Journalism in Bourgeois Society

Department of the History of Foreign Press and Literature, Faculty of Journalism, Moscow State University
Journalism in Bourgeois Society

Professor Y. N. Zasursky

Modern state-monopoly capitalism has carried to its extreme limits the fundamental contradiction of capitalism—the contradiction between the social character of production and the private capitalist method of distributing the products of social labor. Under these conditions, in the capitalist countries, the role of various forms of suppression of the masses of the people is growing - first of all, military and resulting militarization, which is accompanied by the merging of the army and monopolies into the military-industrial complex; police, leading to the strengthening of the functions of the coercive apparatus of the FBI and CIA; ideological, meaning the expansion of the entire information and propaganda system, including bourgeois journalism.

The ties between the bourgeois state and the monopolies are becoming ever closer, their activities are intertwined, and this creates a special form of power when it is in the hands of the state and the monopolies. One of the important weapons of state-monopoly capitalism is bourgeois journalism. It is from this point of view that it is necessary to consider its place in modern bourgeois society.

Our study includes five monographs. This book is devoted to the following issues: monopolies and journalism, the bourgeois state and journalism, bourgeois parties and journalism, the church, and bourgeois journalism.

At the same time, the main attention is paid to identifying the levers and mechanism for managing bourgeois journalism by the monopolies and the bourgeois state.

The next four monographs will consider more particular aspects of this problem: bourgeois journalism as an information and propaganda complex of modern state-monopoly capitalism and all the components of this complex separately - television, radio broadcasting, print, news agencies, advertising agencies, public relations, government propaganda organs and their interaction, various aspects of their activities aimed at manipulating the consciousness of the masses in the interests of the monopolies.

Then, in a separate monograph, the technique of the activity of the bourgeois press, the technique of disinformation and manipulation, will be considered and criticized.

One book will be devoted to criticism of the content of bourgeois propaganda, illusions, myths and false ideas - that spiritual dope that the bourgeoisie imposes on its peoples and brings its journalism to the masses.

Finally, the study will be completed by a book that criticizes contemporary bourgeois theories of journalism.

Considering the place of journalism in bourgeois society, we observe in the process of historical development a constant strengthening of the control of capital, which, as the power of the bourgeoisie grew, was combined with the control of the state.

Let's start with the origins of bourgeois journalism, dating back to the 17th century. Then bourgeois journalism was in opposition to the rule of the feudal lords, defending the right to exist.

D. Milton during the English bourgeois revolution of the 17th century. made a thesis about the freedom of the press from royal power.

Thus arose the bourgeois concept of freedom of the press - freedom of the press for the bourgeoisie. It was directed with its edge against the feudal conception of the press, which is sometimes called authoritarian.

The essence of the latter was that the seal remains in the hands of the king as a means of controlling his subordinates, the king is a god on earth and the voice is the voice of God. The king issued patents for the publication of newspapers, and the newspapers were supposed to serve the interests of the royal power.

Thus, the feudal system of non-economic coercion was also used in the press. The press served the feudal state, the monarchy. The third estate - the bourgeoisie - was deprived of the right to publish newspapers. With the intensification of its political activity, the bourgeoisie begins to demand permission to publish newspapers representing the interests of the third estate, and it calls the struggle for the right to have its own press a struggle for freedom of the press. Naturally, it was not about universal freedom of the press. And Milton, advocating freedom of the press, had no doubt that it was for those who had the means to publish newspapers, but were deprived of this right.

The bourgeois theory of freedom of the press was directed against feudalism and absolute monarchy, and from this point of view it overthrew their basic foundations.

In contrast to non-economic methods of coercion, it put forward freedom of action for rich people: since they have money, they can publish newspapers of their choice, naturally, to promote bourgeois ideas.

Consequently, the slogan of freedom of the press was progressive in the 17th century, since it was aimed at liberation from the fetters of feudalism, but it had a class, bourgeois character. In proclaiming it, Milton also spoke of the need to limit the freedom of the press to the interests of the class he represented.

The class essence of the bourgeois theory of freedom of the press came to the fore with the assertion of the rule of the bourgeoisie. When a new category of people stood out within the third estate - the working class, which had nothing, but claimed its share of the wealth, as Marx said in 1842 in the article “Communism and the Augsburg Universal Gazette”, the bourgeoisie not only did not give him freedom press, but also harassed and repressed the publications of his organizations.

 The class essence of the slogan of freedom of the press was quite obvious from the very beginning, and its orientation against the freedom of the press for the proletariat, the democratic demands of the people, was clearly defined already in the middle of the 19th century, and especially became noticeable during the publication by K. Marx and F. Engels, the League of Communists of the "New Rhine newspaper" and other newspapers and magazines.

It turned out that the communists practically did not have the opportunity to publish their newspapers due to lack of funds, and when they found them at the expense of collections among the workers, at the expense of great sacrifices, the bourgeoisie deprived them of the right to publish their newspapers, as it did in Germany, accepting exclusive laws against the socialists.

During the American Civil War, the activities of the bourgeois press provoked a protest among the rank-and-file abolitionists. Influential circles of the bourgeoisie of North America were not interested in the decisive defeat of the southern slave owners, they advocated a compromise with the South. The majority of the American bourgeois press, with the exception of a few newspapers, supported this position of conciliation and refusal to emancipate Negroes from slavery.

In the north of the United States, there has been a gap between the opinion of the democratic strata of society and the judgments of the bourgeois American press. President Lincoln refused to sanction newspapers that criticized his policy of fighting the South decisively. Then in many cities of the country, ordinary readers dissatisfied with the actions of the press - workers and farmers, representatives of the democratic strata of society organized a boycott of these newspapers, and in some cases literally destroyed their editorial offices, considering their support of the southern slave owners as a betrayal of the interests of the people.

