Banning books

This goes for all media & any form of published censorship. Not Freedom of Speech but of Press (US language).

I'm a librarian & damn proud to give patrons the information they are looking for, even when I personally disagree with their choice.

I understand how much the language on TV & the ratings for movies is state mandated & controlled but published works are not; books & music & art are targeted by parents in the US as well as by librarians & teachers.

Thoughts? Musings? Solutions?

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/...icle-1.1414308

This article prompted this & my interest to see what you folks think

Well I agree with you ... but I am a running dog lackey of the Western imperialists. :D
Waiting for the Stalinists to give their opinion of press freedom. Should be amusing.

I dont quite understand what is your question, can you rephrase it?
Thanks!

It's more of people's thoughts. I'm a librarian & have major issues with restriction to media (as a whole but primarily published)

Just looking for others thoughts about what is a seemingly endless issue in the States

It really depends. Moralistically banning books with swear words or sex in them should be opposed by all socialists. Censoring reactionary propaganda in times of revolution is a more complex issue. Personally, I'm against tolerating outlets for people who explicitly advocate organising against the state after the seizure of power by the working class.

I think the biggest problem we have right now is not state control of the information but its commodification trought market relations.

Someone that i know is in University right now recently told me she had access to some verry importants statistics and paper about various topics, stuff that you will not be able to find without being a university studient or a high paying suscriber of these privatised publications.

Obviously state censorship is pretty bad but markets right now do way more harm to the workers.

You touch on some of what I personally have issue with. My profession is really all about unfettered access; my personal thoughts are more on publications from hate groups.
I can be ok with Lolita but propaganda published by a pedophilia group would be a no-no (personally). Or Mein Kampf should be available but pro Stormfront (or Neo-Nazi or any white supremacist group) shouldn't be.

It's almost a "what line is drawn & where?" Say there is seizure by the working class, where does the worker's state end up being allowed to say "that's against us, so no-go"? It's a conundrum

In the states music, TV, & movies are controlled by the state. Explicit lyrics or dialogue determine what sticker & what "rating" is given (ok for kids/not ok/your child will kill you in your sleep... Ok, the last one isn't a rating).

Books & archives are very different & it depends on the repository (housing institution. I get archivist-y without realizing I'm using terms people may not know). I have access, as a researcher, to tons of Union documents. TONS. As does everyone who wants the access to that library.

But for some reason, the folks in the states aren't keen on access to all books. They restrict & ban them. And librarians fight for them not to be.

I don't WANT to be "hey, your book espouses rape, racism, & fascism. It needs to be available" but we can make other hate available. It's my new personal conflict because I love what my profession stands for.

ratings are OK has long has it dosnt stop something to be published, i dont see anything especially statist in that.

Or has i said, it depend of who own the repository. Has i demonstrated earlier, some publications are effectively blocked from the public beccause of the cost associated with consulting the damn thing, let alone using it to do something productive.

Yeah banning book and other media is in general pretty dumb, but i can see why shit like pedophile porn would be restricted.

What do you mean by other hate?

Well, i can understand why a publication saying shit like: ''lets kill all the gays!'' should be banned, and its beccause it actively make the lives of gays at risk.

Pretty much Mein Kampf is available but should some book with White Supremist rhetoric also be? What about ephemera from the KKK? Should the stuff from the 40's be archived but the newsletters from now tossed?

It depend a lot on both the context and the intent of the publications.
Has i said earlier, if there are serious risks that some peoples might be harmed or killed has a result of these publication, it should be restricted.

There must never be any restrictions on literature. The elitists are essentially saying "we are the all knowing vanguard that will shield the ignorant workers from bourgeois propaganda". I am personally insulted by these notions.

Its not the only argument around for the restricting of certain publications.
Has i said earlier, depending of both the context and the intent , it might be necessary to restrict a publication in order to prevent peoples to be harmed or even killed.

See, that's where it's iffy. Not speaking out against whatever government is going on but advocation of racism & sexism. Do we censor them? Is that correct? So much of me says no because MY opinion is mine & others must reach their own but when it's racism or sexism, how is one to tolerate?

No. You defeat them with the demonstrable superiority of your ideas.

No one has even mentioned the vanguard. Perhaps you should stop idealising the working class and look at the effect media (propaganda, advertising, fiction etc.) can have on the population in general. Why should the working class respect the "right" of bourgeois ideologues to call for action against it?

Let the sexists and the racists spew their garbage.
It is like the bourgeois governments war on drugs, it doesn't make it go away, it just forces it under ground. Our goal ought to be educate people, not ban everything we disagree with.

Why should the bourgeoisie respect our rights to call for action against them?

with all due respect, they dont really respect our right.
has a matter of fact they pretty much screw us over on a daily basis.

They allow it because we're not a threat. They have no obligation to and when tensions are high they won't.

I am all for freedom of the press, literature, news etc and believe that it should be healthy for any revolutionary government to withstand criticism from the media.

Although, it must be said, I can sympathise with the need to ban and censor the media during periods of Civil War for example.

However, it is a fundamental fact that under the Soviet Union people believed the 'State Run' media gave them false information even when they told the truth. Equally people believed that information given by the media in the Free World (Britain, America etc) was uniformly true, even when it was patently false.

Banning things makes people want them. Just look at how well prohibition of alchohol worked in America?

Let the press be free.

