DEMOCRACY
AND ITS DISCONTENTS:
THE
DEBATE ABOUT THE LEGITIMACY OF PROPAGANDA IN THE FUNCTIONING OF DEMOCRACY
“What we seek is the
reign of law, based upon the consent of the governed and sustained by the
organized opinion of mankind.”
-WOODROW WILSONi
“One of the advantages
of democracy, from the governmental point of view, is that it makes the average
citizen easier to deceive, since he regards the government as his government.”
-BERTRAND RUSSELLii
As was discussed in part one of this piece there were some, most notably Bernays and Lippmann who provided our
focus, that viewed propaganda as vital to the functioning of democracy. There
were others however, that did not share their views about the course society
was taking as a result of the increased and intensified efforts of propagandists
to enter into the discourse of daily American life. It is the clash of these
conflicting ideas and the debate that ensued as a consequence that shall form
the basis of this part. While we shall take as our focus in this part the
implications propaganda had for democracy, it is worth noting that totalitarian
dictatorships, particularly that of Nazi Germany,[1]
also utilised many of the guiding principles being pioneered in America. Indeed
Bernays was informed by journalist Karl von Wiegand in 1933 that Nazi
propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels was using his book Crystallizing Public Opinion in the destructive campaign against
the Jews; a fact about which he expressed great shock.[2] Goebbels
was evidently not overly concerned by the implicit ironies involved with his
utilisation of the works of an Austrian born Jew for the purposes of advancing
National Socialism’s repellent ideology.
During the 1920s when ideas
of propaganda in its modern connotation were still being refined the debate
over propaganda’s function in a democracy was dominated by two men; Walter
Lippmann and John Dewey. It should be noted from the outset however, that both
Lippmann and Dewey in this debate did share a degree of common ground. In no
way can it be characterised as reminiscent or suggestive of some of the more
infamously acerbic intellectual debates such as Freud and Jung or more recently
Dershowitz and Finkelstein. As Sue Curry Jansen tells us Dewey and Lippmann
were in many ways allies as both were seeking “to reform democracy in light of
modern conditions, which included the emergence of mass communication.”[3] Both
men ostensibly agreed that the American democratic process was far from an
ideal political institution and differed primarily in prescription.[4] For
example Lippmann states that: “Never has democratic theory been able to
conceive itself in the context of a wide and unpredictable environment.”[5] Similarly
Dewey tells us that: “The idea of democracy is a wider and fuller idea than can
be exemplified by the state even at its best.”[6]
The essential divergence
between Dewey and Lippmann was chiefly concerned with what role the public
should have in the less than ideal existing form of democracy. Lippmann
contended that it was highly impracticable, if not impossible, for citizens to
be sufficiently well informed to participate in democracy on issues of
economics, science or foreign affairs.[7] He
writes in Public Opinion of public’s
perceptions of the world, which he states are based largely on stereotypes,
prejudices and preconceptions, which stood in opposition to the realities of
“the world outside the pictures in our heads.”[8] He
argues that this discrepancy between the “picture inside” and “the outside
world” is what “so often misleads men in their dealings” with political
reality.[9]
Lippmann added later in The Phantom
Public to his reasoning as to why proper methods of propaganda were
essential if the admittedly imperfect American democracy was to function. On
this point he states:
“Since the general
opinions of large numbers of persons are almost certain to be a vague and
confusing medley, action cannot be taken until these opinions have been
factored down, canalised [sic], compressed and made uniform. The making of one
general will out of a multitude is not an Hegelian mystery…but an art well
known to leaders, politicians and steering committees. It consists essentially
in the use of symbols which assemble emotions after they have been detached
from their ideas.”[10]
In
a direct response to this idea Dewey writes:
“The pretence [sic] of
a common mind and general action in behalf of things at large has only bred
fictions, and these fictions have increased confusion, have put a premium on
deceptions and propaganda. The outcome of course is that action is as much