In this case, the points of view of President Lincoln and ordinary Americans did not coincide. Lincoln, who professed bourgeois freedom, considered it acceptable to publish newspapers during the Civil War that advocated compromise with the slave-owning South.

The people of America rejected such freedom of the press and by their actions demonstrated their rejection of it, advocated a press that would reflect the interests and opinions of the broad circles of Americans. Such publications as the New York Herald Tribune, in which K. Marx and F. Engels were published, enjoyed great support from the population.

The further development of bourgeois social relations and bourgeois journalism further demonstrated the foreignness of the bourgeois principle of freedom of the press to the interests of the working masses.

At the beginning of the XIX century, machines were invented that made it possible to publish newspapers in large numbers, counting on a wide audience. Newspapers began to be used to a large extent for product advertising, which was their main source of income. It became possible to sell them below cost, at a very low price of mass production, available to the general reader.

Newspapers became commodities, and this exposed the essence of the bourgeois concept of freedom of the press, based on the right of the wealthy to publish commodifiable newspapers and receive all the profits they could give. In this case, the economic foundations of the bourgeois press coincided with its ideological functions - to serve the interests of its class. This led to the end of the XIX century. to the transformation of bourgeois journalism into one of the main areas for the investment of capital and, at the same time, into the most important instrument of ideological pressure on the masses, their stupefaction and deception. This process took place in the USA, Great Britain, Germany, and France.

Since bourgeois newspapers have exposed their class and commercial character, and publishing has become part of capitalist production, all the laws of bourgeois economics have been extended to the activities of newspaper and magazine enterprises that produce printed products.

First of all, it is the law of monopolization, concentration of production. At the end of the last century and at the beginning of this century, the first newspaper trusts began to be created: Pulitzer, Hearst, Northcliffe, Hugenberg, and others. Further development of this process led to the fact that in the middle of the twentieth century. The press, radio broadcasting, and television in the capitalist countries were essentially completely in the hands of the largest monopoly concerns. The dependence of the media, which require large capital investments, on the magnates of capital became even clearer.

The discrepancy between the theory of freedom of the press and the reality of the bourgeois world has become blatant. It was obvious that freedom of the press did not even exist for all representatives of the bourgeoisie, but only for the richest. Talk about freedom of the press, which long ago turned into pure hypocrisy in the conditions of bourgeois reality, does not even justify itself as a form of cover for the true, class character of the press in bourgeois society.

In the United States in the 1940s, a new bourgeois concept was put forward regarding the position and place of the press in society, which was called the theory of social responsibility of the press. It was intended to replace the decrepit theory of freedom of the press. Although the latter exists as an independent theory, and until now the majority of bourgeois journalists profess and propagate it as the main one in the activities of journalism, the inconsistency of this theory is so obvious that in fact it can only be applied to an inexperienced audience as a demagogic slogan, obviously not corresponding to reality.

The authors of the new concept - bourgeois journalists and theoreticians, recognizing that there is no real freedom of the press in the United States, came to the conclusion that it is pointless to talk about it, but it is possible to achieve such a situation that monopolists limit their influence on the media and bring their actions in line with the interests society, that is, so that they not only determine what to write to newspapers, what to report to radio and television stations, but also feel their responsibility to society. The theorists also proposed the creation of special institutions that would control the activities of the media.

The emergence of the new concept raised several significant and important questions. First of all, the very advancement of the theory of social responsibility of the press emphasized the absence of this social responsibility in the bourgeois world and, at the same time, the untenability of the theory of freedom of the press. In this regard, it became necessary to think about how to exercise control by society over the media. 

Words about social responsibility became very fashionable in the world after the Second World War. The defeat of fascism raised the authority of socialism, communist ideas, and the communist press, which frankly says that it serves the socialist society. This authority was especially strong in countries that had freed themselves from fascism and cast off the shackles of colonial slavery. The authors of the theory of social responsibility, taking into account the new trend, tried to give greater respectability to the bourgeois press, which, in their opinion, should take care of society, and thereby make it more acceptable for countries in which the process of liberation from fascist rule was taking place, as well as for peoples. following the path of decolonization. Perhaps, at the same time, some of the theorists believed that the introduction of a certain control over the activities of the press by the state could limit the arbitrariness of the monopolies.

Finally, one more point. If we analyze how the theorists of social responsibility intended to exercise control over the press, it is not difficult to come to the conclusion that in many cases it means only the consolidation of the class positions of the bourgeoisie in the activities of the press through the intervention of the bourgeois state in it. For example, in the United States of America, the social responsibility of the press to society must be controlled by the president and his cabinet and ministers. How do they understand this responsibility? The presidential chair, as well as the ministerial one, in the United States is occupied by representatives of big business and those who faithfully serve them. And naturally, their control over the activities of the press strengthens even more the influence of the big monopolies, which is carried out with the help of economic levers. In this case, this influence must also be reinforced by the state, which is called upon to reason with that monopolist who can act to the detriment of other monopolies.

This is how state-monopoly capital controls the press by both economic and non-economic methods. And the creation of special bodies to control the press essentially tightens it up and thereby almost eliminates the possibility of press opposition. In this sense, the theory of social responsibility approaches fascist theories in journalism. The Bulgarian professor S. Stanchev cites the statement of the Italian fascist theoreticians of journalism, who in 1942 also wrote about the social responsibility of the press to the fascist Italian state. And here it was about responsibility not to the people, but to the monopolies, which held in their hands the levers of government. Whatever the subjective intentions of the authors of the theory of social responsibility, its zealous supporters most often turn out to be far-right figures, such as former US Vice President S. Agnew, who became famous for attacks on American newspapers and journalists who opposed the Vietnam War.

