Customer Reviews

Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Liberty (History of Communication)

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An excellent and scathing critique of modern information systems and how those symbols can channel thought to protect the powerful.

Alex Carey examines how Management, Gov't, and other powerful interests manipulate the symbols of our cultural life to destroy union solidarity, dillute political accountability, and distract attention away from issues (and solutions) that threaten those institutions.

Very well researched and cleverly developed, it is unfortunate that Carey's career was abruptly cut short. This book and those it has inspired stand strong, albeit quietly, in the face of the information control systems that they seek to expose.

Carey points out that citizens living in totalitarian regimes have no choice but to toe the government line out of fear for their personal safeties. In free societies, Carey explains that more subtle means are used to keep populations under control. Specifically, propaganda is used to ensure that most people will think in a manner that is consistent with the corporate agenda (such as belief in the free market and business' right to unlimited profit). Carey documents how Americans and Australians have been subjected to corporate propaganda during most of the 20th Century, and explains how these efforts have perverted our democracy (for example, American's over willingness to fight communists, real or imagined, to protect capitalism). Indeed, while many Americans were conditioned during the Cold War to believe that propaganda existed only in the Soviet Union, China and other communist regimes, Carey persuasively argues that propaganda actually played (and continues to play) a more critical role in molding the attitudes of citizens in democracies.

"Taking the Risk Out of Democracy : Corporate Propaganda Versus Freedom and Liberty" is a pioneering work in the field of corporate propaganda analysis which reveals just how much of a major force corporate propaganda is in contemporary society. Alex Carey quotes the business press as stating that the public mind is the greatest "hazard facing industrialists."

"Taking the Risk Out of Democracy : Corporate Propaganda Versus Freedom and Liberty" points out that there are two types of propaganda, each of which have specific societal functions. The first type is aimed at the educated, articulate sectors of the population that are involved in in decision making and setting the agenda for others to adhere to. The second type of propaganda is aimed at the unwashed masses, to keep them distracted so as they don't interfere in the public arena where they have no business in being. All in all, "Taking the Risk Out of Democracy : Corporate Propaganda Versus Freedom and Liberty remains a seminal analysis of corporate propaganda and its uses in creating an obedient elite and a subserviant citizenry. Very enjoyable.

Mr. Andrew Lohrey informs us in his introduction, to this collection of essays by the late Australian psychologist Alex Carey, that Carey was prevented from going to college by his parents after he finished secondary school as they wanted him to manage their sheep farm which he did with such success that he could sell it about a decade later and enter a university.

Here and there this book is dreadfully dry, particularly towards the end. His ideas probably would have been made clearer and much better organized if he would have been able to put together a regular book instead of a book of essays put together by someone else but he died in 1988 before he could get it done. But the topics he discusses are very important especially now when business and government propaganda has never been more powerful.

The main title of this book describes what big business and their intellectual and political minions have tried to do particularly in the United States as rights to vote and to organize in this country were extended to large segments of the population of this country over the last hundred years. Carey's old friend Noam Chomsky quotes in his preface the numerous intellectual advocates (Walter Lipmann, Harold Laswell,etc.) of what Thomas Jefferson called late in his life "a single and splendid government of an aristocracy" made up of the "banking institutions and monyed incorporations" whom he feared would destroy the freedoms gained during the American revolution. Many prominent liberal intellectuals devoted loyal service to the state during World War one particularly in the government propaganda agencies putting out massive bogus atrocity stories about the Germans and turning a largely anti-war population in a short period into a bunch of maniacs looking to destroy everything remotely connected with Germany and German culture. A young German soldier named Adolf Hitler was deeply impressed with the allied propaganda effort and blamed German weakness in this field for their defeat and vowed that Germany would learn its lessons by the time the next war came around.

The best part of Carey's text, by far, is about the first five chapters. The first topic discussed is the Americanization movement begun in the few years before World War one by big busisiness associatons who were particularly worried about such events as the victory of the IWW led strike of textile workers in Lawrence Massachusetts in 1912. Big business was particularly worried about the influence of IWW-type radicalism on the U.S. immigrant population which mostly worked under very bad conditions at very low wages and set to work with a somwhat successful drive to inculate immigrants as well as the population at large with "American" values like free enterprise and the status quo and social harmony and against alien values like socialism or the welfare state or non-pliable unions. Out of this campaign came the Fourth of July holiday signed into law into 1918. This campaign culminated in the government crushing of the labor movement during 1919-21 under the cover of chasing communists and German spies.

The labor movement, says Carey, did not recover until the Great Depression which forced the U.S. government to enact very basic welfare legislation and protection of unions. This greatly alarmed important segments of big business. The National Association of Manufacturers literature in 1938 warned of the "hazard facing industrialists" of the "newly realized political power of the masses."

The end of World War two saw the beginnings of a massive attack on independent thinkers and organized labor under the cover of a red scare. After a lag in the early 1970's, the elites in this country began to steer this country towards a very markedly right wing political climate, seeing the rise of previously regarded fringe elements as represented by such think tanks as the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage foundation which featured such profound thinkers as former Nixon and Ford treasury secretary William Simon who fulminated about how the Carter administration was steering the country towards collectivist totalitarianism.

He goes into some detail examining the right wing apparatus in his native Australia. He ends with discussion of some matters dealing with industrial psychology and industrial sociology culminating in a study of the Hawthorne studies, laborious research at an Illinois assembly plant made up of female workers in the late 20's and early 30's where a group of industrial psychologists tried to secure evidence that workers don't care about money and just want to be left alone to do the wonderful jobs that the labor market has forced on them. The Hawthorne chapter is in large part almost unintelligible and very dry, probably inevitable given that it is a scientific paper.

