Читать книгу Creating Freedom - Raoul Martinez - Страница 13

5

Elections

Every few years, millions of people enter small booths set up in local buildings – perhaps a school or town hall. They close the curtain behind them, reach for a pencil and, within the confines of a printed square, mark a cross. The paper is folded and pushed through a narrow slot in a box. Four to five years later they get to repeat the process.

It is primarily the marking of a ballot during the holding of free elections that separates modern democracies from other political systems. Once inside that booth, voters can place their crosses beside any party they choose. It is an act widely hailed as the source of our most cherished political freedoms. And yet, when we place this choice in a larger context, important questions arise: how were the options on the ballot determined? How was the identity – the opinions, loyalties and beliefs – of each voter formed? And, if this liberty is so meaningful, why has voter turnout in most modern democracies been steadily declining?

Manufacturing consent

Democratic reform was not welcomed by the aristocracies and empires of old. The desire of those with power to advance their own interests did not die out as democracies were born. Initially, elites fought the expansion of voting rights, but the growing movement for democratic reform forced a different strategy. As concessions were made, novel methods of control were developed to meet the emerging threat that democracy posed to traditional power structures. These were methods of manipulation rather than coercion.

Technologies of mass communication enable millions of people to be reached with the stroke of a pen or a single broadcast. ‘With the emergence of the mass media as a connective tissue of modern life,’ observes American historian Stuart Ewen, technology was ‘changing the ways that people saw, experienced, and understood the material world and their place within it’.¹ It heralded a revolution in communication and creativity, with huge potential to liberate and educate. But these advances also opened up the possibility of increasing control over the ideas, opinions and values encountered by the public.

Replacing Gustave Le Bon’s irrational crowd was, as Gabriel Tarde, a leading social scientist and close friend of Le Bon, put it, the public. Whereas the ‘crowd’ was viewed as wild and uncontrollable, the ‘public’ was seen as manageable and educable. ‘The crowd may be stampeded into folly or crime by accidental leaders,’ wrote social psychologist Edward A. Ross in 1908, but the ‘public can receive suggestions only through the columns of its journal, the editor of which is like the chairman of a mass meeting, for no one can be heard without his recognition.’²

One of the intellectual pioneers of this ‘risk-free’ approach to democracy was Walter Lippmann, regarded as the most influential journalist and social critic of his time. Already a confidant of President Woodrow Wilson by the age of twenty-five, he was soon dubbed by Roosevelt ‘the most brilliant man of his age’.³ Lippmann called the practice of managing democracy ‘the manufacture of consent’.⁴ If Lippmann was the theoretician, then Edward Bernays was the hands-on practitioner. Today Bernays is widely regarded as the father of modern public relations (a term he coined) and, according to some, one of the most influential people of the twentieth century.

The ideas and strategies developed by these men were very much a product of their time. Towards the end of the First World War, they took part in creating the largest propaganda machine the world had ever seen. President Woodrow Wilson had been elected in 1916 on an anti-war platform: ‘Peace Without Victory’ was his slogan. Nevertheless, Wilson intended to go to war. The problem he faced was how to deal with the ardent anti-war sentiment in his country; many felt it was simply a ‘rich man’s war’ to recover Wall Street loans. Ewen describes the challenge Wilson faced: ‘Sensing that middle-class public opinion was volatile and that a revolt of the masses was possible, a number of noteworthy social analysts began to lobby President Wilson, calling for the establishment of an ideological apparatus that would systematically promote the cause of war.’⁵

One of these analysts was Walter Lippmann. With US involvement in the First World War less than a month away, he advised Wilson to create a government news bureau to make the case that this war would ‘make a world that is safe for democracy’. A week after entering the war, Wilson set up the Committee of Public Information (CPI), also known as the Creel Committee. It united the most prominent journalists, artists, advertisers, speakers and intellectuals in the United States with a single ambition: to saturate the perceptual environment with the message that the US had a moral obligation to join the war.

The results were impressive. George Creel, head of the Committee, declared that ‘The printed word, the spoken word, motion pictures, the telegraph, the wireless, posters, signboards, and every possible media should be used to drive home the justice of America’s cause.’⁶ In cinemas around the country, a group known as the Four Minute Men, comprising 75,000 individuals selected by the Committee for their status in the local community and their speaking talents, would stand up between screenings and deliver a rousing, apparently impromptu speech conveying the Committee’s central message. Billboards, slogans, adverts of all varieties – drawing on the talents of people who had previously promoted household products – were utilised across the nation. The public were fed fabricated stories of German atrocities and warned of German spies spreading doubts in the minds of the American people. They were asked to fulfil their patriotic duty by alerting the authorities to anyone who was against the war effort. Dissenters were whisked off to jail.

