>>> Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> 03/23/00 05:29PM >>>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.
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CB: I agree with Yoshie's materialist critique here. This is one way in which the bourgeois practice of "freedom of speech, press, publishing, radio, television, media, conscience, thought, religion, mind " is an emperor with no clothes. The bourgeois private sector is as much and more the mindcontroller in bourgeois society as the government and state sector. So, repression of speech in bourgeois society is effectively excercised especially by taking away the material means, the means of communication, through exercise of private property rights over the means of communication. The old Enlightenment concepts of freedom of speech largely mis this, ignore it, and dance around as if they are the freeest.
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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!
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CB: Yes , the bourgeoisie ruling class has exercised more finesse in controlling the production of ideas. The bourgeoisie, with more historical experience than the working class, have invented rule with only intermittent and more precise and limited exercise of direct regulation of many areas of thought production. The next Bolsheviks should learn more finesse.
CB