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.
Repression of speech isn’t transitionary. You could say that the nature of repression changes during a socialist transition. Repression of speech exists aplenty in capitalist states. Just the criteria of acceptability and mechanisms of censorship are different.
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.
to add to your point, repression of speech is often a transitional period
Repression of speech isn’t transitionary. You could say that the nature of repression changes during a socialist transition. Repression of speech exists aplenty in capitalist states. Just the criteria of acceptability and mechanisms of censorship are different.