Statistics in the Bourgeois press

Journalism in Bourgeois Society

Disinformation and deception techniques

Techniques and methods for interpreting information and bourgeois propaganda

V. E. Anikeev, E. Ch. Andrunas, L. V. Sharonchikova

Among the quite numerous methods of bourgeois journalism aimed at concealing the propagandistic nature of its materials, its manipulation of public consciousness, the publication of statistical information occupies a special place. Statistical data look as objective and strict facts as possible. The language of numbers always seems convincing, creates an aura of undeniable authority.

Therefore, it is no coincidence that the publication of statistical information is a favorite method of bourgeois propaganda. Even at the beginning of the twentieth century. The American statistician Bliss wrote: “The most effective way to hide the truth is to hide it under a statistical table, use the statistical method and base false arguments on countless and confused rows of statistical figures that claim to be authoritative and indisputable.”

The falsification of statistics is one of the types of ideological weapons for the bourgeoisie. Disclosing the techniques and methods of manipulating statistical data in the capitalist press is of great importance for revealing the strategy and tactics of the bourgeoisie in the ideological struggle.

The official bodies of statistics in the capitalist countries are part of the bourgeois state apparatus. With regard to purely quantitative indicators of production and circulation (for example, the volume of iron smelting or electric power production, the length of transport routes, the turnover of individual goods, etc.), bourgeois statistics, as a rule, provide accurate information. The situation changes dramatically when it comes to the most important social phenomena and processes connected with the very essence of bourgeois society.

In these cases, the interests of capital require the veiling and distortion of the real state of affairs. The falsifying nature of bourgeois statistics is especially pronounced in those areas where class antagonism is most prominent and naked (unemployment, wages, monopoly profits, income distribution, standard of living, etc.).

It was socio-economic statistics that V. I. Lenin described it as “one of the most powerful tools of social cognition ...” . The founders of Marxism-Leninism attached exceptionally great importance to statistics, systematically studied statistical materials, widely used them in their works, because the study of the totality of facts, taking into account all trends and diversity of forms, makes it possible to give an objective picture of social life, to establish the laws of its development.

 The classics of Marxism repeatedly drew attention to the falsifying character of bourgeois statistics. In the preface to the first edition of Capital, K. Marx, speaking of the social statistics of a number of Western European countries, wrote that they cover "eyes and ears with a cap of invisibility in order to be able to deny the very existence of monsters."

V. I. Lenin spoke of the statistics of the capitalist countries as being "permeated through and through with bourgeois views and prejudices ...". coll. vol. 27, p. 208.

With the intensification of the general crisis of capitalism, the falsifying methods of bourgeois statistics became more sophisticated and refined.

Monopoly capital needs a statistical apparatus that would carefully mask the essence of imperialism and signal the dangers threatening capitalism on the fronts of the class struggle.

A significant role in this is assigned to the mass media, which not only deliver to the reader data already falsified by the bourgeois statistical apparatus, but also often deepen their falsification to please the ruling classes, collect and process many statistical data.

The organization of the collection of statistical data is built in such a way as to ensure the distortion of the truth in advance, to prepare the results necessary for capital.

F. Engels also wrote: “We know too well the bureaucratic pattern: they send out forms and are satisfied if they return filled in one way or another; for the information on the basis of which these forms are filled out, too often they turn to those in whose interests it is to hide the truth. “ Soch., vol. 16, pp. 237-238.

This character of the collection of statistical material in the capitalist countries differs little in our time.

In the works of V. I. Lenin, along with criticism of the theoretical foundations and methodological principles of bourgeois statistics, considerable attention is paid to a critical analysis of the organization of its practice. In most capital countries, there are central government statistical offices, but they do not integrate all the country's statistics and often play the role of a supervisory body. A number of other government departments also deal with statistics. In addition to the official ones, which are dispersed among individual departments, there are various private, monopoly-owned, bourgeois statistical organizations.