It is clear that the essence of this theory, despite its outward respectability, turns out to be very unattractive - a cover for the further enslavement of the press by capital, which even makes it difficult to make public intra-class differences in the camp of the bourgeoisie.

In support of the theory of social responsibility of the press, bourgeois theoreticians also put forward a new concept about the place of a journalist in society. Instead of the slogan of freedom of the press, which they consider unrealizable today, the slogan of freedom of the journalist is put forward. Today, says Professor J. Leauté, head of the international center for higher journalism education in Strasbourg, it is absurd to say that every citizen of France has the right to freedom of the press. It is not feasible. Therefore, it is necessary to “delegate” this right to journalists. This theory is called the theory of freedom of the press for the journalist, it is also called the theory of the journalistic elite. When J. Leauté was asked whether there are any democratic procedures in France that allow journalists to be empowered to exercise the right to freedom of the press, he replied that there are none, but journalists should be given these functions, and if they perform them in good faith, which would be, in his opinion, the freedom of the press for journalists.

This is essentially a version of the theory of social responsibility of the press. It is necessary to achieve such a situation, said J. Leothe, so that the owners of newspapers, magazines, radio stations and television companies rent out their property to journalists who will conclude an agreement with them that they will publish newspapers, television programs, and the owners will receive profits. Then, he argues, it will be possible to have the best press, because rich people, monopolists, have the means to create the best working conditions for journalists, and journalists, having received these funds, will do everything to make the owners of the press, radio, and television get rich.

So, when a newspaper or other press, television or radio organ is rented out, the condition is that they must be profitable. This item looks innocent at first glance. But since the problems of profitability are decisive, the owner of the media retains the right to control his income. And if the activity of journalists leads to a drop in the income of the owner or to their disappearance, he has the right to terminate the contract with them and hire other journalists who will provide him with a profit.

But how to make a profit? It is achieved primarily by publishing the largest number of advertisements in the newspaper. Who is advertising? The big and petty bourgeois are representatives of the capitalist class. And if they feel that it makes no sense to give advertising, they will refuse it, especially if this or that medium tries to preach ideas that do not suit the advertisers, the capitalists. Thus, the very principle of economy, profitability of a newspaper, radio, and television channel leads bourgeois journalists to serve the class interests of advertisers.

Consequently, the conversation about the freedom of a journalist turns into another demagogic device under capitalism, which is used very intensively.

They talk about the need to have highly educated professionals, the elite of journalism. In this case, they want to cover up the class nature of the activities of journalists with such talk about qualifications. But when the demand for profitability appears, it immediately reveals the main quality of bourgeois journalism - to serve the capitalist.

The theory of freedom of the press for journalists reveals its inconsistency when confronted with the realities of the world of capital. The history of the creation of such companies, societies of journalists, which conclude agreements with newspaper owners, is especially indicative.

For example, the society of editors of the Le Figaro newspaper entered into an agreement with its owner, Prouveau, a textile manufacturer. However, this did not prevent him from selling the newspaper, along with all the journalists, in 1975 to another owner, Ersan. The conversation about the freedom of a bourgeois journalist, as we see, turned into an elementary fiction. In addition, journalists in bourgeois society are themselves a category that is quite clearly defined socially. They are basically people of bourgeois views. Their education in the spirit of bourgeois ideology is carried out from the school, from the university bench.

A journalism student in a capitalist country is usually a conservative person. During the student riots in 1969 in the United States, students of the faculties and departments of journalism, as a rule, did not take part in them.

It is only very rarely that people of progressive views manage to seep into the ranks of students or teachers of faculties or schools of journalism, but in these cases, they have a hard time there.

The experience of modern class struggle shows that bourgeois journalists play in it a very unsightly role of servants of big capital. This was the case in Chile. Bourgeois journalists are part of the mechanism of propaganda in capitalist society and in this sense, they carry out the class positions of the bourgeoisie.

The world of capital instills in the bourgeois journalist what V. I. Lenin called bourgeois-merchant literary relations. This journalist is attached to the capitalist machine, and his careerism, the desire to please the bourgeois public opinion, the bourgeois public demand from him, as V. I. Lenin said, pornography in frames and pictures.

Even 75 years ago, in the article “Party Organization and Party Literature”, V. I. Lenin wrote: “Down with superhuman writers!”, Emphasizing that journalistic careerism and individualism only cover up subservience to capital.  See V. I. Lenin. Full coll. cit., vol. 12, p. 100.

With the slogan of the freedom of the journalist, bourgeois theoreticians seek to disguise the dependence of the press on big capital, but for bourgeois journalists there is only the freedom to sell their work to the owners of newspapers, radio broadcasting and television, the freedom, in the words of V. I. Lenin, to be “public men”.

And here is the opinion of newspaper owners who are offered to use the theory of freedom of a journalist. At a discussion in Strasbourg, the representative of the Springer concern said that his owner could not waive his right to be also a journalist and to carry his own point of view, which corresponds to his interests, in the newspapers belonging to him. He does not understand why he should transfer this right to someone. Thus, the owners of newspaper-magazine and radio-television concerns are by no means inclined to encourage the concept of freedom of journalists, they are more comfortable with the freedom to hire journalists for themselves.

The theory of the journalistic elite, which is now widely promoted, proceeds from the recognition of the monopoly of big business on the media and serves only as a cover for the subservience of bourgeois journalists to their owners.

The true freedom of a journalist is connected with serving the ideas of the working class, the ideas of the communist party. And it is no coincidence that the theory of the journalistic elite is used against real freedom of the press, the freedom of the party and, indeed, people's press in the socialist countries.

