Chapter 2 article 35: Citizens of the People’s Republic of China shall enjoy freedom of speech, the press, assembly, association, procession and demonstration.
ARTICLE 125: In conformity with the interests of the toilers, and in order to strengthen the socialist system, the citizens of the U.S.S.R. are guaranteed by law: — (a) Freedom of speech; (b) Freedom of the Press ; © Freedom of assembly and of holding mass meetings; (d) Freedom of street processions and demonstrations.
I’m not going to sit here and be like “urmagod china ussr is a 1984 dictatorism” but I do just want to know what this actually means. For instance, both countries engaged in very obvious censorship and banning of materials. I’m not saying these actions were right or wrong, but just (at least on the face of it) contradictory to the previously stated articles. Presumably there have been court cases in both of these countries that actually helps outline what they mean.
This isn’t to say Bourgeois countries follow freedom of speech either (I will leave proving this as an exercise to the reader. And by exercise I mean a slow walk to the other side of the room), but I think my main question is why include them so broadly, or at all really, if they [at least from what I remember] haven’t really been enforced
And because of that transparency, it actually has lead to, among other things, significantly better media literacy. In the west people take the news headlines at face value because we have free press, so therefore whatever you read is probably true. In reality, its just as obscured, censored, and biased towards the bourgeoisie as socialist state owned media is to their state. However in such societies, people know that going into it and therefore think more critically about what they read. Where in the west we see people believing every little thing they see on facebook, people in socialist states are more incentivized to go out and actually educate themselves because they are under no illusions of an infallible free press.
Both systems are equally as repressive (granted towards different parts of society), yet the outcome is fairly different.
I mostly agree. “Equally repressive” does read very bothsideist though. One state is repressive against 99% of their population, deadly so against anyone left of center. The other state is repressive against a tiny minority of fascists and a couple of otherwise state/socialism opposed people, mostly. That is a hugely different thing.
I suppose ‘capacity for repression’ is a better way to say it. That was supposed to be more demonstrative of the nature of media in class struggle (and how it doesnt change no matter who controls it) instead of calling socialist systems repressive