Majority Rule in Media

More Trotsky as promised. This idea just strikes me as horrific. Can you imagine it?

Soviet America will have to find a new solution for the question of how the power of the press is to function in a socialist regime. It might be done on the basis of proportional representation for the votes in each soviet election.

Thus the right of each group of citizens to use the power of the press would depend on their numerical strength – the same principle being applied to the use of meeting halls, allotment of time on the air and so forth.

Thus the management and policy of publications would be decided not by individual checkbooks but by group ideas. This may take little account of numerically small but important groups, but it simply means that each new idea will be compelled, as throughout history, to prove its right to existence.

Today we have every niche market imaginable - from organic "fair trade" clothes pins to Kosher liver patties, to communist radio and anarchist newsletters; what would we have under a rule whereby only the popular media (and products) were delivered? This is one critical failure of socialist thinking. The market provides for the little guy; pure democracy (if it were possible under central planning) would not.