All these old and updated theories, discussed above, ultimately have a very definite goal - to hide the true face, the real position of bourgeois journalism as a servant and weapon of state-monopoly capital, using all the media and propaganda to strengthen its dominance and to fight against the forces of socialism and progress in the international arena.

A study of contemporary bourgeois journalism and propaganda shows how control is exercised over the mass media in the capitalist countries today and what place they occupy in the system of state-monopoly capital. In former times, this control was exercised through economic influence, by subordinating newspapers, magazines, then radio and television to the bourgeoisie through advertising, loans and through information and propaganda concerns. Now these methods are acquiring a new, special character. We are talking about the ever-increasing control of financial capital, monopolies over information and propaganda media, over bourgeois journalism as a whole.

In addition, there are such forms of subordination of the mass media to the interests of state-monopoly capital, such as the intervention in many countries of the bourgeois state in the affairs of the press, radio, television, the introduction of special legislation restricting their activities and placing them under state control. Thus, the main and most significant difference between the current state of the mass media in capitalist society is, as it were, double control over them - both on the part of the monopolies and on the part of the state, both economic and political control.

The place of mass media in the system of state-monopoly capital is determined by a number of factors. The first of these is the dependence of bourgeois journalism on big capital, which is expressed primarily in the fact that the vast majority of newspapers, magazines, radio, and television stations belong to wealthy owners. There are different estimates of how much it costs to publish one newspaper in a particular country.

They say that in the USA this requires capital of at least 50-60 million dollars. We are talking about a newspaper with a small circulation of 20-30-50 thousand copies. In England, a similar publication requires 5-10 million pounds sterling. These figures refer only to small or medium-sized newspapers.

The cost of publications that come out in a large circulation and format is determined by even more impressive figures, and the turnover of their funds is much higher and more substantial. Naturally, only extraordinarily rich people belonging to the top of big capital can have such money. But with the development of the scientific and technological revolution, the cost of mass media increases. The cost of equipment, labor and other factors that determine the economic aspects of the activities of the press, radio, and television are growing.

Advertising is the most important economic lever of press control by big capital. Advertisers, united in national associations of manufacturers and chambers of commerce, have a significant influence on media policy.  Recently, the bourgeois state, which in a number of countries is the owner of entire industries, has begun to play an important role in the dissemination of advertising. For example, in England some branches of industry have been nationalized.

In France, a number of aviation industry enterprises were nationalized. And now the government advertises these enterprises and their organizations, which is also paid at fairly high rates and is an important factor in the life of newspapers, magazines, television, and radio broadcasting.

The advertising given by the government to the press that supports it is a source of pressure on them. For example, in the conditions of Great Britain or France, the government does not advertise its enterprises in the communist press, but in bourgeois publications, especially those close to the government. Thus, advertising is a weapon in the hands not only of the monopolies, but also of the bourgeois state, which exerts influence through it on newspapers and magazines.

Speaking of advertising, you should pay attention to one more thing. The greatest development of the press, radio, and television is achieved where the capitalists spend the most money on advertising. Where costs are lower, both the number of media outlets and the scope of their activities are correspondingly reduced. American, British, Swedish, Japanese and West German monopolists make significant advertising expenditures. In these countries, the proportion of mass media, their circulation and income are especially large. And countries like France and Italy, which spend less on advertising, have correspondingly less developed systems of press, broadcasting, and television. For example, in France, the largest circulation of the daily morning newspaper "Parisien Libere" was until recently 800-700 thousand copies. At the same time, in England the average daily circulation of a newspaper is 3-4 million copies. If the circulation of a mass newspaper falls below 2 million, it is considered unprofitable. In Japan, newspapers are also published in huge circulation - up to 6 million copies.

Advertising is not the only, although a very important factor in the influence of monopolies on the press. Another, no less significant factor is the dependence of the press, as well as radio and television, on banking capital. The fact is that all mass media are forced to buy a significant part of the materials on credit in order to ensure their activities. Newspapers, for example, use loans to buy paper, paint and rent premises, depreciate equipment, etc. Banks, providing these services to the press, hold them in their hands. When a struggle was waged in Russia against the bourgeois press, V. I. Lenin pointed out that it was not enough to deprive it of advertising, since it could still enjoy the support of banks.

Through loans, banking capital has a serious impact on all industries, including the media. One way or another, they are in a certain dependence on financial capital and are included in the sphere of influence of large banks. The mechanism of journalism's dependence on monopolies is not limited to these two factors - obtaining advertising and bank loans. No less important is the process of monopolization of the mass media and propaganda itself, which facilitates the impact and pressure on them from big capital. Inasmuch as any newspaper, magazine, radio, and television enterprise is a capitalist enterprise, all the laws of capitalist production, including the law of concentration and monopolization, also apply to it. The increase in the cost of publishing newspapers, magazines, and the preparation of radio and television broadcasts makes this process increasingly inevitable.

As a result, in most countries of state-monopoly capital, the press is in the hands of the big monopolists, as are all the main mass media and propaganda. There are several varieties of newspapers, magazines, and information concerns, which are combined horizontally or vertically.

There is a concentration of capital along the line of unification of heterogeneous enterprises associated with the publication of newspapers. An example is The New York Times. It belongs to one owner: it is the only large edition of Sulzberer and his family. But recently this paper has acquired several smaller newspapers, radio, and television stations. What businesses does she own? Formerly, for the publication and maintenance of The New York Times itself, there were special factories of the same company, for example, producing paint and paper. In addition, it has its own forest plots, which provide paper mills with raw materials for paper production; It has its own research centers that provide the newspaper with additional information. The New York Times has a special intelligence apparatus and a syndicate to sell material to other newspapers. Thus, it is a concern that combines a number of large enterprises, ultimately producing one large newspaper, The New York Times.

