opinions-political-marcuseRepressiveTolerance

http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/60spubs/65repressivetolerance.htm

I disagree.

Marcuse argues that, due to the indoctrination of the majority by the system of the status quo, procedural equality in freedom of speech leads to actual inequality in the contest of ideas. For example, many listeners will be familiar with the arguments in favor of the status quo, and will immediately apply them when they hear a subversive idea. More subtly, the common language and default paradigm supports the status quo, so even decent arguments against it will have a tendency to be mangled (as they are internally rephrased into the listener's known language and paradigm).

Because of this, Marcuse argues that procedural equality in freedom of speech should be denied to defenders of the system of the status quo. He argues that, due to indoctrination, most listeners aren't really "rational". Those who are rational can and should abrogate to themselves the determination of which ideas are progressive and which are regressive, and deny the regressive ones freedom of speech.

I disagree on three grounds, two theoretical and one practical. First, it isn't so easy to say who is rational and who isn't, and I suspect that the distinction isn't as binary as all that anyhow. Second, the idea that rational people can objectively determine which political ideas are good and which are bad is incorrect. This question is partially an empirical one, and while one can argue that such-and-such a policy will probably fail because it is unworkable in such-and-such a way, reasonable people can disagree about this.

Third, history shows that once ideological suppression is legitimated, it is often abused (even from the perspective of the group that originally instituted it).

I agree with him that the status quo has an unfair advantage, however. I propose to combat this without negating the political, procedural right of freedom of speech, but rather just by educating people about this and encouraging people to give more time to thoughts about subversion (on both an individual and a broadcast media level) to make up for our inherent bias. I agree that that won't be sufficient to counteract the bias. However, I think that given the lack of an objective procedure to determine which ideas to suppress, and given the practical dangers of legitimating suppression, it's better than the alternative.

(the idea of "rephrasing" is my own addition, not to say it hasn't been thought of by others, just that i can't burden marcuse with this thing i made up)