Henry C.K. Liu
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> >From Doug to Charles:
>
> >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.