Alex Carey - The Ideological Management Industry

8/19/2019 Alex Carey - The Ideological Management Industry

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The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: i.e., the class which

is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.

The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at

the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally

speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it.

- Karl Marx, The German Ideology (1846) as cited in The Marx-Engels Reader,edited by Robert C. Tucker, New York: Norton, 1972, p. 136

The Ideological Management Industry

Alex Carey

This chapter is about the modern development of techniques for the ideologicalmanagement of liberal societies in order to preserve the interests of capitalist elites.More specifically, it is about the introduction to Australia of techniques for taking thepolitical risk out of democracy (from the point of view of protagonists of the marketeconomy) that have long been developed, refined and applied in the US and — morerecently and to a much lesser extent — in the UK. Virtually nothing in thesedevelopments is indigenous to Australia. A considerable sample of them has alreadybeen imported direct from the United States (commonly retaining the name of themodel US institution, as in the cases of the Committee for Economic Development,the Business Roundtable, the Business Council and the Foundation for Economic

Education). To a lesser extent American techniques have reached Australia viaBritain, as in the case of Enterprise Australia’s promotion of the free-enterprisesystem through special annual reports for employees and courses in ‘economiceducation’ designed for corporate employees and schoolchildren. 1

At another, intellectually more sophisticated level, there is in prospect a growth of‘think-tanks’ funded by business with the purpose of ‘...shaping the political agendain Australia’ (to cite a report on the subject to the Australian Institute of Directors)through production and dissemination of free-market-oriented ‘...policy research’. 2 The inspiration for this development comes from the relatively favourable conditions

for the political influence of business which have been created by such initiatives inthe US. 3 There the amount of economic policy research produced by think-tanksfunded by corporations is so great and so effectively ‘marketed’ that business hasbeen able, through its hundreds of selectively sponsored scholars, largely to redefinethe terms of debate on many issues in ways favourable to business. For example, bytransforming ‘...quality of life’ issues into esoteric ‘...cost-benefit analysis’ issues. 4 At present the relatively limited Australian progress in this direction is supplementedby importing and distributing publications resulting from business-sponsored policyresearch in the US and the UK.

This double transfer to Australia of American techniques of political control —

pervasive popular proselytising on behalf of the free market, and business-sponsoreddominance of related policy research — is still at an early stage. It is not evident that


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such transfers have yet reached the point where they have substantial politicalimportance, although Bob Hawke’s public endorsement of Enterprise Australia’sproselytising activities deserves notice, as does the coincidence of significantelements of Labor’s current economic policies with Enterprise Australia’s widelyadvocated preferences. Nonetheless the institutional basis for the long-term expansion

of Enterprise Australia’s popular proselytising has been established, and the slowprocess of accustoming the Australian community to the existence and pervasiveintrusions of its mind-managing techniques in such areas as schools, colleges,

universities, radio and TV, on behalf of free enterprise, has already begun. 5

Developments in business-funded policy research have, until recently, been lesssystematic. However, 1980 saw the establishment of the Business Roundtable, whichcomprised the top executives of Australia’s largest companies (Twenty Nine LargestCorporations). 6

It was modelled on a powerful American organisation of the same name which has, in

the course of its endeavours ‘...to control the national legislative agenda’, establishedan astonishing record of success in gaining adoption of its preferred policies byCongress. 7 The Australian Business Roundtable’s policy research interests surfacedbriefly in December 1980, when it put a proposal to the Industrial Relations ResearchCentre at the University of New South Wales, for expenditure of $500000 on aninquiry into corporate executives’ views and preferences with respect to industrial-relations institutions, Jaws and policies. This project met public-relations problemsand its sponsorship passed to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia

(CEDA).

CEDA, which is also modelled on its American namesake, is probably still the mostimportant source of business sponsored economic policy research in Australia. CEDApublished, in 1980, a full-scale inquiry into the problems and prospects of transferringto Australia ‘lessons’ that may be drawn from the successful development andeffective political use of business-sponsored policy-research organisations in theUnited States. 8 In 1984 CEDA established a ‘Strategic Issues Forum’ which willcommission ‘...task forces’ to conduct longer-term policy research and ‘...producereports on chosen topics’. These reports are intended to culminate in a ‘BicentennialBook’ on Australia’s future development. The first such report published by theforum is a comprehensive survey of groups and organisations conducting ‘...economicpolicy research’ in Australia. 9 In 1985 CEDA aimed to publish the results of its

inquiry into corporate managements’ views and preferences with respect to industrialrelations policy that it took over from the Business Roundtable. 10

The American background

Two developments are now appearing in Australia: large-scale funding by business ofpopular proselytizing, and the financing and distribution of economic policy researchsupporting a free-market philosophy. These have produced catastrophic results for

American democracy. If we are to recognise the possible significance of these newtechniques of political control for Australian society, it is altogether necessary to


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obtain some systematic acquaintance with the history and consequences of their use inthe US. For these reasons I shall attempt some review of the American backgroundbefore returning to contemporary Australian developments.

Popular economic proselytising in the US. American corporate capitalism has, since

shortly after the turn of the century, directly intervened with vast, popularproselytising programs on behalf of its values and institutions, whenever andwherever popular sentiment was judged to be taking uncongenial forms. 11 Theseprograms have had much of the temper of secular Billy Graham crusades, though witha greater reach and pervasiveness. The first among them was the pre-World War 1

Americanisation program.

The ‘...movement to Americanise the immigrant’ (or ‘crusade’ as it was commonlydescribed), though ostensibly concerned altruistically to prepare millions of Europeanmigrants for American citizenship, was in fact principally stimulated by business’ fearof radicalism, and especially fear of the influence of the Industrial Workers of the

World (IWW) among the unorganised and abused foreign textile workers ofMassachusetts. 12 For a decade, almost up to America’s entry into World War 1, theprogram, though national in scope, was funded and organised by American businesswith minimal government support (though such support was strenuously sought).However, shortly before American entry into the war, business was able successfullyto link its Americanisation program with the cultivation-now claimed essential fornational security-of an unqualified patriotism among the foreign-born. 13

The Americanisation program thereafter both obtained public funds and, by its self-serving play on the subversive threat constituted by the incompletely Americanised,

contributed to an increasing popular suspicion of any departure in ideas or behaviourfrom the most conservative of American traditions. This development, with large helpfrom President Wilson and his attorney-general, culminated in 1920 in a ‘McCarthy’period even more severe, if briefer, than occurred after World War 11. 14

The original Americanisation program was used by American business to deal withinadequate commitment to the values of laissez fare capitalism, and to anathematisesuch inadequate commitment as ‘un-Americanised’ or ‘unAmerican’. Whenever,from World War 1 to the 1970s, American business has detected serious indicationsof popular ideological ‘backsliding’, it has met the problem by adopting precisely theformula of the Americanisation crusade, though with one major difference. The

original Americanisation program was applied to alien migrants only. Later‘reAmericanisation’ programs have been applied to the entire population, native-bornas well as foreign.

The first such program occurred in the 1920s. The vast network of privately ownedlight and power utilities were in trouble with the public and felt their freedom ofoperation under consequent threat from increased regulation and even nationalisation.They responded by launching a campaign which explicitly employed the techniquesand organisation developed for the Wilson administration during World War 1, todisseminate patriotic persuasion to every part of American society, fromkindergartens to universities, and from farmers’ organisations to women’s clubs. 15

The utilities’ similarly pervasive program of popular persuasion, beginning in 1919,was exposed in 1929-30 by marathon public investigations, and its purposes suffered


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some (but temporary) setback in consequence, but it set a model for laterdevelopments.

A 33-volume report by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on the utilities’propaganda activities during the 1920s concluded: ‘...No campaign approaching it in

magnitude has ever been conducted, except possibly by governments in wartime. 16 As later described by Karl Schriftgeisser, the utilities ‘...flooded every possible outletof public information. Newspapers, magazines, lecture platforms, forums, serviceorganisations, civic societies, schools and colleges...’ 17 Much campaign material wasrabid and suggested that all those who advocated public ownership were communists.18 Nonetheless, Schriftgeisser observes that the success of the ‘...utility propagandaall over the country’ was such ‘...that many a schoolboy of that period still remembersthat it was considered all but subversive even to intimate in a civics or history classthat the utilities were not the greatest benefactors of mankind since history’s dawn’.19 Responses by the director of the utilities’ campaign to a Congressional committeeillustrate the pervasiveness of the propaganda: ‘...Will you agree that... almost

everybody in the country, beginning with the eighth grade and going up from that,including young and old, are reached before you get through?... We reach almosteverybody who can be reached... allowing for the people who do not read or appear inany club or gathering’. 20