Such a structure of production reduces the cost of publishing a newspaper, makes it more profitable, profitable from the point of view of capitalist entrepreneurship, and at the same time ensures that the New York Times is headed by a big capitalist millionaire.

Recently, enterprises have emerged that combine newspapers and magazines, publishing houses and radio and television companies in several countries. An example is the company of millionaire Lord Thomson. He now owns 183 newspapers, as well as television stations in such countries as England, Canada, the USA, the Bahamas, Australia, and other places. Thomson sees these ventures as a means to profit. He owns the saying that the TV is a box for making; of money. In the same way, he evaluates the newspaper and any other enterprise of his. Thomson is the owner of a multi-stakeholder, multi-industry, transnational outreach concern that includes virtually every type of media.

Recently, the so-called conglomerates, i.e., such concerns, in which the information and propaganda business is an adjunct to other types of industrial and entrepreneurial activity, have become increasingly widespread. In the UK, an example of such a corporation is Reed International, which owns the largest English newspaper, the Daily Mirror, and many newspapers, magazines, publishers, and television companies in different parts of the world. For Reed International, the outreach business is just one part of its gigantic business, which includes paper, wallpaper, and many other products.

With the creation of conglomerates, the relative autonomy of the outreach business is reduced; it becomes even more directly dependent on finance capital and the largest industrial monopolies, which are closely connected with each other and play a major role in the life of the countries of state-monopoly capitalism.

The inclusion of the media in big business increases their dependence on financial capital, while making non-monopolized publishing enterprises uncompetitive. It is no coincidence that the majority of bourgeois press specialists now say that from a technical point of view, the best conditions for publication are those newspaper, magazine and radio-television corporations that are in the hands of large concerns. The presence of large capital allows them to acquire modern equipment and make the publication of newspapers and magazines more profitable and cheaper, and thereby "hammer" competitors. Let's say that New York now publishes one evening and two morning newspapers.They come out with a one-time circulation of about 4 million copies. And just a few years ago, 6, and a little earlier, 8 newspapers were published in New York, which had approximately the same circulation. The newspapers now appearing evidently have greater capacity, because the same number of copies is produced with a smaller editorial and publishing apparatus and at a lower cost.

The monopolization of the mass media makes it difficult for other publications, and above all those that are in opposition to the monopolies, to come out. Recently, there has been a reduction in publications in the capitalist world, connected with an increase in the proportion of monopoly groupings that determine the general direction of bourgeois journalism. Three New York newspapers, for example, are now more successful in supporting the American establishment than six newspapers have been. The New York Times used to be more critical of many aspects of politics than it is now, when it has no competition from the New York Herald Tribune. The closure of a number of daily newspapers in London and Paris led to an increase in the influence of the extreme right circles on the press in England, where the conservatives achieved overwhelming dominance in the so-called pan-English national publications and in France.

As a rule, the informational-propagandist complements support the extreme right-wing forces. In this regard, Springer's concern in Germany is indicative: both of Springer's daily newspapers - both the DieWelt, which claims to be solid, and the tabloid Bildzeitung - oppose the détente of international tension, in support of extremely reactionary forces close to neo-Nazism.

Consequently, the process of concentration and monopolization of the media leads to increased economic and political control over them.

It should be noted as a particularly dangerous phenomenon the creation of so-called international concerns. In English they are called multinational, but in practice it is more correct to call them supranational or international. This new trend in the economies of the bourgeois countries is connected primarily with the growing influence of the American monopolies in the capitalist world. For example, the American company General Electric has branches that operate in different countries. ITT played a major role in the overthrow of the government of popular unity in Chile.

The peculiarity of these supranational companies is that they are not connected for the most part with national groupings of capital, with the exception of American ones. They are not interested in protecting the national interests of this or that country; on the contrary, they often act to the detriment of them. As a rule, the decisive role in these companies belongs to American capital. ITT is essentially an American company with its overseas subsidiaries, but it is legally incorporated in each country as a separate company. In fact, they are an important means of subordinating the politics and economics of the capitalist countries to international capital, the main center of which remains the United States.

The concept of multinational, or transnational, companies acquire in connection with the emergence of such corporations by no means an abstract character. An example is Intelsat, which launches international space communications satellites. It has a monopoly in the capitalist world on the use of space for television and radio broadcasting. Intelsat belongs to American capital and is the prototype of the future American television supranational company, which is now trying to take over the television market throughout the capitalist world. 

The creation of such monopolies and corporations allows us to say that the degree of influence of big capital has now reached a level where the bourgeois press is turning into a weapon of international capital, and primarily American.

Thus, the creation of information and propaganda networks - national and then international - is a factor indicating the enslavement of the mass media by large international capital, the intertwining of their interests with the interests of other monopoly groups through bank credit and in the process of pumping capital from various branches of the economy. The monopolized press, radio, and television are increasingly becoming part of conglomerates that tie these mass media to the main groupings of financial capital. Their economic dependence can be traced through financial reports, and political dependence, although sometimes it cannot be documented, because the mechanism of pressure of financial capital is kept in strict secrecy, but it is revealed just as clearly. for example, The New York Times and The Washington Post are associated with banking centers that are part of the same financial group - the eastern one. And although both newspapers compete with each other in a certain way, they have common political principles. This is the reason, in particular, for the position of both on the Watergate case, as well as on the issue of publishing the Pentagon documents.

Thus, the dependence of the media on big capital is revealed in the following forms: advertising, loans, connection with banking capital, with information and propaganda monopolies; monopolies producing paper, producing printing, printing, radio, and television equipment, and more recently also with producing computers, since the activities of the mass media are increasingly based on the use of electronic computers.

