Karl Marx on press Freedom Support the Right to Know Campaign

Simon Spoor alerted me to this excellent article by Karl Marx on press freedom. The Right to Know campaign is mobilising local and global public opinion against the government’s Secrecy Bill. What Marx says about press freedom is also true for the right to access information. The Marx article is difficult but worth working through and it also makes good points about law. It tells me why a socialist prefers a judge to a state official and why we prefer “the rule of law to the rule of men [and some women]“.

This quote from Marx romantic though it is captures the discussion and shows why we should resist any attempt to muzzle the media and to deny us access to information.

The free press is the ubiquitous vigilant eye of a people’s soul, the embodiment of a people’s faith in itself, the eloquent link that connects the individual with the state and the world, the embodied culture that transforms material struggles into intellectual struggles and idealises their crude material form. It is a people’s frank confession to itself, and the redeeming power of confession is well known. It is the spiritual mirror in which a people can see itself, and self-examination is the first condition of wisdom. It is the spirit of the state, which can be delivered into every cottage, cheaper than coal gas. It is all-sided, ubiquitous, omniscient. It is the ideal world which always wells up out of the real world and flows back into it with ever greater spiritual riches and renews its soul.

Democratic rights are not for sale to private interests nor to be sacrificed for political expediency. The government of President Jacob Zuma must withdraw its assaults on our freedoms.

Source: Writing Rights: Zackie Achmat