After Roosevelt’s election in 1932, the NAM warned that present public opinion mustbe reshaped ‘...if we are to avoid disaster’, and reorganised itself to undertake thattask. 21 By 1935 the NAM president could report to a meeting of business leaders,‘...You will note especially that this is not a hit or miss programme. It is skilfullyintegrated so as to gradually blanket every media... and then... that it pounds itsmessage home with relentless determination’. 22 In 1938 the NAM’s board ofdirectors still found ‘...the hazard facing industrialists’ to be ‘...the newly realizedpolitical power of the masses’. ‘...Unless their thinking is directed . . .’ it warned,‘...we are definitely headed for adversity.’ 23 The following year (1939) a vastcongressional investigation reported that ‘...the NAM has blanketed the country withpropaganda’; and, in particular, that ‘...radio speeches, public meetings, advertising,motion pictures and many other artifices of propaganda have not, in most instances,disclosed ... their origin within the Association’. 24

Immediately after World War 11 American business expanded and intensified theprewar program. The object of the program was now frankly described by the

president of the NAM as ‘...to sell-to resell, if you will’ the American economicsystem to the American people. 25 This new campaign caught up the New Dealliberal intellectuals more effectively; they had long been acknowledged by the NAMand other defenders of business as the real enemy. A McCarthyist period began in1948. 26 By 1953, with Eisenhower established in the White House, the widely

recognised political objectives of business’ long campaign were largely achieved. 27

For more than a decade after McCarthy, American public opinion remainedsufficiently conservative to require little attention from business. However, from1958, Vietnam and then Watergate brought a collapse in popular regard for Americaninstitutions generally and for American business in particular. 28 Following the end of

the Vietnam War in 1975 a new re-Americanisation program, now called ‘economic


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education’, was started by one of the world’s largest advertising agencies, Comptons,the Advertising Council and the US Department of Commerce. 29

In 1977 Fortune reported the ‘...Ad Council Campaign is a study in gigantism,saturating the media and reaching practically everyone’. 30 By 1978 business was

spending, according to expert testimony before a congressional inquiry, $1,000million per annum on direct efforts to influence public opinion at the ‘...grass roots’level alone, excluding thinktanks and policy research. 31

In July 1978 the New York Times reported: ‘...There is little doubt that the presentupsurge in conservative thinking owes much to a newly aggressive attitude byAmerican business... [G]rowth of government regulation and an apparent lack ofpublic confidence in business [has led] a growing number of companies to financesympathetic policy research and economic education aimed at defending the freemarket system...’ 32 By 1980 the Advertising Council’s massively detailed pollsshowed ‘...the proportion of Americans who think there is too much government

regulation has risen from 42% ... to 60%'. 33 By November 1980 some four or fiveyears of re-Americanisation had almost returned the US to the nineteenth century.There had been, between 1976 and 1980, a ‘watershed’ reversal of public opinion,which astonished even the leading pollsters of big business and carried RonaldReagan to the White House. Once again democracy was safe for American business.34

The Australian connection

In 1979 Mr Bart Cummins, who is a top executive of both Comptons and theAdvertising Council, and claims principal credit for starting the 1975-80 ‘economiceducation’ campaign, toured Australia under Enterprise Australia’s auspices ‘...toexplain details of the Advertising Council’s campaign to community leaders andleaders in the communications industry ... [and] to explore how to bring together theorganizations that would need to work in cooperation to adapt the programme toAustralia...’ 35 With much illustrative material Mr Cummins explained how to do itto meetings of businessmen in every mainland state, and offered his assistance. ‘...AsEnterprise Australia has been telling you,’ he affirmed, ‘...you’ve got to persuade the

electorate that they’ve got a great system ... the greatest system the world has everknown. In short you’ve got to educate the Australian people about your economicsystem.’ 36 Long before this the US business concept of ‘economic education’ hadbeen proposed by Walter Scott (later Sir Walter).

In 1950 Scott was the first Australian to make a study of the combination of public-opinion monitoring and corrective ‘economic education’ employed by US businessand to propose that Australian business follow American practice. 37 Scott refers inthis connection to the American Economic Foundation (AEF), whose economiceducation activities would be taken as a model 25 years later when Scott’s proposalsat last gained serious support from Australian corporations. The AEF specialised in

creating materials for use in business’ propaganda campaigns, for example slogans,pictures, posters, cartoons, free enterprise ‘...commercials’ for radio (and later, TV),


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canned editorials, leaflets and booklets for use in schools. By 1975 it was alsocommunicating its ‘...free enterprise messages to millions of people’. 38

Scott believed that, in 1950, although many organisations in Australia were enjoyingunprecedented prosperity, the system of free enterprise was at risk because of popular

dissatisfaction with it. ‘...Private enterprise,’ he warned, ‘...cannot survive withoutpublic support... but the public can survive without private enterprise.’ ‘...Propagandais the order of the day,’ Scott concluded. ‘...If Management desires to reestablish itselfin the faith of the general public ... it has to use the methods that will reach thepublic...’ 39 His book was apparently written before the Australian Labor Party lostgovernment in December 1949. Once Menzies was at the helm, and exploitinganticommunism to great effect, Australian business no doubt felt sufficiently secureand Scott’s pleas fell on deaf ears. Little was heard during the next twenty years ofconservative rule, about the public’s misunderstanding of business or about the need

for reformative economic education campaigns.

Indeed, silence on this front was broken only by the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA).The IPA is the oldest Australian organisation created solely to conduct popularproselytising on behalf of free enterprise. It was established ‘...by a group ofprominent businessmen’ in direct response to the ‘...overwhelming victory of theLabor Party in the Federal election in 1943’. ‘...The central purpose of the new body,’the IPA later confirmed, ‘...was to resist the trend to socialism’ which the 1943elections were taken to confirm. As in the US before McCarthyism, it was‘...especially in intellectual circles’ that the drift towards socialism was believed by

businessmen to have occurred. 40

In 1955 the secretary of the IPA was sent to the US to study business’ economic-education programs. His report attempted to convey some idea of the ‘...vast sums’spent on the American operation and its vast scale: General Motors produced morebooklets as part of its ‘...economic-education’ program for employees than itproduced automobiles; the US Chamber of Commerce produced a ‘...colour cartoonfilm’ which had been seen by more than 60 million people and conducted a‘Business-Education Day’ annually on which 300000 teachers had been given in-plant acquaintance with the free-enterprise viewpoint; Sears Roebuck spent a milliondollars on a film about ‘...the economic facts of life’ which was shown, in work time,to its 200,000 employees. 41

The IPA concluded that the ‘...main lesson’ to be learned from the various methods ofdisseminating ‘...economic education’ that have been ‘...tried and tested overseas’ wasthat individual companies in Australia must do ‘...far more to promote ... freeenterprise’ by providing economic education for their own employees. However, anactive interest in economic education for the masses did not develop until the politicalclimate became unfavourable to business, foreshadowing the end, in November 1972,of a period 23 years long of conservative rule. (A detailed account of the rapidexpansion of ‘...economic education’ after 1972, on which the following summary issubstantially based, has been given elsewhere.) 42

The Australian Chamber of Commerce (ACC) was the first into the field. In April

1972 it began detailed planning for a ‘...programme to promote free enterprise’ (moreformally described as a ‘...three years Economic Education Campaign'). As first steps


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the chamber conducted a national survey of school leavers’ attitudes to variousaspects of the freeenterprise system (for example profits, prices, competition) and anessay competition for school children on the same general topic. These projects wereused as a basis for deciding what corrective material to prepare for ‘...circulation

through the schools’. 43

Two further economic education campaigns followed, each of three years’ duration.The total cost in financial contributions by corporations (as distinct from contributionsin kind) was about $500 000. In all, some fifteen videos and films were completed orin production (some in conjunction with IPA) on topics ranging from ‘Profits’ to ‘TheMarket Economy’ and ‘Advertising’. With the agreement of departments ofeducation, all this material was included in teaching resources centres and madeavailable to schools throughout Australia.

The first three ‘...economic education’ campaigns concluded in 1981. The ACCdecided the program should be continued, but with ‘...new projects, a new format, and

a new name’. Though now known as the ‘...Understanding Business’ campaign, theoverall program was maintained and its fundamental aim, ‘...to secure a wider publicappreciation of the Australian market economy’, was unchanged. 44

In 1976 the * director of the chamber’s Economic Education campaign produced areview of business-sponsored economic education in Australia which was publishedby CEDA. The report identifies eight bodies as most active in the field. Four of theserepresented specific industry groups: the Australian Bankers Association, theAustralian Financial Conference, the Life Officers Association of Australia, and theAustralian Mining Industrial Council. All of these had ‘...comprehensive educational

programmes currently in hand’ which ‘...carry a free enterprise message... tosecondary schools and colleges across Australia’. They ‘...make their presence felt’,the report observes, ‘...through a wide range of printed and audio visual materials’.