In addition, the system of control of big capital is carried out through monopoly organizations for the distribution of the press, which exists in most countries. The same companies operate in the field of advertising. And finally, the most effective form of control of big capital is the creation of conglomerates, which include the media as one of the spheres of investment of financial capital.

If we talk about the political control of financial capital, then it is carried out through associations of industrialists and chambers of commerce. These organizations, operating within the national framework, exert political influence through their publications and various advisory bodies. The boards of directors of the largest financial groups also have political influence.

As for the association of employers, in France, for example, there is an organization of patronage, which has a strong influence on the press. Studies have shown that all French bourgeois newspapers, to one degree or another, consider the wishes of this organization.

As we can see, big capital exercises both economic and political control over bourgeois journalism, and the forms of this control are closely connected, intertwined, and are specific to the development of a government-monopoly mechanism at the present stage.

Another characteristic feature of the development of bourgeois journalism today is its growing dependence on states. In modern capitalist countries, along with ministries of internal affairs, foreign affairs, and defense, as well as with other traditional institutions, there appear in various forms bodies exercising control over the mass media: ministries or departments of information, the press service at the White House, etc. .

The state, seeking to influence the press, radio, television, creates appropriate special organizations for this. As a representative of big capital, it thereby exercises additional, cross-control over the media.

In France, television and radio broadcasting are state-owned. In England, there is the BBC, which is under government control, and independent television, licensed by the government. As you can see, state control is exercised particularly harshly over electronic media of information and propaganda - the most widespread and fastest.

 In most capitalist countries, in addition to direct government intervention in the affairs of the press, there are opportunities for intervention through the judiciary. All countries have state secrets and defamation laws. Bourgeois governments make extensive use of them to restrict the freedom of the press and to persecute objectionable mass media.

In England, there is a special law on advance notice, which requires the newspaper that it, in certain cases, does not publish information on those matters that the government asks to remain silent. If a newspaper violates this prohibition, it is subject to appropriate penalties. An effective means of putting pressure on the press by the bourgeois government is censorship, carried out in various forms through the institutions.

In many cases, the forms of control of the bourgeois state and the monopolies coincide. Thus, the world's largest news agencies - Associated Press (AP) and United Press International (UPI) in the USA, Agence France Presse (AFP) in France and Reuters in the UK - are indicative in this respect.

They have a complete monopoly on the dissemination of information in their countries and are an effective form of management of bourgeois journalism. Being in the hands of big business, these four agencies are also closely connected with governments.

Such ties are especially strong between AFP and Reuters, and to a lesser extent between UPI and AP. The governments of the USA, France, Great Britain and other countries of big capital exercise a monopoly on information, and through press conferences and reports of all kinds of information that only they have. How quickly this or that mass media receives it depends on its success. This is a convenient form of supporting newspaper, magazine, and radio-television companies that are pleasing to the government and hindering the functioning of the media that it does not want. That is why the system of press conferences and companies, special firms organizing propaganda campaigns for money paid by private individuals, or the state is so wide.

Of course, when contradictions arise within monopolistic groupings, this can also lead to conflicts between the press, or rather, part of the press, and the government. So, it was with the publication of the secret Pentagon papers and during the Watergate affair. The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other media associated with the so-called "Eastern Establishment" of the United States attacked President Nixon's government, which is closely associated with Western, and above all Californian, monopoly groups.

In essence, it was rather a conflict not between the press and the government, but between the two most influential groups of American monopolies. By the way, a significant, and perhaps most of the press, primarily provincial publications, supported Nixon.

These conflicts, therefore, only confirm the truth that finance capital equally controls both the press and the bourgeois state, which is an effective instrument for strengthening the power of the monopolies. Thus, the bourgeois state in modern conditions has a direct and indirect system of influence on journalism, and the monopolization and concentration of the mass media themselves facilitate this influence.

An auxiliary, but important role in the system of control of the state-monopoly capital over the mass media is played by the political parties of the bourgeoisie and the church. Today in the capitalist countries one of the complex problems is the problem of interaction between bourgeois journalism and bourgeois political parties. The major newspapers here call themselves non-partisan or non-partisan media outlets. These are "newspapers without labels", as they say in France.

Bourgeois theoreticians try to assert that such newspapers serve all sections, all classes and all parties of bourgeois society. This is fundamentally wrong. In the countries of state-monopoly capitalism, there are two types of parties: bourgeois and communist and workers. If we compare the bourgeois press and the communist and workers' press, we will see a fundamental, class difference between them on the main domestic and foreign policy issues.

The communist press openly declares its class, party position, reflecting the interests of the communist party and the working class it serves. As for bourgeois publications, there are cases when some of them call themselves the organs of certain bourgeois parties, for example, in France, Nation, which was the organ of the ruling party of the YuDR. Most of the country's newspapers - Le Figaro, Auror, France-Soir and others - do not carry such a party label. But as practice shows, during the elections all of them supported the ruling party of the South Democratic Republic, that is, they expressed a unanimous opinion on principled, class positions - the opinion of the bourgeoisie.

If in the early stages, in the 19th century, when there was still no strong, organized working class, the bourgeoisie represented its various party groupings in elections and the press was used in the interests of one or another individual bourgeois party, then in modern conditions the bourgeois parties play the role of intermediaries between state-monopoly capital and the masses. And although, acting as intermediaries, they compete with each other, they perform the functions of serving the interests of one class - the monopoly bourgeoisie. In this case, the differences between the parties are very small. The classic country in this respect is the United States of America, where two parties act - the Republican and the Democratic.

In essence, their programs, foreign and domestic policy are not much different from each other. Their rivalry in the elections is a big, carefully organized game, which should give the appearance of a political struggle and divert the attention of the masses from the interests that these parties pursue.

