KARL MARX AND THE MASS-MEDIA

vol. 1, no. 4, November 2008, $ 1.00

si vous voulez lire en français, : http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/


Foreword

Still a minority government for the Conservative party: 144 out of the 308 seats. Same policies? It could be, but it is not so sure. The opposition is over the rim of the House of Commons in Ottawa. Already in the French-Canadian province of Québec, during the race, the people marched in the streets to denounce the Tories: for the cutbacks in Arts and against the Young Offenders Act’s amendments, for instance. In Québec, the Bloc québécois, the nationalist party, won 50 of the 75 precincts. The leader of this party, Gilles Duceppe, declared to The Gazette (on October 10th) that: “I think people were waiting to see what he [Stephen Harper] is proposing [and they] said we don’t want that kind of leader because we don’t want those policies.” Gilles Duceppe has been previously one of the leaders of the Confederation of National Trade Union which endorsed the Bloc along side with the Québec Federation of Labour, 800 000 members altogether.

The candidate of the social-democratic party, the New Democratic Party, Thomas Mulcair, was re-elected in Montréal; interestingly, the Conservative party did not elect any member in the island of Montréal, the largest city of the province of Québec and its industrial heartland. The population of Québec is 7, 7 millions people while the population of Montréal is around 3 millions. Canada: 33 millions.
As for the Liberal Party, they will go in a convention in Spring 2009 to choose a new leader, according to the rumours circulating, before going to press; after all, they lost 25 seats and considerable support amidst the population. The Communist party presented four candidates in Montréal with over 3 600 votes in the 24 ridings where they presented members all over Canada.

Take your pen

Right or wrong, the socialist countries have been all accused to deprive their citizens of the right to free expression and the freedom of press. Let us see what Karl Marx had in mind when he was writing about the press, having been himself a journalist for some German newspapers such as the Rheinische Zeitung. His articles ignited strong criticism by the pundits of this time.

“What makes the press the most powerful lever for promoting culture and the intellectual education of the people is precisely the fact that it transforms the material struggle into an ideological struggle, the struggle of flesh and blood into a struggle of minds, the struggle of need, desire, empiricism into a struggle of theory, of reason, of form.” (K. Marx, Collected Works, International Publishers, New York, Volume 1, p. 292).

The first leader of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin, wrote in 1905, twelve years before the October Revolution, that: “it is indisputable that the literature cannot be equated to mechanical egalitarianism, at a levelling, at a domination of majority over minority. In this area, certainly, one must guarantee a larger space to personal initiative, thought and imagination, form and content.” (V. Lénine, Oeuvres choisies, Les Editions du Progrès, URSS, p. 157-158)

Since La Vie Réelle in English has been created for English-speaking readers, it was decided to refer to The Gazette, (being the only daily published in Montréal), bearing in mind that we display the Marxist outlook in Québec. On August 25th, a member of the above newspaper team at the Olympic Games in Beijing, Dave Stubbs, wrote: “Of course, this grand country will always have its historic Great Wall, China’s challenge now is to move forward, and the Olympics it has just masterfully staged is an ideal springboard to its future.” It is a sound approach. Evaluating the closing ceremony and the performance of the People’s Republic of China, another journalist of The Gazette , Aileen McCabe, said: “When it came time to hand off to London, the host of the 2012 Games, the Brits didn’t even try to compete. Instead, they drove a red double-decker bus onto the field and simply gave the crowd something to cheer about: soccer great, David Beckham.”

The day after, the editorial of their newspaper hammers out: “Now the Games are over, the athletes have dispersed, and Tibet is still as before, China still censors, human rights seem farther away that ever. So much for the impact of international sport on society.” Our head is nodding: Is the editorialist more informed than us? Is he prejudiced? Do we have the right to take our distances from such a point of view? What is the expectation of this “disappointed” editorialist? Do the Chinese people deserve a chance?

The other media

In 1972, was published in Montréal the French translation of a book written by Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media. He stated then that “as an international service, Voice of America was coarse and could not be compared to the refinement of BBC or Radio-Moscow…” In August 2008, the Editor of Radio France International (RFI), Richard Labévière, was dismissed after the interview he made with President of Syria, Bachar el Assad. Mr. Labévière is not recognized as being unilaterally pro-Israeli. This decision encroaches upon plurality in journalism, the freedom of expression, and Human Rights in France, the country of “la philosophie des Lumières”.

In the past, the Canadian workers and progressive intellectuals had access to different newspapers published by democrats close to the working class, such as: The Canadian Tribune, The Pacific Tribune and Combat (in Québec). Their circulation was by thousands, through mail or militant hand-to-hand distribution at plant gates, schools or any other event taking place in Canada gathering the workers and their families. As would have concluded Sophocles in Ancient Age, in relation with the death of his hero Ajax: “Ignorant men don’t know what good they hold in their hands until they’ve flung it away.” The disappearance of these champions for world peace, progress and democracy is the consequence of the internal crisis inside of the Communist party in Canada. Today, a new generation is replacing these papers: People’s Voice and Clarté and they reckon on the workers to make it through.

Nowadays, the communist mass media play a more decisive role than in the past, for instance confronted to the hurricanes in Cuba: “The television, radio and printed press are assuming a great responsibility in exercising their informative tasks "[reported People’s Voice in September 2008]. In this country, the Union of journalists issued a news release congratulating its members for their work in these very difficult conditions (source: AIN, September 11th , 2008).

On the other hand, a group of US citizens, working with professionals and students of the Sonoma State University of California, studied the role of media of information in today’s world, created the Project Censored 2009 and concluded that the “modern censure is the subtle, constant and sophisticated manipulation of the reality in our mass media.” Argenpress informed its Spanish-speaking readers about those mass-media (working in the Western world) in September.

Sometimes, as La Presse Canadienne revealed, the intervention is more direct. At the end of September, an Afghan freelance journalist, Javed Yazamy, was released from a US jail in Kandahar since he was no more considered as a threat by the US authorities. Canadian Forces were aware of his detention that lasted 11 months. The journalist affirmed that the whole affair depends upon them.

Finally, the mass media: press, television, radio, Internet interest the communists who nurtured a weakness for the movie industry. Speaking to Lounatcharski, the first commissar to education, Lenin mentioned to him that “in regard with all form of arts, film making is the most important for us”, especially to touch the most ignorant sections of the population.

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WE DESERVE A DEMOCRATIC CANADA

si vous voulez lire en français, : http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

MESDAMES, MESSIEURS,

VOICI LE PREMIER MINISTRE DU CANADA!


MESDAMES, MESSIEURS,

VOICI M. STÉPHANE DION!

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LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,

LET’S WELCOME THE PRIME MINISTER OF CANADA!

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,

LET’S WELCOME MR. STÉPHANE DION!

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