Inequality Before the Law, De Facto

François Furet, in the preliminary essay that serves as an introduction to The Past of an Illusion, entitled “The Equalitarian Passion,” highlights that in the Ancient Regime inequality was legally consecrated, while after the French Revolution, inequality persists surreptitiously, of contraband, thus cementing a feeling of vindication in the face of illegitimate inequality. Something similar happens in a system of regulations that, with the intention of serving the common good, re-establishes, de facto, a system of monopolies and oligopolies.