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 ideological
management 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 the
political risk out of democracy (from the point of view of protagonists of the market
economy) that have long been developed, refined and applied in the US and more
recently and to a much lesser extent in the UK. Virtually nothing in these
developments is indigenous to Australia. A considerable sample of them has already
been imported direct from the United States (commonly retaining the name of the
model 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 via
Britain, as in the case of Enterprise Australias promotion of the free-enterprise
system through special annual reports for employees and courses in economic
education 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 agenda
in 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 in
the US. 3 There the amount of economic policy research produced by think-tanks
funded by corporations is so great and so effectively marketed that business has
been able, through its hundreds of selectively sponsored scholars, largely to redefine
the terms of debate on many issues in ways favourable to business. For example, by
transforming ...quality of life issues into esoteric ...cost-benefit analysis issues. 4
At present the relatively limited Australian progress in this direction is supplemented
by importing and distributing publications resulting from business-sponsored policy
research 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-sponsored
dominance of related policy research is still at an early stage. It is not evident that

such transfers have yet reached the point where they have substantial political
importance, although Bob Hawkes public endorsement of Enterprise Australias
proselytising activities deserves notice, as does the coincidence of significant
elements of Labors current economic policies with Enterprise Australias widely
advocated preferences. Nonetheless the institutional basis for the long-term expansion
of Enterprise Australias popular proselytising has been established, and the slow
process of accustoming the Australian community to the existence and pervasive
intrusions 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 less
systematic. However, 1980 saw the establishment of the Business Roundtable, which
comprised the top executives of Australias largest companies (Twenty Nine Largest
Corporations). 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, established
an astonishing record of success in gaining adoption of its preferred policies by
Congress. 7 The Australian Business Roundtables policy research interests surfaced
briefly in December 1980, when it put a proposal to the Industrial Relations Research
Centre at the University of New South Wales, for expenditure of $500000 on an
inquiry into corporate executives views and preferences with respect to industrialrelations institutions, Jaws and policies. This project met public-relations problems
and 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 most
important source of business sponsored economic policy research in Australia. CEDA
published, in 1980, a full-scale inquiry into the problems and prospects of transferring
to Australia lessons that may be drawn from the successful development and
effective political use of business-sponsored policy-research organisations in the
United States. 8 In 1984 CEDA established a Strategic Issues Forum which will
commission ...task forces to conduct longer-term policy research and ...produce
reports on chosen topics. These reports are intended to culminate in a Bicentennial
Book on Australias future development. The first such report published by the
forum is a comprehensive survey of groups and organisations conducting ...economic
policy research in Australia. 9 In 1985 CEDA aimed to publish the results of its
inquiry into corporate managements views and preferences with respect to industrial
relations 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 of
popular proselytizing, and the financing and distribution of economic policy research
supporting a free-market philosophy. These have produced catastrophic results for
American democracy. If we are to recognise the possible significance of these new
techniques of political control for Australian society, it is altogether necessary to

obtain some systematic acquaintance with the history and consequences of their use in
the US. For these reasons I shall attempt some review of the American background
before 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, popular
proselytising programs on behalf of its values and institutions, whenever and
wherever popular sentiment was judged to be taking uncongenial forms. 11 These
programs have had much of the temper of secular Billy Graham crusades, though with
a 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 commonly
described), though ostensibly concerned altruistically to prepare millions of European
migrants for American citizenship, was in fact principally stimulated by business fear
of radicalism, and especially fear of the influence of the Industrial Workers of the
World (IWW) among the unorganised and abused foreign textile workers of
Massachusetts. 12 For a decade, almost up to Americas entry into World War 1, the
program, though national in scope, was funded and organised by American business
with minimal government support (though such support was strenuously sought).
However, shortly before American entry into the war, business was able successfully
to link its Americanisation program with the cultivation-now claimed essential for
national security-of an unqualified patriotism among the foreign-born. 13
The Americanisation program thereafter both obtained public funds and, by its selfserving play on the subversive threat constituted by the incompletely Americanised,
contributed to an increasing popular suspicion of any departure in ideas or behaviour
from the most conservative of American traditions. This development, with large help
from 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 with
inadequate commitment to the values of laissez fare capitalism, and to anathematise
such inadequate commitment as un-Americanised or unAmerican. Whenever,
from World War 1 to the 1970s, American business has detected serious indications
of popular ideological backsliding, it has met the problem by adopting precisely the
formula 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-born
as well as foreign.
The first such program occurred in the 1920s. The vast network of privately owned
light and power utilities were in trouble with the public and felt their freedom of
operation under consequent threat from increased regulation and even nationalisation.
They responded by launching a campaign which explicitly employed the techniques
and organisation developed for the Wilson administration during World War 1, to
disseminate patriotic persuasion to every part of American society, from
kindergartens to universities, and from farmers organisations to womens 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

