new dictatorship cannot be structural alone. It must also be embedded in human consciousness. We are not mindless sheep requiring an authority to control us. We are responsible participants in one living world—globally coordinated, locally empowered and collectively stewarded.
Waking Up
In the novel Waking Up – A journey towards a new dawn for humanity you are not given a manifesto or blueprint for the new world. Rather, it is a story seen through the eyes of a bewildered billionaire waking up in this new world. It is meant to inspire rather than prescribe.
Discover the story here