Free Speech, the Rich, The Mass Media, and Democracy

Eureka CA

Description

Some Proglodyte Bootlicker Opines: The 1st Amendment doesn’t give you the right to require a privately owned entity (Craigslist, Facebook, Tinder, etc) to allow your content. The 1st Amendment gives those entities the right to remove any content and/or ban posters for any reason(s) they choose. The rulers of this country never stopped preaching that their form of government is “the most democratic on earth,” and that the “communist countries are cruel dictatorships where the people have no rights.” Like other things these parasites put out, this stands things upside down and twists reality inside out. The fact is that the very people who run this country are a small handful of bankers and businessmen, multimillionaires and billionaires like the Rockefellers, Duponts and Mellons. In this system which they call “the most democratic on earth,” they own the vast productive forces–the factories, the mines, the mills, the transportation systems, machinery, etc–and exploit the working class, the majority of the population, for their own private profit. Capitalist State The state–the police, army, courts, bureaucracy and similar institutions–is set up and controlled by this capitalist class. These big businessmen–the bourgeoisie, or monopoly capitalists–consistently use the police, army, national guard, courts and bureaucracies to break workers’ strikes and generally to put down the rebellions of the poor who own little or no means of production. The police, army and national guard are never called out against the class of bankers and corporation executives. In short, this state is a bourgeois dictatorship. This does not mean there is a dictatorship in this country of one or several men. It does mean there is a class dictatorship, where a tiny handful of profit-makers rules society and uses the state as their machine to suppress the working people. Most people do not think of our country as a dictatorship because the relationship of different classes is usually concealed. The monopoly capitalists do not openly admit their rule. Instead they claim that this is a democracy where “everyone shares power and takes part in running the government.” The ruling class goes to great lengths to cover up their dictatorship under the mask of democracy, for it is extremely difficult for a minority of exploiters to rule by force alone. Only at the time of full-blown crisis, when it can stay in power in no other way, does the monopoly capitalist class rule by open, terroristic dictatorship, or fascism. In fact, the bourgeoisie is no more willing to “share” power with the majority of people than it is to share the ownership of the means of production and the wealth that comes from this. For them to function as a capitalist class, they must exploit the working class; and to exploit the workers, who constantly resist this exploitation and oppression, they must use the state to suppress the workers. Of course the ruling class has been forced to grant the workers some democratic rights such as the right to vote, free speech, free press, etc. But these freedoms, like everything else in capitalist society, have their class content: they mean one thing to the ruling class and quite another for the workers. For the capitalists, freedom of the press and free speech, as examples, mean the right to fill the air-waves and daily newspapers with their propaganda and lies and to use them freely to debate with each other. For the capitalists, elections are a way to settle differences among themselves, while making it look like everybody has equal say. For the working class, democratic rights are the fruits of previous struggles, and we fight to preserve them for they make it easier to organize and mobilize for the day when the capitalists will be overthrown. Nevertheless democratic rights for the masses are primarily a sham, a mask, to cover the real dictatorship of the capitalists. This becomes especially clear when democratic rights come into conflict with the most basic “freedom” of bourgeois society–the right of the capitalists to their “private property” and to exploit the labor of the workers. Consider, for example, how many workers have been fired or disciplined for posting a notice on a company bulletin board, or circulating a leaflet or petition, while the capitalist class freely makes use of their ownership and control of virtually all of the mass media. In the final analysis all their talk about democracy boils down to one thing: The ruling class decides by struggle and compromise within its own ranks, and among its paid politicians, how it will maintain its system of exploitation over the people. As V.I. Lenin, leader of the first successful workers’ revolution, said, “Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich–that is the democracy of capitalist society.” Proletarian Dictatorship Vs Bourgeois “Democracy” Proletarian Dictatorship Vs. Bourgeois “Democracy” originally appeared in the May, 1973 issue of Revolution, at that time the organ of the Revolutionary Union. The article was adopted by the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA at the time of its founding in 1975. The article has been revised for publication.