Communication is freedom: Karl Marx on press freedom and censorship

Karl Marx addresses issues of freedom and communication during his brief ca reer as editor of the Rheinische Zeitung and Neue Rheinische Zeitung in Col ogne, Germany between 1843 and 1849 with remarkable clarity and intensity. His quest for freedom and the disclosure of truth are cornerstones of resis tance to official attempts to manipulate the understanding of freedom as li cense to act and to suggest that truth is relative and determinable by publ ic authorities. Marx identifies editorial practices with freedom of express ion that belongs to working journalists as an individual or collective righ t that governs the relations between journalists and public and private aut horities, including the owners of the press itself; freedom of the press, o n the other hand, as an economic consideration is a professional prerequisi te for intellectual labour. His ideas offer real alternatives to current de bates over freedom of the press and contemporary conditions of journalism: to sustain democracy requires freedom of expression and the protection of t he public sphere, including the media, particularly from forms of censorshi p that arise with the control of intellectual labour by those who own or in fluence the means of public communication.