>>> Jim heartfield <jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk> 10/16/99 07:04PM >>>
In message <s8089ec2.063 at mail.ci.detroit.mi.us>, Charles Brown
<CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us> writes
>Well, Doug, you aren't trying to make Marx out as a liberal ,are you ?
>
>You are mistaken if you think I am opposed to freedom of speech. So, what is
>your point ? I don't see any arguments in there for making freedom of speech an
>absolute and dogmatic right, with no exceptions. Marx is not one, even in
>youth , for pronouncing absolute legal rights. All his generalizations are
>historically and class concrete. After WWII and the fascists, I am sure he would
>agree that there must be an exception to the general right of freedom of speech
>for fascistic racists, just like the Marxists in the socialist countries thought
>in applying Marx's dictatorship of the proletariat to that concrete historical
>situation.
>
>It is not I who construes Marxism as a dogma.
>
>CB
Jim: No, and nor should you. But Marx's argument is pretty good.
I am interested that the historical occasion you give for revising his principle is the second world war and the fight against fascism.
You seem to be saying that it is fascism that is qualitatively new and demands a different approach to freedom of speech.
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Charles: No, I would say that Marx did not even in that essay argue for an absolute right to freedom of speech, so it is not a qualitatively new and different approach to freedom of speech. Marx would always have had a different approach than liberals to freedom of speech, even if he didn't make it in that particular essay. Marx had a Marxist conception of freedom.
On the concrete aspect, the old essay was regarding Germany, so the historical fact of the German Nazis would be directly pertinent to what Marx would write in 1930 or 1945.
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Jim: But could I suggest another reason why ww2 would be seen as a turning point?
It was WW2 that first saw the third international unite with the allies in the war against Germany. Embracing the allies war effort as 'the people's war' led the comintern to a collaborationist policy with British and American imperialism. The political independence of the working class movement was sacrificed. Identifying with the state made the principled defence of freedom of speech redundant. Instead the state was looked upon (in defiance of all reason and experience) as the guarantor of liberty, instead of for what it was, the greatest danger to liberty.
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Charles: I disagree with this analysis of WWII. So, whatever conclusions concerning freedom of speech for Nazis you draw from it, I would probably disagree with too.
I am sure if Karl Marx had been alive in 1945, he would not have been to the right of the United Nations on the issue of outlawing advocacy of genocide, which the UN provided for in its Convention for Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. Nor would he have been to the right of the West and East German laws that outlawed Nazi organizing.
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Jim: It is doubly perverse to cite fascism as an instance in which bans on free speech are justified. Fascism was characterised by the suppression of free speech, book burning and the suppression of all political opposition.
Charles: The perversion is in your argument. Freedom of speech for Nazis is freedom of speech to advocate abolition of freedom of speech. If the Nazis succeed in their advocacy, there would be no freedom of speech. That is perverse and absurd.
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Jim: Furthermore, the SPD often made the mistake of demanding state action to limit the fascists' freedom of speech. Mobilising working class support for such bans the SPD gave the repressive laws a measure of respectability that they did not deserve.
Time and again the German state used the laws against freedom of speech to suppress the left, while refusing to use them against the right. Why? Because the right was the state's ally.
And after the SPD put the laws into the statute book under which it was liquidated, here we are again demanding that the ruling class protect us from 'hate speech'.
How naive can you get? Turkeys for Thanksgiving?
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Charles: I am afraid it is you who is naive. Who is it you rely on to uphold freedom of speech except the very bourgeois state that you say we cannot rely on. Your persist in this dream world state of mind despite the fact that you point out that the state did not protect left wing freedom of speech , but did protect rightwing "freedom" of speech. This is exactly what I pointed out about the history of this issue in the U.S. What exactly is it you say the left has to lose, since you admit that left speech has not been protected ?
How naive can you be if you see protection of fascist and Nazi speech as contributing to "freedom" of speech ?
CB