A Soviet broadcaster once explained the official policy on the content of radio programmes:

It is an argument which typically finds no favour with liberals, not least because the official policy seems to express intolerance for any view which does not accord with those laid down by the state. Soviet claims upon the word ‘toleration’ are seen, by the liberal, as a cynical exercise in redefinition: the Soviet state tolerates only that which it approves. But is the gap between the two views as wide as it sometimes seems? This is the question to which this chapter is directed.

Tolerance is most commonly referred to as a liberal value. It is held to epitomise the liberal's concern for freedom of speech and action, for free choice and intellectual scepticism. Marxism seems almost to confirm this link between liberalism and tolerance by the disdain it expresses for the institutions and assumptions which enshrine liberal values. As Merleau-Ponty once wrote: ‘To tell the truth and to act out of conscience are nothing but alibis of a false morality, true morality is not concerned with what we think or what we want.’