The Bolsheviks and freedom of the press The victory of the October Revolution opened the way for a new type of debate in the workers" movement on freedom of the press. The existence of a 'Commune-type" state, directed and controlled by the mass of the producers, meant that for the first time in history there was an alternative to the traditional counterposition: "either private ownership of the press or a state monopoly of information.
Between February and October 1917, Lenin drafted two articles in which he elaborated the major elements of Bolshevik policy on the press. The first article, "How to Fight CounterRevolution", appeared immediately before the July Days; the second, "How to Guarantee the Success of the Constituent Assembly", was written from Finland and published on the day the Bolshevik Central Committee discussed Lenin's theses on "Marxism and Insurrection". It is scarcely surprising that in the whirlwind of these events, few socialists had time to absorb the full import of Lenin's writings and of the radical solution he had found to the problem of eliminating private ownership whilst avoiding bureaucratic domination.
In a situation of indescribable chaos and crisis, the Military Revolutionary Committee decided in the first days of Bolshevik government to suppress Milyukov's paper Ryech" for inciting armed resistance to soviet power. A violent reaction ensued to this infringement of "free speech' — not least from Milyukov, whose paper immediately reappeared under another name. Thus on 27 October the Council of People's Commissars issued a decree on the press (a document much misunderstood in the English-speaking world due to the heavily distorted and edited translation of it which appeared in Kerensky's The Russian Provisional Government).
Questions of press freedom
interwoven with the other crucial issues of the day: the convening of the Constituent Assembly and the formation of a coalition government. At the meeting of the Central Executive Committee of 4 November the suppression of "press freedom' became the focus for all the debates between the Bolsheviks and their opponents. We are lucky to have a wonderful description of this debate by John Reed, which we reproduce here together with the speeches actually made by the Bolshevik leaders in the debate.
Following the debate, the Bolshevik resolution was easily passed. (Liebman follows Broue in mistaking the number who voted against the resolution and then attempting to use this to reveal supposed deep divisions within the Bolshevik party, but he is simply mistaken as to the voting figures — see Leninism under Lenin, pp. 259-267.) In the following days the Bolsheviks supplemented this resolution with a Decree on Advertising: yet still the working class was suspicious of any infringements of civil liberties and Trotsky had to address the Grenadier Guards on 27 November to reiterate the Bolsheviks' position on press freedom. Here we reprint for the first time all the major
immediately became
documents of the debate — the Bolshevik resolutions, Lenin's draft resolutions, the eyewitness account by John Reed, the judgement of Victor Serge, and the speeches of Lenin and Trotsky. Trotsky's speeches appear in English for the first time; they are taken from "October to Brest', the sccond part of Volume Il of his Collected Works (Moscow 1925; translation from the Russian by Val Graham).
This debate is particularly valuable today. Not merely does it reveal how far removed the first Soviet government was from that of Stalin, but it also establishes the practical measures that a workers government must take to deal with the inevitable resistance of the press barons whilst attempting to guarantee a real freedom of the press for the first time in historymany
popular
debate clarifies
Moreover,
the
misconceptions about the Russian revolution. It shows that the Eurocommunist counterposition of the 'primitive Russian' to
revolutionary strategy merely
the "sophisticated
capitalist"
distorts the real natore of the Russian revolution itself. Isaac Deutscher argued many years ago (in the New Cambridge Modern History) that the Bolsheviks triumphed in October primarily because they were associated with the most thoroughgoing democracy. The discussion on press freedom certainly bears out this view and reveals that the irreconcilable conflict between bourgeois property rights and the rights of the mass of producers was not specifically Russian but expressed an inherent contradiction of proletarian revolution wherever it occurs.
Finally, the debate is valuable because it took place in the main before the realities of civil war compelled the Bolsheviks to impose restrictions on civil liberties. It is true that in 1921 Miasnikov was first silenced within and then expelled from the Bolshevik party for demanding freedom of the press. It is also true that Lenin attempted to justify this, and that the first
from the Russian
expulsion of a prominent Bolshevik
Communist Party was used to tighten the grip of the Central Committee over local freedom of discussion. Yet historians like Schapiro and Daniels, who cry out for us to observe the relationship between press freedom and the degeneration of the Bolshevik party, would do well to study this first debate, which took place before a score of foreign armies had set foot on Soviet territory.
