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cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1892258
Source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/aug/05.htm
this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
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Informed Tankie
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What you are saying is not true. Under socialism, the government is made out of representatives democratically elected by workers who care about the interest of workers. Also, socialism is a system which main goal is to benefit people, so every person in power has that goal. Therefore, news will be more transparent because their point is to show the truth to people instead of just being manipulated information paid off by the wealthy which is the case right now. What you called “both sides” is the same side paying off the two political parties that it owns to write slightly different content.
A dictatorship of the proletariat would be interested in news that help the people and not that help the bourgeoisie.
Who “buys and bribes” the press under the government? The government, of course, but in the name of what? A certain class. Under the bourgeoisie, the press serves the bourgeois state regardless of direct ownership, this is what Lenin is attempting to demonstrate. How do you refute this? You don’t, just as Lenin said you cannot. Instead you say that having direct government ownership is worse. Why? Because “government is evil and market relations are good as a rule”. How is this demonstrated? By you asserting it?
Probably not worth bothering with this one, they seem like an ancap lol
Like, they literally post in a "capitalist questions and discussions" community to make posts praising free market capitalism and complaining about the evils of government intervention (any government intervention)
I want to specialize in converting libs though since we are short on people for the revolution 😅
I'm seriously perplexed what these people think they'll accomplish by trying to bait here.
'Let the people elected to power decide what the masses get to see, they're not self interested'
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahhahahahahahahahahahahaha
Even if they were all evil, the bourgeoisie are much worse as we can see today
It's a little more complicated to argue that the free market is good for the consumer (though it can be done), but it's pretty easy to argue that government is self-interested and power-hungry.
Firstly, history. Nearly every government ever has been populated with people concerned with their own power. Even since the popularization of democracy, governments were still incredibly corrupt and did not operate out of a love for the people. All democracy really does to alleviate a government's self-interest is make charisma more important during election cycles, which doesn't do anything to shift the government's interests.
The people in the government are the same type of people as CEOs and people who run multi-billion companies. Whether they're put in power by military force, by elections, or by people willingly giving them money for a good or service in return, they are all people who are 100% acting in their own self-interest collecting as much wealth and power as possible. The only thing that elections do is make it so that sometimes, some government officials have to appear to be good (or appear not as bad as their opponent).
That's way easier if the press is under the government's control though. Now, the government could imprison anyone who doesn't talk about how nice the president is to puppies for at least an hour. Or, less drastically, they could revoke your press license if you say that the things the president is saying is wrong (and then fine or imprison you if you deliver news without a license).
In a free press though, even if all the major news sources are owned by the same people (which is a good point and probably to some extent true, though I don't know to what extent), there's nothing stopping new people from popping up and delivering what they believe to be honest, unbiased news. That won't be the only type of person who pops up, and it'll be exploited a lot, but the possibility of a good news source exists now.