[Translated from Sozialistische Gruppe]
Freedom of opinion is one of the quality seals of democracy. It is highly regarded that the forming of opinions and their expression are emphatically permitted.
That this should be a plus for democracy is already a bit thick. It is stated so flatly, as if this service to the people were a miracle, as if humankind, up until the invention of democracy and its generous permissions, were stumbling through the world without opinions or speech. But everyone, because they have will and intellect, had opinions, even in the “darkest” days of the Middle Ages and under the most “totalitarian” rule, and expressed these at home and probably even in the tavern. Certain statements sometimes may have been unwelcome, or even completely forbidden, by the rule. However, this is still no reason to celebrate one's own state for the fact that it does not do this and that something as natural as forming and expressing opinions is specially permitted.
With its permission, the democratic state does not simply let the expression of opinion be, keep itself outside the sphere of thinking, and declare its incompetence. It makes the rather banal fact that everyone always thinks what he thinks into a legal question, and also its concern. It does not let the forming and expressing of opinions simply take its course, but meddles and indeed in its interest.
But then that's what the right to free speech and opinion is about: it does not serve the facilitation of thinking and expressing opinions in the country, but on the contrary serves their regimentation. By the permission to free expression of opinions, it licenses them under its terms and conditions.
Therefore, it is also no wonder that the state sometimes feels defied, and proceeds with a lot of force against the abuse of this right, and forbids opinions.
The reproach that the bourgeois state, in its actions against opinions, infringes on the right to freedom of opinion, is quixotic. If it proceeds against opinions, then it applies this right, declaring which opinion is free and which is a violation of this right. The state's actions document the fact that it means something quite different with the principle of free opinion than the critic, this shows that notions of freedom of opinion have very little to do with it. Instead of insisting that freedom of opinion should be as one imagines it – which is always an acknowledgement that it isn’t – it would be appropriate, on the contrary, to look at the freedom of opinion and its logic and to learn why the state decrees it. It is not reasonable to regard the deviation of something from one's own good opinion about it as a criticism; such a critique, no matter how harsh, gives fundamental credit to the subject matter under review.
The right to free opinion is an order to respect the opinion of others. On the one hand, it is the state guarantee that nobody may come along and dispute what one thinks. On the other hand, it is the state ban on challenging and dissuading what others may believe about God and the world if one regards it as nonsense. With the demanded respect, the content of an opinion – one's own as well as others’ – is not to be taken seriously – since then one would have to refer to the thought and argue about its character – but to accept opinions in principle, indifferent to what is believed with them and how contradictory they may be.
With the tolerance demanded by the freedom of opinion, the content of an opinion does not count. Rather, what counts is only the fact that whoever has an opinion may have it, regardless of its content. The opinions of people, their judgments about God and the world, are explained as something their very own, as something that pertains and belongs to the person who expresses them. In this way, thoughts are made into a purely personal affair by the right to free opinion. They have absolutely no obligation for themselves, but rather, only because of the person who expresses them, are to be treated with respect.
The right to free opinion is the requirement to treat all opinions as purely personal expressions. Thus what is expressed there is reduced to purely subjective statements: one no longer makes out the content of the thought and the statement, judges what it says, what it deals with, what it is all about, but, because the opinion is valid only for and to the individual, what the thing means to someone, what one can get from it. Freedom of opinion is the state order to practice modesty, in that one refrains from knowing about the social relations in which one is situated in order to draw practical conclusions from them, and instead uses thinking to give meaning to everything and everyone.
It is clear that this destructive act by the state in the sphere of thought is a direct result of the tolerance commandment: if all opinions are to be equally respected, then nobody may emerge with thoughts that would be more than merely his, but everybody has to retract them as mere opinions from which nothing follows – for or against others. In this way, one has to abstain from taking one’s own thoughts seriously which regards statements that provide advice about what one has to do and consequently what is to be put into action. Then thinking has the duty to bring no disorder into the world, but to arrange itself according to it. One presupposes in thinking whatever one comes up against and, as a result, asks only what’s in it for oneself. One has always already accommodated the criteria that apply to one’s own living conditions, theoretically as well as practically.
Free speech is nothing other than the state obligation – in thinking as in action – to adapt.
If the social reality is presupposed, and the thinking and acting of the people have to adapt to it, then it is clear that the people are not the subject of their social conditions and create them with their knowledge and in accordance with their intentions. Rather, they are subjected to their social conditions, to whose yardsticks they have to correspond in their actions. They experience their own social conditions as an incomprehensible and uncontrollable coercion, which contains purely “objective” necessities that must be respected and obeyed. This whole circus is only possible if there is a power enthroned above and beyond all interests, which sets up this relation of subordination and, as the guardian of these “objective” necessities, makes them valid.
As everyone knows, in democracy, as opposed to other forms of rule, “there shall be no censorship.” This gets democracy a big plus in the public mind, and gets other forms of government a big minus. Thus, e.g. Cuba is made into a stronghold of totalitarianism in the US press because it refuses to tolerate so many spokesmen of the spiritual or divine edification of the word and excludes them from public life as “dissidents.” When Cuba censors the opinions of people, it places itself in opposition to the advocated matter: it encases certain incriminated opinions with force and in this respect has to account for why it judges the persecuted statements as wrong. As twisted and outrageous as these justifications may ever be, Cuba, in its use of force in dealing with its critics, takes the deviating opinions as serious judgments.
It is different in a democracy. It decrees freedom of opinion for its society and with it censors no opinion in the country for its content. Rather, it generously grants its subjects the permission to maintain anything, provided that they do not insist that it is correct, and in such a way that they don't attribute any commitment to their views. While the democratic state does not censor a single judgment, but rather forbids judgment itself, it decrees a truly totalitarian ban on criticism: every opinion must inscribe on itself that it will not shake up what exists.
If the citizens follow the order of free speech, they may grumble about anything, as well as get publicly excited about anything that they are discontent with in democracy, and in the process need to observe no stipulations on substance. As long as it is clear with this whole yapping that they presuppose what applies in the society, that its existing standards are not scratched but assumed, it also looks accordingly: discontent then always appears in the name of that which applies, and turns over the eternal problem of whether something corresponds to the existing standards or whether the people themselves are not guilty of an oversight. Democracy does not need to be afraid of the discontent of its citizens: by permitting its subjects, with free speech, to express their discontent publicly, it separates discontent and criticism and thereby makes the discontent of its citizens functional for itself.
Democracy recognizes its enemies and brands them publicly by registering a methodological offense, indifferent to the advocated content: that someone does not take part in the democratic status-assignment to thought of being opinions without consequences, and even insists on his opinions and their validity, is immediately taken to want to persist in practice as a consequence. A democracy does not tolerate such a thing; that is not permitted ideas, but revolution! “No freedom for the enemies of freedom” is the motto of democracy when it slams shut against this improper tolerance with its entire force apparatus. Against arguments – whether they are simply correct or downright nonsense, it’s all the same – only one means occurs to democracy: force.