The other four bodies found to be most active in economic education promoted ‘...thefree enterprise system generally’. They were the Australian Industries DevelopmentAssociation (since merged with the Roundtable to form the Business Council), theAmerican Chamber of Commerce in Australia (AmCham), CEDA and IPA. All ofthese were similarly active both in schools and elsewhere. However, only the IPAprovided any quantitative measure of its activities, and then for schools only. IPAclaimed in 1976 that 50000 copies of its monthly pamphlet ‘Facts’ and 15 000 copies

of its quarterly IPA Review were used in more than 1200 high schools throughoutAustralia. 45 Elsewhere IPA was reported to be ‘...channelling hundreds of thousandsof copies of publications to employees through firms; 46 and AmCham claimed tohave ‘...carried the business story to more than 20000 students in hundreds of highschools across the country’. 47

Probably the most important development in enlarging the business effort to monitorand manage public opinion, occurred in 1975 with the establishment of the AustralianFree Enterprise Association Ltd. Funded by donations of $35000 each from CIG,Esso, Kodak and United Permanent and (a little later) from Ford Motors and IBM, 48 the formation of the association was a direct response (as its prospectus reveals) to the

‘...threats to free enterprise’ constituted by ‘...recent events’, namely the election ofthe Whitlam Labor government.


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The association planned to launch ‘Enterprise Australia’ in December 1975 with thepurpose of assisting and coordinating other proselytisers ‘...in the development of anational programme of public education’ which would use ‘...all the means ofcommunication ... skilfully and professionally ... in the free enterprise cause’. 49 However, in deference to other events of November 1975, the launching was delayed

until April 1976.

Geoff Allen, subsequently director of AIDA and then of the Business Council (bothmajor business organisations) described Enterprise Australia as resulting frominitiatives by IPA and ex-Liberal minister Sir Allan Fairhall. Allen expected EA to be‘...by far the most important group in the propaganda warfare for capitalism’. Whilewaiting for the delayed launching of EA, its new chief executive, Jack Keavney, spenthis time ‘...looking at similar organizations overseas’. 50

Of the organisations he visited overseas, Keavney appears to have been mostimpressed by the American Economic Foundation, which gave him ‘...a great

welcome and every assistance’. ‘...We owe much of what we have done toAmericans,’ he acknowledged five years later on a return visit to the AEF in NewYork, ‘...and especially to this organization.’ 51

In August 1976 Enterprise Australia brought a director of AEF, Mr John Q. Jennings,to Australia. Jennings is an expert in ‘...employee communication’ and especially inthe production of ‘...annual reports for employees’ which make clear how littlesurplus is left after wages and other costs are paid. His most famous achievement is tohave used employee communications to produce a dramatic conservative shift inopinion among employees of the large English engineering firm Guest, Keen and

Nettlefold (GKN), a shift, that is, against nationalisation and towards the company’sview. 52 Under EA’s auspices, Jennings met Prime Minister Fraser and the Ministerfor Industrial Relations. Both thereafter publicly endorsed ‘...use of the Jenningsformula’. EA subsequently reported that between 200 and 300 Australian companieswere producing employee reports ‘...similar’ to the Jennings model! 53

Jennings was the first of a long series of conservative economists, trade union leadersand expert ‘...communicators’ that EA has imported, obtained media coverage for,and toured around a national circuit of business forums and conferences.

On the mass-media front there was also progress. By 1979 EA had been instrumental

in the production of a series of twelve half-hour TV films ('Making it Together') onthe general theme that what helps business helps everyone. This series was broadcastin all States and a further series was in production. 54 EA had also secured somemillion dollars of free radio time per annum. Every day more than 100 radio stationsbroadcast free-enterprise ‘...commercials'-which, as EA explained, ‘...relate that freeenterprise benefits the entire community’. 55

By 1978 EA had set the goal of obtaining, from (tax deductible) corporate donations,an annual budget of $2.5 million. 56 Moreover there was little sign of resistance toEA’s advance. The NSW Department of Education-where resistance might have beenexpected-had agreed to cooperate with EA on production of the ‘Australianized’

version of GKN’s economic education program. 57


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Overall there was, it appeared, significant progress towards realisation of the bravenew world foreshadowed by Sir Robert Crichton-Brown, president of the Institute ofDirectors. As an inducement to his fellow directors to give generously in support ofEnterprise Australia, Sir Robert had described a utopian vision of the permanentpacification of the ideological restlessness that characterises democracy until the

opinion managers get at it:

[The Institute] needs to publicize and sell the benefits of the system it espouses. Thiscan be done by cooperation with and support of such bodies as Enterprise Australia...

We must be constantly vigilant in countering moves to wreck the present privateenterprise system. There are threats to it from many sources, and we cannot relax untilthese threats have been removed. That will be when we have convinced society atlarge that our influence is indeed for its good... [T]hat ... will take up some of yourtime and some of the corporate system’s money. The expenditure of both will be wellworth while if it succeeds in obtaining for the corporate system society’s seal of

approval, thus relieving our successors of the need to spend their resources ... onfurther promotion of the systems. 58

Teachers, schools and children. In 1981 EA appointed a full-time director of itsSchools and Colleges Programme (Ted Hook) and in 1982 took over distribution of aschool textbook entitled The World of Business. 59 Based on a Canadian text of thesame name, the book had been compiled by Hook under a contract funded by variousbusiness corporations and the Queensland Confederation of Industry. 60 In 1982, EAtook over Young Achievement Australia (YAA) which had been introduced toAustralian schools in 1978 by the American Chamber of Commerce in Australia as an

adaptation of an American program called Junior Achievement. Under Americanauspices YAA had not flourished. 61 After being taken under EA’s umbrella in 1982,YAA involved 1400 high-school students in four States. 62

In 1983 the ‘Australianised’ economic education program ‘Work and Wealth’ wasmade available to secondary schools Australia-wide through the good offices ofdepartments of education. Also in 1983 a board game called ‘Poleconomy’, whichhad been produced under EA’s auspices on the ground that it improves understandingof the free-enterprise system, was successfully marketed and 100000 sets were sold.

Universities, CAEs and TAFEs. In 1981 EA appointed a full-time director of its

Universities Programme (John Warr) and Jack Keavney addressed formal meetings ofuniversity staff on the merits of the free-enterprise system. In 1983 MonashUniversity ‘...employ[ed] a full time officer, with special educational duties whichincluded encouraging schools to use Enterprise Australia materials’. 63 A businessexecutive-in-residence program was begun (at Monash) under which senior businessexecutives spent up to a week explaining the merits of the free-enterprise system toformal meetings of staff and students. In 1984, twelve universities acceptedarrangements of this kind.

Employees. In 1981 Bob Hawke presented the awards to New South Walescompanies in the competition, sponsored by EA, for the best annual reports to

employees. Andrew Peacock performed a like service in Victoria. In 1982 EAappointed a full-time director of its Employee Communications Programme; and the


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economic education program ‘Work and Wealth’ was made available to corporationsfor use with their employees.

General public. The million dollars per annum of free-enterprise slogans wascontinued. In 1981 a second series of twelve half-hour programs on industry ('Making

It Together') was broadcast by 40 TV stations. In 1983 production of 30second TVspots was begun. In 1984 the value of free radio spots donated by 136 radio stationswas increased to $5 million; that is, to approximately 136000 30-second spots perannum. The topic of the spots was changed to stress the individual employee’sresponsibility for making the economic system work (by increasing output, quality,and hence-it is argued-jobs). Under the rubric ‘Australia for Quality Campaign’, thenew radio onslaught was launched on 2 April 1984, with a three-minute speech byPrime Minister Bob Hawke which was broadcast by all 136 commercial radiostations.

Policy research in Australia and overseas connections. In an address to the

Institute of Directors in 1983, Les Hollings, editor of the Australian, noted therelatively undeveloped level of business’ agenda setting role in Australia: ‘...In theUnited States,’ Hollings observed, ‘...there are a number of public policy researchinstitutions that are funded by business and do a good job in promoting the system weall believe in. There are some of these types of institutes in Britain. But you dovirtually nothing here in a serious way.’ 64

Greater intervention by corporate interests in the American educational system tocheck the growth of values opposed to freemarket conservatism had influentialsupporters from the late 1960s. Lewis F. Powell was (until his elevation to the

Supreme Court in 1972) an early and influential advocate of the view that businessshould wholly restrict its financial support to educational and research centres of anadequately conservative temper. Some major foundations and institutes in the US areregarded by free-marketeers as more or less subversively left-wing. The FordFoundation-the largest-is in this category, as is the Brookings Institute. Another groupis regarded with particular favour; it includes the Hoover and Hudson Institutes, theConference Board (an adjunct of the NAM), The Heritage Foundation and theAmerican Economic Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) — now the mostinfluential of all business-sponsored organisations specialising in economic-policyresearch.

