Comrades! Pray, cast your eyes upon the latest proclamation from the halls of the State Duma. Mr. Anatoly Aksakov, a man of the financial committees, descends from his pedestal to 'recommend' that the common folk abandon their Visa and Mastercard instruments in favour of the 'Mir' card.

What is the pretext for this sudden exhortation? They speak of 'security certificates' and the technical whims of the National Payment Card System. They claim that the internet—that vast digital ether—may suddenly refuse the old cards, leaving the worker stranded and penniless in the marketplace. Is this not a classic maneuver of the bourgeoisie? To create a crisis of convenience and then offer a State-sanctioned remedy that further binds the citizen to a single, monolithic entity!

Mr. Aksakov, with a boldness that would make a London usurer blush, declares that the 'Mir' card offers 'more services.' Bah! More services? I ask you: more services for the labourer, or more avenues for the financial capital to extract its tribute? While he pretends that the transition is a 'personal matter,' we know well that when the machinery of the State begins to grind, the choice for the proletariat is an illusion.

They tell us that the banks have already 'adapted' their systems. Indeed! The banking houses, those great temples of exploitation, always adapt swiftly when there is profit to be made from a monopoly. They have cast off the foreign yoke of Visa and Mastercard only to forge a domestic chain.

And what of those desperate souls who seek to trade in foreign lands? They are told to seek the charity of banks in Kyrgyzstan or Armenia—to wander like nomads in search of a financial sanctuary because the great engines of capital have partitioned the world for their own greed.

Let us be clear: this is not a matter of 'convenience.' It is the consolidation of financial power. The usurers of the new age merely change the name of the card, but the yoke of exploitation remains as heavy as ever upon the shoulders of the working class!