determined in private by a few insiders as ever it was. But falsification has
come in; acting for ends of their own, they claim to be the agents of a public
will and to have public support and sanction, and to get the latter as a
working force, they bamboozle the public.”[11]
As we can see, in contrast to Lippmann’s views, Dewey believed that
democracy required the active participation of its citizens in the formation and
enactment of important political decisions.[12]
Dewey in seeking to refute the somewhat negative prospects for public
involvement in democracy as outlined by Lippmann stated of Public Opinion that: “it is the most effective indictment of
democracy as currently conceived ever penned.”[13] The
alternative Dewey offers to this ‘indictment of democracy’ was a move away from
the utilisation of propaganda, putting in its stead more democratic methods of
inquiry and education.[14] The
deprivation of these methods was, Dewey states: “the problem of the public.” The
remedying of this problem was: “The essential need, in other words, the
improvement of methods and conditions of debate, discussion and persuasion.”[15]
Dewey recognised the difficulties that accompanied the prospects of any such
environment of democratic methods of inquiry and debate. Such democratic
methods were at every turn undermined by "publicity agents manufacturing
public opinion" as well as "government by press agents, by
'counsellors of public relations', by propaganda in press and school".[16] It
was Dewey’s belief that:
“Until secrecy,
prejudice, bias, misrepresentation, and propaganda … are replaced by inquiry
and publicity, we have no way of telling how apt for judgement of social
policies the existing intelligence of the masses may be.”[17]
Dewey was not alone in his
beliefs, and while the criticisms levelled against propaganda became
increasingly frequent and trenchant later in the 20th century, there
were others at this time that shared his ideas. One such distinguished observer
of these trends was American theologian and commentator Reinhold Niebuhr. In
his 1932 work Moral Man and Immoral Society Niebuhr states; “Contending
factions in a social struggle require morale; and morale is created by the
right dogmas, symbols and emotionally potent oversimplifications” further
stating that “No class of industrial workers will ever win freedom from the
dominant classes if they give themselves completely to the ‘experimental
techniques’ of the modern educators”.[18]
One year later sociologist
Frederick Lumley offered some practical advice to citizens on how to be aware
of the promulgation of these ‘emotionally potent oversimplifications’ and thus
avoid ‘giving themselves completely’ to these ‘experimental techniques of the
modern educators’. Taking his cues from Dewey and Bertrand Russell, Lumley
opines that: “the ultimate cure for propaganda seems to hang inseparably with a
liberated intelligence, cooperatively searing its unthwartable way through
every cherished doctrine and practice.” It was this Lumley added that “will
operate to save him by giving the propagandists pause … by ruining the soil to
which they are accustomed to plant their noxious seed.”[19]
While the capacity to
reach a wider audience through technological advances continued to gather pace,
and while people like Niebuhr, Lumley, Lippmann and Dewey debated to what end
they should be used, Franklin Roosevelt entered the White House. While in some
ways as Stuart Ewen tells us: “FDR was a prototypical twentieth century
persuader, intuitively sophisticated about public psychology” as well as being
“remarkably attuned to the modern media apparatus” he was simultaneously a
believer in the possibility, as was recommended by Dewey, of an informed public
debate.[20]
He pronounced in 1938 that:
“Democracy cannot
succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely.
The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education. It has been well said
that no system of government gives so much to the individual or exacts so much
as a democracy.”[21]
Similarly
with the question of what was happening overseas, as the world moved ever
closer to war, Roosevelt sought to inform public debate and saw himself “in the
midst of the long process of education.”[22] While
Roosevelt enacted an immense campaign to ‘educate’ the public about the ‘New
Deal’, his approaches to public opinion were far more nuanced than the
essentialist views.[23]
Propagandists tended to vacillate between the two; informed rational public
debate on the one hand and manipulation of opinion through marginalisation and
censorship on the other, views which are encapsulated in the arguments of Dewey
and Lippmann respectively.
