Free Speech and Socialism
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Dialectics of "Free Speech"Capitalism quite legitimately, from its standpoint, insists on honourable withholding of that vaunted Absolute "free speech".Capitalist companies demand commercial-in-confidence non-disclosure agreements [NDA] to prevent staff, suppliers or collaborators who, in a free market, are potentially staff, suppliers or collaborators of competing rival firms, from sharing the company's so-called "intellectual property" beyond the confines of the company. Such folks are expected to honour their NDAs as condition for their collaboration and work within the company. It is a legal offence to violate this confidence.Police and military demand a need-to-know "free speech" policy to prevent unintended disclosure of vital information that might jeopardize their operations. Folk are considered incompetent or saboteurs if they divulge such confidential or classified information. In many cases, failure to withhold "free speech" may endanger the lives of their active personnel.International diplomacy is the supreme task of unfreeing some other nation's withheld, or unfree, speech.And we all know about cabinet solidarity, which deliberately leaks cabinet-confidential "free speech" when expedient to fly a political kite or when its hostile band-of-rivals sneakily settle political scores against each other. There is often greater honour of silence among theives.What about a prisoner's "right" to remain silent in his own defence as part of his own defence?On the other hand, how about the coercive side of "free speech".Thrusting "free speech" upon people whether they like it or not must surely be a good thing! Well, what is enemy torture but a means of thrusting upon a captured enemy the great capitalist Right of "free speech"?The vaunted capitalist rights are absolutely not Absolute. Their multifarious concrete manifestations are all explained rationally as consequences of the capitalist social base of production — just like everything else that is social in capitalism.
hello twcI havent had time to read all your post but I can't see the Party changing its position on this one. Socialism without free speech is an idealistic dream. Socialism is impossible if workers can't talk to each other. 'Free access!, 'Abolition of the wages system' Are they 'single issues'?
TheOldGreyWhistle: I havent had time to read all your post …An incautious admission for someone advocating "free speech", which implies a courteous obligation on the part of the listener to listen to the speech, otherwise the speech might just as well be "unfree speech".You formerly encouraged me, in good fellowship, to simplify my writing style so as to reach out more readily to the working class, but after years of considering the socialist case I find I must write about socialism as simply as I think suits the case.In this trivial episode, it is you who unconsciously, but probably quite appropriately, attempted to limit [through your genuinely-felt concern for conveying the socialist case] my freedom of speech. This makes my point — "free speech" is simply not Absolute.[As an aside, I will never compromise, in an effort to simplify, the integrity of the case I make for socialism and so hold responsibility for making — that class consciousness is not some blinding insight, but rather it is a scientific understanding of society — the subtle robbing and ruling by the capitalist class of the working class.]TheOldGreyWhistle: … I can't see the Party changing its position on this one. Socialism without free speech is an idealistic dream. Socialism is impossible if workers can't talk to each otherOf course!I fully support the Party position on internal freedom of speech and internal democratic control. I carefully expressed my support from the start to avoid any such misunderstanding when challenging what I took to be making an Ideal out of "free speech". Internal "free speech" was immediately established by the Party upon its inception in 1904 — the Party broke away from the old SDF over the very issue of internal free speech and internal democracy for socialism.My point is theoretical. I assert that, from the standpoint of the materialist conception of history, the concept of "free speech" is a subservient concept to the only socialist Absolute concept we acknowledge, which for materialists can only be a material thing [well, actually a material process]. Our Absolute is something as prosaic as the material "social base of production" [precisely the Party Object] — common ownership and democratic control of society's resources and instruments.To arrogate anything else [such as "free speech"] to Absolute status for us is to float into the realms of Idealism. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't adopt "free speech". On the contrary we must, and do, adopt it internally. But we must also understand what we are adopting realistically, not imaginatively.Our own material Object is Absolute for us because, as Materialists [not Idealists], we hold the scientific Materialist position that everything that characterizes human society — the social being of us humans living in that society — follows as a consequence upon that society's social base. A capitalist social base of ownership and control produces and sustains capitalist social being — capitalist social behaviour and social thought — capitalist consciousness. A socialist social base of ownership and control produces and sustains socialist social being — socialist social behavior and social thought — socialist consciousness.Our Object is a material Absolute for us because it is the material agency that will produce and sustain the common sociability of the whole socialist society. What could be more Absolute for us than that?Emphasize Un-FreedomThe disturbing aspect of emphasing freedom of XXX, freedom of YYY, … is that we unwittingly undermine our case by emphasizing freedom, the very thing the working class doesn't possess in the only sense that freedom matters — the un-freedom the working class has over ownership and control of its very social existence. All other un-freedoms pale to insignificance.On the contrary, we must scientifically explain our material social un-freedom before we can unmask the ideal illusory social freedoms that arise out of our social un-freedom in capitalism.If the working class doesn't recognize its actual social un-freedom, why should it bother freeing itself while it continues to recognize itself as being already socially free?TheOldGreyWhistle: 'Free access!, 'Abolition of the wages system' Are they 'single issues'?From the strict standpoint of the materialist conception of history, they are 'single issues', just like 'free speech', whenever they are treated as goals superior to our Object. The only way to conceive them as not being 'single issues' is to conceive of them as meaning the very same thing as our Object.What would you say if we added the anarchist catch-cry 'Abolition of the State' to the list?Marx supported the socialist banner 'Abolition of the wages system' as a rallying synonym for abolishing capitalism. But strictly speaking it can only come after establishing our material Object.Marx also foreshadowed the 'Withering away of the state', yet he opposed Bakhunin's 'Abolition of the state' for the very same reason — that the capitalist state is a consequence of the capitalist social base, and can only be abolished and remain abolished as a perpetual consequence of establishing our material Object.In isolation of attaining our Object, all such clauses put the cart before the horse. Our material Object is the only Absolute that brings the above catch cries in its wake.
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