Under socialism, I don't believe there should be freedom of speech for reactionaries, there's still an active class struggle going on in the ideological sphere. Letting old ideas fester in the superstructure runs the risk of capitalist restoration.

Under communism, sure whatever, it's not like any remaining reactionaries can do anything at that point.

Fun fact: it's in China's constitution.

I believe in censoring reactionaries, and explaining why we do it.

Freedom of speech isn't real and never has been. It's a lot like the free market that way. What is real is regulated speech and a regulated market.

Under capitalism, speech and market are regulated in favor of the capitalists at the expense of everyone else.

Under a socialist state, speech and market are regulated in favor of the working class (the common people) and capitalist power is repressed.

Some states in history are more repressive than others about what speech is allowed, but this doesn't inherently mean anything by itself. We still have to look at whose interests the repression is in favor of and for what purpose. For example, it's possible that a vanguard state that is currently transitioning from capitalism to socialism may be especially repressive of speech from the reaction and only let up a bit when power is more stable. On the flip side, it's possible that a capitalist state will let people say a wide variety of things as long as they don't turn it into political organizing because it can easily outspend some minority views; but it gets even more tricky than that under capitalism, as sometimes it's not about what is explicitly legal or illegal to say, but rather whether you can feasibly afford to get your message out.

In summary, quantity/range of how much you are legally allowed to say is almost meaningless on its own as a metric of anything. We have to take into account factors like whose interests speech laws favor, the logistics of being heard, and what developments a state is going through that drives its current actions relating to speech.

I think it doesn't exist and never has.

Freedom of speech is an excuse for liberals to allow fascism to fester without having to do anything about it (until it is too late), and it is not even a standard they are willing to abide by whenever they need to oppress the workers. Freedom of speech is a terrible idea under capitalism because media is inherently biased towards the bourgeoisie and they attack communist views (in different ways depending on what type of capitalist supporter they are) whenever they become prominent if the FBI's ruthless attacks on dissidents during the Civil Rights Movement was anything to go by.

Under socialism, it is a terrible idea because it would allow libservantives to influence society in ways that attempt to restore the capitalism of old, so any principled communist (not just Marxist-Leninists) should be against freedom of speech. Let them call us authoritarians or totalitarians for railing against the rights of fascists to spread their maggotry.

Edit: To be clear, there should be room for criticism of failed policies under socialism because that is how the vanguard can better act in the interests of the proletariat; I am against active attempts to overthrow socialism by way of supporting freedom of speech, though.

I'd argue the whole freedom of speech idea is basically just propaganda designed to portray the liberal democracy as being more enlightened than other types of societies, which is then used to justify western hostility to other human civilizations.

Every society, without exception, puts some limits on freedom of expression. There is zero reason to believe that the west got the balance right while everybody else has got it wrong. And seeing how western society is now losing all social cohesion by becoming atomized into competing thought bubbles, I'd argue there's plenty of reason to think the west got it wrong.

A society needs to have to have a common world view to be functional. That world view can evolve over time, but at least some core principles need to be generally accepted. For example, people have to have a common agreement of how politics and economics function in their society. Without that, any sort of progress becomes difficult because everybody pulls in a different direction. We see this happen in western parliamentary democracies all the time. You get one party in power and it tries to pass one set of policies, then another party comes in and starts reverting those policies. So, any projects have a very short horizon of just a few years that a particular party can stay in power. However, even here the parties cannot deviate too far from the agreed upon model. A party has to subscribe to liberalism and capitalism to even get into power. Parties with different ideologies are inherently shut out from the whole process.

A second aspect of this is that the type of free speech championed in the west is superficial because it generally does not translate into any material action. People have the right to scream into the void. As soon as criticism starts to translate into any sort of organized movement then the state takes action to suppress it. And this is often done with brutal violence. The murder of Fred Hampton being a perfect example.

