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to me. I tell you that in order to make you all equal it is necessary to put you in shackles first. I tell you that without putting you in fetters it will not be possible to equalize you. Maybe someone has a bigger head than others, another has larger arms and a third one has longer legs -- they all will have to be cut to equal size. And this painful operation will not be possible without first depriving you of your freedom. And it sounds very logical.
But people forget that the person who will make them all equal will himself remain tree and unequal; he will remain outside them all. He will have no fetters on his feet and, besides, he will have a gun in his hand. Now you can well envision a situation, a society where most people are in shackles, maimed and crippled, and a handful of people are free and powerful with all the modern instruments of suppression and oppression at their disposal. What can you do in a situation like this?
Marx held the view that in order to achieve equality in society it would, in the first place, be necessary to suppress political freedom, destroy individual liberty and establish a dictatorship. And he thought that after the achievement of equality, freedom would be restored to the people. But do you think people with such enormous power in their hands that they can equalize everyone will ever give you back your freedom? We don't see any sign of it in the countries where such experiments have been conducted. In fact, as the power of the rulers grows, and as the people, the ruled, ate systematically suppressed and debilitated, the hope for freedom becomes increasingly dim. Then it is difficult even to raise the question of freedom. Nobody dares ask a question, speak his thoughts, much less dissent and rebel against the established tyranny.
In the name of equality, and under the cover of equality, freedom is going to be destroyed. And once it is destroyed it will be neatly impossible to win it back -- because those who destroy freedom will see to it that the chances of its being revived in the future are also destroyed.
Secondly, you should know that while freedom is an absolutely natural phenomenon, which everyone
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