I don’t think censorship is the way. I feel it’s a fear driven approach and paternalistic.
It’s easy to see with your own eyes the decay of western society, because the supposed material gain is rooted in elitism and barely hidden exploitation.
The only way to convert the liberals is to show them what is really going on in the material world of western society. Keeping it censored will allow liberalism to fester and grow unchecked in china as these people will have their ideas reinforced by not being in contact with what liberalism really cause.
“Marketplace of ideas” means the idea with dominant capital will be dominant; it is not the “merit” of the argument that wins a person over. In a dictatorship of the proleteriat by seizing the means of production the socialist enterprise controls the capital and therefore “wins” the argument for the proleteriat. The perception whether an idea is good or not is always affected by bias; the point is for whom the bias should be in favor of.
That does not mean there is no objective reality or concrete solutions to real-world problems. Science is the method of figuring this out and marxism is a science. The problem is where and when people choose science in the day to day world. There are classes of people with sufficient privilege that perceive not to be affected by this ignorance, and therefore ignore the science when it suits them.
It is not a question of whether “censorship” is good or not; de facto censorship will always exist with every community and society - the question who gets to decide which censorship, what gets censored and which media it should take form in.
If one imagines a space with no formal censorship that does not mean it does not take place; a lack of a formal structure and hierarchy just means an informal one takes place instead, and in a capitalist world this means capital will dictate what those will end up being.
In early stages of socialism by definition it will have capital mechanisms such as markets; this is not maintained in a “neutral” environment, it will inevitably come with the culture of liberalism.
We should aim to have a scientific approach and understand of how things works and try to step away from the liberal frameworks we are brought up in which often conceptualises problems it does not really want to solve in absractions, rather than ground them in the concrete of the real.
My argument isn’t for or against censorship; it is just a tool and to understand how and whether we use this tool we should understand the science of how ideas “win” people over.
One can think of a socialist country as where the standards enforced on an educator is enforced on every aspect of society and this includes what gets amplified and de-amplified for the progression of society. No individual has the correct answer, our collective knowledge and trials of how to apply this scientifically in a continually shifting landscape is the way forward.
The only thing you said I think is wrong is that de facto censorship always exist.
Censorship is created by a social entity hidding or faking data. Any advanced mind can take these incomplete or faked conclusions and from there find out that the data has been messed with.
Any “trust me bro” arguments can be rejected from the get go. Any information without it’s reproduction steps has no meaning, only an agenda.
People are pretty bright animals on the individual level, but where they fail is that they are social animals which will take cue from other social animals and social entitiesml.
What you see as de facto censorship is only a natural consequence of this mechanism.
But this can be countered with proper education of both the social animals and the social entities.
Fatalism is not needed here because we know that we can build social constructs that can change both how the social animal and the social entity comport themselves.
All in all , a censorship attempt, for a social animal that reject social cues from it’s peers, is at best an attack on it’s agency and intelligence, as worst a proof that the social entity has a hidden agenda and whishes a bad outcome to the censored.
And this attempt will by itself, because the social animal has an advanced mind, create an interest in what the other entity is trying to hide.
We can see this in action with antivaxxer, flat-earthers and so on, in which de facto censorship does not exist.
These examples are not the best, because they also get influenced by bad messaging -a sort of propaganda created by bad actors be it animal or entities - but they examplify the mechanism I am talking about.
Sorry, my English is quite poor this morning as I am very tired from bullshit events in my life.
Every community has censorship to filter out its perception of noise or topics they feel are dangerous/ destablising/ upsets decorum/creates havoc with internal structures etc etc. We do it here for example with bad-faith liberal slop. It could be de facto or de jure.
In capitalist society it would be those that fit with their narratives and perspectives. For example, we live in a world of (crumbling) Western Hegemony so there will be self-censorship on the genocide or pro-Russian perspectives of the Ukraine war; from schools to newspapers to entertainment media - there does not need to be someone at the top pulling the strings, the associated communities (formal and informal) will do that themselves.
Education will not in itself lead to “enlightenment”. One of the first organisations to discover climate change were oil companies but their class perspective did not take them down the path of environmentalism.
We have to a degree accept the fact the people intelligently seek narratives that they feel benefit their perceived material perspectives - including us - and it behooves us as MLs to understand this and allows us to better understand which class our audience is and focus our energies where it is productive.
Anti-vaxxers and flat-earthers could look up the same information we do but choose not to believe them. It comes from a level of privilege where they feel the consequences of their ignorance does not affect them. They create spaces for themselves to talk about the issues that are important to them and filter out the “noise” in those spaces.
In the wider community the above two groups fester as they are not a threat to capital. In a spcialist society such nonsense is stomped out for the greater good.
There are for example stories where “traditional” communities with overbearing patriarchal structures who were forced at gunpoint for their women to be literate and educated. There is a “generational trauma” but the outcome of good is exponential as a result for all the following generations. (This is not a specific example of socialist history, this was actually Kemalist Turkey. Socialists usually use more tactful approaches)
We have to understand freedom not from an idealistic conception but a scientific understanding of social sciences, and it ia from that true freedom is acheived.
The west has at its disposal significant access to vast volumes of knowledge through the internet but people voluntarily choose wilful ignorance for their perceived material benefits.
The above is not a nihilistic perspective, it is encouraging to know there is a scientific approach to liberation of the world despite what it seems like an unsurmountable obstacle of bad-faith ignorance. It just means we have to direct our energies towards the revolutionary classes.
(English was not initially my first language either; hope life at your end gives you a break!)