Public attention at this
time was being drawn increasingly towards the character of propaganda. As well
as the highlighting of the dangers of external propaganda the public became
more aware of business propaganda that sought to repeal the concessions granted
to organised labour with accusations of Bolshevism.[24]
Much of this propaganda was organised by the National Association of
Manufacturers (NAM), which sought to influence public opinion against
Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ and the immense publicity campaigns that had been
organised on its behalf. The NAM blamed the changes that were happening in
industrial relations on “Communists”, “impatient reformers”, “disturbers” and
“teacher propagandists”.[25] The
extent of NAM agitation against the ‘New Deal’, as well as the increasing
public awareness of corporate malfeasance and propaganda, led to the NAM
becoming part of the investigations of a Senate Committee. The Committee on
Education and Labor, Subcommittee Investigating Violations of Free Speech and
the Rights of Labor, known as the La Follette Committee (1936-1941), named
after its chairman Robert La Follette (Progressive –Wisconsin), gave a grave
indictment of corporate propaganda. The La Follette Committee declared of the
NAM that they had sought to: “render public opinion intolerant of the aims of
social progress through legislative effort.”[26] It
was furthermore said of the NAM by the La Follette Committee that it had:
“blanketed the country
with a propaganda that in technique has relied upon indirection of meaning, and
in presentation of secrecy and deception. 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.”[27]
In
spite of these revelations the NAM held together and after World War II
continued, with many other business sponsored organisations, to disseminate
widespread anti-Communist, anti-socialist, anti-union and anti-New Deal
propaganda.[28]
Also after that war Lippmann
again played an important role, advancing ideas in opposition to the idea that
the public could be sufficiently informed on matters of foreign affairs to play
a significant part. The ideas of Lippmann, and political scientist Gabriel Almond, yielded a broad consensus in the post-war years (The Almond-Lippmann
Consensus). This consensus was made up of the propositions regarding domestic
opinion of foreign affairs: (1) it is volatile and thus provides inadequate
foundations for stable and effective foreign policies, (2) it lacks coherence
or structure, but (3) in the final analysis, it has little if any impact on
foreign policy.[29]
The catalyst for re-evaluation of such beliefs was largely the Vietnam War.[30]
It was chiefly as a
result of Vietnam that views such as the Almond-Lippmann consensus came to be
challenged prompting in turn, a renewed and increasingly acerbic critique of
propaganda. Prevalent amongst those offering this critique was sociologist,
philosopher and political theorist Herbert Marcuse. In his 1964 work One-DimensionalMan Marcuse criticised the implications of propaganda for society,
highlighting it as a specifically elite interest, stating that: “As the great
words of freedom and fulfilment [sic] are pronounced by campaigning leaders and
politicians, on the screens and radios and stages, they turn into meaningless
sounds which obtain meaning only in the context of propaganda…”[31]
Arguably the most
influential and best known of those who critique the implications of propaganda
for democracy is linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky. Chomsky, who
still works and writes in Massachusetts Institute of Technology, believes that
propaganda is compatible with only one view of democracy; a view of contempt.
In his 1989 work Necessary Illusions,
Chomsky decries the views of both Bernays and Lippmann, and sarcastically discusses
“the ignorant public” that after World War II “reverted to their slothful
pacifism.”[32]
Similarly in his 1988 work Manufacturing
Consent, (co-authored with Edward S. Herman), he contends democracy is
significantly impoverished in its forms owing to the fact that: “In countries
where the levers of power are in the hands of a state bureaucracy, the
monopolistic control over the media, often supplemented by official censorship,
makes it clear that the media serve the ends of a dominant elite.”[33]
For Chomsky the propagandist’s “logic is clear”, he writes that: “Propaganda is
to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state. That's wise and
good because, again, the common interests elude the bewildered herd. They can't
figure them out.”[34]
What Chomsky, Dewey,
Marcuse and others have offered since the end of World War I, as part of a
process that accelerated during and after the 1960s, is a coherent, sustained