some (but temporary) setback in consequence, but it set a model for later
developments.
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 outlet
of public information. Newspapers, magazines, lecture platforms, forums, service
organisations, civic societies, schools and colleges... 17 Much campaign material was
rabid and suggested that all those who advocated public ownership were communists.
18 Nonetheless, Schriftgeisser observes that the success of the ...utility propaganda
all over the country was such ...that many a schoolboy of that period still remembers
that it was considered all but subversive even to intimate in a civics or history class
that the utilities were not the greatest benefactors of mankind since historys dawn.
19 Responses by the director of the utilities campaign to a Congressional committee
illustrate 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 almost
everybody who can be reached... allowing for the people who do not read or appear in
any club or gathering. 20
After Roosevelts election in 1932, the NAM warned that present public opinion must
be reshaped ...if we are to avoid disaster, and reorganised itself to undertake that
task. 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 skilfully
integrated so as to gradually blanket every media... and then... that it pounds its
message home with relentless determination. 22 In 1938 the NAMs board of
directors still found ...the hazard facing industrialists to be ...the newly realized
political power of the masses. ...Unless their thinking is directed . . . it warned,
...we are definitely headed for adversity. 23 The following year (1939) a vast
congressional investigation reported that ...the NAM has blanketed the country with
propaganda; 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 the
prewar 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 economic
system to the American people. 25 This new campaign caught up the New Deal
liberal intellectuals more effectively; they had long been acknowledged by the NAM
and other defenders of business as the real enemy. A McCarthyist period began in
1948. 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 remained
sufficiently conservative to require little attention from business. However, from
1958, Vietnam and then Watergate brought a collapse in popular regard for American
institutions 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

education, was started by one of the worlds 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, $1,000
million 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 present
upsurge in conservative thinking owes much to a newly aggressive attitude by
American business... [G]rowth of government regulation and an apparent lack of
public confidence in business [has led] a growing number of companies to finance
sympathetic policy research and economic education aimed at defending the free
market system... 32 By 1980 the Advertising Councils massively detailed polls
showed ...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 five
years 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 Ronald
Reagan 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 the
Advertising Council, and claims principal credit for starting the 1975-80 economic
education campaign, toured Australia under Enterprise Australias auspices ...to
explain details of the Advertising Councils campaign to community leaders and
leaders in the communications industry ... [and] to explore how to bring together the
organizations that would need to work in cooperation to adapt the programme to
Australia... 35 With much illustrative material Mr Cummins explained how to do it
to meetings of businessmen in every mainland state, and offered his assistance. ...As
Enterprise Australia has been telling you, he affirmed, ...youve got to persuade the
electorate that theyve got a great system ... the greatest system the world has ever
known. In short youve got to educate the Australian people about your economic
system. 36 Long before this the US business concept of economic education had
been proposed by Walter Scott (later Sir Walter).
In 1950 Scott was the first Australian to make a study of the combination of publicopinion monitoring and corrective economic education employed by US business
and to propose that Australian business follow American practice. 37 Scott refers in
this connection to the American Economic Foundation (AEF), whose economic
education activities would be taken as a model 25 years later when Scotts proposals
at 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),

