Communism and Freedom
Marx explains that only in a communist society can man be truly free: “Only in community [with others has each] individual the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions: only in community therefore, is personal freedom possible.”[1] Yet it is an interesting definition of freedom that communists have.
Communists believe that one cannot have freedom in a world with inequality. So, in practice, freedom and equality are interchangeable. Bukharin, a theoretical Marxist of Lenin’s Politburo explains in his ABC of Communism:
[Under
capitalism] The workers wish to publish a newspaper, and they have the legal
right to do so. But to exercise this right they need money, paper, offices, a
printing press, etc. All these things are in the hands of the capitalists. The
capitalists won't relax their grip. Nothing doing! Out of the workers' paltry
wage it is impossible to accumulate adequate funds. The result is that the
bourgeoisie has masses of newspapers and can cheat the workers to its heart's
content day after day; whereas the workers, notwithstanding their legal
'rights', have practically no press of their own.[2]
So, if some cannot afford something that another can, he is not free to take advantage of his “formal” freedom to pursue this happiness. So, Marxists explain, he isn’t actually free. Bukharin continues:
Such is the real character of the workers'
'freedom' under bourgeois democracy. The freedom exists solely on paper. The
workers have what is termed 'formal' freedom. In substance, however, they have
no freedom, because their formal freedom cannot be translated into the realm of
fact. It is the same here as in all other departments of life. According to
bourgeois theory, master and man are equals in capitalist society, since 'free
contract' exists: the employer offers work; the worker is free to accept or
refuse. Thus it is upon paper! In actual fact, the master is rich and well fed;
the worker is poor and hungry. He must work or starve. Is this equality? There
can be no equality between rich and poor, whatever the written word declares.
This is why, in the capitalist régime, 'freedom' has a bourgeois complexion.
In the
'14. In order to secure for the workers
actual freedom of expression of opinion, the Russian Socialist Federative
Soviet Republic abolishes the dependence of the press upon capital, and puts
into the hands of the working class and the poor peasantry all the technical
and material means for the publication of newspapers, pamphlets, books, and all
other products of the printing press, and provides for their free distribution
throughout the country.
… The Soviet Power and our party have
already done much in this direction. The mansions of the nobles, the theatres,
the printing presses, paper, etc. - all these now belong to the working class
organizations and to the workers' State.
Having seen the result of this, we can almost laugh at this notion of “actual freedom,” were it not so tragic. The nationalization of the press did not result in more freedom to the people, nor could it ever. In every circumstance of nationalization of the media, it only serves to make it an outlet of the state; it removes that precious freedom of expression that the media provides. Of course, communists expected the state to wither away, but that is hardly comforting for those whose speech was suppressed for so many years by the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.