Propaganda & Mass Persuasion: The Wealth of Nations

Thursday, February 23, 2006

The Wealth of Nations

while reading Adam Smith's " The Wealth of Nations" recently, i found great similarity in structure and operation between his ideal and that of George Creel's CPI. such as "the division of labors based on talents" is like the various branches within the huge bureau of CPI; " the exchange of economic value" is the same thing as for CPI to sell American image while gainning support for war--the products they want", and the turnout is proportionate to the input; and the basic functions of government like to pretect society from violence, to keep justice and maintain public institutions, ect. are all what CPI propagandizes.
no wonder, propaganda is multidisciplinary, like the Constitution that covers almost all range of human activities. so to some extent, it's always more or less related to those original ideas that build up the spirit of America. and most obviously, since economic incentives are always the greatest, all those economic ideas stand out as the backbone of the whole propaganda process.
luckily, America is the open arena that defends freedom of speech, so we--either as participants or recipients in various forms of propaganda, can always choose what we believe. Compared to those that impose ideas on people by either power or force that actually intensif ies rebellious spirti instead, this is more effective and seems like still defending the democracy and human rights.

1 Comments:

Blogger A. Mattson said...

Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" is a fundamental text of capitalism, of a market society, of a free market economy.

Creel and the CPI had to work with the American media, which is a free market system. The government did not directly own or control the newspapers. The CPI could rely on the patriotism of the media class to assist in the propaganda effort, but there was also a constant negotiation, in which the CPI had to recognize that they needed to take into account that the media were independent and needed to be asked for their cooperation in the war effort, and that their interests had to be addressed. Economic instrests had to be respected. The power of the government to offer carrots as well as the stick helped them to control the press and force their cooperation.

2/23/2006 11:57 AM  

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