I've only read Marx and Smith, but I suspect you haven't, or if you did, you didn't understand. Marx wrote, not about the evil, but the sheer fantasy that is "equity"; like cancel culture, it doesn't exist in the real world. Furthermore, Marx was a great admirer of what capitalism had accomplished in his time. And lastly, he understood and loved individuality, but he also understood that it arises from interaction with the community.
Marx was a materialist, and saw human history through the lens of man's interaction with the objective material world, and saw that capitalism, just like feudalism, creates and maintains a class division that's unnatural, one that didn't exist in our tribal roots. The trick is, my dear friend, to enlarge the tribe so that it encompasses all of humanity; we're a long way removed from that still, and maybe we'll destroy ourselves before we even have a chance to reach that goal. But in the meantime it would serve all of us best that you understand that there's no such thing as an individual without the community that shapes the individual, and that therefore every single freedom of every single individual is the product of the community they're part of. The most important of those freedoms is, like Marx said, economical freedom, material freedom. That can't be realized in a system where some own all the means of production with the rest only selling their time, brainpower and muscle-power. There's no such thing as "equity"; we're all unique, uniquely talented and with our unique interests. And we'll always have natural leaders and a lot of followers; that's only human. But... leaders and followers is something quite different from rulers and the ruled. Capitalism creates those rulers and ruled, creates the class division Marx saw to destroy. But, again, that's not "equity".
There's no political speech that should be banned by a dictator. Like Hitler's book-burning for example. Speech that's banned in a democracy however, is just society deciding what's best for itself. This whole "culture war" and "cancel culture" is just a by-product of this eternal class-warfare that's waged against you and me by the capitalists who decide what's "politically correct" and what's not. I wish you would see that...
It's late so I can't get into this (I didn't finish your post)
We're conflating issues here. When I was talking about equity - it was the current incarnation of the left which is promoting this. Marx was a far more complex thinker than the proponent of CRT and other variants of a theme. Marx was trying to build. These guys aren't thinking about building - they're thinking about destroying what is and fantasize that a cohesive society will spontaneously develop once they got rid of capitalism.
Marxists still haven't figured out the basics - how to get two unequal producers (say a floor sweeper and an electrician) to both be paid the same amount and both be content about it; not to mention the obvious - what does one do with someone who does not produce the expected amount in the expected amount of time.
Ok. Let's hold that to another comment. Let me read your comment first before writing any more.