>I don't trust states or any other agglomerations of power (e.g.
>capital) to be the arbiters of what I should be allowed to read,
>think, or say. Call me a bourgeois liberal if you like, though your
>average bourgeois liberal wouldn't include capital among the
>potential censors.
While I think it's a big waste of time trying to ask the capitalist state to ban books like _The Bell Curve_, is it also wrong if individuals sabotage them? There are cases of left-wing students waking up early in the morning, collecting papers published by conservative students, and throwing them away or burning them in protest. This is the sort of actions that annoy right-wingers to no end, but they are not against the principles of anarchism, Marxism, feminism, etc. Direct actions, not state censorship.
As for not trusting capital to be the arbiters of what you should be allowed to read, whether or not you trust them, they already are the arbiters. Many worthy books are out of print, untranslated into English (or any other language you can read), prohibitively expensive, etc. Public libraries have been underfunded. University presses have cut back on the number of publications. Lots of books have already been and will be lost in the future, for no one makes an effort to collect them all. And what of editorial judgments? There have been & will be many talented writers who can never find a publisher. And there are those who do not have the time to write, too busy just surviving, and those who are plain illiterate.
Now, socialist censorship. On one hand, I think that many socialist states took artists too seriously. They probably could have taken a page from capitalists and exercised "repressive tolerance" (to use Marcuse's term). A flowering of individualistic voices, zero political consequences, as in the U.S.A. I have to say that socialist censors, unlike the market & the CIA, were too unironic and hence worse at censorship & marginalization of political oppositions. What does it matter politically if the art of the moment is Socialist Realist or Modernist! Spinoza is right in this sense: liberal tolerance = efficient production of depoliticization & obedience to the sovereign. Oh, irony of it all!
On the other hand, the CIA did a really good job of planting scare stories in the media & creating panics in Allende's Chile, the Sandinista Nicaragua, etc. For instance, in Chile before Allende came to power:
***** The CIA underwrote more than half the [Christian Democratic] party's total campaign costs [an estimated $20 million]....The bulk of the expenditures went toward propaganda. As the Senate committee described it:
In addition to support for political parties, the CIA mounted a massive anti-communist propaganda campaign. Extensive use was made of the press, radio, films, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, direct mailing, paper streamers, and wall painting. It was a "scare campaign", which relied heavily on images of Soviet tanks and Cuban firing squads and was directed especially to women. Hundreds of thousands of copies of the anti-communist pastoral letter of Pope Pius XI were distributed by Christian Democratic organizations. They carried the designation, "printed privately by citizens without political affiliation," in order more broadly to disseminate its content. "Disinformation" and "black propaganda" -- material which purported to originate from another source, such as the Chilean Communist Party -- were used as well.[6]
One radio spot featured the sound of a machine gun, followed by a woman's cry: "They have killed my child -- the communists." The announcer then added in impassioned tones: "Communism offers only blood and pain. For this not to happen in Chile, we must elect Eduardo Frei president."[7]
...The Senate committee also revealed that:
In addition to buying propaganda piecemeal, the [CIA] Station often purchased it wholesale by subsidizing Chilean media organizations friendly to the United States....[The] CIA supported -- even founded -- friendly media outlets which might not have existed in the absence of Agency support....
[6] _Covert Action in Chile, 1963-1973_, a Staff Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (US Senate) 18 December 1975, p.16. [7] Paul E. Sigmund, _The Overthrow of Allende and the Politics of Chile, 1964-1976_ (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977), p. 297.
(William Blum, _Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II_, Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1995) *****
Propaganda continued after the electral victory of Allende:
***** CIA propaganda merchants had a field day with the disorder and the shortages [created by capital strike, AIFLED-led strikes, etc.], exacerbating both by instigating panic buying....[H]headlines and stories which spread rumors about everything from nationalization to bad meat to undrinkable water ... "Economic Chaos! Chile on Brink of Doom!" in the largest type one could ever expect to see in a newspaper ... raising the specter of civil war, when not actually _calling_ for it, literally ... alarmist stories which anywhere else would have been branded seditious....[48]
In response, on a few occasions, the government briefly closed down a newspaper or magazine, on the left as well as on the right, for endangering security.[49]
[48] The author's own observation while in Chile from August 1972 to April 1973. [49] One of the publications closed down was _Punto Final_, a magazine put out by the left wing of Allende's own Socialist Party, during a state of emergency declared after an aborted June 1973 military coup.
(William Blum, _Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II_, Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1995) *****
Now, as Carrol says, it's stupid to play a "what would you have done" game, but, really, what should Allende have done? Or the Sandinistas, for that matter, in the face of massive & many-sided attacks, to which propaganda for destabilization contributed greatly???
The U.S. government could have done the same in all other socialist countries, had they been more liberal.
Yoshie