Finally, we are now seeing the whole narrative collapsing even in the west as countries rush to limit expression online, pass age verification laws, ban foreign media, and so on. All this illustrates that a high degree freedom of expression was only really possible because the material conditions facilitated general consensus that the system was working in the interest of the public. When most people have their needs met, and the standard of living is higher than in other regions of the world, then you don't need to actively suppress dissent. Now that the material conditions are changing, we're seeing attacks on freedom of expression.

The control of speech should be in the hands of the working classes, to restrict from reactionaries and disinformation. Too much restriction stifles discussion, a lack of control cedes ground to fascists. That's why the class character of speech and how it relates to a socialist state needs to be analyzed as such.

It’s a meme.

In the context of the West, it's just a talking point to me to culturally ingrain onto us the normalization of reactionary and, at best liberal, speech, a lot of which is filtered in through media on the basis of Capital, while materially cracking down on revolutionary voices. Red Sails made an essay about it.

Hugo Black, the Supreme Court justice most closely identified with First Amendment Absolutism, by his own account, “never believed that any person has a right to give speeches or engage in demonstrations where he pleases and when he pleases.” [14] He also distinguished speech from “conduct.” [15] Hence, he supported prohibitions on flag-burning, the wearing of anti-war armbands in high school, protesting on government property and “Fuck the Draft” t-shirts.

“Freedom of speech” is an abstract principle that doesn’t exist in any meaningful sense. What does exist is access to or control over platforms and the means to spread their ideas. So in that sense, I think the working class should have control over those platforms.

I view freedom of speech as not an ideology, but rather as a privilege/luxury for places with favorable conditions and a lack of existential threats. The West liked to flaunt free market and free speech ideals back when they had a massive soft power advantage over the late USSR and emerging world, now that they are losing the economic/soft power game against China they are placing the shoe on the other foot and doing away with those ideals in favor of protectionist and nationalistic measures.

Freedom of speech doesn't exempt one from the consequences of actions. If you spout reactionary nonsense, you will get punished, simple as.

Generally the way that "freedom of speech" is used in a capitalist context is a half-baked idea. When a government says "we will not restrict any form of speech under any circumstances", they haven't made a promise to protect an inalienable right of the working person, they've created a power vacuum to be filled by capitalist firms. Proletarian freedom of speech should be a combination of the negative right (will not prevent speech) and a positive right (will prevent others from preventing speech), and must be balanced with other rights that people have (people's speech must not cause harm).

Liberal governments also all too commonly reveal themselves to be hippocrites even by their own half-baked standards of speech. The fact of the matter is that the freedom of speech as practiced by bourgeois dictatorships is the freedom of the ruling class to control information flows in society. Our own governments have made the calculation that allowing a certain amount of dissenting speech among the populace is not a threat to them, which is the only reason we're allowed to be on this website saying these things - if Communism enjoyed a resurgence in Western democracies we would see a return to Red scares and blacklists for sure.

Freedom of criticism 👍

Freedom of hate speech 👎

I think (maybe it's a deepity/pseudophilosophical drivel) that freedom of speech is a collective right, that is, while a society should be allowed to speak its mind, an individual person (eg. a reactionary) not necessarily so

"freedom" is an idealist concept. Nothing is "Free" there are always constraints on everything.

Should people feel free to voice their opinions? sure why not as long as other people are free to say those opinions as fucking stupid. Should people be free to promote hate and spread slander? no. Should foreign actors be free to spread divisive ideas? no. Should capitalists be able to pay dominate the conversation when their opinions are biased against the majority? no.

"A victim of collision on the open sea

Nobody ever said that life was free

Sink, swim, go down with the ship

But use your freedom of choice"

~ DEVO

It's treated as a right when it's a privilege.

It's constantly abused as a 'right', with people citing the primacy of their rights over all other considerations as justification to be cruel.

And it's cynically manipulated by didacts and polemicists in the same way.

I hate freedom of speech. Freedom of speech makes my town filled with paramiliters.

Although I hate freedom of speech, I support flexibility of speech.

I am sorry if my english is bad

I've always thought it's the control of the audience that is more important. Easy to grant "freedom of speech" when they can limit and control who gets to hear it. The old "if a tree falls in a forest" adage.