> Marx showed a great deal of
> interest in freedom and none at all in equality, which he thought
> quite
> absurd.
But "freedom" in Marx's sense requires a particular kind of "equality."
In particular, the relations that constitute the ethical essence of the activities that are fully "free" in this sense require fully developed individual "powers" ("virtues" in the sense of Aristotle") and so require an "equality" of such developed powers and of the other means of such activities. It's for this reason that an ideal community, as Marx conceives it, is "an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all."
Individual differences mean that what each individual "needs" in order to develop these powers and actualize them in fully free activity will differ from individual to individual so the actualization of freedom in this sense requires unequal distribution "to each according to his needs."
Ted