SOCIALISM, IN THEORY, is economic policy. But in practice, socialism has profound consequences on free speech. When we think of socialist regimes like the Soviet Union, Cuba, or Venezuela, we picture state-owned media, monotony of thought, and jail time—or worse—for dissidents. Why?

The answer is simple. Socialist states have only existed by controlling what people hear and say.

Socialism is premised on the fundamentally misguided ideas that the collective is more important than the individual, and the best way to help the individual is to champion the collective (via government).

Just as these misguided ideas mutate into misguided economic policies, they mutate into misguided restrictions on speech. Take, for instance, the socialist idea that individual rights must yield to the collective good. In socialist societies, that notion has repeatedly given rise to censorship. When socialist governments silence dissenting views, they justify their action on socialist grounds. Censorship is necessary, they tell us, to prevent the dissemination of “dangerous ideas.”

We see shades of this in America today. Local governments across the nation have enacted bans on “hate speech,” “offensive speech,” and even “political speech.” For example, the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) rejected PLF client Jon Kotler’s personalized license plate “COYW”—the acronym for his favorite soccer team’s slogan, “Come on You Whites” (referencing their white jerseys)—because they said it was potentially offensive.

As misguided as these laws are in theory, they are even more sinister in practice. After all, someone must define open-ended terms like “hate” and “offensive.” As we saw in PLF’s recent Minnesota Voters Alliance Supreme Court case, a government official wielding that expansive power is likely to stifle speech he or she personally finds disagreeable: in the Minnesota case, a Tea Party T-shirt.

These restrictions on individual thought trouble us but represent the socialist norm. Socialist regimes routinely regulate speech under the guise of championing and protecting the people. Little surprise, then, that those governments are concerned not so much with the marketplace of ideas, but with controlling those ideas.

Socialism is based on the premise that government control is necessary to facilitate individual prosperity. But America’s experience shows just the opposite is true. The great movements of our time—abolition of slavery, equality before the law, and others—championed people as individuals regardless of the collective to which they belonged. We must remain committed to free speech. One starting point is rejecting socialism and the inevitable limits on speech that come with it.