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title: 'Liberalism, Fascism, and Free Speech'
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2019-04-14T12:05:20+10:00
Free speech and liberalism are two political concepts which are bound up
together. With the rise of fascism and the far right in Western
capitalist societies, the enemies of Communists have been trying to
manipulate and extract advantages in Australian political discourse
because of the dominance of liberalism as a political position in the
media and in the academy.
In this essay I want to argue that the call for respect for, or the
demand to maximise free speech has become a contested concept in
capitalist societies, and is not simply a neutral concept, as we are
instructed in our schools and by our liberal parents.
There are in fact two types of "free speech", or "freedom of
expression". These two types of freedom of expression line up with the
class struggle we experience daily under capitalism. There is free
speech for the oppressor, and conversely, there is free speech for the
oppressed. Both of these two types of free speech line up with the
opposing classes of people that exist under capitalism. Currently, when
the far right, or Nazis, or fascists, etc., call for expansions of free
speech, they are doing nothing but calling for the expansion of
ideological domination and oppression by the capitalist ruling class.
The dominant ideology of liberalism under capitalism in Australia allows
these demands, say from Pauline Hanson, or Fraser Anning, to appear as
if they are politically neutral claims. In the same way as human rights
are weaponised by the dominant imperialist powers to oppress the
Palestinian people, and the Chavistas in Venezuela, the discourse of
"universal" human rights are used as a cloak to mask the attacks that
enemies of Communists make against our efforts to establish a free and
equal society.
Liberalism, as a political ideology, tries to justify the dictatorship
of the ruling class by claiming th rights that the ruling class enjoy
are in fact universally possessed by both the ruling class, and the
oppressed working class alike.
This is of course absolutely untrue. Look at the material conditions we
have to suffer under, under capitalism. What would it take to advertise
to demand a rise to Newstart on the enormous billboards in our city
CBDs? It wouldn't just take millions of dollars, it would also take a
great degree of persuation to convince bureaucrats in the city local
council, the owners of the properties on which the billboard space
rested, perhaps the advertising executivies who paid the workers to
install the advertisement. And, finally, it would take even greater
amounts of resources to defend *maintaining* the billboard against
removal, when the Murdoch Press eventually decided to attack us
Communists for intruding on the territory that the capitalists usually
enjoy exclusively in our major cities.
The barriers to gaining expression for the Communists are immense!
Consider the opposite scenario: a capitalist seeking to advertise their
new mobile phone, produced with slave labour, would already have all the
personal and political connections to getting their advertisements on
enormous billboards with easy approval. They already have massive teams
of corporate bureaucrats who are trained in behavioural economics, who
know how to design catchy slogans, etc., and can fit their colonising
message in easily to the geography of a major city.
So it is absolutely not true that "free speech" as a human right is
universal. It is absolutely contested, and a component of the class war
we are waging every day in our work places.
Think of the uniforms we have to wear at work. The affective labour we
have to carry our when serving customers: the forced smiles, the way we
force ourselves to try and be interested in the concerns of people who
are far wealthier than us, buying the commodities we are hocking that we
will never be able to afford. We are literally compelled to alter and
adjust the way we comport ourselves to the external world in order to
scrape together the means of subsistence.
Finally, I would like to draw a parallel between Communist stuggle for
rights for the oppressed from the works of Mao Zedong, and today. In
Mao's *Combat Liberalism*, Mao expounds a picture of liberalism under
capitalist societies that is not typically heard of in Australia. The
way Mao presents liberalism in his piece is a kind of *personal*
attitude, or character of someone's conscience as a revolutionary. I
quite agree with what Mao is trying to say in *Combat Liberalism*.
Putting it very quickly, Mao argues that liberalism is a kind of moral
vice that is encouraged under capitalism.
Treating political discussions as a private matter, only to be dealt
with as a matter of personal conscience between friends, is one moral
vice that Mao singles out.
Another is not treating political debates and differences openly and
transparently within party organisational life. The upshot of this
second moral vice that I am outlining is that a liberal attitude to
politics lends itself to gossiping and making decisions behind the back
of formal avenues for debate and decision-making.
Another two critical moral defects of the liberal attitude to politics
is to see a moral injustice, or attack on the oppressed, and do nothing,
or ignore it. This is the "eighth" moral defect that Mao mentions. The
one that follows immediately after is being undisciplined in the way one
plans political strategy, and just going through the motions of
political work with dogmatic religiousity.
Finally: and most crucially (and I realised I have presented Mao's
enumeration of the vices in an eclectic order), not to take up political
issues that do not affect someone personally -- that is, to only do
political agitating on issues that only concern yourself. That is
perhaps the moral defect of liberalism that plagues Australian society
the most.
I want to call Mao's picture of liberalism in this famous text a
condemnation of laziness, but I think the deliberate way these moral
defects are instructed to us in school and by our parents means that
liberalism dosn't come about as a result of the *lack* of action on the
part of everyday people, it is something that is forcibly pushed onto us
in our horribly inadequate political and civic education in Australia.
It is easy to appreciate how the moral vices of liberalism make the
terrain for fascist demands around free speech easy for right wing
forces to advance and win battles. The characteristic liberal response
by the police against Fraser Anning and Egg Boy -- to drop criminal
charges against both of them -- clearly smack of what Mao calls
"slipshod" discipline in political discipline in political discourse in
capitalist societies. I don't mean to say that I approve of the police,
and I demand greater proletarian morality from them, as if they are the
defenders of justice, I mean to say that their decision to let *both*
Anning and Egg Boy off was a calculated move not to offend anybody,
because of the laxity of political education and experience of struggle
that the average person has in capitalist Australia.
Finally, I want to point out that there is a name for the two political
enironments where the oppressor, and conversely, the oppressed have
control or dominance of the determination of the meaning and practice of
"free speech". Where the oppressor, the boss, the ruling class has free
speech, this is called the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. On the other
hand, when the working class and the masses have control of the
political discourse, this is called the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Both of these environments of class dominance are symptoms of *who
controls the means of production*. Who controls the factories, the
retail outlets, the service stations, the trucks, etc, etc.
Blair Vidakovich 14 April 2019.