As I read this article I, at first, thought that Andy Barns was
capitulating to the right-wing distortions of the word propaganda. Then
as I read further it became clear to me that he was technically correct
in his use of and explanation of the word. Still, though, given the
context of its use in this article I think he could have made more of an
effort to emphasize the inherent neutrality of the word. He does explain
that socialists use propaganda too, but when you give the general
impression that there is something inherently wrong with propaganda then
when you write an article about your own efforts at propagandizing you
make yourself look bad. So let me point out that this article is
propaganda itself and that in saying that I intend no criticism at all.
https://socialistaction.org/2018/05/20/buy-one-get-one-free-on-capitalist-propaganda/
Buy one, get one free: On capitalist propaganda
/ 2 days ago
June 2018 BillboardBy ANDY BARNS
The more pervasive and unchallenged propaganda is, the more effective it
becomes. As a salesman by trade, I handle a lot of promotional materials
for the products we sell at my workplace (booklets and product samples).
These range from decking, to fasteners, all the way to kitchen faucets.
I have a front-row seat to the construction industry’s view of itself.
For the purposes of this article, I will focus on one example: door slabs.
In one of our slots is a thick booklet from the creators of Masonite®
Doors. The front cover features a woman walking through a door and
beaming. The slab itself is prominently displayed in all its cleanness,
beauty, and glory. On the next page, we see the image of a father
joyfully watching his two daughters run off to soccer practice. He is
standing in a doorway with a wood-grain texture Masonite® Door. The
front of the house is pristine, clearly amplified by the gorgeous door.
After a few pages touting the long list of benefits (one of the slogans
we are taught to memorize at my workplace: “lead the customer to the
benefits!”) we have a photograph of a family enjoying a meal in the
dining room, all facing the camera and laughing! Spotless kitchen,
gourmet meal—and behind them, a perfect door. That Oxford Style
Masonite® Door behind them sure helped bring joy to this family!
The message is clear: “Buy our product, and you will find joy.” This
message rings everywhere in capitalist society. You cannot escape. It
calls to us on the roads, sings to us during our broadcasts, and is even
present on the pump handles at gas stations.
As a social system, capitalism has been running the longest, most
successful propaganda campaign in human history. In our time, we refer
to this as “advertising.” Necessarily, capitalist propaganda goes beyond
advertising into the news media, TV shows, and from public officials
themselves (who are often capitalists or former capitalists). But the
vast bulk of this propaganda, and the heart of its focus, lies in
advertising.
Advertising is the all-pervasive and unchallenged propaganda of our
time. It has fulfilled its task well, for most workers do not see it as
propaganda.
What makes it propaganda?
Some skeptical minds will remain suspicious. “Propaganda,” they might
say, “is a tool used by malicious governments to trick their
populations. Individual corporations trying to make their way in the
market are not producing propaganda.”
Yes, history shows malicious governments having used propaganda to
manipulate their populations. But to claim that this is propaganda in
its entirety, is false.
Properly understood, propaganda is a widely applied message, meant to
frame a particular narrative (what is the story of our time?) and push
an agenda (what should we do in our time?). Propaganda is inherently biased.
Governments have used propaganda to push narratives and agendas, this is
undeniable. But they do not have a monopoly on propaganda. Example: FOX,
CNN, Brietbart, etc. These are outlets that push through narratives with
particular policy aims. These are not governments, though they often
have close ties with government officials. Controlled or funded by
capitalist institutions and individuals, they frame all issues on
capital’s terms (pro-market, pro-business, etc.).
These outlets are controlled by the owners of economic property in the
interest of protecting that property from the many. They have an agenda
(often attempts to get the working class to fight itself, or to justify
the newest war) and will use narratives to push that agenda (oftentimes
using racism, i.e. “immigrants cause all problems,” or painting a
non-cooperative sovereign state as inherently irrational).
The socialist movement also uses propaganda. We have a narrative and we
have an agenda—the narrative of working-class struggle and the agenda of
working-class revolution. We are biased towards the needs and aims of
the working class (and all who are oppressed by capitalist accumulation
and the state violence that serves it). Since the working class is the
audience of our message, we don’t hide our aims from them.
Ads as propaganda
If we understand propaganda in this way, then we can see that the
endless barrage of advertisements we experience incessantly is the
propaganda of a ruling capitalist class against a ruled working class.
The narrative? “Our product(s) are amazing!” The agenda? To promote
their commodity: “Buy this thing and be happy/cool/upgraded.”
This is all in the service of the private profit of the owners of
corporations. If the stockholder, CEO, or business owner can get
millions of people to obediently go to work and then take their money to
the mall, then they make moolah like kings. The capitalist system of
commodity production, and profit for a few, sustains itself.
Advertisements are a deep layer of illusion that hides the real source
of workers’ struggles behind a wall of gloss and glamour. It pretends
that the workers can solve their problems by consuming a product.
This layer is buttressed by a web of media organizations, owned by
capitalists, who report the news on current events in a way that
reflects positively on the entire for-profit system, as well as calling
on “experts” favorable to capital’s interests.
An advertisement not only has the intent of opening your wallet, but it
also has the unspoken effect of singing the praises of a system ruled by
property owners, though actually run by the mass of working people. Work
hard, consume, and don’t question the boss! Such is the mantra ever
repeated from the capitalist class to the working class, in an endless
barrage of noise from every screen and on every surface in every store.
And on the wall at my own workplace.
They don’t have to say it outright, but it is implied. You can’t, after
all, get that new razor blade or video game without first selling your
labor to a capitalist.