Lenin's first thoughts on the press were printed in Pravda on 17
How
i lo
article
part
June
the
as
1917
of
Fight
Counter-Revolution" (Collected Works, Vol. 25, pp. 97-98):
that the
Gazela
later
out
points
Rabochaya
counter-revolution's chief instrument is the press, which is fomenting anti-semitism, inciting the masses against the Jews.
36
That is correct. But what is the conclusion?
You are a ministerial party, gentlemen, aren't you? What have you done to curb the infamous counter-revolutionary
Do you think you can, while calling yourselves press?
'revolutionary
democrats' refuse
measures against the unbridled, blatantly counter-revolutionary press? Andthen why don't youstart a government organ thai would
advertisements and deprive the infamous counter-revolutionary press of its chief source of income and hence of its main chance to deceive the people? What evidence isthere, indeed, that thousands upon thousands of people must now be kept away from productive labour in order to publish Novoye Premya, Malenka Gazeta, Russkaya Volya and other reptiles?
Three months later he gave much
consideration to the question in the article 'How to Guarantee the Success of the Constituent Assembly published in Rabochy Put o 15 September 1917:
The capitalists (followed either from stupidity or from inertia by many SRs and Mensheviks) call freedom of the press' a situation in which censorship has been abolished and all parties freely publish all kinds of papers.
In reality it is not the freedom of the press, but freedom for the rich, for the bourgeoisie, to deceive the oppressed exploited mass of the people.
Indeed, take, say, the Petrograd and Moscow newspapers. You will see at once that it is the bourgeois papers — Rech. Birzhevke, Novoye Vremyu, Russkoye Slovo, and so on and so forth (for there are a great many papers of thissort) — that have by far the largest circulation. What makes for this prevalence? Not at all the will of the majority, for the clections have shown that in both capitals the majority (a gigantic majority, too) favours the democrats,
Bolsheviks. These three parties command from three-quarters to four-fifths of the votes,
newspapers they publish is certainly less than a quarter, or even less than one-fifth, that of the whole bourgcois press (which, as we know and see now, supported the Kornilov affair directly and indirectly).
Why is that so?
Everyone knows very well why. Because the publication of a newspaper is a big and profitable capitalist undertaking in which the rich invest millions upon millions of rubles. *Freedom of the press' in bourgeois society means freedom for the rich systematically, unremittingly, daily, in millions of copies, to deceive, corrupt and fool the exploited and oppressed mass of the peopie, the poor.
This is the simple, generally known, obvious truth which everyone sees and realizes but which 'almost everyone' "bashfully" passes over in silence, timidly evades.
The question is whether and how this crying evil can be
First of all, there is a very simple, good and lawful means which I pointed out in Pravda long ago, which it is particularly opportune torecall now, before 12September | the dateon which the
workers should always bear in mind, for they will hardly be able to do without it when they have won political power.
That means a state monopoly on private press advertising.
Look at Russkoye Slovo, Novoye Vremya, Birzhevka, Rech, etc. — you will see a multitude of private advertisements, which yield a tremendous income to their capitalist publishers. This is how bourgeois publishers hold sway, how they get rich, and how they deal in poison for the people all over the world
In Europe there are newspapers which have a circulation as large as onc-third the number of inhabitants of the town (for instance, 12,000 copies in a town with a population of 40,000) and are delivered free to every home, and yet yield their owners a sizeable income. These papers live by advertisements paid by private people, while the free delivery of the paper to every home ensures the best circulation of the advertisements.
Then why cannot democrats who call themselves revolutionary carry out a measure like declaring private press
advertising a state monopoly, or banning advertisements anywhere oviside the newspapers published by the Soviets in the provincial towns and cities and by the Centrel Sower in Petrograd for the whole of Russia? Why must "revolutionary" revolutionary
democrats tolerate such a thing as enrichment, through private advertising, of rich men, Kornilov backers, and spreaders of lies and slander against the Soviets?
