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While speaking, the leader is constantly interrupted by shouts from the heckler as he is carried out of the auditorium. "Fanatic! You're fifty years too late! We haven't gained our own powers in order to give them up to you!" The shouting stops when the Guardians exit from the auditorium, close the door, and apparently carry the heckler outside the theater. There is widespread uneasiness in the audience; numerous individuals turn their heads in all directions, as if looking for an explanation. However, the leader remains perfectly calm, and continues his opening speech as if the incident that just took place had been an expected and pre-planned part of the evening's proceedings.
"The big banks are the 'state apparatus' which we need to bring about socialism, and which we take ready made from capitalism; our task here is merely to lop off what capitalistically mutilates this excellent apparatus, to make it EVEN BIGGER, even more democratic, even more comprehensive. Quantity will be transformed into quality. A single State Bank, the biggest of the big, with branches in every rural district, in every factory, will constitute as much as nine-tenths of the socialist apparatus. This will be country-wide book-keeping, country-wide accounting of the production and distribution of goods, this will be, so to speak, something in the nature of the skeleton of socialist society."
The leader is interrupted again, this time from the ground floor. A large individual with unruly hair and a beard raises his hands high above his head. In a deep voice and pronouncing each word with deliberate care, he appears to be pleading with the audience. "Comrades, do you know what you have done? You, who have rid yourselves of the police, have allowed four self-appointed Guardians to remove a crank, a nuisance, a disrupter. Comrades, you have restored the power of the police. But have you considered who this police will relieve you from next? Perhaps another crank, another disrupter. Perhaps an anarchist. It so happens that I have been an anarchist since—"
While he is speaking, the four Guardians who have surrounded him seize his arms and legs—
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