Official government statistics make extensive use of data from private bodies. As a result, discord prevails, the figures suffer from incompleteness, methodologically they are not linked to each other, so they are difficult to compare. Business owners hide many important data, referring to the so-called trade secret.

But if the statistics of the capitalist countries are far from a system of unified centralized and scientifically objective accounting, then, while obeying the interests of the monopolies, it is united in the performance of the function that consists in obscuring the contradictions of capitalist reality in the interests of the ruling financial oligarchy.

Already at the initial stage - the stage of collecting statistical information, they can be falsified due to the unreliability of information sources, as well as false representativeness. But the distorted figures are presented with ostentatious accuracy in order to give them maximum credibility. In this, bourgeois statistics are greatly assisted by the mass media and propaganda. It is they who, filling their pages and hours of broadcasting with outwardly indisputable and authoritative facts received from the apparatus of bourgeois statistics, dissect them in accordance with the social order of their masters, give a false picture of the social and economic structure of society and try in this way to influence the consciousness of their readers and listeners.

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One of the most common methods of manipulating statistical information in the bourgeois press is the direct suppression of information, the dissemination of which is not beneficial to the ruling circles.

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Fulfilling the social order of the bourgeoisie, the media use rigged and outright falsified figures to mask the progressive relative and absolute impoverishment of the working class, which is an inevitable consequence of the development of capitalism.

This feature of bourgeois statistics was emphasized by K. Marx, who pointed out that “official statistics more and more distort the real dimensions of pauperism as the class struggle develops with the accumulation of capital, and therefore the self-consciousness of the workers.” Works, vol. 23, page 668.

False figures about the condition of the working people are presented on the pages of bourgeois publications in a form that looks accurate. But this "scrupulousness" conceals deceit in order to mislead the broad masses of readers. Thus, figures of unemployment published in the press and broadcast over the radio, at best, cover only separate groups of workers, not at all taking into account those who work not every week, young people who have completed their studies and have not entered production. Usually, when it comes to those receiving unemployment benefits, only the registered unemployed are given figures, while the vast majority of the unemployed do not receive any benefits.

The mass media that support certain groups of the bourgeoisie willingly publish any statistical information that presents in a favorable light the activities of this or that party, coalition, not in the least caring about the correspondence of these data to reality, and often and deliberately give deliberately incorrect figures.

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Various methods of juggling facts are especially widely practiced in the world of capital when publishing wage statistics. In order to prove that the nominal and especially the real wages of workers are high enough, bourgeois statistics, and after them the bourgeois press, along with false indicators of the so-called average money wages, which greatly exaggerate the actual wages of workers, cite falsified indices of the cost of living, significantly underestimate the rise in the price level.

The real wage index in capitalist countries is calculated by dividing the so-called wages of employed workers by the cost of living index, which is sometimes called the cost of living index or the high cost index. The interest of the bourgeoisie is that cost-of-living indices underestimate the increase in the cost of living and thus do not give a correct picture of the fall in real wages.

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Exposing the propaganda methods of the bourgeois media, the press of the communist parties emphasizes that unemployment, inflation, and the rising cost of living should be fought not through statistical manipulations, but by a decisive attack on the policy of monopolies, limiting the super profits of industrial and financial corporations.

The bourgeois press also displays a natural predilection for the publication of summary or generalizing indicators of the economy. These data include, first of all, the national income figures provided by bourgeois statistics with an accuracy almost to the last dollar or pound sterling. The question of the social class character of the distribution of the national income is completely ignored. The falsifying methods are aimed at one goal: to exaggerate the share of the national income that goes to the working people, to underestimate the lion's share appropriated by the capitalists.

The statistics of the national income of the capitalist countries include in the incomes of the working people ever-increasing taxes levied on the wages of workers and employees and on the incomes of the working peasantry. As a result of these manipulations, the share of the working class in the national income is greatly exaggerated.

But the data on the national income, its distribution and use are a vivid and clear illustration of the operation of the basic economic law of one or another mode of production.