William Simon, secretary of the US Treasury, 1973-77, was one of the leaders of thecampaign to reshape the political agenda that has led to the dominance of the neo-conservative movement in the USA. He claimed that the Carter Administration wasbecoming collectivist, that the regulatory agencies of ‘...an economic police state’were spreading ‘...terror’ among the corporations, and that the crisis of Americandemocracy was due to the pervasive influence of un-American intellectuals. Majorfoundations such as the Ford Foundation had been ‘...taken over’ by the philosophicalenemies of capitalism, people of egalitarian outlook; hence new foundations werenecessary, funded by business on a large scale. Business support should be withdrawnfrom major universities which were ‘...churning out young collectivists by legions’.Similarly, media sympathetic to business should be supported, but advertising should

be withdrawn from those who were not. 65


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The budget of the American Economic Institute grew from under $1 million in 1970to over $7 million in 1978; its staff grew from 24 to 125, plus 100 ‘...adjunct scholarsworking on AEI-sponsored studies’. In 1977 its ‘...vast outpouring of material andactivities included 54 studies, 22 forums and conferences, 15 analyses of importantlegislative proposals, 7 journals and newsletters, a ready-made set of editorials sent

regularly to 105 newspapers, public affairs programmes carried by more than 300college libraries’. The following year Irving Kristol was cochairman of a new AEIdrive to raise a $60 million endowment. 66 In 1980 AEI scholars included Hayek,Solzhenitzyn, and Mr Malcolm Fraser. AEI is only one, although among the largest,of many privately financed policy research centres in the US.

I spent 1977 in the US and could scarcely avoid observing that most universitylibraries I had occasion to use contained about a foot of index cards to publications bythe AEI. Returning to Australia, I believed I had got some measure of AEI’sactivities, substantially ahead of its influence reaching Australia. I was inconsequence disconcerted to find on entering the library of the University of New

South Wales that an entire foyer was occupied with a display of selected books from250 titles which had been donated to the library by AEI. These donations establishedthe University of New South Wales Library as an AEI Public Policy Research Centre.Four years later the donated titles had reached 400.

Despite this experience, I believe Hollings’ assessment — that compared to the USA,Australia does very little in the area of such public policy-research institutes — is avalid one. However, I do not think, as he implies, that this situation represents simplya cultural lag behind the northern hemisphere. I think it results in part fromindigenous cultural characteristics that affect Australian businessmen as well asothers: some measure of genuine egalitarian sentiment, and a consequent distaste forthe corruption of democracy by massive regimenting of opinion, that the Americanstyle of opinion management constitutes; and a sharp discomfort with the scale ofhypocrisy required to defend and maintain such developments in a formallydemocratic society. These comments are likely to arouse considerable scepticism.Nevertheless I am convinced that philosophical elitism does not yet have anythinglike the support in Australia, even among our elites, that it has in the US and the UK;and that this must be recognised and full advantage taken of it.

These Australian cultural circumstances do not, of course, mean that the new mind-managing developments will fail in Australia. But it does mean that they will depend

peculiarly on channels of overseas influence for both their initiation and continuation;and that it will take some time to break down resistance even within the businesscommunity itself. An illustration of this may well be the fact that by 1981 there wereover 40 Chairs of free enterprise, in the USA, established and financed by business inuniversities, for the explicit purpose of promoting and defending the free-enterprisesystem, for example the Goodyear Chair at Kent State and the University of Akron.67 In Australia the first such proposal came from the National Party in Queensland in1981, but negotiations so far have been unsuccessful. 68

The international connections are still growing. The chief executive of EnterpriseAustralia, Jack Keavney, made a number of visits during his tenure of office, to

‘...counterpart organisations’ overseas; these included NAM, the US Chamber ofCommerce, and the Roundtable. He noted that these were impressed with what EA


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was doing, especially in working with moderate unions; he rejoiced in the fact thatRalph Nader had called EA ‘...the most dangerous organisation’ he had come acrossin Australia. 69

An important British connection has been the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA).

Funded by corporations, directed by Lord Harris, it is the British equivalent of theAmerican Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, though on a smaller scale.Even so it has a remarkable record of subsidising and publishing free-market scholars,70 and it is widely credited with significant contribution to the emergence of theThatcher era. During a visit to Sydney in 1981 (under the auspices of the Centre forIndependent Studies (CIS) and Enterprise Australia) Milton Friedman claimed thatIEA had been able to exercise ‘...a far greater influence than any of the much betterknown or more prestigious institutions of learning’. 71 IEA material is distributed inAustralia by the Libertarian Review and CIS (among others).

Harris, like William Simon, blames liberal intellectuals for the problems of capitalism

and also sees the remedy in business’ organising and funding large numbers ofcounter-intellectuals. ‘...A growing army of IEA economists in the broad classicalliberal tradition have,’ Harris says, ‘...kept up their long range, long-term, scholarlybombardment of one enemy position after another.’ Harris distinguishes strategicallythe need for two levels of ideological offensive. He rejects the view, attributed tosome businessmen, that ‘...all effort should be concentrated on simpler propagandaaimed “at the man in the street” ‘. This approach, he argues, is equivalent tosupposing ‘...that ground troops could advance without support from the intellectual

artillery to soften up the entrenched enemy strong points’. 72

The Committee for the Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) appears to haveled the growth here in corporatefunded economic-policy research. CEDA is modelledon its US counterpart, the Committee for Economic Development (CED), with whichit maintains ‘...close and regular liaison and participation in joint internationalprojects’ . 73 On a visit to CEDA in Australia David Rockefeller (Standard Oil andCED) observed that, ‘...organisations like CEDA’ are ‘...precisely the right approach’to promoting private enterprise with less government regulation and control while atthe same time protecting the public interest. 74

In the twenty years to 1984 CEDA has published ‘...an enormous amount of materialacross a broad range of issues’. This material includes 23 ‘...major research projects’

on aspects of economic policy and over 300 lesser research projects and papersrelevant to economic policy. 75 From 1976 to 1984, CEDA published (though it didnot initiate) the only general review of corporate-sponsored ‘...economic education’ inAustralia, 76 the only comprehensive review of bodies engaged in corporate-sponsored economic policy research in Australia, 77 and the only study of the muchmore significant political role of privately sponsored policy research in the US, withan explicit view to ‘...lessons’ that might be transferred in pursuit of a comparabledevelopment in Australia. 78

More recently CEDA has established a Strategies Issues Forum through which itappears to be in process of adopting a forwardplanning program similar to the

Business Roundtable in the US. 79


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The major CEDA study by Niland and Turner of corporate executives’ views aboutthe Australian industrial-relations system and possible alterations to it is presumablyalso related to the Forum’s program. 80 This report largely constituted CEDA’ssubmission to the Hancock Committee’s review of industrial relations. 81

Four organisations, apart from CEDA, are more than incidentally concerned withbroad promotion of conservative policies and ideology. These are the BusinessCouncil of Australia; the Centre for Independent Studies; the Australian Institute forPolicy Studies; and Malcolm Fraser’s ‘Think-Tank’. 82

The Business Council was inaugurated in September 1983 from a merger of theAustralian Industries Development Association (AIDA) and the (Australian) BusinessRoundtable. The council is by far the most important recent development in Australiaof ‘...intellectual artillery’ in the two-front war of ideas towards which Australianbusiness appears to be moving. The Australian Business Council, like its Americannamesake, is comprised of the chief executive officers of some 70 large Australian

corporations.

It already displays all the hallmarks of American business-sponsored policy-researchorganisations. It was ‘...established to conduct research into public policy questionsthat affect business’ and to ‘...provide a forum for the chief executives of Australia’smajor companies’. Through the Business Council, and on the basis of the council’sresearch on ‘...relevant issues’, its members will ‘...speak out to governments, unionsand the community’. ‘...A key factor in the perceived effectiveness of the BusinessCouncil’s advocacy,’ the CEDA report advises, ‘...has been its publications’, such asits Bulletin which is distributed monthly to ‘...a wide audience of decision makers in

politics, the bureaucracy, the media, academia and business’. 83

The Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) is a Sydney-based body which publishesand promotes studies supporting a libertarian-laissez faire philosophy, 84 for exampleProfessor Wolfgang Kasper’s recent book arguing for deregulation of foreigninvestment. 85 CIS also distributes literature from British and American laissez faire -sources. CIS was reported to have an annual budget of $250,000 in 1984 86 and$350,000 in 1985. 87

The Australian Institute for Policy Research was founded in 1983 and is headed byJohn Hyde, the leader of the Liberal Party ‘dries’ who had a weekly column in the

Financial Review. Mr Fraser’s Think Tank was founded in 1984. It is described as a‘...scaled down version of Mr. Fraser’s earlier hopes of establishing a researchfoundation along the lines of ... the American Enterprise Institute’ (to which, asalready observed, Mr Fraser has since become officially attached). The Think-Tank’smembership includes Mr Hugh Morgan of Western Mining Corporation and DameLeonie Kramer of the ANZ Bank. Even so it is not evident that the AIPR or MrFraser’s Think-Tank have yet achieved any substantial impact. 88

This review of corporate-sponsored activities directed to managing public opinion andthe political agenda of the nation, has had to omit the following, for reasons of space:


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1. Research conducted in universities, often in ‘centres’ or ‘institutes’, financed bycorporations from particular sectors of industry, such as banking and finance, ormining.