canned editorials, leaflets and booklets for use in schools. By 1975 it was also
communicating its ...free enterprise messages to millions of people. 38
Scott believed that, in 1950, although many organisations in Australia were enjoying
unprecedented prosperity, the system of free enterprise was at risk because of popular
dissatisfaction with it. ...Private enterprise, he warned, ...cannot survive without
public support... but the public can survive without private enterprise. ...Propaganda
is the order of the day, Scott concluded. ...If Management desires to reestablish itself
in the faith of the general public ... it has to use the methods that will reach the
public... 39 His book was apparently written before the Australian Labor Party lost
government in December 1949. Once Menzies was at the helm, and exploiting
anticommunism to great effect, Australian business no doubt felt sufficiently secure
and Scotts pleas fell on deaf ears. Little was heard during the next twenty years of
conservative rule, about the publics 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 popular
proselytising on behalf of free enterprise. It was established ...by a group of
prominent businessmen in direct response to the ...overwhelming victory of the
Labor 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 1943
elections 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 economiceducation programs. His report attempted to convey some idea of the ...vast sums
spent on the American operation and its vast scale: General Motors produced more
booklets as part of its ...economic-education program for employees than it
produced automobiles; the US Chamber of Commerce produced a ...colour cartoon
film which had been seen by more than 60 million people and conducted a
Business-Education Day annually on which 300000 teachers had been given inplant acquaintance with the free-enterprise viewpoint; Sears Roebuck spent a million
dollars 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 of
disseminating ...economic education that have been ...tried and tested overseas was
that individual companies in Australia must do ...far more to promote ... free
enterprise by providing economic education for their own employees. However, an
active interest in economic education for the masses did not develop until the political
climate became unfavourable to business, foreshadowing the end, in November 1972,
of a period 23 years long of conservative rule. (A detailed account of the rapid
expansion of ...economic education after 1972, on which the following summary is
substantially 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 (more
formally described as a ...three years Economic Education Campaign'). As first steps

the chamber conducted a national survey of school leavers attitudes to various

aspects of the freeenterprise system (for example profits, prices, competition) and an
essay competition for school children on the same general topic. These projects were
used 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 contributions
in kind) was about $500 000. In all, some fifteen videos and films were completed or
in production (some in conjunction with IPA) on topics ranging from Profits to The
Market Economy and Advertising. With the agreement of departments of
education, all this material was included in teaching resources centres and made
available to schools throughout Australia.
The first three ...economic education campaigns concluded in 1981. The ACC
decided the program should be continued, but with ...new projects, a new format, and
a new name. Though now known as the ...Understanding Business campaign, the
overall program was maintained and its fundamental aim, ...to secure a wider public
appreciation of the Australian market economy, was unchanged. 44
In 1976 the * director of the chambers Economic Education campaign produced a
review of business-sponsored economic education in Australia which was published
by CEDA. The report identifies eight bodies as most active in the field. Four of these
represented specific industry groups: the Australian Bankers Association, the
Australian Financial Conference, the Life Officers Association of Australia, and the
Australian Mining Industrial Council. All of these had ...comprehensive educational
programmes currently in hand which ...carry a free enterprise message... to
secondary 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 ...the
free enterprise system generally. They were the Australian Industries Development
Association (since merged with the Roundtable to form the Business Council), the
American Chamber of Commerce in Australia (AmCham), CEDA and IPA. All of
these were similarly active both in schools and elsewhere. However, only the IPA
provided any quantitative measure of its activities, and then for schools only. IPA
claimed 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 throughout
Australia. 45 Elsewhere IPA was reported to be ...channelling hundreds of thousands
of copies of publications to employees through firms; 46 and AmCham claimed to
have ...carried the business story to more than 20000 students in hundreds of high
schools across the country. 47
Probably the most important development in enlarging the business effort to monitor
and manage public opinion, occurred in 1975 with the establishment of the Australian
Free 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 of
the Whitlam Labor government.
7