Thousands of ‘official war news’ press releases were sent to people through the mail. ‘Human-interest’ features were distributed to capture the attention of those who skipped over the news section of their paper. To target the immigrant population, contact was made with 600 foreign-language papers. The CPI also began publishing its own paper: the Official Bulletin had a circulation of 115,000 and targeted public officials, newspapers and other organisations equipped to disseminate information. Hollywood movies, whose plots had been written by the Committee, were soon being filmed by seasoned producers.⁷

Within a few months there was growing war hysteria and a keen hatred of the Germans. By shaping the perceptual environment, a tiny minority had changed the mind of a nation. This was thought-control on a massive scale. The CPI heralded a new age of propaganda (or ‘public relations’ as it came to be known). At the forefront of these developments were Lippmann and Bernays.

Implicit throughout their work is the idea that public consent is not attained through reasoned, honest discussion but through deception and manipulation. It is worth quoting at length from their writings to demonstrate just how conscious was this attempt to stage-manage democracy. It portrays a very different – and to most people, unfamiliar – conception of democracy, but, as we will see, their strategies and ideas have become commonplace. From think tanks to spin doctors, their legacy pervades our corporate and political life.

Bernays’ classic 1928 manual Propaganda begins by setting out his vision of a well-functioning democracy:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.

We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.⁸

In a similar vein, Lippmann declared: ‘The creation of consent is not a new art. It is a very old one which was supposed to have died out with the appearance of democracy. But it has not died out. It has, in fact, improved enormously in technique . . .’.⁹ Harold Lasswell, an American political scientist and perhaps the first analyst of modern propaganda, would write soon after: ‘The modern world is busy developing a corps of men who do nothing but study the ways and means of changing minds or binding minds to their convictions . . . more can be won by illusion than coercion.’¹⁰

Lippman’s goal was to ensure the ruling elites could ‘live free of the trampling and the roar of the bewildered herd’. He believed the public must be ‘put in their place’, kept as ‘spectators’ not genuine participants. In order to keep the public in its place, it is necessary to censor the truth, to redact reality. ‘Without some form of censorship, propaganda in the strict sense of the word is impossible . . . Access to the real environment must be limited, before anyone can create a pseudo-environment that he thinks wise or desirable.’¹¹

In order to do this, Bernays stressed the importance of an ongoing ‘scientific’ study of the public, a ‘survey of public desires and demands’.¹² With enough data, a publicist can adjust propaganda ‘to the mentality of the masses’.¹³ What the public want or don’t want, desire or detest, fear or hope for can be tracked by focus groups, polls, surveys and market research. Armed with this information, Bernays thought it possible to stimulate the public’s fears and hopes to achieve a desired outcome. Symbols – be they a national flag, emotive concept or religious image – play a central role in this process. According to Lippmann, ‘The symbol in itself signifies literally no one thing in particular, but it can be associated with almost anything. And because of that it can become the common bond of common feelings, even though those feelings were originally attached to disparate ideas.’¹⁴ Used effectively, the symbol is ‘an instrument by which a few can fatten on many, deflect criticism, and seduce men into facing agony for objects they do not understand’.¹⁵ Not only must the ‘master of current symbols’ use the ‘pseudo-environment’ to unite disparate groups, he must, argued Bernays, also manufacture public events to direct public attention. These ‘stage-managed’ moments might include a carefully planned ‘spontaneous’ photo shoot, a well-worked ‘off-the-cuff’ sound bite, an orchestrated ‘public’ protest, or an apparently objective scientific report.

Lippmann repeatedly emphasises the potential for exploiting our limited capacity to make sense of an infinitely complex world. The ‘way in which the world is imagined determines at any particular moment what men will do’, he writes, but the ‘real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance’. Before we act on the world, ‘we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model’ in symbolic form.¹⁶ How does a particular symbol take root in the mind of an individual? Lippmann claims that ‘It is planted there by another human being whom we recognize as authoritative. If it is planted deeply enough, it may be that later we shall call the person authoritative who waves that symbol at us.’