2. Policy-oriented studies of Australian society by American institutes, or members

from them, sometimes hosted by Australian academic institutions, for example thebook Will She Be Right? The Future of Australia by Herman Kahn and ThomasPepper. 89 Kahn and Pepper were both directors of the US Hudson Institute. Thestudy was financed by fourteen large corporations in Australia, at least half of whichwere American or British transnationals.

3. The open use of the media by corporations to promote particular policies orideologies, or what is called in the USA ‘...issue or advocacy advertising’ which hasbeen prevalent there for a decade and has appeared in Australia in the last few years,for example regular advertisements by the Uranium Mining Council proclaiming themerits of nuclear energy.

4. Material provided for schools by sectoral corporate interests, such as the‘educational service’ provided by the banks. 90

Despite these omissions, sufficient activities have been documented in enough detailto establish a broad perspective on the introduction to Australia of new methods ofpolitical control, and sometimes old methods on quite a new scale.

Conclusions

As this chapter neared completion, Hugh Morgan, managing director of WesternMining Corporation acknowledged, indeed, proclaimed with unconcealed satisfaction,that Australian corporations are in process of adopting the American methods forcontrolling public opinion. 91 Morgan makes specific reference in this connection tothe provision of generous corporate funding to such bodies as the Centre forIndependent Studies, the Institute for Policy Research and the IPA. Morgan affirmsthat the expansion of the work of these bodies relates to a decision by their corporatesupporters ‘...to change public opinion’ and thereby ‘...reshape the political agenda’ toa form that would delight the hearts of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. He is

wholly confident that, given sufficient corporate backing for policy research andpopular proselytising, such a radically conservative transformation of Australian

politics can be achieved.

At least we owe our thanks to Morgan for the fact that this whole corporate programand its objectives are now official and public. It remains only to attempt someperspective on likely sources of resistance in Australian society to theaccomplishment of Morgan’s vision and some consideration of how such resistancemight be made most effective. I shall attempt such a perspective in two stages; one,resistance and vulnerability of a more general cultural kind; and two, of a morespecific kind, associated with business, government, the media, schools, unions anduniversities.


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The effectiveness of propaganda depends on the availability of emotionally chargedsymbols or ideas that can be manipulated by propagandists. In the western world themost powerful of such symbols have to do with nationalism: almost sacred [if alsosecular] symbols which affirm loyalty to a cherished (and idealised) ‘...way of life’;satanic symbols which signify subversion and ‘...threats to national security’.

Manipulation of such symbols (words, ideas, images) is, of course, the indispensablebasis of conservative political rhetoric and propaganda generally. The extraordinarypower of such propaganda in the US is wholly dependent on the maintenance ofpopular ‘patriotic’ sentiments that are both intense and shallow; sentiments that are inconsequence easily exploited by manipulation of sacred and satanic symbols relatingto nationalism.

The relatively low level of ‘patriotic’ excitability, and relative scepticism towardsinflated patriotic rhetoric, that has characterised Australian popular attitudes so far isan important barrier to early duplication of American techniques of public-opinionmanagement here. 1 believe it is for this reason that EA’s plans to ‘Australianise’ an

American booklet for similar distribution here never got off the ground. However, it isalso for this reason, in my view, that so much effort has recently been given tocreating just the intense and shallow patriotism so essential to the work of themindmanagers.

To maximise popular vulnerability to propaganda, it is necessary to complementshallow and intense patriotism as a source of sacred symbols, with an equallymindless and intense anti-communism to provide a powerful source of satanicsymbols. There is therefore great danger that if Australian corporations expand theircurrent machinery of popular propaganda, they will also seek to intensify popularanti-communist fears, with the likelihood of serious consequences for foreign as wellas domestic policy. EA’s publications have, from the beginning, been replete withdark references to a dangerous minority of disloyal ‘extremists’ who are hell-bent ondestroying our economic political system and all our cherished liberties. The equationof criticism of our economic system with subversion of our political system was, ofcourse, the central theme of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

Americans have long been accustomed to the expenditure of many millions of dollarsby diverse interest groups, to flood the media with crusading campaigns whichattempt to convert everyone to prohibition, anti-communism, religiousfundamentalism or whatever. Australian society has been relatively free of such

campaigns of persuasion. In consequence the attempts of business to manage publicopinion here are likely to be much more distinctive and visible and are therefore morelikely to evoke an unfavourable response.

Unfortunately this advantage is now being eroded by the increasing practice of Stateand federal governments taking, at public expense, many pages of newspaper space tosell their policies to the publicalways of course, in the name of ‘information’ and‘understanding’. 92 Australian society shares with other western democracies aparticular vulnerability to the new developments. Our society has for so long been fedassumptions that any disposition to undertake Orwellian mind-management on anational scale is an exclusive prerogative of governments — and especially of

communist governments — that the very last place they expect such a threat to comefrom is the leaders of capitalist industry within their own societies.


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Business as a source of resistance. There is some prospect of significant resistancefrom within the ranks of business. CEDA’s leaders cannot rely on support even fromits own member companies, for a move toward an AEI role. Malcolm Fraser’sproposal to establish an Australian AEI similarly failed to obtain substantial businesssupport. EA has also met significant opposition from business quarters: Geoff Allen

hardly helped EA’s credibility by publicly describing it as a ‘propaganda’organisation; the Bank Education Service ‘...has been critical’ of EA and goes tosome lengths to overcome ‘...suspicions’ of any ‘...possible link with EA’. 93 TheAustralian Chamber of Commerce takes sharp offence at any suggestion of similaritybetween its economic education programs and the activities and methods ofEnterprise Australia, which has shifted further to the right.

In two conferences about business and society which were organised respectively bythe Australian Council of Social Services and the American Chamber of Commerce inAustralia, leading representatives of Australian business expressly rejected thepropagandist and opinion-managing tactics of American business. 94 Against all this

there must be set, of course, the whole-hearted endorsement of such tactics by HughMorgan and his supporters. Overall, resistance from within Australian business maybe expected to delay, but cannot be relied upon to prevent, the long-term achievementof the control of the political agenda that Morgan seeks. Such resistance maynonetheless provide an invaluable breathing space within which to search for otherand more permanent safeguards against the realisation of Morgan’s vision.

Role of governments. Malcolm Fraser’s governments contributed notably to ageneral progress towards an opinion-managed state. They made a long leap forward inthe use of public funds for advertisements to promote government policies, fundedProject Australia, actively supported EA and urged corporate leaders to proselytisetheir employees. It must be expected that whenever the coalition is returned to powerit will assist, in every possible way, the expansion of businessfunded popularpropaganda and policy research.

There are two ways in which the Hawke government could, if it had the will, move toplace some constraints in the way of such development. First, it could firmly forswearits own practice of proselytising for its policies by means of advertisements paid forout of public funds, and appeal to the opposition to make a similar commitment.Second, it could review present taxation law to prevent corporations from obtainingtax deductions for contributions to proselytising organisations like Enterprise

Australia. It is ridiculous that members of a democratic society should be obliged tosubsidise their own indoctrination by a partisan interest group, just because that groupchooses to label its program ‘...economic education’. Similarly, corporate expenditureon policy research, which Marsh describes as ‘...invariably tendentious’, should notbe tax-free. 95 Third, it is essential that the federal government give attention to theneed for some legal restraint on the expenditure of funds by corporations for thepurpose of influencing public opinion, before such expenditure becomes so vast andeffective that political control of it is virtually impossible. It is crucial that we studyand take warning from American experience here.

Media and Advertising. Both media corporations and advertising agencies can

expect to benefit greatly from an expansion of political advertising. Hence resistancefrom that quarter is unlikely. Max Walsh, when asked at the AmCham conference


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already referred to how the media felt about ‘...advocacy advertising’, replied, ‘...welove it’. 96 In 1983, shortly after Malcolm Fraser had announced a plan to spend$800000 to sell the wages freeze, it was revealed that Mrs Thatcher’s governmentplanned to spend $1.6 million ‘...to soften up the British public to the prospect ofcruise missiles outside their cities’. The Thatcher government was embarrassed by the

head of a London advertising agency who went on TV to denounce the proposed useof public money. When Australian advertising executives were questioned on thematter, few acknowledged any reluctance at all to use ‘...taxpayers money to promote

party political decisions’. 97

The attitude of advertising agencies is of strategic importance. In the US the initiativefor vast corporate-funded proselytising campaigns has come from advertising andpublic-relations agencies more than from business itself-to which, indeed, thecampaigns have in large measure been sold by the advertising agencies. This USbackground is especially relevant for reasons made clear some years ago by JohnCumming, the owner of an Australian advertising agency. Warning that the Australian

Association of Advertising Agencies had been under American control since 1976,Cumming described the industry as a ‘...wooden-horse’ for the cultural invasion ofany country, and anticipated that Australia would be ‘...turned into the 52nd state ... asa result of the comparatively small advertising industry’. 98 By 1980 two thirds ofAustralian advertising was handled by agencies which were wholly or partly USowned. 99 Cumming’s fears may be exaggerated, but we must certainly expect theadvertising industry to employ its persuasive skills to lead Australian businesstowards opinion-monitoring and management — as John Clemenger in particularhave already been doing for a decade. 100 Finally, if Australian business follows theAmerican path, we can sooner or later expect to hear a factitious clamour fromcorporate sources about how unfairly and incompetently business is reported in themedia. 101 This clamour will be followed by expenses-paid, corporate-sponsoredseminars and conferences in holiday surroundings where assorted journalists arehelped to ‘understand’ the business viewpoint. 102

Schools. Departments of education throughout Australia have shown a remarkablereadiness to assist EA’s varied efforts to ‘...penetrate’ schools. This is so despite areport by the Bank Education Service that EA has ‘...a questionable reputation withcurriculum areas of most education departments’. 103 Much the most vigorous andvocal of all opposition to EA has come from teachers in state schools and theirunions. 104 In consequence EA is probably not making much progress in public

schools but may be faring a lot better in private schools. In neither case is reliableinformation available.

