What is the argument there tho, that at the margins the left is allowed to develop which could turn into a mass movement, so allowing dissidents is a good idea for America? Good for us right now, but if the state ruthlessly squashed every dissident left voice the margin would likely be even thinner than it is now, and more hidden. Which has definitely worked for them in the past, and it worked for the USSR in suppressing fascists dissidents, and it seems to largely work in China where they have leftist organizing, but the party co-opts what it can and dispersed the rest. Meanwhile, up to 70% of the population are reportedly in favor of the party.
Which is just to say, repression works for who it is applied against. Sure, the USSR fell to revisionism, but revisionists weren’t the ones targeted. The original revisionism wasn’t framed as market reforms exactly, it was framed as things like using shadow prices and profits to enhance production for the transition to greater socialism. Or in China the same thing, with the strategy to bring in more foreign investment and foreign currency through controlled exports and sanctioned investment zones to “move towards the development of MoP for next stage of socialism” etc. This was all given cover as “still socialist”, within the confines of allowable discussion. What wasn’t allowed was alternative parties or fascists, which all got effectively crushed and suppressed. So the real problem here isn’t that suppression of free speech allows some fight club movement of secretive dissidents to gain mass support, it rarely if ever goes that way. It’s that the controllers of the repressive state may even nominally agree with you (“we are the communist/people’s party!”), but in reality the suppression of speech is the suppression of dissent against the group of cadres in power right now and their right to maintain it. Non-ideologically. It’s just realpolitik.