The association planned to launch Enterprise Australia in December 1975 with the
purpose of assisting and coordinating other proselytisers ...in the development of a
national programme of public education which would use ...all the means of
communication ... 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 (both
major business organisations) described Enterprise Australia as resulting from
initiatives 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. While
waiting for the delayed launching of EA, its new chief executive, Jack Keavney, spent
his time ...looking at similar organizations overseas. 50
Of the organisations he visited overseas, Keavney appears to have been most
impressed by the American Economic Foundation, which gave him ...a great
welcome and every assistance. ...We owe much of what we have done to
Americans, he acknowledged five years later on a return visit to the AEF in New
York, ...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 in
the production of ...annual reports for employees which make clear how little
surplus is left after wages and other costs are paid. His most famous achievement is to
have used employee communications to produce a dramatic conservative shift in
opinion among employees of the large English engineering firm Guest, Keen and
Nettlefold (GKN), a shift, that is, against nationalisation and towards the companys
view. 52 Under EAs auspices, Jennings met Prime Minister Fraser and the Minister
for Industrial Relations. Both thereafter publicly endorsed ...use of the Jennings
formula. EA subsequently reported that between 200 and 300 Australian companies
were producing employee reports ...similar to the Jennings model! 53
Jennings was the first of a long series of conservative economists, trade union leaders
and 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') on
the general theme that what helps business helps everyone. This series was broadcast
in all States and a further series was in production. 54 EA had also secured some
million dollars of free radio time per annum. Every day more than 100 radio stations
broadcast free-enterprise ...commercials'-which, as EA explained, ...relate that free
enterprise 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 to
EAs advance. The NSW Department of Education-where resistance might have been
expected-had agreed to cooperate with EA on production of the Australianized
version of GKNs economic education program. 57

Overall there was, it appeared, significant progress towards realisation of the brave
new world foreshadowed by Sir Robert Crichton-Brown, president of the Institute of
Directors. As an inducement to his fellow directors to give generously in support of
Enterprise Australia, Sir Robert had described a utopian vision of the permanent
pacification 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. This
can 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 private
enterprise system. There are threats to it from many sources, and we cannot relax until
these threats have been removed. That will be when we have convinced society at
large that our influence is indeed for its good... [T]hat ... will take up some of your
time and some of the corporate systems money. The expenditure of both will be well
worth while if it succeeds in obtaining for the corporate system societys seal of
approval, thus relieving our successors of the need to spend their resources ... on
further promotion of the systems. 58
Teachers, schools and children. In 1981 EA appointed a full-time director of its
Schools and Colleges Programme (Ted Hook) and in 1982 took over distribution of a
school textbook entitled The World of Business. 59 Based on a Canadian text of the
same name, the book had been compiled by Hook under a contract funded by various
business corporations and the Queensland Confederation of Industry. 60 In 1982, EA
took over Young Achievement Australia (YAA) which had been introduced to
Australian schools in 1978 by the American Chamber of Commerce in Australia as an
adaptation of an American program called Junior Achievement. Under American
auspices YAA had not flourished. 61 After being taken under EAs umbrella in 1982,
YAA involved 1400 high-school students in four States. 62
In 1983 the Australianised economic education program Work and Wealth was
made available to secondary schools Australia-wide through the good offices of
departments of education. Also in 1983 a board game called Poleconomy, which
had been produced under EAs auspices on the ground that it improves understanding
of 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 of
university staff on the merits of the free-enterprise system. In 1983 Monash
University ...employ[ed] a full time officer, with special educational duties which
included encouraging schools to use Enterprise Australia materials. 63 A business
executive-in-residence program was begun (at Monash) under which senior business
executives spent up to a week explaining the merits of the free-enterprise system to
formal meetings of staff and students. In 1984, twelve universities accepted
arrangements of this kind.
Employees. In 1981 Bob Hawke presented the awards to New South Wales
companies in the competition, sponsored by EA, for the best annual reports to
employees. Andrew Peacock performed a like service in Victoria. In 1982 EA
appointed a full-time director of its Employee Communications Programme; and the
9

