Capitalist propaganda
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Capitalist propaganda is promotion of capitalism, often via mass media, education, or other institutions, primarily by the ruling private and political elite.
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Means
Mass media and entertainment
The mass media has been commonly described as the most pervasive avenue of distribution for capitalist propaganda. Advertising has been referred to by cultural theorist Raymond Williams as "the official art of modern capitalist society: it is what 'we' put up in 'our' streets and use to fill up to half of 'our' newspapers and magazines: and it commands the services of perhaps the largest organized body of writers and artists, with their attendant managers and supervisors, in the whole society."
Writers such as Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart in How to Read Donald Duck and Michael Real in Mass-Mediated Culture demonstrate the pervasiveness of capitalist propaganda in mass media such as Disney comics and entertainment venues like Disneyland. Media studies scholars have analyzed how capitalist propaganda in the media and entertainment sectors often goes completely unidentified. Donald Lazare questions, while a fictional "communist version of Disneyland" or an "American socialist television newscast might cause readers to snicker at what they perceive to be blatant propaganda" for socialism, "is it not an indication of how indoctrinated we have been that we do not recognize the real Disneyland or commercialized newscasts as equally blatant propaganda for capitalism?"
Television
Television has been identified as a major source of capitalist propaganda among existing scholarship and studies. As scholar Guinevere Liberty Nell writes, "the private propaganda of capitalist firms can be seen in many forms of media, including television." Shows such as The Price is Right and Undercover Boss have been identified as programs which visibly perpetuate a capitalist worldview. On the latter, Nell writes that "the show at first might appear to be a positive force upon corporate culture, bringing workers' needs to the attention of the management; actually, it promotes a submissive attitude of workers to management, and focuses on the productivity (and pride) of the workers in much the same way as the Soviet propaganda promoting 'Stakhanovites.'"
Institutions such as the Advertising Council of the United States have been identified as "a propaganda agency for corporate capitalism" because of its work in implicitly upholding capitalism despite claiming to be "non-commercial, non-denominational, non-partisan politically, and not designed to influence legislation." It has been estimated that American children receive over 350,000 propaganda messages for capitalism in television commercials alone by the time they are eighteen.
Museums and the art establishment
Although they appear as "neutral" institutions in capitalist countries, art museums and other museums have been designed to uphold the ideological beliefs of the elite or capitalist class. Museum studies scholar Nicolas Lampert analyzes how museums in capitalist countries form, what he terms, a Museum-Industrial complex. Organizations such as the Guerilla Art Action Group (GAAG) have protested museums such as the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), where they removed Kazimir Malevich's Supremacist Composition: White on White from the wall, with no intention to harm the work but rather selecting it as a "symbolic site to present [a] manifesto." The manifesto demanded that MOMA "decentralize its power structure" and stated that if art is "to have any relevance at all today, [it] must be taken out of the hands of an elite and returned to the people." The manifesto further described how the art establishment (1) represses and manipulates artists to primarily create and say only what is "for the benefit of an elite," (2) encourages people to accept or distracts them from their repression by the military/business complex, and (3) functions "as propaganda for capitalism and imperialism all over the world."
National organizations
National organizations that promote capitalist propaganda and monitor anti-capitalist activity by suppressing people who oppose capitalism exist to maintain the ideological hegemony of capitalism in capitalist countries. These organizations are often explicitly founded by and/or receive heavy financial backing and support from the elite, who use them to spread capitalist propaganda and discourage dissent. The Economic League was a non-governmental organization (NGO) in the United Kingdom dedicated to surveying and opposing all anti-capitalist activity as well as funding capitalist propaganda. The organization kept a blacklist of anti-capitalists for decades which it passed on to corporate members who used it to vet job applicants and deny people jobs based on their anti-capitalist ideological perspectives.
Pages linking in
Dominant ideology, Communist propaganda, Vladimir Lenin, We Were Strangers, How to Read Donald Duck, Art history, History of art criticism, Modern capitalist society
See also
- Media imperialism
- Le Capitalisme de la séduction (1981) by Michel Clouscard
