The Limits of Free Speech

Advocating Revolution.

A longtime leading member of a militant faction in the Social Democratic Party (USA), Benjamin Gitlow was a vocal public supporter of the Russian Revolution of November 1917. In June 1919 as business manager for Revolutionary Age, a publication of the Social Democrats, Gitlow approved the distribution around New York City of twelve thousand copies of an issue that featured a manifesto declaring the need for a similar violent uprising in the United States. He gave his assent with the full knowledge that this piece violated the provisions of a sedition act passed by the New York General Assembly in 1916. Gitlow and several other people were subsequently arrested, but state prosecutors decided to try him individually, charging that he had promoted "criminal anarchy" within the state boundaries of New York, even publicly "hawking" copies of the journal in Herald Square, Manhattan.

The...

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