Some sort of publicly visible safeguard is necessary against undue invasion of thepublic schools by ideological and public-relations material, produced by business andindustry agencies and other interest groups. Something of the kind could be providedif departments of education were required to collect information from all state schoolsthat would enable them to publish annually an estimate of the total amount of‘...outside’ material used in schools, and the percentage deriving from each significant

source.

If US experience is repeated here we can expect that business in general, and EA inparticular, will launch a campaign to have economics made a compulsory subject in


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high schools. Just such a campaign flourished in the US following the discovery bythe Opinion Research Corporation that the more courses in economics a student hadtaken the greater was the commitment to conservative free-enterprise beliefs. 105 By1976 more than half the states in the US had made high-school courses in economics

compulsory for all students.

Universities and Colleges of Advanced Education. The response from researchersin universities and CAEs will be an important determinant of how far Australia goesalong the path to ‘...guided-opinion’ democracy. There is no defence so effectiveagainst propaganda agencies which masquerade under the name of ‘education’ and‘research’, as repeated exposure of their real purposes through detailed criticalexamination of their activities and output. Once effectively tagged with thepropaganda label the credibility of such agencies-hence their influence-is almostirremediably destroyed. (Even the little I have myself published about EA has had, inthe judgment of Jack Keavney, their former chief executive, a very serious impact onits reputation and credibility.) 106

The disastrous consequences for American democracy resulting from the rise ofcorporate propaganda could not I believe, have happened but for an almostunbelievable neglect by liberal American scholars and researchers to give anysystematic attention and exposure to the extent, character and consequences of thisdevelopment. 107 American scholars and researchers by the thousand have wittinglyand unwittingly helped in every imaginable way to make the monitoring andmanagement of public opinion by business more effective. 108 A great deal willdepend on whether or not Australian academics in the social sciences are able toproduce a very different record from their American colleagues.

It is already clear that corporations, with the advantage of abundant funds, will haveno difficulty in finding academics who will give the seal of professional (especiallyprofessorial) credibility to ‘...invariably tendentious’ policy research conducted fromthe viewpoint of business. The survey of attitudes of workers, union officials andmanagers which was sponsored in 1979 by the American-owned insurance companySentry Holdings Ltd is a case in point. 109 Its sampling, interpretation and subsequentpromotion were all clearly biased, so as to yield results adverse to union interests. 110 Yet this whole exercise was made possible only by the naive cooperation of unionsand their members.

The survey of managements’ and unions’ views about industrial relations that wassponsored by CEDA provides another example. 111 By a systematic disregard ofcontradictory data, this study was interpreted to reveal a high level of dissatisfactionwith the present industrial-relations system among corporate executives. In fact anysuch conclusion accords much more closely with the known views of the study’ssponsors than it does with the evidence produced.

Given the cultural resistance that appears to be blocking the establishment of an AEI-type policy-research institute independent of universities, it must be expected thatuniversities and university scholars in the social sciences will be subject to increasingpressures and temptations to become ever more deeply involved in politically

motivated research on behalf of corporations. This is a prospect which shouldprofoundly concern academic staff associations and professorial boards.


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Unions. Much will depend on how quickly unions can come to appreciate that theessential weapons in the emerging conditions will not be strikes, the crude economicpower of employers, the sympathy of the government in office, or the form of thesystem for settling disputes. The essential new weapon in the armoury of Australiancorporations will be what managements call ‘communications’. The purpose of the

new weapon will always be represented as a benevolent concern with improvement inmutual understanding. But its real purpose, as revealed in the American context, is the‘persuasive communication’ of managements’ viewpoint and values to ‘target’audiences inside and outside industry, 112 in order both to weaken support for unionsamong the general public and to weaken the tie between unions and employees.

The decisive upward and downward turning points in the history of American unionswere the Wagner Act of 1935 and the Taft Hartley Act of 1947; and these turningpoints reflected one condition above all others-favourable public opinion in 1935 andunfavourable public opinion in 1947. Malcolm Fraser built up an armoury of legalweapons for use against unions. One thing only prevented him from using them; his

polls showed that he would not have the support of public opinion if he did so.

In the US, industrial relations are still formally conducted by direct negotiationbetween the parties. In reality, managements’ freedom of action and the terms thatunions will have to accept are to a great degree predetermined by the level ofeffectiveness achieved by management’s two-pronged ‘communication’ activities.Over 30 years ago Whyte described American management’s preoccupation withdomestic ‘communications’, and Peter Drucker acknowledged that the principalpurpose of a major aspect of this communication program had been to ‘...bust theunions’ . 113 For 50 years the first preoccupation of the US National Association of

Manufacturers was public opinion. 114

The success of this strategy over the last 30 years has brought disastrousconsequences for the union movement. Fortunately the use of a similar strategy inAustralia is seriously hindered by the arbitration system, as it exists at present. I doubtwhether most Australian corporate managers, who are products of a more egalitarianand less ideological culture, would carry exploitation of the communications weaponto the lengths American managements have carried it. Nonetheless, unions mustexpect that many Australian corporations will try to follow the American course.

These prospective developments require new responses from unions both towards

their own members and towards the public at large. Unions should warn theirmembers to have nothing to do with any management-initiated communicationsproject (for example annual reports for employees, economic-education programs,surveys of the opinions of union officials and members, ‘worker participation’schemes) unless people with the inclination and qualifications to took after union andworker interests are involved at every level of the planning and execution of suchprojects. In particular, workers should on no account participate in polls or surveysinitiated by employer agencies or university researchers unless qualifiedrepresentatives of union interests are involved in both the design of the survey and theinterpretation of results.

Unions need to develop more capacity to counter managements’ ‘communication’ andpublic-relations activities with competing union initiatives, including policy research


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as the AMWU has done. On the public-relations front unions will continue to be at agreat disadvantage until they can educate their members to appreciate the need to payfor some public-opinion monitoring. Unions badly need reliable feedback from pollson how, when and where strikes may be used with least damage to union public

relations.

In recent years a high proportion of strikes has occurred in publicly owned serviceindustries, where they inconvenience a maximum number of people and discreditpublic ownership, rather than in private industries where neither of these resultsfollow. It must never be forgotten that, no matter how many strikes the unionmovement wins, it will in the long run come to disaster if it loses the support of publicopinion. If American union history has not conveyed persuasive warning on thispoint, nothing ever will.

In sum, the future shape of Australian society depends in significant degree on anumber of considerations bearing on the introduction of tried and tested American

methods for creating a ‘guided-opinion’ democracy:

1. the strength of cultural resistance of various kinds to the introduction of suchmethods, and especially of cultural resistance within the Australian businesscommunity, which is not to be expected within the American-controlled sectorgenerally, or in the American-dominated advertising industry in particular.

2. the extent to which unions become aware that the greatest threat they now face isthe growth of a management communications octopus, that will have the capacity tocome between unions and the workforce, and between unions and the public

generally.

3. the extent to which unions can find the intellectual and financial resources tocounter these threats.

4. the extent to which scholars at universities and other tertiary institutions either jointhe Morgans of this world in pursuing a corporation-controlled political agenda, orchallenge and expose the incipient but rapidly growing mind-management industryfor the profoundly illiberal and subversive development that it is.

5. the extent to which it becomes accepted practice for universities and university

staff to lend their authority to tendentiously argued policy briefs, produced oncommission for corporations, and call this activity ‘research’.

Author’s Note: I am indebted to Trudy Korber for extensive contributions to theresearch on which this chapter is based.


