What do Marxists say about free speech?

The state can decide what is and isn’t ‘free speech’ (Photo: Guy Smallman)

“It’s free speech until you say free Palestine.” This captures an important truth.

The great champions of free speech demand the right to offend, belittle and spout prejudice. Predictably, they are complete hypocrites who are silent when the state attacks people for carrying “Free Palestine” placards.

These “culture war warriors” love John Milton’s quote, “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”

But Milton was a revolutionary who defied the king in the English Revolution of the 1640s.

The idea of free speech emerged during the great revolutions against feudalism. Feudal societies criminalised any views that deviated from the dictates of the Church and the lords.

In 1641, publishing restrictions were abolished and a flood of pamphlets and tracts turned London into a “mansion house of liberty”, in Milton’s phrase. He used the new freedom to justify the execution of Charles I.

The great French Revolution inspired English radicals. But their attempts to explore the values of “liberty, equality and fraternity” were greeted with violent repression.

Treason was redefined to include spoken and written words. In 1792, shoe-maker Thomas Hardy founded the radical London Corresponding Society. In May 1794, Hardy was charged with treason.

In 1819, unarmed protesters in St Peter’s Field in Manchester were murdered by special constables. It became known as the Peterloo Massacre. Parliament passed the notorious Six Acts, banning large meetings and gagging radical newspapers. So working class radicals defied these laws.

Richard Carlile published a radical anti-monarchist paper, The Republican. He was sentenced to six years in prison. His pregnant wife, Jane, was also imprisoned. Carlile’s sister, Mary Anne, took the reins until she was arrested.

The courage of these principled men and women created the idea of a free press. 

Bourgeois revolutions mobilised the poor and excluded against the old order, but never delivered on their promise of individual rights and freedoms. The new capitalist states excluded enslaved people, women and the working class from so-called “universal rights”.

Mass campaigns for free speech forced the state to make concessions, to allow the right to assembly, to a free press and to criticise the government. But within capitalism, this is only ever an aspiration as wealth shapes our access to public speech.

I have a right to speak, within limits set by the state. Rupert Murdoch has the same right—but he has a media empire to amplify his views. And the state can withdraw rights at any time.

A militant campaign for free speech erupted in London in 1887. Demonstrations of unemployed workers from London’s East End began to gather in Trafalgar Square.

The police banned them. But tens of thousands took part. They were met with police truncheons, mounted police charges and infantry with drawn bayonets. Three people died, and hundreds were injured, on “Bloody Sunday”.

It was socialists who organised this defiant defence of free speech. Throughout history, we have fought hard to make it a reality for the excluded and oppressed.

But we do not believe people are free to say anything. Speech that undermines the rights of others—racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia—is not free speech.

Calling for pogroms outside refugee hotels is not free speech, it’s a call for violence. Spreading lies about migrants is not free speech, it’s a call for hatred.

Fascists should never be allowed a platform to spread their poison. Their “free speech” is premised on the erasure and violence against certain groups of people. Unlike the fight throughout history, this doesn’t secure freedom within society—it does the opposite.

Our rights have always depended on our collective power to break unjust laws. To assert our rights not just to speak, but to act and to bring about real change.