Such a measure would be absolutely just. It would greatly benefit those who published private advertisements and the whole people, particularly the most oppressed and ignorant class, the peasants, who would be able to have Soviet papers, with supplements for the peasants, at a very low price or even free of charge.
Why not do that? Only because private property and hereditary rights (to profits from advertising) are sacred to the capitalist gentlemen. But how can anyone calling himself a more systematic
revolutionary democrat in the twentieth century, in the second Russian revolution, recognize such rights as 'sacred'?!
Some may say it would mean infringing on fredom of the press.
That is not true, It would mean extending and restoring freedom of the press, for freedom of the press means that all
What do we have now? Now, the rich alone have this monopoly, and also the big parties. Yet if large Soviet newspapers were to be published, with all advertisements, it would be perfectly feasible to guarantee the expression of their opinion to a much greater number of citizens
say, lo every
group having collected a certain number of signatures. Freedom of the press would in pracrice become much more democratic, would be incomparably more complete as a result.
But some may ask: where would we get printing presses and newsprint?
There we have it!!! The issue is not "freedom of the press" but the exploiters' sacrosanct ownership of the printing presses Mensheviks,
and stocks of newsprint they have seized!
Just why should we workers and peasants recognise that sacred right? How is that "right" to publish false information better than the right" to own serfs?
Why is that in war-time all sorts of requisitioning - of
- are allowed
houses, flats, vehicles, horses, grain and metals and practised everywhere, while the requisitioning of printing presses and newsprint is impermissible?
The workers and peasants may in fact be deceived for a while, if such measures are made out to be unjust or hard to realize, but the truth will win through in the end
State power in the shape of the Soviets takes all the printing presses and all the newsprint and distributes them equitably: the state should come first - in the interests of the majority of the people, the majority of the poor, particularly the majority of the peasants, who for centuries have been tormented, crushed and stultified by the landowners and capitalists.
The big parties should come second — say those who have polled one or two hundred thousend votes in both capitals.
The smaller parties should come third, and then any group of citizens which has a certain number of members or has collected a certain number of signatures.
This is the distribution of newsprint and printing presses that would be just and, with the Soviets in power, could be effected easily enough.
Then came the October Revolution. Victor Serge describes the actual course of events:
The proletarian dictatorship hesitated a long time before
the
enemy
suppressing
press. Immediately after the
insurrection, the only bourgeois papers to be suppressed were those openly advocating armed resistance to "the Bolshevik usurper', "bloodthirsty anarchy" and the coup d'elat of the Kaiser's agents". It was only in July 1918 that the last organs of the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie were closed down. The legal press of the Mensheviks only disappeared in 1919; the press of the anarchists hostile to
the regime, and the
Maximalists, appeared down to 1921; that of the Left Social Revolutionaries, later still.
From the archives 37
All newspaper owners, shareholders, and all members of
Thus the press of the Mensheviks did not disappear until
their staffs shall be under obligation to immediately submit terror and assassination had combined with foreign invasion to
written reports and information on the said questions to the threaten the very existence of soviet power. However, the
Commission of Inquiry probing ties between capital and the suppression of Milyukov's Rech the day after the insurrection had already raised the spectre of censorship. Hence the
press, and its dependerice on capital, at Smoiny Institute,
Petrograd.
carefully worded "Decree on the Press" issued by the Council of
The Commission shall have the power to co-opt members, People's Commissars on 27 October:
call experts, subpoena witnesses, order the presentation of all
accounts, ele.
In the trying critical period of the revolution and the days immediately following it. the Provisional Revolutionary
John Reed describes the scene when the CEC (Tsay-ce Kah) Government was compelled to take a number of measures
met:
against the counter-revolutionary press of different shades.
Immediately outcries were heard from all sides that the new,
At Smolny itself, in the ranks of the Bolshevik party, a socialist power had violated a fundamental principle of its
formidable opposition to Lenin's policy was growing. On the programme by encroaching on the freedom of the press.
night of 4 November, the great hall was packed and ominous
The workers' and peasants" Government calls the attention
for the meeting of the Tsay-ee-kah.
of the population to the fact that what this liberal facade
Larin, Bolshevik, declared that the moment of clections to actually conceals is freedom for the propertied classes, having taken hold of the lion's share of the entire press, to poison the
the Constituent Assembly approached, and it was time to do
away with "political terrorism'.
minds and obscure the consciousness of the masses unhindered.