They create the illusion of a choice between two parties that equally serve big capital. The interests of the bourgeoisie in the United States are not endangered either by the victory of the Democrats or by the victory of the Republicans. Each bourgeois party, to one degree or another, expresses the class interests of the bourgeoisie or some part of it, but all of them in the aggregate are branches, branches of one bourgeois party. And bourgeois journalists express the interests of precisely one party, which has various branches with their own names, and the newspapers, as it were, lease their space, their pages to them. That is why many bourgeois, and even more so workers, leaders call the bourgeois press one-party press. In this sense, President Roosevelt was also right when he defined the American press as a one-party press. The recent statements of the general secretary of the British trade union of printers R. Briginiro is also curious. He declared that in England there was a one-party press, that in the clash between labor and capital, between the working class and the bourgeoisie, the entire English press took a bourgeois position. Thus, when it comes to the so-called informational press or without labels, non-partisan, it must be remembered that in essence this is a bourgeois press. Its partisanship is expressed not in the fact that it is published in the name of this or that party, but in its political program, which reflects the interests of the bourgeoisie.

The refusal of bourgeois publishers to talk directly about their connection with any political party, consequently, serves only to defend the common class interests of the bourgeoisie more frankly, both foreign policy and domestic policy, in essence the press becomes one-party.

As for the connection with the parties, and sometimes there is, this strengthens the dependence of newspapers, magazines, and other publications on certain bourgeois-financial groupings. Through the bourgeois parties, they have a significant influence on the content of propaganda in the interests of the big monopolies. 

The true partisanship of the bourgeois press is, no doubt, in its service to its class, or, more precisely, to financial capital.

But there is another point in the support of one or another newspaper of certain bourgeois political parties. In this case, the bourgeois newspapers reflect the alignment of forces within the ruling camp and their influence on the population.

Thus, in England, The Times newspaper announced after the defeat of the Conservatives that it would support the Labor Party in the re-election. The newspaper decided to do so both in the interests of retaining its readers and in the interests of the group of financial capital on behalf of which it acted. By the way, shortly after that, The Times returned to supporting the conservatives: it always remained the mouthpiece of financial capital, no matter who it supported in words.

Studying the position of newspapers from this point of view allows us to better understand the alignment of forces in a particular country. In principle, the bourgeois parties have changed their characteristics and meaning under the conditions of the modern capitalist state. Although there are differences between them, and very significant ones, they do not contradict the general interests of the bourgeoisie. All bourgeois parties are part of the apparatus for manipulating public opinion, for manipulating the masses. Of course, under certain conditions, some political parties, due to the situation that has arisen, can, to a greater or lesser extent reflect the mood of the masses, and this, in some cases leads to a new trend in the activity of the party, even bourgeois. Therefore, it is necessary to draw a line between different political bourgeois groups - fascist, ultra-right, extremely reactionary, conservative, right, liberal, while remembering that all these parties are bourgeois.

It is important to emphasize one more very important circumstance connected with the problems of the party spirit of the bourgeois press. This is the desire of publishers, with the formal non-partisan press, to sell their product to the largest possible number of readers, and, consequently, to impose their propaganda on the largest possible audience.

A study of the activities of the press in the United States shows that, as a rule, newspapers operate on the principle of mimicry: where the majority of the population supports the Republicans, they also support the Republican Party, and vice versa. At the same time, newspapers have a huge impact on the audience. The formal support of Republicans or Democrats does not prevent them from opposing more progressive candidates of either party. Here the position of American newspapers is always unequivocal: the vast majority of them (over 70%), as a rule, support more right-wing candidates, both Republicans and Democrats. The American press votes for the right - for the monopolies to which it belongs.

In conditions when the press was connected with the parties, this or that newspaper exposed its political line, which made it more vulnerable in the eyes of readers. It had to create the appearance of consistency in its political program. The reduction in the number of organs of the bourgeois parties means the strengthening of general bourgeois tendencies in the press and the reduction of the possibilities for revealing various internal contradictions in the camp of the bourgeoisie.

From this point of view, the creation of the so-called information press, a press without labels, is a manifestation of the onset of reaction, an indicator of the even greater dependence of the mass media on state-monopoly capital. A characteristic situation has developed in England, where not a single bourgeois newspaper is published in the name of any party. True, they claim that they support the positions of the Conservative or very rarely the Labor Party and try to act almost as an arbiter between them, but in fact the big capitalists, the owners of these newspapers, are the arbitrators.

The reduction in the number of newspaper owners means the consolidation of the mass media in the hands of state-monopoly capital, and the reduction of opportunities for revealing one or another disagreement in the press itself.

As research shows, the interaction between bourgeois parties and the press in each of the countries of state-monopoly capital develops differently, and on the whole there is a tendency to create a one-party bourgeois press, which further strengthens the control over it of monopolies, finance capital and the bourgeois state. 

In this connection, the classification of newspapers into information and "opinion newspapers" is also characteristic, which is used by bourgeois theoreticians of journalism. They call informational newspapers that are not associated with one or another political party. Essentially, these are one-party newspapers representing the interests of big business. The name "informational" only masks their political nature, the desire to reflect the common interests of the bourgeois class and, to a lesser extent - at least openly - the positions of groupings within the bourgeois class.

"Opinion newspapers" are of two categories: those supporting some unformed groupings, i.e., expressing the opinion of various circles of the bourgeoisie in a given country, and those supporting organized bourgeois groupings - bourgeois parties.

