>>> cbcox at ilstu.edu 03/30/01 01:28PM >>>
On the specific question of racist hate speech I still think (with a qualification discussed below) that Charles is wrong, but not because prohibition of it would be a violation of freedom of speech or in any way threaten the abstract principle of free speech. I think that _under present circumstances_, given the actual makeup of the criminal justice system from the squad car to the supreme court, such laws would be in fact used to suppress attacks on racists and other pigs (such as the Chicago PD, the Cook County States Attorney's office, etc).
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CB: I appreciate Carrol and others's concern that in the current circumstance the state is likely to pervert a law repressing the fascistic racists to instead repress anti-fascistic racists. Look what has happened to the 14th Amendment. It is now used to strike down affirmative action in the name of the "reverse discrimination doctrine": total perversion.
Yet , I must say that we would have had to support the passage of the 14th Amendment (as well as 13th and `15th) by that very same bourgeois state, that Carrol distrusts now. In fact , I cannot think of a struggle in the history of the U.S. working class movement that was not aimed at establishing some bourgeois law. In other words, all reform struggles within a capitalist system are aimed at establishing bourgeois statutes. By definition, a reform is a change but within the existing system. To oppose all reform struggle (i.e. all revolution, no reform) tends to ultrarevolutionism. (Carrol's discussion gets into this central problem for all revolutionism: reform and revolution, walking the tightrope between opportunism and ultraleftism).
The First Amendment itself is a bourgeois law. So, those who support it protecting the left are evincing confidence that the bourgeois state will for some reason do the right thing in applying it ( and , as I have said a hundred times, legal historical research demonstrates they did not do the right thing in applying the First Amendment exactly on the issues we debate here; they protected fascistic racists but did not protect communists). Why do you trust the bourgeois state to enforce the protection of the left ? Why do you think your standing up for the rights of fascistic racist speech will mean that the bourgeois state will feel bound by that "precedent" to protect left speech ? It is you who trust the bourgeois state too much, not I ? You trust it to be bound by logical consistency, but time and again it has demonstrated the ability to be treacherous, and protect the right, but inconsistently persecute the left at the same time. So, your ( not Carrol's) relying on your ! advocacy of protection of fascitic racist speech to translate into protection for your own speech is to ignore your own argument against me that the bourgeois state will act hypocritically, treacherously and twofacedly. There is just as much trust in the bourgeois state in your argument as in mine.
I think that a key is in what Carrol says following. The goal of outlawing fascistic racist speech is part of a socialist USA program. Such a program will not be effected until we win the support of the overwhelming majority of the people, or the dynamic and complex process of that. In that circumstance and development, we can have more confidence that the state ( in transition from bourgeois to proletarian) will be more trustworthy in applying the law. Anyway, France , a bourgeois state, seems to apply this principle progressively. Of course, they had the horrible lesson of having fascists take over their country, so reality has cleared their heads up on this issue a bit better than the U.S. , which hasn't had full fascism since the Confederacy.
(((((((( The qualification: Under present conditions no such law is going to be passed. The political processes (the mass struggle) which would bring changed conditions about might also create a situation in which such a law would not be misused or in which such misuse itself would be encountered by massive resistance. Hence we cannot reject in principle the desirability of an anti-hate speech law. We can object I think to most 'reforms' that are, as it were, handed to us on a platter, as a result of wheeling-and-dealing within the present structure. Campaign finance reform, for example, if it comes about will almost certainly be an utter disaster for the left.
Carrol