I don’t think censorship is the way. I feel it’s a fear driven approach and paternalistic.
It’s easy to see with your own eyes the decay of western society, because the supposed material gain is rooted in elitism and barely hidden exploitation.
The only way to convert the liberals is to show them what is really going on in the material world of western society. Keeping it censored will allow liberalism to fester and grow unchecked in china as these people will have their ideas reinforced by not being in contact with what liberalism really cause.
“Marketplace of ideas” means the idea with dominant capital will be dominant; it is not the “merit” of the argument that wins a person over. In a dictatorship of the proleteriat by seizing the means of production the socialist enterprise controls the capital and therefore “wins” the argument for the proleteriat. The perception whether an idea is good or not is always affected by bias; the point is for whom the bias should be in favor of.
That does not mean there is no objective reality or concrete solutions to real-world problems. Science is the method of figuring this out and marxism is a science. The problem is where and when people choose science in the day to day world. There are classes of people with sufficient privilege that perceive not to be affected by this ignorance, and therefore ignore the science when it suits them.
It is not a question of whether “censorship” is good or not; de facto censorship will always exist with every community and society - the question who gets to decide which censorship, what gets censored and which media it should take form in.
If one imagines a space with no formal censorship that does not mean it does not take place; a lack of a formal structure and hierarchy just means an informal one takes place instead, and in a capitalist world this means capital will dictate what those will end up being.
In early stages of socialism by definition it will have capital mechanisms such as markets; this is not maintained in a “neutral” environment, it will inevitably come with the culture of liberalism.
We should aim to have a scientific approach and understand of how things works and try to step away from the liberal frameworks we are brought up in which often conceptualises problems it does not really want to solve in absractions, rather than ground them in the concrete of the real.
My argument isn’t for or against censorship; it is just a tool and to understand how and whether we use this tool we should understand the science of how ideas “win” people over.
One can think of a socialist country as where the standards enforced on an educator is enforced on every aspect of society and this includes what gets amplified and de-amplified for the progression of society. No individual has the correct answer, our collective knowledge and trials of how to apply this scientifically in a continually shifting landscape is the way forward.
The only thing you said I think is wrong is that de facto censorship always exist.
Censorship is created by a social entity hidding or faking data. Any advanced mind can take these incomplete or faked conclusions and from there find out that the data has been messed with.
Any “trust me bro” arguments can be rejected from the get go. Any information without it’s reproduction steps has no meaning, only an agenda.
People are pretty bright animals on the individual level, but where they fail is that they are social animals which will take cue from other social animals and social entitiesml.
What you see as de facto censorship is only a natural consequence of this mechanism.
But this can be countered with proper education of both the social animals and the social entities.
Fatalism is not needed here because we know that we can build social constructs that can change both how the social animal and the social entity comport themselves.
All in all , a censorship attempt, for a social animal that reject social cues from it’s peers, is at best an attack on it’s agency and intelligence, as worst a proof that the social entity has a hidden agenda and whishes a bad outcome to the censored.
And this attempt will by itself, because the social animal has an advanced mind, create an interest in what the other entity is trying to hide.
We can see this in action with antivaxxer, flat-earthers and so on, in which de facto censorship does not exist.
These examples are not the best, because they also get influenced by bad messaging -a sort of propaganda created by bad actors be it animal or entities - but they examplify the mechanism I am talking about.
Sorry, my English is quite poor this morning as I am very tired from bullshit events in my life.
So if im not very clear, I’m sorry again.
Every community has censorship to filter out its perception of noise or topics they feel are dangerous/ destablising/ upsets decorum/creates havoc with internal structures etc etc. We do it here for example with bad-faith liberal slop. It could be de facto or de jure.
In capitalist society it would be those that fit with their narratives and perspectives. For example, we live in a world of (crumbling) Western Hegemony so there will be self-censorship on the genocide or pro-Russian perspectives of the Ukraine war; from schools to newspapers to entertainment media - there does not need to be someone at the top pulling the strings, the associated communities (formal and informal) will do that themselves.
Education will not in itself lead to “enlightenment”. One of the first organisations to discover climate change were oil companies but their class perspective did not take them down the path of environmentalism.
We have to a degree accept the fact the people intelligently seek narratives that they feel benefit their perceived material perspectives - including us - and it behooves us as MLs to understand this and allows us to better understand which class our audience is and focus our energies where it is productive.
Anti-vaxxers and flat-earthers could look up the same information we do but choose not to believe them. It comes from a level of privilege where they feel the consequences of their ignorance does not affect them. They create spaces for themselves to talk about the issues that are important to them and filter out the “noise” in those spaces.
In the wider community the above two groups fester as they are not a threat to capital. In a spcialist society such nonsense is stomped out for the greater good.
There are for example stories where “traditional” communities with overbearing patriarchal structures who were forced at gunpoint for their women to be literate and educated. There is a “generational trauma” but the outcome of good is exponential as a result for all the following generations. (This is not a specific example of socialist history, this was actually Kemalist Turkey. Socialists usually use more tactful approaches)
We have to understand freedom not from an idealistic conception but a scientific understanding of social sciences, and it ia from that true freedom is acheived.
The west has at its disposal significant access to vast volumes of knowledge through the internet but people voluntarily choose wilful ignorance for their perceived material benefits.
The above is not a nihilistic perspective, it is encouraging to know there is a scientific approach to liberation of the world despite what it seems like an unsurmountable obstacle of bad-faith ignorance. It just means we have to direct our energies towards the revolutionary classes.
(English was not initially my first language either; hope life at your end gives you a break!)