economic education program Work and Wealth was made available to corporations
for use with their employees.
General public. The million dollars per annum of free-enterprise slogans was
continued. 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 TV
spots was begun. In 1984 the value of free radio spots donated by 136 radio stations
was increased to $5 million; that is, to approximately 136000 30-second spots per
annum. The topic of the spots was changed to stress the individual employees
responsibility for making the economic system work (by increasing output, quality,
and hence-it is argued-jobs). Under the rubric Australia for Quality Campaign, the
new radio onslaught was launched on 2 April 1984, with a three-minute speech by
Prime Minister Bob Hawke which was broadcast by all 136 commercial radio
stations.
Policy research in Australia and overseas connections. In an address to the
Institute of Directors in 1983, Les Hollings, editor of the Australian, noted the
relatively undeveloped level of business agenda setting role in Australia: ...In the
United States, Hollings observed, ...there are a number of public policy research
institutions that are funded by business and do a good job in promoting the system we
all believe in. There are some of these types of institutes in Britain. But you do
virtually nothing here in a serious way. 64
Greater intervention by corporate interests in the American educational system to
check the growth of values opposed to freemarket conservatism had influential
supporters 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 business
should wholly restrict its financial support to educational and research centres of an
adequately conservative temper. Some major foundations and institutes in the US are
regarded by free-marketeers as more or less subversively left-wing. The Ford
Foundation-the largest-is in this category, as is the Brookings Institute. Another group
is regarded with particular favour; it includes the Hoover and Hudson Institutes, the
Conference Board (an adjunct of the NAM), The Heritage Foundation and the
American Economic Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) now the most
influential of all business-sponsored organisations specialising in economic-policy
research.
William Simon, secretary of the US Treasury, 1973-77, was one of the leaders of the
campaign to reshape the political agenda that has led to the dominance of the neoconservative movement in the USA. He claimed that the Carter Administration was
becoming collectivist, that the regulatory agencies of ...an economic police state
were spreading ...terror among the corporations, and that the crisis of American
democracy was due to the pervasive influence of un-American intellectuals. Major
foundations such as the Ford Foundation had been ...taken over by the philosophical
enemies of capitalism, people of egalitarian outlook; hence new foundations were
necessary, funded by business on a large scale. Business support should be withdrawn
from 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

10

The budget of the American Economic Institute grew from under $1 million in 1970
to over $7 million in 1978; its staff grew from 24 to 125, plus 100 ...adjunct scholars
working on AEI-sponsored studies. In 1977 its ...vast outpouring of material and
activities included 54 studies, 22 forums and conferences, 15 analyses of important
legislative proposals, 7 journals and newsletters, a ready-made set of editorials sent
regularly to 105 newspapers, public affairs programmes carried by more than 300
college libraries. The following year Irving Kristol was cochairman of a new AEI
drive 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 university
libraries I had occasion to use contained about a foot of index cards to publications by
the AEI. Returning to Australia, I believed I had got some measure of AEIs
activities, substantially ahead of its influence reaching Australia. I was in
consequence 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 from
250 titles which had been donated to the library by AEI. These donations established
the 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 a
valid one. However, I do not think, as he implies, that this situation represents simply
a cultural lag behind the northern hemisphere. I think it results in part from
indigenous cultural characteristics that affect Australian businessmen as well as
others: some measure of genuine egalitarian sentiment, and a consequent distaste for
the corruption of democracy by massive regimenting of opinion, that the American
style of opinion management constitutes; and a sharp discomfort with the scale of
hypocrisy required to defend and maintain such developments in a formally
democratic society. These comments are likely to arouse considerable scepticism.
Nevertheless I am convinced that philosophical elitism does not yet have anything
like 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 mindmanaging 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 business
community itself. An illustration of this may well be the fact that by 1981 there were
over 40 Chairs of free enterprise, in the USA, established and financed by business in
universities, for the explicit purpose of promoting and defending the free-enterprise
system, 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 in
1981, but negotiations so far have been unsuccessful. 68
The international connections are still growing. The chief executive of Enterprise
Australia, Jack Keavney, made a number of visits during his tenure of office, to
...counterpart organisations overseas; these included NAM, the US Chamber of
Commerce, and the Roundtable. He noted that these were impressed with what EA

