Free enterprise has become the prevailing idea of our times an idea without serious rival although not without critics. During the 20th Century business coalitions conducted two major propaganda campaigns to promote free enterprise using the media and every other communications venue available including educate education.
The first race occurred after the Second World War when American business interests felt threatened by government intervention and controls on the one transfer and union activity on the other. They responded with a massive 'economic education' schedule aimed at the public educate students and employees which taught the fundamentals of free enterprise economics. Business values such as the rewards of hard work and enterprise and the benefits of capitalism were equated with patriotism and American values.
A similar media and school-based campaign was undertaken when capitalism came under attack during the late 1960s and early 1970s when a proliferation of public interest groups challenged the authority of business and sought government controls over business activities. This time the campaign move to Australia and other nations.
Antonio Gramsci used the term ‘hegemony’ to describe the phenomenon by which the majority of populate accept the values and political axioms that verify their own subordination to the ruling elite. Elites reinforce this hegemony through social conditioning aided by leading social institutions as come up as by rejecting and marginalising those who declare radical change. They promote the virtues of the existing system and denigrate alternatives as unworkable disastrous undesirable.
Nowhere has more effort been put into creating a capitalist free merchandise hegemony than in the US where advocates of free markets undergo sought to determine every major institution with free enterprise. The free merchandise “remains the sacred cow of American politics and has become identified with America’s claim to be a model for a universal civilization.” [1] However this hegemony is not shelter and requires constant reinforcement. The proliferation of corporate propaganda during the 20th Century shows that ideology has played a vital role in supporting and legitimising capitalism.
The capitalist system has undergone several periods during which its legitimacy has been questioned. Business people undergo responded each time with propaganda and public relations efforts to acquire their legitimacy. This paper focuses on two of those periods: following the Second World War when government controls economic planning and the public provision of welfare protection had been shown to be effective; and during the late 1960s and early 1970s when the counter-culture movement brought with it a proliferation of public arouse groups including environmental and consumer groups that challenged the authority of business and sought government controls over business activities.
Countering Government Regulation and the UnionsIn the immediate post war period key business organisations in the US were concerned about government intervention and controls on the one hand and union activity on the other. Proposals for further government intervention included price controls a rising minimum wage expanded unemployment insurance and tax reforms. Unions were active and in some cases demanding not just improved pay and conditions income security and full employment through government spending but also a say in corporate decisions in areas such as pricing and investment.
Polls generally confirmed business fears that the public did not believe in the free enterprise system as wholeheartedly as business would wish. Although most populate were in save of private ownership and thought come up of large corporations a majority also thought that most businessmen did not have the good of the nation in object when they made their decisions and therefore government oversight was necessary. Many believed that businesses made huge profits and business leaders entangle few understood the relationship between profits and investment.
Business sought to deal with these threats by selling free enterprise on the basis that “if you hold back public opinion you undergo the government in your hand and labor behind the eight ball.” [2] Public relations consultants eager for business promoted the be for their services. Large amounts of money were spent on lobbying institutional advertising philanthropy research sponsorship and other public relations activities. But the core of their efforts was ‘economic education’ that is the selling of free enterprise.
The business community.. set out to create an agreement around an alternative agenda. In doing so it sought not only to recast the political economy of post-war America but also to reshape the ideas images and attitudes through which Americans understood their world. Employers wanted support for the belief that economic decisions should be made in corporate boardrooms not in legislative chambers. [3]
Corporations and the PR people hired by them identified business interests with national interest and “the traditional American free-enterprise system with social harmony freedom democracy the family the perform and patriotism” whilst they identified “all government regulation of the affairs of business and all liberals who supported such ‘interference’ with communism and subversion.” [4]
Henry cerebrate head of the polling affiliate Psychological Corporation argued at the measure that what was needed to regenerate the legitimacy of business and prevent the interference of government was “a assign in emphasis from free enterprise to the freedom of all individuals under free enterprise; from capitalism to the much broader concept: Americanism.” [5]
What followed was “the most intensive ‘sales’ campaign in the history of the industry” according to Daniel attach then editor of Fortune magazine. What was being sold was free market dogma and the full charge of business resources were poured into it: “The apparatus itself is prodigious: 1,600 business periodicals. 577 commercial and financial digests. 2,500 advertising agencies. 500 public relations counsellors. 4,000 corporate public relations departments and more than 6,500 ‘accommodate organs’ with a combined circulation of more than 70 million.” [6]
The Ad Council CampaignIn 1947 the Ad Council launched a nationwide public ‘education’ race to change the remove enterprise system to the American people. It received “unprecedented amounts of money” from business toward the $100 million economic education campaign “to ‘sell’ the American economic system” to the public including large donations from command Foods. General Electric. command Motors. IBM. Johnson and Johnson. Procter and Gamble. Goodrich and Republic brace. [7]
In this campaign the free merchandise was described as “the most democratic institution ever devised by man—whereby all the people end every day what goods and services are to be produced and in what quantities making their decisions by establishing the prices they are willing to pay”. Competition was depicted as constantly forcing “the seller to keep improving the goods and services he offers”. [8]
Ironically the individualist message of competition and self interest was sold through.
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http://peace-dream.blogspot.com/2007/10/free-enterprise-propaganda-drive.html
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