Alex Carey's work is absolutely some of the best. My favorite quote of his is this: "The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy." This has become a touchstone for Sheldon Rampton and me in our books Toxic Sludge Is Good for You, Trust Us, We're Experts, and our writing for PR Watch. Carey is much missed.

As N. Chomsky brilliantly states, `Alex Carey draws the veil of deceit and imposed ignorance in the struggle for freedom and justice.'
Alex Carey shows how corporate propaganda protects corporate power (the few) against democracy (the many). Skilled manipulation conceals the real human nature and the needs of the common man in the interest of corporate efficiency and profit, in other words, in the interest of the privileged segments of society.

The effectiveness of propaganda depends on the availability of emotionally charged symbols and ideas. The most powerful ones are nationalist symbols. Therefore, corporate propaganda tries to identify the free-enterprise system with US national values, and strong unions, interventionist governments, communists and alleged liberal fellow travelers with threats to national security, subversion and tyranny.
A surveillance network detects early signs of ideological drifts. Corrective persuasion is immediately disseminated through the media, completely controlled by fellow megacorporations. As the social scientist H.D. Lasswell said: `propaganda is the one means of mass mobilization which is cheaper than violence, bribery or other possible control techniques.'

Another means of manipulation is the filtering of social science studies. Only those which improve the industry's image and interests are propagated.
Alex Carey shows the nonsense and fundamental hypocrisy of alleged `basic' social experiments (the Hawthorne studies, the experiments of K. Lewin and F. Herzberg), which `prove' that salary, job security and good working conditions are only of secondary importance for employees. In the meantime, corporations pocket superprofits.
Alex Carey's dissection of the Hawthorne studies is simply devastating. He unmasks social scientists as servants of power and union busters.

This book contains also excellent historical information (the McCarthy crusade, the great steel strike of 1919) and exposes rightly the link between propaganda and the pragmatism of Dewey and W. James (the promotion of false beliefs is justified if they are socially useful).

This is a very revealing book and a must read for all those wanting to understand the world we live in.

"The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance : the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy." This quote summarizes this book.

The author first recalls that between 1880 and 1920 the franchise in the American population increased from 10 to 50 percent. Corporations were afraid that this political emancipation would pose a risk, but they soon discovered that they could "produce public opinion". In the first half of the 20th century, this manipulation was coordinated by National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). The La Follette Committee in the US Congress observed in 1939 : "Radio speeches, public meetings, news, cartoons, editorials, advertising, motion pictures and many other artifices of propaganda have not, in most instances, disclosed to the public their origin within the Association."

Nothing was done to stop this trend. And it went from bad to worse. Corporate propaganda succeeded in turning the values upside down. The general public didn't hesitate to approve ideas that went totally against its own interest. Several examples are given in this book, and I would like to recall the following two important episodes.

After the second world war, prices in the US continued being controlled by the Office of Price Administration (OPA). That didn't please industry, but inquiries showed that 80 % of the American people approved of this politics. After a media campaign organized by the NAM, an inquiry showed that in October 1946 only about 26 % of the population "thought" that the OPA made sense. In November 1946 the OPA was closed down. Afterwards, President Truman called the corporate propaganda campaign a "conspiracy against the American consumers". Consumers were betrayed. By December 1946 prices had increased 15 %, much more than salaries had.

In 1975 the Advertising Council undertook a media campaign to "re-educate the people in economics", "investing" 1.000 million dollars a year. The brainwashing of the people under the slogan "Take government off our backs" was very successful. The percentage of the American people considering that government was too much involved in their lives increased from 42 to 60 % in 1980, and then Reagan won the presidential election.

What happened from then on can be read in Ben Bagdikian The New Media Monopoly.

"'Americans are the most propagandized people of any nation.'"

"The subject embraces a 75-year-long multi-billion dollar project in social engineering on a national scale."

"'The manufacture of consent... was supposed to have died out with the appearance of democracy' Walter Lippman wrote. 'But it has not died out. It has, in fact, improved enormously in technique... Under the impact of propaganda, it is not longer possible... to believe in the original dogma of democracy.'"

And other fun facts you would learn if you lived in a democracy. It's worth pondering on why any half-way decent course on Russian or Chinese history in America thoroughly discusses their social engineering projects- the Five Year Plan, the Cultural Revolution, etc.- as a given, while our own social engineering projects- corporate propaganda, the National Highway Act- are never even mentioned in spite of being significantly larger in scale. We don't even know that there were social engineering projects in this country. Imagine being a Russian student and never learning about the Five Year Plan or a Chinese student never learning about The Great Leap Forward (and the parallels of the US to these massive state-controlled behemoths are frequent and often unflattering), and you're beginning to get a sense at how stupid American education is. And to rub it in, you get smug libertarians like John Stossel (who is, ironically, a pure and perfect product of our education system) snarking on how American kids are ignorant because teachers get paid as if they somewhat resembled human beings. If you don't know the kind of things Carey talks about, you're to a rather large extent ignorant about 20th century American history- just like I was before I read the book, and probably still am. It would be remarkable if it were otherwise.

My son was assigned this book for an English class. He was puzzled by it, and I read it to see what the problem was. I was aghast that something like this would be assigned -- it's purely a screed by an academic leftist who considers propaganda to be anything he doesn't agree with. The book is really risible, when it's not impenetrable, and I'm amazed that it got any positive reviews on Amazon.
The fact that Noam Chomsky, the accomplished linguist who has destroyed his credibility with ridiculous political opinions, wrote the foreword says it all. Anarcho-syndicalism -- seriously?