11

was doing, especially in working with moderate unions; he rejoiced in the fact that
Ralph Nader had called EA ...the most dangerous organisation he had come across
in 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 the
American 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 the
Thatcher era. During a visit to Sydney in 1981 (under the auspices of the Centre for
Independent Studies (CIS) and Enterprise Australia) Milton Friedman claimed that
IEA had been able to exercise ...a far greater influence than any of the much better
known or more prestigious institutions of learning. 71 IEA material is distributed in
Australia 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 of
counter-intellectuals. ...A growing army of IEA economists in the broad classical
liberal tradition have, Harris says, ...kept up their long range, long-term, scholarly
bombardment of one enemy position after another. Harris distinguishes strategically
the need for two levels of ideological offensive. He rejects the view, attributed to
some businessmen, that ...all effort should be concentrated on simpler propaganda
aimed at the man in the street . This approach, he argues, is equivalent to
supposing ...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 have
led the growth here in corporatefunded economic-policy research. CEDA is modelled
on its US counterpart, the Committee for Economic Development (CED), with which
it maintains ...close and regular liaison and participation in joint international
projects . 73 On a visit to CEDA in Australia David Rockefeller (Standard Oil and
CED) observed that, ...organisations like CEDA are ...precisely the right approach
to promoting private enterprise with less government regulation and control while at
the same time protecting the public interest. 74
In the twenty years to 1984 CEDA has published ...an enormous amount of material
across a broad range of issues. This material includes 23 ...major research projects
on aspects of economic policy and over 300 lesser research projects and papers
relevant to economic policy. 75 From 1976 to 1984, CEDA published (though it did
not initiate) the only general review of corporate-sponsored ...economic education in
Australia, 76 the only comprehensive review of bodies engaged in corporatesponsored economic policy research in Australia, 77 and the only study of the much
more significant political role of privately sponsored policy research in the US, with
an explicit view to ...lessons that might be transferred in pursuit of a comparable
development in Australia. 78
More recently CEDA has established a Strategies Issues Forum through which it
appears to be in process of adopting a forwardplanning program similar to the
Business Roundtable in the US. 79

12

The major CEDA study by Niland and Turner of corporate executives views about
the Australian industrial-relations system and possible alterations to it is presumably
also related to the Forums program. 80 This report largely constituted CEDAs
submission to the Hancock Committees review of industrial relations. 81
Four organisations, apart from CEDA, are more than incidentally concerned with
broad promotion of conservative policies and ideology. These are the Business
Council of Australia; the Centre for Independent Studies; the Australian Institute for
Policy Studies; and Malcolm Frasers Think-Tank. 82
The Business Council was inaugurated in September 1983 from a merger of the
Australian Industries Development Association (AIDA) and the (Australian) Business
Roundtable. The council is by far the most important recent development in Australia
of ...intellectual artillery in the two-front war of ideas towards which Australian
business appears to be moving. The Australian Business Council, like its American
namesake, is comprised of the chief executive officers of some 70 large Australian
corporations.
It already displays all the hallmarks of American business-sponsored policy-research
organisations. It was ...established to conduct research into public policy questions
that affect business and to ...provide a forum for the chief executives of Australias
major companies. Through the Business Council, and on the basis of the councils
research on ...relevant issues, its members will ...speak out to governments, unions
and the community. ...A key factor in the perceived effectiveness of the Business
Councils advocacy, the CEDA report advises, ...has been its publications, such as
its 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 publishes
and promotes studies supporting a libertarian-laissez faire philosophy, 84 for example
Professor Wolfgang Kaspers recent book arguing for deregulation of foreign
investment. 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 by
John Hyde, the leader of the Liberal Party dries who had a weekly column in the
Financial Review. Mr Frasers Think Tank was founded in 1984. It is described as a
...scaled down version of Mr. Frasers earlier hopes of establishing a research
foundation along the lines of ... the American Enterprise Institute (to which, as
already observed, Mr Fraser has since become officially attached). The Think-Tanks
membership includes Mr Hugh Morgan of Western Mining Corporation and Dame
Leonie Kramer of the ANZ Bank. Even so it is not evident that the AIPR or Mr
Frasers Think-Tank have yet achieved any substantial impact. 88
This review of corporate-sponsored activities directed to managing public opinion and
the political agenda of the nation, has had to omit the following, for reasons of space:

13

1. Research conducted in universities, often in centres or institutes, financed by

corporations from particular sectors of industry, such as banking and finance, or
mining.
2. Policy-oriented studies of Australian society by American institutes, or members
from them, sometimes hosted by Australian academic institutions, for example the
book Will She Be Right? The Future of Australia by Herman Kahn and Thomas
Pepper. 89 Kahn and Pepper were both directors of the US Hudson Institute. The
study was financed by fourteen large corporations in Australia, at least half of which
were American or British transnationals.
3. The open use of the media by corporations to promote particular policies or
ideologies, or what is called in the USA ...issue or advocacy advertising which has
been 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 the
merits 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 detail
to establish a broad perspective on the introduction to Australia of new methods of
political control, and sometimes old methods on quite a new scale.

