I always interpreted this work as a satire of Ayn Randian style objectivism/exceptionalism. It's funny that in school we were taught that it was a criticism of communism/socialism when I think it's really a criticism of the popular perception of communism/socialism.
The underlying premise is a misunderstanding of equity that persists today. The idea behind leftist ideologies is not to handicap the brilliant and able, but to extend the material buffers that allow brilliance to flourish to everyone:
“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”
But at the time and today, people (leftists included) thought that leftist ideology must have been based in envy or some inferiority complex. Harrison Bergeron is that 'meta-ideology' taken to its extreme.
The underlying premise is a misunderstanding of equity that persists today. The idea behind leftist ideologies is not to handicap the brilliant and able, but to extend the material buffers that allow brilliance to flourish to everyone:
“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”
But at the time and today, people (leftists included) thought that leftist ideology must have been based in envy or some inferiority complex. Harrison Bergeron is that 'meta-ideology' taken to its extreme.