The rise of the corporation

In his history of public relations, Alex Carey argued that ‘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.’¹⁷ The evidence to support Carey’s thesis is overwhelming. The grand scale and conscious intent of twentieth-century corporate propaganda is striking. Any account of modern democracy that excludes it is misleading and incomplete.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, regulations on corporate mergers and acquisitions were relaxed, leading to a rapid concentration of capital in a small group of ‘super corporations’. From 1898 to 1904, almost 2,000 corporations were whittled down to just 157.¹⁸ By the end of the nineteenth century, they had been granted ‘corporate personhood’ by the courts, winning rights and freedoms that previously had only been possessed by living, breathing people. They were soon to be endowed with a personality. In 1916, following the example of company law in Britain, a US court ruling effectively made it illegal for a corporation to be motivated by anything but profit.¹⁹ To compromise this purpose for the sake of any other considerations – the environment, working conditions or the public interest – would be to act illegally. In 1933, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis compared modern corporations to ‘Frankenstein monsters’.²⁰ Given life by the state, they now threatened to overpower their creators.

Milton Friedman, one of the most influential economists of the twentieth century, defended the view that the corporation’s only moral obligation was to maximise corporate profits for stockholders. Executives who prioritised social and environmental goals over profits were, he declared, immoral. The only time such actions are permissible, claimed Friedman, is when they are insincere, that is, when appearing to prioritise the wider social good is merely a means to the end of profit-maximisation. Today, this view of the role of corporations is still supported by the legal framework of most industrialised nations. Legal scholar Joel Bakan explains that the law ‘compels executives to prioritize the interests of their companies and shareholders above all others and forbids them from being socially responsible – at least genuinely so’.²¹ ‘Corporate social responsibility’ is tolerated, then, only when it is in the financial interests of the shareholders. Structuring the law in this way only underscores the deeper logic of market competition, which drives competing firms to profit any way they can or perish.

Corporate employees may be decent individuals in their personal lives, but in their institutional roles they are compelled by the goals and priorities of their employer to maximise profit at all costs. This is generally well understood. Jan Kees Vis, Director of Sustainable Agriculture at the multinational corporation Unilever, conceded that the minute he ‘adopts a policy that benefits the environment but harms the company’ he will lose his job.²²

A corporation can increase its profits in various ways. Some, such as technological innovation, can benefit us all. But there are many easier ways to increase profits that can, incidentally, cause grave damage: using resources without paying for them; manufacturing unhealthy wants through manipulative advertising; extracting subsidies, tax breaks and bail-outs from the state; and increasing demands on workers while dramatically reducing wages.

The two major threats to corporate profit are market competition and political democracy. No profit-maximising entity truly endorses free-market doctrine for the simple reason that competition harms profits. The corporate support of free enterprise is an opportunistic move – a struggle for power, not principle. Ideally, every corporation prefers to monopolise the market in which it operates and raise entry costs to prohibitive levels, thereby eliminating all competition. Often, this is what happens. Market competition produces winners and losers. Winners then use their gains to consolidate and expand their advantage. They benefit from economies of scale, synergy and larger budgets for advertising, research and political lobbying. Over time, small advantages become magnified and industries become less competitive. In fact, students in business schools are taught how to create barriers to competition in the pursuit of market dominance.

In order to protect citizens and the environment, governments can limit the ways in which businesses can make a profit. So, from the perspective of the corporation, the power of the state poses a persistent threat. Of particular concern is the state’s capacity to impose regulation and taxes that eat into profit margins.

But the real threat to profit is not the state (which can be an enormously powerful ally) but the existence of democracy, which can challenge corporate control of the state. Democracy enables people to regulate industry and use their votes to obtain what they cannot afford in the market – healthcare, social housing, education, energy and food – and, in doing so, cordon off parts of the economy from which business might otherwise profit. Consequently, strong incentives and ample means exist for corporations to restrain and control democracy. The goal is to co-opt state power and create an economic environment conducive to their own short-term financial interest. This would be an economy free from democratic interference with minimal regulation and taxation, no legal protection for workers, unions or the environment, coercive support from the state and a host of valuable subsidies.

During the nineteenth century, corporate power was effectively insulated from democratic interference. However, this began to change when, from 1880 to 1920, in Britain and the US, the right to vote was extended from roughly 10 per cent of the population to almost 50 per cent.²³ Men and women from all walks of life were winning the formal right to rule themselves. Meanwhile, widening inequality and worsening poverty were forcing middle-class people to rethink ideological assumptions once widely accepted. Aggravating such conditions were the unaccountable heads of corporations dominating economic life who, writes Ewen, had taken on ‘the traits of the despots that eighteenth-century democrats had fought so vigorously to overthrow’.²⁴