Conclusions
As this chapter neared completion, Hugh Morgan, managing director of Western
Mining Corporation acknowledged, indeed, proclaimed with unconcealed satisfaction,
that Australian corporations are in process of adopting the American methods for
controlling public opinion. 91 Morgan makes specific reference in this connection to
the provision of generous corporate funding to such bodies as the Centre for
Independent Studies, the Institute for Policy Research and the IPA. Morgan affirms
that the expansion of the work of these bodies relates to a decision by their corporate
supporters ...to change public opinion and thereby ...reshape the political agenda to
a form that would delight the hearts of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. He is
wholly confident that, given sufficient corporate backing for policy research and
popular 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 program
and its objectives are now official and public. It remains only to attempt some
perspective on likely sources of resistance in Australian society to the
accomplishment of Morgans vision and some consideration of how such resistance
might 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 more
specific kind, associated with business, government, the media, schools, unions and
universities.

14

The effectiveness of propaganda depends on the availability of emotionally charged

symbols or ideas that can be manipulated by propagandists. In the western world the
most powerful of such symbols have to do with nationalism: almost sacred [if also
secular] 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 indispensable
basis of conservative political rhetoric and propaganda generally. The extraordinary
power of such propaganda in the US is wholly dependent on the maintenance of
popular patriotic sentiments that are both intense and shallow; sentiments that are in
consequence easily exploited by manipulation of sacred and satanic symbols relating
to nationalism.
The relatively low level of patriotic excitability, and relative scepticism towards
inflated patriotic rhetoric, that has characterised Australian popular attitudes so far is
an important barrier to early duplication of American techniques of public-opinion
management here. 1 believe it is for this reason that EAs plans to Australianise an
American booklet for similar distribution here never got off the ground. However, it is
also for this reason, in my view, that so much effort has recently been given to
creating just the intense and shallow patriotism so essential to the work of the
mindmanagers.
To maximise popular vulnerability to propaganda, it is necessary to complement
shallow and intense patriotism as a source of sacred symbols, with an equally
mindless and intense anti-communism to provide a powerful source of satanic
symbols. There is therefore great danger that if Australian corporations expand their
current machinery of popular propaganda, they will also seek to intensify popular
anti-communist fears, with the likelihood of serious consequences for foreign as well
as domestic policy. EAs publications have, from the beginning, been replete with
dark references to a dangerous minority of disloyal extremists who are hell-bent on
destroying our economic political system and all our cherished liberties. The equation
of criticism of our economic system with subversion of our political system was, of
course, the central theme of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Americans have long been accustomed to the expenditure of many millions of dollars
by diverse interest groups, to flood the media with crusading campaigns which
attempt to convert everyone to prohibition, anti-communism, religious
fundamentalism or whatever. Australian society has been relatively free of such
campaigns of persuasion. In consequence the attempts of business to manage public
opinion here are likely to be much more distinctive and visible and are therefore more
likely to evoke an unfavourable response.
Unfortunately this advantage is now being eroded by the increasing practice of State
and federal governments taking, at public expense, many pages of newspaper space to
sell their policies to the publicalways of course, in the name of information and
understanding. 92 Australian society shares with other western democracies a
particular vulnerability to the new developments. Our society has for so long been fed
assumptions that any disposition to undertake Orwellian mind-management on a
national scale is an exclusive prerogative of governments and especially of
communist governments that the very last place they expect such a threat to come
from is the leaders of capitalist industry within their own societies.
15

