| |
win the applause of the people, the very people who are being dispossessed. The people who applaud them do not know that they are applauding their hangmen, who are tighening the noose around their necks. Soon they will be hanged.
Once property and the means of production pass into the hands of the state, that state becomes absolute, despotic. And in the same measure the individual becomes helpless and impotent before it. The individual becomes faceless, even soulless. For the last fifty years a small group of fifty persons is ruling Russia. Power has constantly remained in the hands of this group; it is not allowed to go elsewhere. Whether Stalin dies or Khrushchev comes in; whether Kosygin, Breshnev or whosoever is there, this caucus of fifty, tightly entrenched in power, has been keeping Russia under its jackboot. This group has been the Frankenstein of Russia. No opposition is possible, no dissent is possible. Before a man thinks of dissenting, his tongue may be cut; before he thinks of opposing, he himself may disappear from the world. What can the individual do if the entire power is in the hands of the state?
So remember, the power of the state has to be increasingly reduced; in no case should it increase. For, ultimately, we need a society in which the state will be just a functional unit, nothing more. I don't think a food minister of a country should have much importance. How is he important? The family cook has a place in the family -- the same place a food minister has in relation to the country. He is a big cook. If he serves us good food, he should be praised sometimes, but only as much as a cook is praised. Sometimes you may tip him, but only in the way you tip a cook. But the present food minister is not a cook, he is a man of power. He has much power. But he is aware that his power lacks something. It lacks something because people have personal, private property. And private property can rebel. Private property can dissent, resist and fight. The man of property can think, and think freely. The man in power wants to deprive him of it.
The politician is very ambitious. He wants to have all the power in his hands. But when the
|
|
|