this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023

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All over the world, wherever there are capitalists, freedom of the press means freedom to buy up newspapers, to buy writers, to bribe, buy and fake "public opinion" for the benefit of the bourgeoisie (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

35 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1892258

Source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/aug/05.htm

all 36 comments

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Lenin lookin kinda hot in this pic no lie😨

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah! It is crazy that in every western search engine, the pictures that come from him are of him looking serious, but the ones on Yandex are all of him looking happy and stylish. You can clearly see the bias of the western search engine.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Huh, never thought of that before but it makes sense, time to check out Yandex

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

For more privacy you can use 4get.ca , they scrape results from Yandex and other search engines

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Vlad with the drip

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I hope you won't get mad - but the style of the renegade Kautsky was much better (guy on the right with sunglasses)

[–] MushuChupacabra 5 points 1 year ago

All over the world, wherever a communist regime is in place, the politburo dictates all information disseminated through mass media, for the benefit of the ones in power.

Bourgeoisie, high ranking communist party official, despot, whatever; if the power differential between you the reader, and the ones with editorial control is high enough, you can be certain that your being told what to think.

[+] [email protected] -30 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I saw this quote earlier today and responded to it there, but I'll also comment here.

If the press is not free, it means the government owns it. This means that they'll use it to manipulate narratives and take control. This is bad because the government is exclusively self-interested and evil. It will not hesitate to perform the worst acts imaginable to secure wealth and power.

The best model for the press (at least, that I can think of) is a free market press. One where people freely and continuously choose which press they'd like to support and the more support a news company receives, the more people it can deliver news to.

Yes, there's a risk that the press is bought and bribed, but it's a guarantee with a government controlled press (in that case, the government is the one to buy the press).

Without government involvement, people can hear both sides of the story and the possibility for new, unbiased journalists exists.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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)

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

I want to specialize in converting libs though since we are short on people for the revolution 😅

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I'm seriously perplexed what these people think they'll accomplish by trying to bait here.

[+] [email protected] -19 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I don't hate to break it to you that

free market press

will never work with

free market economy

[+] [email protected] -19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

uh, why? It seems like a free market economy is exactly where a free market press would work. Companies might buy news companies, but thanks to no government interaction, other news companies can pop up, make money because they deliver a service people want, and then grow.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

other news companies can pop

And existing monopolies won't give a fuck about it, yeah.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They might not like it but it's what happens anyway. I don't have many examples off the top of my head, but I do know of at least one YouTuber who gives updates on geopolitics.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

They might not like it but it’s what happens anyway.

But, what actually happens in reality is, this...

Six corporations own 90% of news media in the United States. They’re NBCUniversal (COMCAST), Disney, Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), VIACOM, News Corporation, and AT&T. All of these companies have rich executives who’ve been known to fund not just individual politicians, but both heads of the American party (I.E. both the Republican and the Democratic parties). Our government is owned by corporations, and those corporations also own our information.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Why would any top company allow others to challenge their market share? Why does the trend under capitalism (where economic power stands above political power, and governments) tend towards increasing monopolization / fewer companies, in every industry?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is bad because the government is exclusively self-interested and evil.

I love me some tautological nothings!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Tautological means that it’s a true statement in every possible case, but the government being evil isn’t.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is moreso how I meant it.

"This is bad... because [they're] evil."

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

This is bad… because [they’re] evil

Ah, I see the tautology now lol

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Read Parenti - Inventing reality. You need to badly.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

ban hammer

but it is worth mentioning that both the USSR back in the day, and China now ha[d][ve] state-owned press, and they also allow[ed] anyone to publish their own press. The USSR was also known to allow its state-owned journalists to publish critiques of the government, and present information in ways that didn't always suit the state. Socialist press was and is far more free than "free" market press.

All of the major news organizations in the West get large portions of their funding from their governments. Some of them also get their funding from the funders of politicians. The vast majority of "independent" journalists will quote those organizations in their publications, meaning "independent" journalism in the West is nothing more than an extension of mainstream media. The only ones who break from this norm are publications that attempt to oppose MSM's reporting.

Six corporations own 90% of news media in the United States. They're NBCUniversal (COMCAST), Disney, Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), VIACOM, News Corporation, and AT&T. All of these companies have rich executives who've been known to fund not just individual politicians, but both heads of the American party (I.E. both the Republican and the Democratic parties). Our government is owned by corporations, and those corporations also own our information.

Meanwhile, if you were to go to China and rummage through their news media, you'd see that their media is much more honest about where it comes from, and it's far easier to find the true truth. Sure, sometimes the state-owned media won't publish the full truth, but there are always a few actually independent journalists who're covering the same story, who will publish other views of the situation. That's heaps better than what we have here.

[+] diocan -41 points 1 year ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (8 children)

[removed by mod]

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago

Don’t you love slums, homelessness, people not being able to afford education or medical bills, low minimum wages that are supposed to be made livable by customers tipping, genocidal war crimes on the 3rd world and tax cuts for the rich? I hope you do, because that’s what capitalism has historically delivered on and it will continue to fulfill its promises. Except for the promise that you may become rich one day. More than 90% of people will die in the class they were born into or fall down into a lower class. Why simp for Capitalism when Elon Musk and Donald Trump and Jeff Bezos are the only ones doing better? Is your life personally better because the top oil companies have made it their mission to destroy our planet forever? Is Exxon going to give you any of the money they earn by putting Pipelines in indigenous lands? Will Amazon give you a few bucks here and there because their tax cuts mean they have more disposable income? No, these companies will continue to exploit innocent people with pollute the world with no care as to how it may affect you or your family. Seriously, if you think Capitalism is the high watermark for how successful a society can be, you need to dream bigger, because this is shit. Inflation and taxes are through the roof in the US and I imagine Europe isn’t exactly paradise either.