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Notes

1. Alex Carey ‘Social Science Propaganda and Democracy’ in P. Boreharn and G.Dow (eds) Work and Inequality vol. 2, Melbourne: Macmillan, 1980, pp. 60-93

2. I. Marsh ‘Business Government Relations: Some Recent United StatesDevelopments’ The Australian Director, February 1981, pp. 10-14

3. I. Marsh An Australian Think Tank? CEDA Study M61, University of New SouthWales, Kensington 1980

4. K. McQuaid ‘The Roundtable: getting results in Washington’, Harvard Business

Review May-June 1981, pp. 115-22

5. Carey ‘Social Science Propaganda’

6. B. Carr ‘Big Business Launches New Lobby Group’, Bulletin 10 February 1981,pp. 1, 22

7. T. Ferguson and J. Rogers ‘The Knights of the Roundtable’, Nation 15 December

1979, p. 621; McQuaid ‘The Roundtable’

8. Marsh ‘An Australian Think Tank?’

9. P. Burgess Economic Policy Research in Australia, Committee for EconomicDevelopment in Australia, Information Paper No. IP13, Sydney, 1984, pp. 3-6

10. J. Niland and D. Turner Control, Consensus or Chaos, Sydney: Allen & Unwin,1985

11. A. Carey ‘Reshaping the Truth: Pragmatists and Propagandists in America’ Meanjin Quarterly 35, 4, 1976, pp. 370-78

12. E.G. Hartmann, The Movement to Americanize the Immigrant New York:Columbia University Press, 1948, pp. 3843, 56-63, 88-97

13. ibid. pp. 127-33, 162-79

14. ibid. pp. 216-19; L. Post, The Deportations Delirium of Nineteen Twenty,NewYork: Da Capo, 1970 (originally published in 1923) pp. 51-109; C. Beard and M.Beard, The Rise of American Civilization vol. 2 ‘The Industrial Era’, New York:Macmillan, 1927, pp. 639-43, 671-79

15. For Wilson’s World War I propaganda program see G. Creel How We Advertised America New York: Harper, 1920 and J. Mock and C. Larson Words That Won theWar Princeton University Press, 1939; for adaptation of this program by the privateutilities see F. McDonald Insull University of Chicago, 1962, pp. 171-72 and 182-83


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16. Federal Trade Commission Summary Report , Document 92, Part 71A 70thCongress, First Session, p. 18, cited in K. Schriftgeisser The Lobbyists Boston: LittleBrown, 1951, p. 59

17. Schriftgeisser The Lobbyists p. 59

18. J. Levin Power Ethics New York: Knopf, 1931, pp. 53-54, 150

19. Schriftgeisser The Lobbyists pp. 59-60

20. Hearings before a Senate Committee cited in Levin Power Ethics p. 153

21. Report of the Senate Committee on Education and Labor, ‘Violations of FreeSpeech and Rights of Labor, 78th Congress, First Session. Report No. 6, Part 6, p.155. Cited in A.S. Cleveland, Some Political Aspects of Organised Industry, PhD

thesis, Harvard University, 1947

22. National Association of Manufacturers ‘Proceedings of the Fortieth AnnualConvention of the Congress of American Industry’ (1935). Cited in S. RippaOrganized Business and Public Education: The Educational Policies and Activities ofthe Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers 1933-56.Thesis for Doctor of Education Graduate School of Education, Harvard University,1958

23. US Congress, Senate Committee on Education and Labor Violations of FreeSpeech and Rights of Labor Hearings pursuant to S. Res. 266, 74th Congress, before a

sub-committee of the Committee on Education and Labor, 75th, 76th Congresses,Washington: Government Printing Office, 1937-39, Part 17, p. 7693, Exhibit 3838.Cited in Rippa Organized Business.

24. US Congress, Senate Committee on Education and Labor Violations of FreeSpeech and Rights of Labor, 76th Congress, First Session, Senate Report No. 6, Part6, Part III, The National Association of Manufacturers, Washington: GovernmentPrinting Office, 1939, p.- 218

25. W.H. Whyte ‘Is Anybody Listening? Fortune September 1950, pp. 78-83 and ff.In 1942 James Selvage, director of public relations for the NAM, foreshadowed the

postwar program. In an impassioned appeal published in Vital Speeches (journal ofthe US Chamber of Commerce), he urged the importance of ‘selling the AmericanWay to America’. ‘Skilful and intelligent publicists’ must ‘unsell millions ofAmericans on a lot of economic tommyrot’. It is ‘not a job today of sellingmerchandise ... Our merchandise is and must be ... the American system of individualinitiative and profit as contrasted with a regimented economy. We are selling Americaitself to Americans who have forgotten what America has symbolized’ (Selvage VitalSpeeches 1942, p. 145). War conditions inhibited the launching of the proposedprogram until 1945.

26. In 1946 ‘a consortium of Wisconsin businessmen ... helped to finance and

engineer McCarthy’s rise ... to the US Senate. An aura of big business ... envelopedthe Senator ever since ... the 1952 presidential elections. Money contributed by his


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well-heeled supporters also followed him unquestioningly into other strategicsenatorial contests’: C.J. Murphy ‘McCarthy and the Businessman’ Fortune April1954, pp. 156-58 and ff. For moral support given to McCarthy at the height of hisinfamy by the US Chamber of Commerce and the NAM, see D.M. Oshinsky Senator

Joseph McCarthy and the American Labor Movement University of Missouri Press,

1976. The NAM maintained in September 1951, that the term ‘McCarthyism’ may yetgo down in history as one of honour and high courage despite the strenuous efforts ...to make it sound like something bad’ (Oshinsky, p. 173); R.M. Freeland The Truman

Doctrine and the Origin of McCarthyism New York: Knopf, 1975

27. W.H. Whyte ‘Is Anybody Listening’ p. 78; H.G. Moulton and C.W. McKee ‘HowGood is Economic Education?’ Fortune July 1951, p. 126; D. Bell ‘Industrial Conflictand Public Opinion’ in A. Kornhauser, A.R. Dubin and A. Ross (eds) Industrial

Conflict New York: McGraw-Hill, 1954, p. 254

28. According to polls conducted by Yankelovich, a leading monitor of public

opinion on behalf of American business, popular satisfaction with the behaviour ofUS corporations — i.e., big business-declined from 70 per cent in 1968 to 20 per centin 1974 and 17 per cent in 1978 (J. Henry ‘From Soap to Soapbox: The CorporateMerchandising of Ideas’ Working Papers for a New Society 2, 3, 1980, pp. 55-57; P.Lesley ‘Why Economic Education is Failing’ Management Review October 1976, pp.17-23; N. Wardell ‘The Corporation’ Daedalus 107, 1978, pp. 97-110). TheClemenger advertising agency, Melbourne, which appears to be playing forAustralian business a monitoring role comparable with that of Yankelovich in the US,published similar results from Yankelovich polls (along with Australian poll results)as early as 1975 (John Clemenger Pty Ltd ‘What every Corporate Communicator

Should Know About His Hostile Audience’ Melbourne: Clemenger, 1975, p. 3).

29. US Congress Oversight Hearings on Commerce Department Payment to theNational Advertising Council for Promotion of the Free Enterprise System,Washington DC, Keith Congress First Session of 30 July 1975, p. 6

30. P. Weaver ‘Corporations Are Defending Themselves with the Wrong Weapons’

Fortune June 1977, p. 188

31. J.D. Baxter, K.W. Kennett, I.G. Black, C.T. Post, R. Reagan and G.A. Weimer ‘IsGovernment Having a Chilling Effect on Business’ Right to Speak?’ Iron Age 23

October 1978, p. 67

32. A. Crittenden, ‘A New Corporate Activism in the US’ AFR 18 July 1978, p. 6

33. A. McDougall ‘Advocacy: Business Increasingly Uses (in Both Senses) Media toPush Views’ Los Angeles Times 16 November 1980

34. D. Yankelovich and L. Kaagan ‘Assertive America’ Foreign Affairs 59, 1981, p.

696

35. M. Meagher ‘Spreading the Word for Free Enterprise’ Australian 4 April 1979, p.

13


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36. B.A. Cummins ‘The Advertising Council’s Campaign on Economic Education’April 1979 (text of address to business groups) p. 3

37. W. Scott Greater Production Sydney: The Law Book Co., 1950, pp. 429-51

38. American Economic Foundation 37th Annual Report, AEF, New York 1976, pp.1- 10, 16

39. Scott Greater Production pp. 11-12, 437-39

40. ‘About the IPA’ IPA Review April-June 1968, pp. 33-40

41. ‘Understanding Free Enterprise’ IPA Review January-March 1956, pp. 9-14; muchof the economic activity reported by the IPA in 1956 describes programs in operationseveral years earlier

42. Carey ‘Social Science Propaganda and Democracy’

43. Australian Chamber of Commerce ‘National Chamber Intensities Programme toPromote Free Enterprise’ ACC 69th Annual Report 1972-73, 1973, p. 13

44. ibid. p. 22

45. A. Dawson ‘Economic Education in Australia’ in The First National Private Enterprise Convention Information Paper no. 5 CEDA Appendix, Sydney 1976

