remain free at all.

Individualism, then, is what through Socialism we are to attain to.
As a natural result the State must give up all idea of government.
It must give it up because, as a wise man once said many centuries
before Christ, there is such a thing as leaving mankind alone;
there is no such thing as governing mankind. All modes of
government are failures. Despotism is unjust to everybody,
including the despot, who was probably made for better things.
Oligarchies are unjust to the many, and ochlocracies are unjust to
the few. High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy
means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the
people. It has been found out. I must say that it was high time,
for all authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who
exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised. When it
is violently, grossly, and cruelly used, it produces a good effect,
by creating, or at any rate bringing out, the spirit of revolt and
Individualism that is to kill it. When it is used with a certain
amount of kindness, and accompanied by prizes and rewards, it is
dreadfully demoralising. People, in that case, are less conscious
of the horrible pressure that is being put on them, and so go
through their lives in a sort of coarse comfort, like petted
animals, without ever realising that they are probably thinking
other people's thoughts, living by other people's standards,
wearing practically what one may call other people's second-hand
clothes, and never being themselves for a single moment. 'He who
would be free,' says a fine thinker, 'must not conform.' And
authority, by bribing people to conform, produces a very gross kind
of over-fed barbarism amongst us.