though much controverted critique of the implications propaganda has for the
democratic process. Standing in firm opposition to these ideas are the imposing
figures of men like Walter Lippmann and Edward Bernays who postulate that not
only is propaganda not harmful to democracy, it is in fact essential to its
proper functioning. While criticisms have been levelled since the 1920s about
the seemingly sinister underpinnings of propaganda, the constant and rapid
changing face of today’s technology has rendered any future inferences as to
the direction of mass communications singularly impossible. What none of these
men could have been aware of as they wrote their treatise, with the possible
exclusion of Noam Chomsky who sill writes today, is the extent to which mass
communications would shift with the development of new technologies. Though the advent of radio and television were
adapted into the framework of their thought the power of the internet could not
have been predicted; it being an inherently democratic medium through which
every individual with access can now propagandise and disseminate ideas in
their own corner of it. Consequently, according to Alan Axelrod with “all
available information … available to everyone at all times … technology, not
great thinkers and their great ideas, may create the apotheosis of democracy.”[35]
i Woodrow
Wilson, Address at Mount Vernon, July
4th 1918, (Washington, 1918) p.5
ii Russell, Power, 114
[1]
For authoritative histories of propaganda and public opinion in Nazi Germany
see Ian Kershaw, Popular Opinion and
Political Dissent in the Third Reich: Bavaria 1933-1945, (New York, 1983)
& Ian Kershaw, The Hitler Myth: Image and Reality in the Third Reich,
(New York, 1987)
[2]
Tye, Father of Spin, 111 & Edward
Bernays, Biography of an Idea: Memoirs of
Public Relations Counsel, (New York, 1965), p.652
[3]
Jansen, ‘Phantom Conflict’, 222
[4]
Whipple, ‘Dewey-Lippmann Debate Today’, 158-159
[5]
Lippmann, Public Opinion, 250-251
[6]
Dewey, Public and its Problems, 143
[7]
Dell P. Champlin and Janet T. Knoedler, ‘The Media, the News, and Democracy:
Revisiting the Dewey-Lippman Debate’, in
Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Mar., 2006): p.137
[8]
Lippmann, Public Opinion, 9-36
[9] Lippmann,
Public Opinion, 32
[10]
Lippmann, Phantom Public, 37
[11] Dewey,
‘Practical Democracy, 215
[12]
Champlin and Knoedler, ‘Revisiting the Dewey-Lippmann Debate’, 138
[13]
Dewey, ‘Review of Public Opinion’, 286
[14]
James Farr, ‘John Dewey and American Political Science’, in American Journal of Political Science,
Vol. 43, No. 2 (Apr., 1999): pp. 520-541
[15]
Dewey, Public and its Problems, 208
[16]
Quoted in Farr, ‘Dewey and American Political Science’, 528
[17]
Dewey, Public and its Problems, 209
[18] Reinhold
Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics, (Kentucky, 2001), xxvii –
Originally Published 1932
[19]
Lumley, Propaganda Menace, 428
[20]
Ewen, PR!, 241
[21]
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Message for
American Education Week, September 27, 1938 – Available at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=15545
–Accessed 16-7-2012
[22]
Quoted in Steven Casey, Cautious Crusade:
Franklin D. Roosevelt, American Public Opinion and the War Against Nazi
Germany, (New York, 2001), p.30
[23]
Ewen, PR!, 240-241
[24]
Harold D. Lasswell and Dorothy Blumenstock, World
Revolutionary Propaganda: A Chicago Study, (New York, 1939), p.4
[25]
Quoted in Jerold S. Auerbach, Labor and
Liberty: The La Follette Committee and the New Deal’, (Indiana, 1966),
p.147
[26] Quoted
in Auerbach, Labor and Liberty, 147
[27]
Quoted in Alex Carey, Taking the Risk Out
of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda Versus Freedom and Liberty, (Illinois,
1997), p.24
[28]
Carey, Taking the Risk Out of Democracy, 29
[29]
Ole R. Holsti, ‘Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: Challenges to the
Almond-Lippmann Consensus’, in
International Studies Quarterly, Vol.
36, No. 4 (Dec., 1992): p.439
[30] Ole
R. Holsti, ‘Public Opinion and Foreign Policy’, 459
[31]
Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, (New York, 2002), p.61 –Originally
Published 1964
[32]
Noam Chomsky, Necessary Illusions:
Thought Control In Democratic Societies, (London, 1989), pp.16-18
[33]
Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, Manufacturing
Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, (London, 1994)
[34]
Noam Chomsky, Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda,
(California, 1991) –Available at http://ics-www.leeds.ac.uk/papers/vp01.cfm?outfit=pmt&folder=715&paper=1146
–Accessed 17-7-2012
[35]
Axelrod, Selling the Great War, 226
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