Freedom of the Press/Source
Freedom of the Press and Marxism
Philosophies
Early in Karl Marx’s career, he was widely read and praised for his press publications. In 1842, he became editor of the Rheinsche Zeitung für Politik. Handel und Gewerbe which was a newspaper that reported on issues pertaining to politics, trade and commerce. The Rheinische Zeitung as a whole was a reformist publication that presented and promoted many pro-democracy ideals in a time of Prussian absolutism. The freedom of the press was one of which Marx himself advocated for, largely in response to the government’s increasing support for censorship at the time. These debates that occurred within the Rhineland province of Prussia spurred several articles written by Marx that not only promoted freedom of the press in and of itself, but provided his own insight as to the importance of preserving such a freedom.
Throughout his articles, Marx rebukes arguments made both against the freedom of the press and for censorship. These claims come directly from the debates held by the Sixth Rhine Province Assembly. Marx lays down the foundation for his argument first by rationalizing the limitations of those within the Assembly advocating for free press by exposing their natural disconnect from the issue. Marx claims that “They have never come to know freedom of the press as a vital need. For them it is a matter of the head, in which the heart plays no part,” (Rheinische Zeitung No. 125, Supplement May 5 1842). This, in turn, leads defenders to put forward “vague arguments” that are overwhelmed by the opposing arguments promoting censorship. Notably, Marx then refers to another influential German thinker, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, alluding to the importance of sentimental bonds or, to put it bluntly, love for something. Marx concludes that in order to defend something, one must love it and in order to love something, that thing must be essential to one's existence. The defenders of freedom of the press in the Assembly, as Marx states, “seem to enjoy a complete existence even in the absence of any freedom of the press,” (Rheinische Zeitung No. 125, Supplement May 5 1842).
Following Marx’s opening critique of the debates themselves, he provides a complete rebuttal to the claims made by the speaker of the knightly estate who argued in favor of censorship. Throughout his argument, the speaker insinuates a dissonance between the Assembly as an internal faction of the population that should, at least for the interim, be insulated by the external forces of the provinces. This, Marx believes, is contradictory to the creation of the Assembly itself: “Nothing is more contradictory than that the highest public activity of the province is secret, that in private lawsuits the doors of the court are open to the province, but that in its own lawsuit the province has to remain outside,” (Rheinische Zeitung No. 130, Supplement May 10 1842). This specific claim stems from the lack of accessibility given to the press to report and discuss the decisions and actions pursued by the Assembly. Marx finds it staggering, to say the least, that the public may involve itself in private proceedings and less important legal dealings but is barred from inquiring about decisions made by the Assembly–decisions that clearly impact the lives and welfare of the constituents of each province. However, the speaker does not make his claim without making an argument to support it: “Precisely for that reason [the members of the Assembly] are most of all able to appreciate the value of our words, and do so the more frankly as we allow ourselves to be less subject to external influences, which could only be useful if they came to us in the form of well-meaning counsel, but not in the form of a dogmatic judgment, of praise or blame, seeking to influence our personality through public opinion," (Rheinische Zeitung No. 130, Supplement May 10 1842). This “obtrusively emotional” reasoning does not truly prioritize the safety of an effective Assembly rather it promotes the “Parliamentary freedom” that innately reinforces the hierarchical separation between the ruling class and the provinces. Censorship only further reinforces this “antithesis of the Assembly as something internal and the province as something external,” (Rheinische Zeitung No. 130, Supplement May 10 1842).
These publications are what inspired and propelled Marx to actively argue in favor of the freedom of the press. Marx justifies freedom of the press as “an embodiment of freedom, a positive good, whereas censorship is an embodiment of unfreedom… it has a merely negative nature,” (Rheinische Zeitung No. 132, Supplement May 12 1842). This definition explicitly ties Marxism to the promotion of freedom of the press. With that being said, Marx also claims that censorship “is not an end in itself,” rather the unjustified means to an unjustified end. He calls it “a bad police measure, for it does not achieve what it intends, and it does not intend what it achieves,” (Rheinische Zeitung No. 132, Supplement May 12 1842). Marx concluded that censorship actually augments any “forbidden piece of printed matter” to an “event” and “martyr” to its believers. In other words, censorship works against itself and against those who believe there is something to be gained from it. In this specific publication, Rheinische Zeitung No. 132, Marx finalizes his concerns and frustration in a poetic denouncement of censorship in favor of freedom of the press: “You think it barbaric to blind nightingales, but it does not seem to you meaningless at all barbaric to put out the eyes of the press with the sharp pens of the censorship. You regard it as despotic to cut a free person's hair against his will, but the censorship daily cuts into the flesh of thinking people and allows only bodies without hearts, submissive bodies which show no reaction, to pass as healthy!” (Rheinische Zeitung No. 132, Supplement May 12 1842).
Sources:
“On Freedom of the Press Proceedings of the Sixth Rhine Province Assembly Debates on Freedom of the Press and Publication of the Proceedings of the Assembly of the Estates.” 2000. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_On_freedom_of_the_Pres s.pdf.