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hands of others. In fact, power-drunk people all over the world are anxious to grab economic power for themselves. Then they will have total power, absolute power in their hands. Political power plus economic power makes for what is called totalitarianism. Political power alone was enough to turn their heads; if economic power also passes into their hands, they will become dictators. And then nothing can be done to remove them . After all, nothing could be done to remove Stalin and Hitler from power.
Do you know that Hitler was a socialist? The name of his party was the National Socialist Party. He was also a socialist. Now Mao cannot be removed from power.
And also remember, governments in the world already hold enormous power, political power. If economic power also passes into their hands, the individual will become quite impotent. The whole nation will become impotent. Then the individual is left with no power, nothing. You may not be aware that individual freedom, freedom of thought, can only exist if there is political freedom, if there is economic freedom. If economic and political power are in the hands of a single group, then the individual is deprived of his freedom of thought. There is no freedom of thought in Russia. There is no freedom of thought in China. Tomorrow it may not be here in India either.
But these things happen step by step -- gradually -- and take people unawares. Take away a man's property and you destroy ninety percent of his personality. With the loss of property, he is ninety percent dead. With the loss of property his capacity to think withers away, because his capacity to be an individual, to be himself, has withered away. The individual will die if the state has absolute power. Currently, the greatest problem facing the whole world, and even this country, is how to save the individual. The state is out to grab everything, but it grabs with cunning. There is a method in its madness. It grabs power in the name of the people themselves. It says this iS being done in their interest; it is in their interest that wealth and means of production are being taken over. So the politicians not only usurp power, they also
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