*The measures taken against the freedom of the press should
Everyone knows that the bourgeois press is one of the most
be modified. They had their reason during the struggle, but now powerful weapons of the bourgeoisie. Especially at the crucial
they have no further excuse. The press should be free, except moment when the new power, the power of workers and
for appeals to riot and insurrection.
peasants, is only affirming itself, it was impossible to leave this
In a storm of hisses and hoots from his own party, Larin weapon wholly in the hands of the enemy, for in such moments
offered the following resolution:
it is no less dangerous than bombs and machine guns. That is
"The decree of the Council of People's Commissars why temporary extraordinary measures were taken to stem the
concerning the press is herewith repcaled. Measures of political torrent of filth and slander in which the yellow and green press
repression can only be employed subject to decision of a special would be only too glad to drown the recent victory of the
tribunal, elected by the Tsuy-ee-kah, proportionately to the people.
strength of the different parties represented; and this tribunal
As soon as the new order becomes consolidated, all
shall have the right also to reconsider measures of repression administrative pressure on the press will be terminated and it will be granted complete freedom within the bounds of legal
already taken."
This was met by a thunder of applause, not only from the responsibility, in keeping with a law that will be broadest and
Left Socialist Revolutionaries, but also from a part of the most progressive in this respect.
Bolsheviki.
However, being aware that a restriction of the press, even al
Avanessov, for the Leniniles, hastily proposed that the critical moments, is permissible only within limits of what is absolutely necessary, the Council of People's Commissars
question of the press be postponed until after some compromise
- the
Socialist
between
parties had been reached.
Overwhelmingly voted down.
"The revolution which is now being accomplished', went on for open resistance or insubordination to the Workers' and
Avanessov, "has not hesitated to attack private property; and it Peasants' Government; (il) sow sedition through demonstrably
is as private property that we must examine the question of the slanderous distortion of facts; (iii) instigate actions of an
press..."
obviously criminal, i.c. criminally punishable, nature.
Thereupon he read the official Bolshevik resolution.
2. Publications
drafted by Trotsky:
permanently, only by decision of the Council of People's
*The suppression of the bourgeois press was dictated not
only by purely military needs in the course of the insurrection.
The present ordinance is of a temporary nature and w repealed by a special decree as soon as normal conditions
and for the checking of counter-revolutionary action, but it is
of transition toward the
as a measure
also necessary
social life set in.
establishment of a new regime with regard to the press — a
regime under which the capitalist owners of printing presses
For the meeting of the Centrai Executive Committee of 4 November, Lenin drafted a resolution on press freedom, which
and of paper cannot be the all-powerful and exclusive
manufacturers of opinion.
he then withdrew in favour of Trotsky's resolution (Collected
We must further proceed to the confiscation of private Works, Vol. 26, p. 283):
printing plants and supplies of paper, which should become the
property of the Soviets, both in the capital and in the provinces,
For the bourgeoisic, freedom of the press meant freedom for the rich to publish and for the capitalists to control the
so that the political parties and groups can make use of the
facilities of printing in proportion to the actual strength of the newspapers, a practice which in all countries, including even the
ideas they represent
- in other words, proportionally to the
freest, produced a corrupt press.
number of their constituents.
For the workers' and peasants' government, freedom of
*The re-establishment of the so-called "freedom of the the press means liberation of the press from capitalist oppression, and public ownership of paper mills and printing
press", the simple return of the printing presses and paper to
- this
the capitalists — poisoners of the minds of the people presses; equal right for public groups of a certain size (say,
would be an inadmissable surrender to the will of capital; a numbering 10,000) to a fair share of newsprint stocks and a
giving up of one of the most important conquests of the corresponding quantity of printers" labour.
