Requiem for the American Dream Page #6

Guns, tear gas, clubs

and fists bring injuries

to more than 80 persons

and caused the death of two.

By the mid '30s,

it began to reconstruct.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he himself was rather

sympathetic to progressive legislation

that would be in the benefit

of the general population,

but he had to somehow

get it passed.

So he informed labor leaders

and others, "force me to do it."

What he meant is, go out and demonstrate,

organize, protest,

develop the labor movement.

When the popular

pressure is sufficient,

I'll be able to put through

the legislation you want.

I am not for a return

to that definition of Liberty,

under which for many

years a free people

were being gradually

regimented into the service

of a privileged few.

I prefer that broader

definition of Liberty.

So, there was kind of

a combination of sympathetic

government,

and by the mid-'30s,

very substantial popular activism.

There were industrial actions.

There were sit-down strikes,

which were very

frightening to ownership.

You have to recognize

the sit-down strike is just

one step before saying,

"we don't need bosses.

We can run this by ourselves."

And business was appalled.

You read the business press,

say, in the late '30s,

they were talking

about the "hazard

facing industrialists"

and the "rising political

power of the masses,"

which has to be repressed.

Things were on hold

during the second world war,

but immediately after

the second world war,

the business offensive

began in force.

The Taft-Hartley Act.

(Labor Management Relations Act of 1947)

The Taft-Hartley Act was written

for only one purpose,

to restore justice and equality in

labor-management relations. (In fact, it restricts

the activities and power of labor unions)

Then McCarthyism was used for

massive corporate propaganda

offensives to attack unions.

It increased sharply

during the Reagan years.

I mean, Reagan pretty much told

the business world,

"if you want to illegally break

organizing efforts and strikes,

go ahead."

They are in violation

of the law,

and if they do not report

for work within 48 hours,

they have forfeited their jobs

and will be terminated.

It continued in the '90s and,

of course with George W. Bush,

it went through the roof.

By now, less than 7% of private

sector workers have unions.

The effect is that the usual

counter-force to an offensive

by our highly class-conscious

business class has dissolved.

Now, if you're in

a position of power,

you want to maintain

class-consciousness

for yourself,

but eliminate it

everywhere else.

You go back to the 19th century,

in the early days of

the industrial revolution

in the United States,

working people were

very conscious of this.

They, in fact,

overwhelmingly regarded

wage labor as not very different

from slavery,

different only in that

it was temporary.

In fact, it was such a popular

idea that it was the slogan

of the Republican party.

That was a very sharp

class-consciousness.

In the interest of power

and privilege,

it's good to drive those ideas

out of people's heads.

You don't want them to know

that they're an oppressed class.

So, this is one of the few

societies in which you just

don't talk about class.

In fact, the notion

of class is very simple.

Who gives the orders?

Who follows them?

That basically defines class.

It's more nuanced and complex,

but that's basically it.

The public relations industry,

the advertising industry,

which is dedicated

to creating consumers,

it's a phenomena that developed

in the freest countries,

in Britain and the United States,

and the reason is pretty clear.

It became clear by,

say, a century ago

that it was not going to be

so easy to control

the population by force.

Too much freedom had been won.

Labor organizing, parliamentary

labor parties in many countries,

women starting to get

the franchise, and so on.

So, you had to have other

means of controlling people.

And it was understood

and expressed

that you have to control

them by control of beliefs

and attitudes.

Well, one of the best

ways to control people

in terms of attitudes

is what the great political

economist Thorstein Veblen

called "fabricating consumers."

If you can fabricate wants...

Make obtaining things that are

just about within your reach

the essence of life,

they're going to be trapped

into becoming consumers.

You read the business

press in say, 1920s,

it talks about the need

to direct people to

the superficial things of life,

like "fashionable consumption"

and that'll keep them

out of our hair.

You find this doctrine

all through progressive

intellectual thought,

like Walter Lippmann,

the major progressive

intellectual of

the 20th century.

He wrote famous progressive

essays on democracy in which

his view was exactly that.

"The public must be

put in their place,"

so that the responsible

men can make decisions

without interference

from the "bewildered herd."

They're to be spectators,

not participants.

Then you get a properly

functioning democracy,

straight back to Madison

and on to Powell's memorandum,

and so on.

And the advertising industry

just exploded with this

as its goal...

Fabricating consumers.

And it's done with

great sophistication.

You don't see many

wild stallions anymore.

He's one of the last of a wild

and very singular breed.

Come to Marlboro country.

The ideal is what you

actually see today...

Where, let's say,

teenage girls, if they have

a free Saturday afternoon,

will go walking

in the shopping mall,

not to the library

or somewhere else.

The idea is to try

to control everyone,

to turn the whole society

into the perfect system.

Perfect system would be

a society based on a dyad,

a pair.

The pair is you

and your television set,

or maybe now you

and the Internet,

in which that presents you

with what the proper life

would be,

what kind of gadgets

you should have.

And you spend your time

and effort gaining those things,

which you don't need,

and you don't want, and maybe

you'll throw them away...

But that's the measure

of a decent life.

What we see is in, say,

advertising on television,

if you've ever taken

an economics course,

you know that

markets are supposed to be based

on "informed consumers making

rational choices."

Well, if we had a system

like that, a market system,

then a television ad would

consist of, say, General Motors

putting up information, saying,

"here's what we have for sale."

That's not what

an ad for a car is.

And ad for a car

is a football hero...

An actress, the car doing

some crazy thing like,

going up a mountain

or something.

The point is to create

uninformed consumers who

will make irrational choices.

That's what advertising

is all about,

and when the same institution,

the PR system, (The PR Industry, ori

Public relations and lobbying industry)

runs elections,

they do it the same way.

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