Opinion newspapers, representing unformed bourgeois groupings, more openly express political tendencies within the camp of the bourgeoisie. In France, the newspaper Le Monde is the "newspaper of opinion". It essentially reflects a position close to the French government, and in this sense represents the interests of a formally unorganized grouping of the bourgeoisie. And another "newspaper of opinions" - "Nation" until recently represented the bourgeois party of the YuDR. Such a classification of publications - into "opinion newspapers" and informational ones - is basically conditional and unreasonable, since all these newspapers provide extensive information, put forward political slogans, theses and conduct political propaganda. Calling themselves informational, newspapers try to hide their political affiliation with this word. True, they can say that they reflect the interests of all parties, except for the extreme left, and in this case they call the communists the extreme left, and this is precisely what reveals their bourgeois one-party system.

The division of bourgeois newspapers is, of course, conditional, but such a classification must be kept in mind, because its purpose is to hide the broad bourgeois platform of the press, the purposeful nature of its political propaganda activities, and its support for certain actions of bourgeois political parties and the government.

In relation to the working class, all these newspapers take practically the same bourgeois position.

Speaking of the one-party bourgeois press, one should not think that there is no point in studying the various tendencies that are reflected in this or that newspaper.

They must be studied because they reflect the relations within the camp of the bourgeoisie.

Knowledge of these details and nuances is very important for the activities of the parties of the working class, which are interested in preventing extremely reactionary, fascist groups from coming to power. This is also important for the interests of the socialist camp in its struggle against bourgeois ideology.

The church plays an extremely important role in the modern countries of state-monopoly capitalism, in their political apparatus and journalism. The fusion of clericalism with state-monopoly capitalism is manifested in the fact that, firstly, the church itself is a big capitalist: it has, in particular the Catholic Church, large enterprises closely connected with capital; secondly, the clerical activity of the church elite also reflects the interests of big business: using the influence of religious dogma on the population, it influences the masses of big business in a somewhat mystified form of religious propaganda. In most capitalist countries, the press reflects, to one degree or another, the positions of the largest church associations. France, for example, is a Catholic country. It has a special concern for the Catholic press, in whose hands is the newspaper "Croix", many magazines and other publications. In Italy, too, all bourgeois newspapers are under the influence of the Catholic Church. In England, the press is closely connected primarily with the Anglican Church, in the USA with various Protestant associations, as well as with Catholic and other churches.

The Church is also strong in other countries of state-monopoly capitalism. It publishes its newspapers and magazines in very large circulations. In the US, the Presbyterian magazine Presbyterian Life has a circulation of 1.5 million copies. The newspaper "Croix" in France is published with a circulation of about 150 thousand copies. In a word, clerical journalism plays an essential role in the activity of the modern bourgeois apparatus of propaganda and enters into the general structure of states -monopolistic capitalism.

Consideration of the place of journalism in bourgeois society shows that it is an inseparable part of the system of state-monopoly capitalism, its superstructure. Modern newspaper, magazine, radio and television trusts, news agencies are large capitalist enterprises and, in terms of the scope of their activities, occupy a significant place in the economies of such countries as the USA, Japan, Germany, Great Britain, France, Italy, Canada, etc.

Ensuring the economic and ideological domination of capital, suppressing the resistance of the working masses through its propaganda influence, bourgeois journalism serves as an effective weapon of the bourgeois state, the bourgeois court, the bourgeois government. In the context of the growing general crisis of capitalism and the growing influence of socialist ideas, it is playing an increasingly sinister role in maintaining the dominance of capital.

Studying the place of bourgeois journalism in the system of modern state-monopoly capitalism, it must be borne in mind, first of all, that there is a process of monopolization and concentration of the media and propaganda, and it develops according to the same laws as processes in other areas of industry, strengthening the dominance of capital and its control.  

In the economic control of capital, the most important role is played by advertising, which is distributed by the press, radio, television, loans, various forms of concentration and monopolization. Conglomerates, finance capital and international monopolies are increasingly exercising political control of capital through national industrial associations, chambers of commerce, through bank lending to media and propaganda enterprises, through the monopoly's own propaganda apparatus.

At the same time, the control of the bourgeois state over journalism is also growing. For this, the government's monopoly on the most important types of information, laws restricting the activities of the media in the interests of capital, and various forms of censorship are used.

While demagogically arguing about the formal principles of "freedom of the press", in fact the bourgeois state is strengthening its control and the power of the monopolies over the media and propaganda. The disappearance of the press of bourgeois political parties in most bourgeois countries also contributes to this: journalism here is transformed into one-party bourgeois journalism. With all the differences that reflect the intra-class contradictions of the bourgeoisie, in the main international and domestic political issues, the mass media and propaganda of the capitalist countries support the line of the monopolies and their bourgeois governments.

One of the straps that bind bourgeois journalism to the system of state-monopoly capitalism is the church. Its influence is especially great in the moral and ethical sphere, in the spiritual cultivation of the population, in subordinating it to bourgeois ideology.

The growing role of bourgeois journalism and propaganda in the system of state-monopoly capitalism reflects one of the important trends in the development of modern bourgeois society, connected with the development of the ideological functions of the monopolies and the bourgeois state.

Here we need high political vigilance, activity, prompt and convincing propaganda work, timely rejection of hostile ideological sabotage.

Naturally, a careful study of the mechanism of bourgeois propaganda, a profound Marxist critique of the theories, methods, and techniques of bourgeois journalism, which equips our propaganda cadres in the struggle against bourgeois ideology, acquire essential significance.

Revealing the true face of bourgeois journalism, its place and role in the system of state-monopoly capitalism helps not only to trace one of the most important trends in the development of modern capitalist society, but also to wage an offensive struggle against the ideological sabotage of imperialism, to cultivate implacability towards all hostile manifestations of bourgeois propaganda and to those who directs it to please their masters - finance capital, international monopolies.

Translation from Russian 
Svitlana M & MLDG