it would be a measure of
revolution; in other words,
As a first step towards this goal, which is bound up with the
the
unquestionably counter-revolutionary character. working people's liberation from capitalist oppression,
the
Government
from
Workers'
above,
Provisional
has
the
Tsay-ee-kah
and Peasants'
*Proceeding
all
the
aiming
appointed a Commission of Inquiry to look into the ties
propositions
categorically
rejects
re-establishment of the old regime in the domain of the press, between capital and periodicals, the sources of their funds and
and unequivocally supports the point of view of the Council of revenues, the list of their donors, covers for their deficits, and
People's Commissars on this question against pretentions and every other aspect of the newspaper business in general.
or by
ultimatums dictated by petty-bourgeois prejudices, Concealment of books, accounts, or any other documents from
evident surrender to the interests of the counter-revolutionary the Commission of Inquiry, or the giving of any evidence
bourgeoisie.*
known to be false, shall be punishable by a revolutionary court.
38
The reading of this resolution was interrupted by ironical shouts from the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, and bursts of indignation from the insurgent Bolsheviki. Karelin was on his feet protesting. "Three weeks ago the Bolsheviki were the most ardent defenders of the freedom of the press.... The arguments in this resolution suggest singularly the point of view of the old Black Hundreds and the censors of the Tsarist regime - for they also talked of "poisoners of the mind of the people" Kolagayer intervened, and then:
Trotsky spoke at length in favour of the resolution. distinguished between the press during the civil war, and the press after the victory. 'During civil war the right to use violence Belongs only to the oppressed...' (Cries of Who's the oppressed now? Cannibal!")
"There are two related questions here: (1) repression in general, and (2) the press. The demand for an end to all repressive measures during civil war amounts to a demand that we end the civil war itself. Such a demand can come either from the enemies of the proletariat or from their lackeys. Our adversaries, who provoked the civil war, have not sued for peace and I would swear that no one here can give us any guarantees for Kornilov. In conditions of civil war the suppression of hostile newspapers is an entirely legitimate measure. Of course we must move towards a new press regime and we have every intention of doing so. In our party press, well before the insurrection, we ceased to look at freedom of the press from the point of view of the press barons. If we can use certain measures to remove various individuals, then surely we can apply such measures to the press. We must conficate the printing plants and the paper supplies and turn them over to the people." (Heckling. "You mean to the Bolsheviks!')
"Yes, our task is to nationalize all the supplies and machinery. All the groups — all the soldiers and peasants may requisition paper and plants. Each and every soldier, worker and peasant will understand that we have not seized power only to leave control of the press in the hands of the old rulers. We say that Novoye Vremya, which had no supporters in the elections, should not have a single piece of type nor a single sheet of paper, and thar Russkaya Volga, as long as it remains a purely financial journal, has no right to exist. This isn't a permanent step, but we can't allow a return of the old capitalist order. The transfer of power to the Soviets is the decisive step from bourgeois rule to the socialist order. Why was Suvorin able to publish an ostentatious newspaper? Because he had the money. Can we allow the Suvorins to peddle their poison during the clections to the Constituent Assembly? Is it conceivable that we should allow financial journals to exist which serve the banks and not the people? All the printing plants must be put into the hands of the Soviet power.' (Cries, 'Confiscate the printing shop of Pravda?)
"You say that we demanded freedom of the press for Pravda. But then we were in conditions where we had to apply the demands of the minimum programme — now we demand the maximum! I have no doubt that the representatives of the workers and of the peasants are with me!" (Applause)
"The soldiers will return to their units. The peasants will return to their villages. And they will report that there are two points of view - either freedom of the press for bourgeois newspapers, or the requisitioning of paper and plants and their transfer into the hands of the workers and peasants."
Karelin declared the Tsay-ee-kah had no right to pass upon this important question, which should be left to a special committee. Again, passionately, he demanded that the press be free... Comrade Trotsky says that we argue from the viewpoint of capital. I say that anyone who poses the question thus argues from the point of view of his own personal power."
Then Lenin, calm, unemotional, his forehead wrinkled, as he spoke slowly, choosing his words; each sentence falling like a hammer-blow.
