Advertising Capitalism

Thinking about Dr. Oliver's DQ regarding whether or not Bernie Sanders or any other democratic socialist could become president pushed me to consider why capitalism is so highly esteemed in the U.S. This piece from The Conversation fills in some of that picture.

In 1942, a group of advertising and industry executives created the War Advertising Council, to promote the war effort. The government compensated the companies that created or donated ads by allowing them to deduct some of their costs from their taxable incomes.

Renamed the Ad Council in 1943, the organization applied the same wartime persuasive techniques of advertising and psychological manipulation during the Cold War years, the post-war period when the geopolitical rivalry between the U.S., the USSR and their respective allies raged. One of their goals: promoting the virtues of capitalism and free enterprise in America while simultaneously demonizing the alternative – socialism – which was often conflated with communism.

Government propaganda at home portrayed the communist USSR as godless, tyrannical and antithetical to individual freedoms. As a counterpoint, America became everything the Soviet Union was not (continues).

This leads me to believe that if a socialist--or any other alternate economic philosophy--is going to gain a more effective role in American society, then much more has to be achieved on the level of public perception. Simply appealing to the statistical failures of capitalism, e.g. wealth inequality, minimum wages, etc., won't work, I think. I'm not saying that advocates for democratic socialism should start assembling the machines of propaganda . . . but looking at the amount of corporate power that was behind the Ad Council mentioned in the article suggests that a competitive campaign is going to take some bankrolling.

A big part of this is, following Hagglund, pointing out capitalism's failures, especially by using an immanent critique (301). That's an important step. It's worthwhile to convincingly show that capitalism doesn't make good on its most fundamental promise, freedom, notwithstanding its impressive ability to distract us from realizing this with unending streams of titillation (shout out to George Orwell).