46. G. Allen ‘The Capitalist Offensive’ Age 31 March 1976

47. AmCham ‘Directors’ Report’ Annual Report (unpaginated) 1977

48. W. Finnegan ‘Enterprise Australia: Its Work and Influence in “EconomicEducation” ‘ Appendix 1, ‘Interview with Personnel Operations Manager, IBM’School of Psychology University of NSW (unpublished) 1984, p. 1

49. ‘Enterprise Australia’ Australian Free Enterprise Association Ltd, Sydney (nopagination, no date but in fact 1975)

50. G. Allen ‘The Capitalist Offensive’

51. J.T. Keavney ‘Australia: Turning Away from Socialism’ Vital Speeches 15February 1981, p. 264

52. J.T. Keavney ‘Building for Profit’ Sydney: Enterprise Australia, 1977, p. 3

53. ‘Company Employee Reporting’ Newsletter Sydney: Enterprise Austra lia, May1977

54. ‘Television Documentary Series’ Newsletter, Enterprise Australia, July 1978, p. 4

Notes 193


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55. M. Meagher ‘Spreading the Word’ p. 13; ‘Radio Spots’ Newsletter, EnterpriseAustralia, May 1978, p. 2; ‘Action 1980’ Sydney: Enterprise Australia (unpaginated,undated, but 1980)

56. B. Carr ‘Troubleshooter with a difference’ Bulletin 15 August 1978, p. 41

57. ‘Audio-Visual Economics Course in Schools’ Enterprise News Sydney:Enterprise Australia, June 1979, p. 2: ‘Action 1981’ Sydney: Enterprise Australia(unpaginated, undated but 1981)

58. R. Crichton-Brown ‘Looking to the Future — The Institute’s Role in theCorporate Sphere’ The Australian Director October- December 1977, pp. 13, 15

59. E. Hook and J. Harding (eds) The World of Business Milton, Qld: JacarandaWiley, 1982

60. The Queensland Confederation of Industry established the World of BusinessResearch Foundation in 1979 to receive corporate contributions (thereby made tax-deductible) towards the cost of commissioning the manuscript of the book. Its taskaccomplished, the Foundation ceased to exist in 1981 ('Audio-Visual EconomicsCourse’ 1979; J.T. Keavney ‘Economic Literacy-Industry’s Responsibility’ Sydney:Enterprise Australia, 14 July 1981.

61. AmCham ‘Directors Report’ 1977

62. ‘The Facts on the Enterprise Australia Schools and Colleges Programme’ A

Special Bulletin for the Information of Members Sydney: Enterprise Australia,September 1982

63. ‘The Capitalist Crisis-Meeting the Challenge’ Sydney: Enterprise Australia(unpaginated, undated, but early 1983)

64. L. Hollings ‘Current Affairs’ The Australian Director August- September 1983, p.26

65. W. Simon A Time for Truth Sydney: McGraw Hill, 1978, pp. 191-233; W. Simon

‘Clearly this is Economic Insanity’ Enterprise Washington NAM, April 1978, p. 6

66. A. Crittenden ‘A New Corporate Activism’ p. 9

67. P. Montgomery ‘Business Institutes on the Rise’ New York Times March 1981,chs 1, 5

68. D. Broadbent, ‘Sheil wants colleges to teach more profitable subjects’ Age 4September 1981

69. J.T. Keavney ‘Advance Australia Fair’ Enterprise (Washington) August 1978, pp.8-10; J.T. Keavney ‘Australia: Turning Away from Socialism’ Vital Speeches 15

February 1981, pp. 264-66


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70. ‘Publications in Print’ London: The Institute of Economic Affairs, 1981

71. M. Sawer ‘Political Manifestations of Libertarianism in Australia’ in M. Sawer(ed.) Australia and the New Right Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1982, p. 8

72. R. Harris ‘The Conversion of the Intellectual’ in M. Ivens (ed.) InternationalPapers on the Revival of Freedom and Enterprise London: Aims, 1978, pp. 10-12

73. Burgess Economic Policy Research p. 77

74. D. Rockefeller David Rockefeller in Australia CEDA, 1979, p. 50

75. CEDA ‘Economic Policy Research in Australia’ CEDA Information, 1984 Paper

no. 5; CEDA Annual Report (unpaginated) 1984

76. Dawson ‘Economic Education in Australia’

77. Burgess Economic Policy Research

78. Marsh ‘An Australian Think Tank?’

79. J. Utz ‘Foreword’ in Burgess Economic Policy Research p. 4

80. ibid. p. 8

81. Niland and Turner Control, Consensus or Chaos p. 1

82. Burgess Economic Policy Research pp. 7-29

83. ibid. p. 15

84. M. Sawer ‘Political Manifestations’ pp. 7-9

85. W. Kasper Capital Xenophobia — Australian Controls of Foreign Investment Sydney: Centre for Independent Studies, 1984


87. P. Sheehan ‘The Right Strikes Back’ SMH 2 March 1982, p. 3


89. University of Queensland Press, 1980

90. K. Barlowe, The Ideology of the Higher School Certificate Economics Syllabus,Masters Thesis, School of Education, Macquarie University, 1985.

91. Sheehan ‘The Right Strikes Back’ pp. 37-38

92. ‘Public Money, Private Goals’ SMH editorial 21 February 1985


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93. M. Kerr ‘Economics in Primary Schools’ Economics (journal of Economics andCommerce teachers Association NSW) April 1983, pp. 31-37

94. P. Paech (ed.) The Social Responsibilities of Business in the 1980s Sydney: TheAustralian Council of Social Service, 1980; ‘Corporate Risks in the Australian

Political Environment: Responding to the Growing Pressures’ Transcript ofProceedings from the 20th Annual General Meeting of the American Chamber ofCommerce in Australia, March 1981, Overmeyer Ltd, Sydney

95. Marsh ‘An Australian Think Tank?’ pp. 1-2

96. M. Walsh, ‘Media Perceptions of the Corporation’ in Corporate Risks in the Australian Political Environment Sydney: AmCham, 1981, p. 43

97. R. Milliken ‘Ad Chiefs Give Thumbs Up to Policy Promotion’ National Times 6-12 February 1983, p. 5

98. L. Blanket ‘The Last Angry Adman’ Advertising News 10 November 1978

99. ‘US Fondness for Our Agencies’ Advertising News 14 March 1980

100. John Clemenger Pty Ltd ‘What Every Corporate Communicator Should KnowAbout His Hostile Audience’, Melbourne: Clemenger, 1975; John Clemenger Pty Ltd

The Corporate Dilemma Melbourne: Clemenger, 1980

101. A strong bid of this kind was in fact attempted at the AmCham Conference by a

representative of a major advertising agency. In a fashion inconceivable in the US itwas dismissed with mockery and derision in a related commentary by Max Walsh,managing editor of the AFR (M. Walsh ‘Media Perceptions of the Corporation’ inCorporate Risks in the Australian Political Environment Sydney: AmCham, 1981, pp.38-39, 42-43

102. P. Dreier ‘The Corporate Complaint Against the Media’ The Quill November1983

103. M. Kerr ‘Economics in Primary Schools’ Economics (journal of Economics and

Commerce Teachers Association NSW) April 1983, p. 32

104. D. Bell ‘Enterprise Australia — Handle With Caution’ Education 5 July 1982;‘In the Name of All that is Sacred... We give you Enterprise Australia’ QueenslandTeachers Journal 22 April 1982; J.T. Keavney ‘Your Organization Under Fire’Special Bulletin Enterprise Australia, September 1982 (unpaginated); R. Moran‘Business Wants to Tell the Truth’ T. TUV News No. 5, 1981; R. Moran ‘FanaticalBelievers in Private Enterprise’ Australian Teacher No. 1, 1982; R.M. Shanahan‘Enterprise Australia: Knowledge for Whom?’ South Australian Teachers Journal 22April 1982

105. ‘Why Too Many College Students Are Economic Illiterates’ The Public Opinion

Index for Industry, Princeton Opinion Research Corporation, April 1960; A.C. Neal‘Boobs and Booby Traps in Economic Education’, address by Alfred C. Neal,


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president, Committee for Economic Development at the 32nd Annual New EnglandBank Management Conference Boston Massachusetts, 25 October 1962

106. J.T. Keavney ‘A Commentary by the Chief Executive of Enterprise Australia’ 2September 1982. Keavney is, indeed, moved to hyperbole by the occasion. He

observes that ‘attacks on Enterprise Australia in the journals of teachers’ unions havespread like a bushfire in 1982’ causing ‘great damage’. Keavney notes that bushfiresmay be started ‘by nothing more than a discarded cigarette butt’ and goes on toattribute a similarly culpable incendiary role to my article (i.e., A. Carey, ‘SocialScience Propaganda')

107. A. Carey, Business Propaganda and Democracy, University of NSW, 1983(unpublished)

108. W. Albig ‘Two Decades of Public Opinion Study: 1936-1956’ Public Opinion

Quarterly 21, 3 1957, pp. 15-22

109. Managers and Workers at the Crossroads Sydney: Sentry Hol

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