*Comrade Karelin assured us that the way he was talking led to socialism, but 1 am afraid this would be marching to socialism backwards. Trotsky was right: the officer cadets staged their uprising, and war was declared in Petrograd and
Moscow for freedom of the press. This time the SocialistRevolutionaries did not
revolutionaries. This week all the telegraph offices were in Kerensky's hands. The Vikzhel was on their side. But they had no troops. It turned out that the army was on our side. The civil war was started by a handful of men. It is not over. Kaledin's troops are approaching Petrograd. We do not want a civil wur. Our troops have shown great restraint. They held their fire, and it all began when three of our men were killed. Krasnov was given soft treatment. He was only placed under house arrest We are against civil war. But if it nevertheless goes on what are we to do? Trotsky was right in asking on whose behalf you spoke? We asked Krasnow whether he could sign on behalf of Kaledin that the latter would not continue the war. He naturally replied that he could not. How can we stop retaliative measures against an enemy who has not stopped his hostile operations?
*We shall negotiate when peace terms are offered to us. But so far peace is being offered to us by those on whom it does not depend. These are only fine words. After all, Rech is an organ of the Kaledinites. We can well allow that the SocialistRevolutionaries are sincere, but it is, after all, a fact that Kaledin and Milyukov are behind them.
*The firmer your stand, soldiers and workers, the more we shall gain. Otherwise they will say to us: *If they've let out Milyukov, they can't be strong." Earlier on we said that if we took power, we intended to close down the bourgeois newspapers. Totolerate the existence of these papers is to cease being a socialist. Those who say:
newspapers", fail to understand that we are moving at full speed to socialism. After all, tsarist newspapers were closed down after the overthrow of tsarism. Now we have thrown off the bourgeois yoke. We did not invent the social revolution: it was proclaimed by the Congress of the Soviets protested, all adopted the decree proclaiming it. The bourgeoisie proclaimed liberty, equality and fraternity. The workers say. "We want something eise."* We are told that we are retreating No, comrades, it is the Socialist-Revolutionaries who are returningto Kerensky. Wearetold that there are new elements in our resolution. Of course there are, because we are advancing to socialism. When the Socialist-Revolutionaries made speeches in the First and the Second Duma, they were also ridiculed for saying something new.
*There should be a monopoly of private advertisements. The members of the printers' union look at them from the point of view of income. They will get it, but in another form. We cannot provide the bourgeoisie with an opportunity for slandering us. We must appoint a commission right away to probe the ties between the banks and the bourgeois newspapers. What kind of freedom do these newspapers want? Isn't it freedom to buy rolls of newsprint and hire crowds of penpushers? We must escape from the freedom of a press dependent on capital. This is a matter of principle. If we are to advance to socialism we cannot allow Kaledin's bombs to be reinforced by the bombs of falsehood
'Of course, our draft law is not perfect. But it will be applied everywhere by the Soviets in accordance with their local conditions. Weare not bureaucrats and do not want to insist on the letter of the law everywhere, as was the practice in the government offices. 1 recall the Socialist-Revolutionaries saying that people in the countryside kiow so very little. They were getting their information from
should blame ourselves for leaving the newspapers in the hands of the bourgcoisie. We must go forward, to a new society, and take the same attitude to the bourgeois newspapers as we did to the ultra-reactionary papers in February and March."
Then the vote, The resolution of Larin and the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries was defeated by 31 to 22; the Lenin motion was cartied by 34 to 24. Among the minority were the Bolsheviks Rinzanov and Luzovsky, who declared that it was impossible for them to vote for any restriction on the freedom of the press
Upon this the Left Social Revolutionaries declared they could no longer be responsible for what was being done, and withdrew from the Military Revolutionary Committee and all other positions of executive responsibility.
Five Bolsheviks — Nogin, Rykov, Millutin, Teodorovitch
*Open the bourgeois
riskoye Slovo. We
From the War-Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd
Soviet of Workmen and Soldiers Deputies. To the Citizens of Russia:
The Provisional Government is deposed. The State power has passedinto the hands of the organ of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies the Miliary Revolutionary Committe, which stands at the head of the Petrograd proletariat and garrison.
Theaims for which the people were fightingimmediate proposal of a democratic peace, abolition of landlord propertyrights in the land. labor control over production, creation of a Soviet Government, - these aims have been achieved.
LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION OF WORKMEN, SOLDIERS AND
PEASANTS!