The absurd waste of advertising
One 30-second Superbowl ad can cost millions of dollars. Somehow though,
caring for our sick is too much of a financial burden in the United
States. Behold the efficiency of the free market—where countless hours
of labor, watts of electricity, pounds of steel, and land space is
devoted to reminding highway drivers that Sheetz has over 100 drink flavors.
Moreover, advertisements take up the resource of time. Millions of hours
of your time, fellow workers, are gone. Where did it go? Into every
commercial break and YouTube ad. Hours and hours—gone! That was part of
our free time, the time supposedly meant for R ’n R, but is used instead
to tell us to buy more things.
At my own workplace the waste is just silly. Every year we get updated
catalogs of product lines for doors from two different brands. Generally
speaking, the old ones are either kept in storage and collect dust, or
they get thrown in the garbage. We also get multiple samples of trim and
composite decking. What are we to do with the old ones?
Furthermore, we have multiple product lines with two or more companies
competing to sell essentially the same product (Trex vs. Moisture
Shield, GAF vs Owens Corning, etc.) Each makes its own promotional
materials and has entire departments of workers dedicated to these
projects. That is money, man-hours, time, ink, and fuel for
transportation of the materials.
It should be remembered that the thousands of workers who toil on, draw,
animate, print, mail, and construct these advertisements across the
globe are also exploited for their labor, just like every other worker
(given a wage that sustains them, while the capitalist retains the
fruits of their extra work as profit—what Karl Marx called “surplus-value”).
The insanity of it all is that we as a species have the productive
powers to make everything we need to live healthy and free lives with a
minimum of work required. Instead workers are pitted against each other
in the needless delivery of crap, as part and parcel of the capitalist
process of commodity production, as well as a culture that encourages
workers to see others as the enemy (the sales guy at Lowe’s is competing
against the sales woman at Home Depot; the delivery driver for 84 Lumber
must get to the job on time to stay competitive with the driver from
Lezzer Lumber). So much human effort is absolutely wasted in this
needless competition.
Clicks in the service of profit
Advertising gets weirder when capitalists use big data, and marketing,
in the age of the internet. George Orwell’s “Big Brother,” it turns out,
is just Google’s marketing department.
Information technology corporations like Google, Facebook, and Amazon
use algorithms and immense amounts of collected data about your browsing
and “liking” habits, and will then use this information to target ads
specifically catered to you. Yes, you. Thanks to Facebook and other
websites, they know your name and they probably also know what you like
and don’t like.
The implications when we consider politics are chilling. For example:
Ever wonder why people seem to live in their own bubbles, becoming ever
more hostile and getting ever more opposed views on the world? Political
ads targeted to particular audiences (carefully monitored and studied by
teams of in-house corporate sociologists) are one reason why. Algorithms
that drive clicks for that sweet ad revenue, rather than expand our
minds, are why. Fake news? That’s money.
The business model is this: the selling of an audience to advertisers,
i.e. a capitalist (Mark Zuckerburg) providing a service to other
capitalists (Ubisoft, Toyota, etc) in the form of workers who will,
after a long, tired day of working, want to sit back and scroll on their
feed. In other words, willing eyes.
Such services are also rendered to political representatives and their
opponents in elections. This sniper propaganda has been very profitable
for the likes of Zuckerburg, who also happens to be one of the eight men
who, collectively, control the same wealth as the 3.5 billion poorest of
us. Keep this in mind when recalling that the U.S. Congress voted to
allow internet service providers to sell your browsing information to
the highest bidder. It should make people question whom the U.S.
government really serves.
Mind you, there is no technological reason why the internet has to be
designed like this. The internet is not an innate Big Brother machine.
It is not necessary to track users information for advertising purposes,
and then waste screen space on advertisements. The internet is just
computers talking to each other. Nobody needs to be listening in.
“Big Brother” as we have come to know it, exists because the internet
was created under a capitalist system. Necessarily, as it grows, the
for-profit, class-dominated system will shape it just like any new
government, agency, or colony will be shaped by it. It will be used by
the ruling capitalist class for their purposes.
What would happen under socialism?
For starters, the tens of thousands of workers who are trained to be
predators of their fellow human beings at the behest of capitalists
(i.e., salesmen and marketers like myself) could find something better
to do with their time. The amount of labor that could be saved by the
elimination of advertising in our daily lives would go a long way
towards reducing working times in all other industries, by the rational
redistribution of work based on human need, not profitability.
Furthermore, your bandwidth would be freed. I can guarantee you that
with a planned internet that provides the service to citizens as a
right-to-information, your internet speeds will explode. No more NSA
collecting porn data. No more double-click monitoring your Google
searches for advertising. No more animated ads for crappy games you
don’t want.
The barrage of advertisements that envelop our lives, from dawn to dusk,
are a symptom of a larger problem: an economic system in which a tiny
few who own massive property have unilateral control of investment
decisions and their employees. In market warfare with each other, they
not only waste human potential, but push out what they consider the
story of our time: “Buy something, and sate your desires.” All for the
benefit of who happens to own productive property.
We can express ourselves differently and more deeply. We can fill our
world and our minds with thoughts that ultimately matter to our
existence as fragile human beings, rather than the existence of capital.
Let us construct a new narrative—not one that pushes commodities but one
that upholds human existence as worth living on its own terms.
Advertisements don’t need to exist, and I look forward, with great joy,
to the day we all recognize this fact.
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May 20, 2018 in Arts & Culture.
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