Paul Flewers wrote: > I am not opposed to dealing with counter-revolutionary elements with the > necessary force. But to deny pluralism means to deny freedom of > expression to everyone except those who are deemed to be acceptable. Are > we that afraid of bourgeois ideology of either an open sort or, like > social democracy, of a disguised sort, so lacking in confidence that we > can't defeat it on an ideological level? If Paul thinks freedom of speech is an absolute which ever has or ever will be realized anywhere, it will be impossible to carry on a discussion with him. Assuming he knows that freedom of speech is always limited, and the question is only one of degree of limitation, kinds of speech limited, etc., perhaps some discussion will be possible. Now these questions will probably be among the messiest political questions socialist regimes face or will face. Paul writes of "everyone except those who are deemed to be acceptable." Yes, that is the general formula under all social systems. The bite comes on how, *in practice*, "acceptable" gets defined. Radical democrats such as Paul are correct in seeing that too narrow a definition of "acceptable" will be stifling to political and intellectual life as well as to the necessary ease of daily life of everyone. I suspect that in daily life "acceptable" should be defined very broadly indeed -- but no one can make the formula more precise in advance of any concrete situation. In Long Bow as described by Hinton apparently no one engaged in one kind of speech: speculation mixed with rumor that the Nationalist armies were on the offensive and might be reoccupying Long Bow shortly. I would not be willing to rule out in advance shooting someone for such free speech. On the other hand, considerable bad mouthing of the party and of the regime as a whole was allowed, even flourished to some extent, in Long Bow. To suppress it formally --even not to give it some protection against informal suppression -- would have had the same effect that allowing the first kind of "free speech": stifling the conditions necessary for the development of socialist democracy. Going beyond a few vague formulations such as this is the most I would allow myself. The human brain is the most totalitarian entity in the universe, and projecting the formulae of that brain on the future places an intolerable limit to thought by focusing it on what cannot be thought, hence obscurring what can be. (Another way to object to utopian theory.) Carrol P.S. Freedom of the Press in anything remotely analogous to bourgeois freedom of the press is of course out of the question, for no one will be allowed to accumulate the capital necessary for the establishment of a free (i.e., detached, purposeless, free floating) press. So how to allow for sufficient circulation of conflicting points of view within the revolution is another process involving endless contradictions which cannot even be imagined, let alone solved, in advance.