NOVEMBER Z, 1917
[Reproduction in English of the Russian text J
Military Revolutionary Committee
of the Petrograd Soviet of
Workers and Soldier's Deputies.
From the archives 39
40
and Shliapnikov - resigned from the Council of People's Commissars.
Three weeks later, Trotsky appeared before the Genadier Guards to make the most eloquent of all the pleas for the Bolshevik position:
One of the main accusations levelled against us by bourgeois spokesmen, politicians and press barons concerns our policy towards the bourgeois press. They say that we are muzzling free expression. This accusation melts the hearts of the
so-called
petty-bourgeois who are incapable of penetrating beneath the surface of events. Freedom of the press! What do the ideologues of the bourgeoisie mean by this? Exactly the same as they mean by freedom of trade. Every man who has the capital has the right because he has the means to open a factory, a shop.
w. or a newspaper, according to his personal a brothel
predilections. By publishing a newspaper he makes his profits. That's his freedom of the press.
But do the millions of peasants, workers and soldiers enjoy this freedom of the press? No! They do not possess the essential prerequisites of freedom, the real, actual and genuine means of publishing a newspaper. They have no printing plants, no stocks of paper, no money. So bourgeois freedom of the press means in practice a capitalist monopoly to disseminate the ideas of the capitalist class, to poison people's minds and pollute their consciousness with the garbage of bourgeois thought. For the toiling masses, bourgeois freedom of the press boils down to enforced consumption of the contents of bourgeois newspapers and all theit lies, slanders, hypocrisy, chauvinism and witch-hunts.
Where does press freedom begin for the people? It begins when the masses themselves take over the weapon of print; when they possess typesetting machines, printing presses and stocks of paper. We, the Soviet power, look on freedom of the press in the following way; above all, we consider ourselves obliged to deprive the bourgcoisie of its monopoly of the means of printing and to transfer all resources to the people as a whole, on the basis of proportional allocation. This means that all privately owned plants and stocks of paper must and will be taken into public ownership. In this way citizens can be allocated use of them in proportion to the real strength of the different classes, parties and ideological currents.
Novoye Vremyu was once one of Russia's most powerful newspapers, Why? Certainly not because Novoye Vremyo represented a powerful popular current. On the contrary, throughout all the elections before the revolution we never witnessed the appearance of a party called Novoye Vremya. But just as Suvorin-pére received fat subsidies from the state for ten years, so in turn Suvorin-fils received a powerful weapon of lies and slander, and they demand that they should be given uninterrupted access to this machine as a right. That's their freedom of the press. And even people like Gorky or Korolenko, undoubtedly honest but riddled with the narrow, vulgar prejudices of a petty-bourgeois milieu, are ready to weep copious tears in the cause of freedom for Novoye Vremya.
A powerful weapon in the hands of the capitalist press is
no in cal be
advertising, which as a matter of fact has little to do with publishing as such but serves as a means of levying tribute from the people in the interests of the press barons. We cannot free publishing from the absolute dictatorship of capital without first establishing a monopoly over newspuper advertisements. These advertisements are a kind of tax, and the right to raise taxes must be entirely in the hands of the state and other organs of power, i.e. the Soviets. Only Soviet publications have the right, by decree of the Council of People's Commissars, to accept paid advertisements and the revenue thus gained must from now on be used exclusively for the benefit of the people.
The capitalist press entrepreneurs will never agree to this. They see in this new law a violation of their sacred freedom of enterprise. "You are trampling all our freedoms underfoot, you are violating the laws of god and man", they hawl. When, in reply to their violations of the decree of the monopoly of advertising, the Red Guards or the sailors close down their newspapers as the decree demands, who should come along but the Gorkys and Korolenkos howling about suppression of free expression. However, all these complaints and accusations leave the broad mass of workers, peasants, and soldiers quite unmoved. Not at all because the masses are philistine and cannot appreciate the lofty sentiments entertained by bourgeois intellectuals for freedom of the press. but because the toiling masses newly awukened to spiritual life and to their higher inrerests feel a million times more fiercely the awful deprivations they were subjected to by capitalist control of the press. If in the allocation of newspapers the bourgeoisie were to have at its disposal only such resources as corresponded to its support, the vast majority of existing publications would soon be in the hands of the people. And this would be freedom of the press in the highest sense. It is our task to create the conditions for such a transformation.