Although Stalin makes a good point when he supposedly said:

Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?
Its not an easy decision, especially considering I agree with Stalin's assessment that the average worker doesn't know about or want to know about the finer points of Marxism, and is happy to 'fight for his own Slavery' as Spinoza would say.

But ultimately, in the long run, I think its better to just take your chances and let all press be free, except in periods of Civil War or Revolutionary upheaval of course, because like it or not, that does constitute dangerous opposition to the cause of winning power for the proletariat

I think THAT is a lot of the affirmation I have needed. It's tough knowing these horrible things are out there & promoted but where do I get off saying someone cannot read? My profession pushes me to say that a patron has to have access to information.

(In the instance of archives, papers are released as agreed upon by the estate & the repository. The UAW is at 12 years I believe--as in they just opened 2001 for use)

I guarantee you I can go out into the streets right now and scream "fuck the bourgeois government".

Now, imagine I lived in Russia in the 1930s. I go out into the streets and scream "fuck the Stalinist government". No one hears from me again.

This is true and our labor history confirms it. All policy is dependent on material conditions. However, if bourgeois uprisings are a threat in a socialist society, then that says a lot about that given society. There should be no reason for society to turn back the evolutionary clock, unless of course, the progressives, i.e socialists, are doing something wrong, as was the case in the USSR.

Who is reading Mein Kamf and going "Wow it's the Jews fault, lets go kill some"
No one is. Just like no one listens to rage against the machine and discovers that they are suddenly anti capitalist.
Art is a reflection of life not the source of ideas.

No one reads a left wing book and discovers they are oppressed. They already know they are oppressed that is why they are reading.

Freedom of Speech is often a Bourgeois argument against the workers state oppressing the counter revolutionary efforts to reinstate capitalism. It's also what the KKK argues when they want to have a demonstration or march and many liberals agree with them on that point. We can have the FOS vs FOI discussion if you want but I think the OP gets the difference.

Freedom of Information is a different argument. Censoring books does not help the working class efforts to assert power, it hinders it. What you are saying when you agree with banning any books is that you agree with prosecuting and punishing librarians who "unlawfully" allow people to read whatever they want. So wtf, let the librarians run the libraries how they want to. It's called worker control of the means of production.

Well, they dont need to actively stop you, all they need is to keep owning the media while you scream outside like an idiot, and to deny you food and rent unless you work for money.

Hey, that beats a Gulag any day.

We do not need to actively resist the bourgeois in socialist society.

the result is pretty much the same tho, you will be silenced.

I read in the rules that one liners are not supposed to be allowed.

No, that was my point. I won't be silenced. I will remain a wage slave, yes, but I will have a voice.

My overall point is this: you can not establish freedom by stripping it away, especially when objective material conditions do not call for such absurdity.

But bottom line your influence will be second to none.

Also, dont be an absolutist, putting some restrictions in place dosnt mean the whole system is gonna go apeshit, if it goes apeshit it will be beccause the framework implemented prior to these restructions was corrupt.

What you are saying really sound like what the libertarian say about regulations, IE: there should not be any drug approval beccause 10 years ago some life saving drugs that could have been approved was delayed due to the need of further test.

I tell people that, if you're getting into anti-fascism and anti-racism, you need to read Mein Kampf at least once. No matter how painful or nauseating it may be, you need to read it. If you're ever going to understand the mindset of the fascist and the nazi, you need to get it from the source. So much of what Hitler writes in that book directly correlates to how modern fascism and neo-nazism evolved, and what it will ultimately result in.

I would say the same thing about The Turner Diaries as well, especially if you're an American antifa. You must read these to understand the mindset of the fascist, and how deeply destructive and reactionary it truly is (the 'night of the rope' in the TDs is the only time I've ever become nauseated from a piece of fiction).

Both books are hard, and deeply distressing to both the heart and the spirit, but in order to gain the knowledge to challenge the enemies of freedom and socialism, you need to know how they think.


THAT is why I oppose the censoring of reactionary materials. People need to be able to have the tools to combat evil, and we will need to preserve these texts so that, after the revolution, the human race will never repeat these mistakes.

If a large amount of people are still buying into reactionary propaganda after the revolution then we have not toppled ideology and therefore not had a successful revolution. Do european capitalists need to ban pro-feudalist texts? No, because feudalism has been defeated by capitalism there at an ideological level. If we have not toppled reactionary ideologies then we haven't had a revolution. Successful revolution implies the working class liberating themselves having already freed themselves from reactionary ideologies. If you haven't toppled those ideologies, making them illegal isn't going to topple them for you. I shouldn't matter if reactionary literature is available if we've already defeated those world views (see feudalism example). So no, texts should never be banned just because some pseudo-socialist state beaurocracy thinks they're reactionary. That will solve nothing.

Very well put, it seems many believe revolution to be only the physical implementation of socialism, and not its ideological victory.

Beautifully phrased! Very much my political thoughts & why I'm a librarian.

Excellent thoughts. My fence sitting was primarily "am I wrong to still be ok with such publications?" But your statement makes a great point & solidifies much of what my trepidation of even posting this might bring out; & I'm feeling good about how many of us are anti-censorship completely. It's a big thing we (librarians) deal with

I was going to post a wall of text, but Skwisgaar said mostly what I was going to say. So I'll just reiterate that banning books will not magically make capitalism disappear and is kind of a dumb idea. Transitional period, revolutionary transformation of society, material circumstance precedes ideology and not the other way around, etc etc.

It is pointless banning books today. now that we have the internet.

Yeah it's not like it is possible to censor the internet ...