V. I. Lenin wrote in 1914, regarding the distribution of income in the USA, that half of the social income “is taken by the capitalist class, which, with all its defenders and protectors, is only one tenth of the population.” Vol. 24, p. 272.

The mass media and propaganda of the capitalist countries abound in averages. Calculated without comprehensive scientific analysis, they do not reflect the real state of affairs and are used as a means of falsification to embellish the position of the workers. Here they are juggling both general average data on food consumption and figures of average per capita income, and these figures are made up of the fabulous profits of billionaires, from the wages of workers and meager benefits for the unemployed.

V. I. Lenin, exposing the apologetic nature of the use of the method of averages by bourgeois statistics in order to obscure the sharpest class contradictions in the world of capital, wrote: "moderate" net income ... But such an average is completely fictitious. v. 3, pp. 145-146.

 These remarks by V. I. Lenin have not lost their significance for modern bourgeois statistics, which strives to put "workers and owners into one whole", "to operate on a common average." A favorite topic of the bourgeois press is to talk about the income of the "average" American or the statistical "average" Englishman.

The bourgeois press, which makes extensive use of statistics to mask class contradictions, is replete with all sorts of comparisons. At the same time, it very often shows complete arbitrariness in choosing the starting base for comparison.

So, for example, when calculating time series designed to characterize changes in the economic situation depending on the goal set by the interested capitalist enterprises, the lowest, then the highest point of the economic cycle is chosen as a base, as a result, the level achieved for a given year turns out to be lower or above the actual level.

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In order to obscure the contradictions of capitalism, the grouping method is also used, ignoring the need for a scientific approach to the choice of a “grouping” attribute.

It is well known that the growth of high prices has recently reached enormous proportions in all capitalist countries. This fact is also acknowledged by the bourgeois press, but it strives to belittle it. the size of the increase in prices and the cost of living, publishing data falsified by bourgeois statistics.

When calculating the cost of living indices, the scientific approach to the grouping method is violated. Quite often, the set of goods and services allegedly corresponding to the consumption of workers at a given time does not include many consumer goods, the prices of which are rapidly rising.

The bourgeois press uses statistics as a weapon by publishing the data of various public opinion polls.

Newspapers are especially full of reports about soundings of public opinion during the period of election campaigns, when polls are conducted on the orders of the candidates themselves, various "interest groups", as well as newspapers, magazines, and television. During this period, specialized institutions, private organizations, and individuals work with the greatest load. Poll results are studied, carefully analyzed, and then, depending on what the figures say, they are published by some press organs, while others are hushed up. It has long been known that survey data in bourgeois countries do not stand up to scrutiny due to the dishonesty of the interviewers, the possibility of fairly significant deviations in one direction or another, deliberate juggling of numbers, predeterminedness and bias. The manipulation of the data of soundings of public opinion in the media and propaganda is already political in nature.

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Many organs of the bourgeois press follow the lead of arms manufacturers and militaristic circles. In order to somehow justify the arms race, they are sounding the alarm, reporting "the latest information" about the "Soviet military threat." And although in the presence of the well-known Soviet-American agreements and the Vladivostok agreement, which fixed the principle of equality in strategic weapons and equal security of the two countries, it becomes increasingly difficult to manipulate digital data on inequality in the field of weapons systems, the stereotype of the “Soviet threat” is annoyingly imposed on the mass reader, confirmed by fabricated CIA statistics.

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The use of statistical data to transfer the discussion of the problems of military detente and disarmament from the POLITICAL PLANE to the military-technical PLANE is also a kind of trick of the opponents of detente and disarmament. The bourgeois mass media and propaganda impose propagandistic stereotypes on public opinion, which contribute to fanning the arms race.

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The role of statistics in bourgeois society is thus reduced to masking the true reality, glossing over antagonistic contradictions, and defending the capitalist system. This sharp weapon of the class struggle, that is, the struggle between capital and labor, is actively used by the bourgeois press in defending the interests of big capital.