Those who canvass for freedom say that a necessary part of freedom is equality. But it is strange logic that equality has to be established for freedom to come, and that freedom has to be sacrificed for the sake of equality. The truth is, once freedom is lost, who will restore it?
People forget that the person who will make them all equal will himself remain free and unequal; he will remain outside of them all. He will have no fetters on his feet and, he will have a gun in his hand. Now you can well envision a society where most people are in shackles, and a handful are free and powerful with all modern instruments of suppression and oppression at their disposal. What can you do in a situation like this?
Marx said that in order to achieve equality in society, first, 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 what we see is that as the power of those who govern us grows, and as the people, the ‘ruled’, are 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 establishment.
In the name of equality, and under cover of equality, freedom could get destroyed; then it will be nearly 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, while freedom is an absolutely natural phenomenon, which everyone must have as his right, equality is not. Equality is neither natural nor possible. All people cannot be equal because they are basically unequal. But everyone should be free to be what he is and what he can be; to be himself. If equality is forced on people then their freedom is bound to diminish and disappear. Anything imposed with force is synonymous with slavery.
Only free individuals make asociety, and where sovereignty of the individual is denied, society turns into a herd, a mob. This is the difference between society and crowd. Society is another name for the interrelationship of individuals, a cooperative of individuals – but the individual has to be there, he is the basic unit of society.
There cannot be a society inside a prison; a prison can only have a crowd, a collection of faceless individuals. Prisoners also relate with each other, exchanging greetings and gifts among themselves, but they are definitely not a society. They have just been gathered together and forced to live within the four walls of a prison; it is not their free choice.
Evil wants to destroy the individual, seen as a thorn in its flesh. It wants the crowd, the mass to live and grow. Good, on the contrary, accepts the individual and wants him to grow to his supreme fulfillment and, at the same time, it wants the crowd to disappear gradually from the scene. Good stands for a society of free individuals. Individuals will, of course, have relationships, but then it will be a society and not a herd, not a crowd.