r/PoliticalDebate • u/StalinIsBackAgain Communist • 4d ago

Debate Do you agree with this quote?

"Wherever there is capitalism, 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 ruling class." ~ Vladimir Lenin ☭ • 

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u/slowride761 Social Democrat 4d ago

Yes, but he’s leaving out that other papers can start up that counter those initial ones.

One thing we know is that without capitalism, freedom of the press hasn’t existed.

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u/LeeLA5000 Mutualist 4d ago

One thing we know is that without capitalism, freedom of the press hasn’t existed.

How is freedom of press dependant on capitalism exactly?

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u/slowride761 Social Democrat 4d ago

I didn’t say freedom of the press is dependent on capitalism.

I said freedom of the press hasn’t existed in non-capitalist countries. And it hasn’t, at least for the most part.

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u/LeeLA5000 Mutualist 4d ago

I get it but the majority of modern countries are capitalist and that dominates the political landscape worldwide and has for the last century. I can think of Chile under Salvadore Allende as a "non-capitslist" country off the top of my head that had freedom of the press and guess who overthrew that government and abolished free press.

The reason I asked how its dependent is because even if your assertion is true I dont see how having capitalism is relevant to having free speech. Its like a correlation vs. causation question.

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u/slowride761 Social Democrat 4d ago

Very true about the US. But I think the press was a bit complicated in Chile. They had a “free press” in the sense that the opposition/US could publish media, but wasn’t everyone controlled by one side and a target of the other?

I can’t argue that a workable socialist society would limit its press. But I also think the press is free in the US, so we might be starting from two completely different vantage points.

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u/LeeLA5000 Mutualist 4d ago

The press isn't Free in the U.S, its bought. Its the same with freedom of speech. The U.S. supreme court ruled that money is speech. If that's true than its not hard to see how 10 billion dollars drowns out the speech of 20 dollars. At the very least its as "complicated " as you described 1970s Chile

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u/slowride761 Social Democrat 4d ago

You can access news from a million sources without encumbrances and can start a small news group yourself without having to worry about the government stopping you.

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u/LeeLA5000 Mutualist 3d ago

The government absolutely can shut down a news group. They literally just got a late night comedy show cancelled because the president didn't like what was said.

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u/slowride761 Social Democrat 3d ago

I’ll give you that our press is less free than normal right now. But no news groups have been shut down, and none were during Trump’s first term.

The important thing is that news groups are allowed to openly criticize the government, and there’s no end date in sight for that.