Well Carl I appreciate the honesty on what I see as irreconcilable views. One who supposedly wants liberation wants to embrace some of the most enslaving discourse imaginable. I must say you're doing a very naughty thing in transposing your own socially constructed era on another. This is a perfect recipe for totalitarianism. How many times has one heard a Maoist excuse the horrors going on in Tibet by saying "but it was feudal!” Yeah well let the inhabitants decide that. That should be the essence of anti-imperialism; unfortunately people such as Carl inherit a very narrow Euro/modern centric Leninist conception which is laughable to any true "consistent" anti-imperialist such as myself. And you know that I'm not romanticizing feudalism as much as I'm saying it's hegemony has not matched capital and modernity. Marx actually said it well "its so easy to be liberal against feudalism"(something such).
And as far life span goes this should be seen as subjective pure and simple. Life expectancy should be seen as relative to a particular epoch. Besides if you want to look at a human existence with the least amount of toil and disease look no further then primitive societies. I suppose you think they were "brutal and short" as well, which puts you well within the thinking of the British Empire Club members. As for cybernation, I'd rather have hibernation thank you;)You sound like something of a Donna Haraway, someone who has all of these crazy(admittedly interesting)fantasies but avoids the question of technology in regards to maintenance. Marxists have been especially guilty of this as they cloak these specific concerns with all that abstract "real" movement nonsense. As if you will not have to squeeze people into centralized computer rooms, send people to mines and factories, develop mass levels of bureaucracy and most of all, biopolitical disciplinary measures to keep things maintained, my god it sounds a bit like capitalism with another name!

In regards to knowledge you display the classic (intellectually destroyed) Cartesian logic of absolute self-certainty. Pure presence at hand as Heidegger would say. Only problem is this whole Cartesian logic is based on an "I" without a "world" as Marty H also put it. Your logic mirrors 2001 A Space Odyssey where I am more in line with Solaris. Both Space movies, one is all about progress and moving forward, the other is about inter-subjectivity. It's ironic that you like to make the point that the individual can not exist without the social(as I would as well) but fail to realize that your whole conception of knowledge falls back on the most subjectively narcissistic "I" centered drivel that I can think of. Ultimately our existence in the world is as reciprocal as any other. How we operate is always contextual and full of potentialities (with no forward or backward nonsense).

On a small not about Russia, it's ironic that you essentially fall back on a crude idealist "big man of history" clause by invoking the excuse of Stalin. It's a way to avoid discussion of the discourse and conditions that created him. Way not to be a materialist(from one who is neither a materialist or idealist)

And on your last point, shouldn't the point of a libratory agency mean 'unbecoming' a politician? Certainly Lao Szu and the fat gold statue from India would agree;)