Of course this is not an casy task. The possessing classes will not hand over what they have without a struggle. They know full well what a powerful weapon their press is. They have in their pay a significant number of proprietors of both sexes who. by upholding freedom of the press, uphold their means of profit and the source of their cheap popularity. All these people will fight by every means possible aginst our policies on press freedom. They will continue to take advertisements, to flout the decree, to lie, slander, wail and curse....
Our struggle against the bourgcois press barons, against the capitalist monopoly of publishing, is perceived by the petty-bourgeois school of thought as a struggle against free expression. But the broad masses, the millions on whom the Soviets and Soviet power rest, understand perfectly that it is a matter of creating the basic, elementary conditions for a broad, popular freedom of the press. Every printing plant created by the people's labour and stolen from them by capital, every press we take from the bourgeoisie and place in the hands of the Council of Workers', Peasants" and Soldiers" Deputies, is a stone in the edifice of real press freedom. We will stand firm against all slanders and sabotage and carry this task through to the end. And in place of those literary brothels created by the power of capital in the name of free enterprise, we will establish organs of free, unfettered human thought.
slanderous
Reviews
Book review sections in socialist journals usually differ from those in bourgeois publications only in the selection of books reviewed. To some extent. this is inevitable, since the common aim is to call attention to new publications of interest and to provide critical appraisal of their approach and argument.
While reviews of individual new books or selections of books on similar topics will be prominently featured in this section of International, we will aim for a broader coverage of intellectual and cultural life and of the development of socialist, feminist, and 'alternative" publishing and book-selling.
Asthe editorial in thisissue of International explains, our central objective in re-launching the journal is to provide a forum for debate designed to elaborate a revolutionary socialist programme for Britain. The book section will be integral to this, publishing extended review articles (by supporters of Trotskyism and the Fourth International and by representatives of other viewpoints as well) on important new books about British social, political, and cultural life and on major new theoretical contributions to our understanding of capitalism, socialism, and the revolutionary process.
At the same time, we believe that the review section must complement this foous with a broader appraisal of Rudolf Bahro's Alternative The Alternative in Eastern Europe, by Rudolf Bahro, New Left Books, London, 463 pp., £9.50.
Erst Thaimann, the leader of the German Communist Party in the twenties and early thirties, used to insist that the acid rest for all communists was their attitude to the Soviet Union. For Thaimann, to pass the test meant to manifest unconditional fealty to the dictats emanating from the Stalin leadership in Moscow; but there is a very different sense in which his motto holds true for revolutionary Marxists today. The acid test for communism today is its ability to regain its credibility as a true movement of emincipation, for the working masses,
East and West, have for the most part ceased to regard scientific socialism as a science of liberation, as a result precisely of the depredations of the Stalins and Thalmanns, Unless the problem Is clearly stated in these fundamental terms, the immensity of the task cannot be properly understood.
It is easy for Trotskyists to adopt a dangerously smug attitude towards the past and present crimes committed in the name of Marxism, which are responsible for the ideological demoralization of the international communist movement — a demoralization that leads Eurocommunists and East European dissidents alike to seck salvation in the virtues of bourgeois democracy. Did we not sound the alarm as carly as 19237 Do the documents of our movement not present a consistent and coherent alternative to Stalinism? Will history not work in our favour, as the empirical lessons of the class struggle in the West and the anti-bureaucratic movement in the East sooner or later force people to assimilate the rich heritage of the Transitional Programme and The Revolution Betrayed?
For the small but growing number of Marxist dissidents in Eastern Europe, however, the problem is posed differently. The true history of the October Revolution, the Soviet Union, and the world communist movement is still largely inaccessible to them; they live in an ambiance of popular hostility to "Marxism-Leninism" as the language of oppression. This has tended to divide the dissidents into two currents: those who continue broadly to accept the official doctrine and concentrate on demanding democratie reforms, and those who seck the roots of the system's degeneration in the doctrine itself. The former course is that of the reform communists"
(the Dubcek current in Czechoslovakia,