Business as a source of resistance. There is some prospect of significant resistance

from within the ranks of business. CEDAs leaders cannot rely on support even from
its own member companies, for a move toward an AEI role. Malcolm Frasers
proposal to establish an Australian AEI similarly failed to obtain substantial business
support. EA has also met significant opposition from business quarters: Geoff Allen
hardly helped EAs credibility by publicly describing it as a propaganda
organisation; the Bank Education Service ...has been critical of EA and goes to
some lengths to overcome ...suspicions of any ...possible link with EA. 93 The
Australian Chamber of Commerce takes sharp offence at any suggestion of similarity
between its economic education programs and the activities and methods of
Enterprise Australia, which has shifted further to the right.
In two conferences about business and society which were organised respectively by
the Australian Council of Social Services and the American Chamber of Commerce in
Australia, leading representatives of Australian business expressly rejected the
propagandist 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 Hugh
Morgan and his supporters. Overall, resistance from within Australian business may
be expected to delay, but cannot be relied upon to prevent, the long-term achievement
of the control of the political agenda that Morgan seeks. Such resistance may
nonetheless provide an invaluable breathing space within which to search for other
and more permanent safeguards against the realisation of Morgans vision.
Role of governments. Malcolm Frasers governments contributed notably to a
general progress towards an opinion-managed state. They made a long leap forward in
the use of public funds for advertisements to promote government policies, funded
Project Australia, actively supported EA and urged corporate leaders to proselytise
their employees. It must be expected that whenever the coalition is returned to power
it will assist, in every possible way, the expansion of businessfunded popular
propaganda and policy research.
There are two ways in which the Hawke government could, if it had the will, move to
place some constraints in the way of such development. First, it could firmly forswear
its own practice of proselytising for its policies by means of advertisements paid for
out of public funds, and appeal to the opposition to make a similar commitment.
Second, it could review present taxation law to prevent corporations from obtaining
tax deductions for contributions to proselytising organisations like Enterprise
Australia. It is ridiculous that members of a democratic society should be obliged to
subsidise their own indoctrination by a partisan interest group, just because that group
chooses to label its program ...economic education. Similarly, corporate expenditure
on policy research, which Marsh describes as ...invariably tendentious, should not
be tax-free. 95 Third, it is essential that the federal government give attention to the
need for some legal restraint on the expenditure of funds by corporations for the
purpose of influencing public opinion, before such expenditure becomes so vast and
effective that political control of it is virtually impossible. It is crucial that we study
and 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 resistance
from that quarter is unlikely. Max Walsh, when asked at the AmCham conference

16

already referred to how the media felt about ...advocacy advertising, replied, ...we
love 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 Thatchers government
planned to spend $1.6 million ...to soften up the British public to the prospect of
cruise 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 use
of public money. When Australian advertising executives were questioned on the
matter, 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 initiative
for vast corporate-funded proselytising campaigns has come from advertising and
public-relations agencies more than from business itself-to which, indeed, the
campaigns have in large measure been sold by the advertising agencies. This US
background is especially relevant for reasons made clear some years ago by John
Cumming, 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 of
any country, and anticipated that Australia would be ...turned into the 52nd state ... as
a result of the comparatively small advertising industry. 98 By 1980 two thirds of
Australian advertising was handled by agencies which were wholly or partly US
owned. 99 Cummings fears may be exaggerated, but we must certainly expect the
advertising industry to employ its persuasive skills to lead Australian business
towards opinion-monitoring and management as John Clemenger in particular
have already been doing for a decade. 100 Finally, if Australian business follows the
American path, we can sooner or later expect to hear a factitious clamour from
corporate sources about how unfairly and incompetently business is reported in the
media. 101 This clamour will be followed by expenses-paid, corporate-sponsored
seminars and conferences in holiday surroundings where assorted journalists are
helped to understand the business viewpoint. 102
Schools. Departments of education throughout Australia have shown a remarkable
readiness to assist EAs varied efforts to ...penetrate schools. This is so despite a
report by the Bank Education Service that EA has ...a questionable reputation with
curriculum areas of most education departments. 103 Much the most vigorous and
vocal of all opposition to EA has come from teachers in state schools and their
unions. 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 reliable
information available.
Some sort of publicly visible safeguard is necessary against undue invasion of the
public schools by ideological and public-relations material, produced by business and
industry agencies and other interest groups. Something of the kind could be provided
if departments of education were required to collect information from all state schools
that 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 in
particular, will launch a campaign to have economics made a compulsory subject in

17

high schools. Just such a campaign flourished in the US following the discovery by
the Opinion Research Corporation that the more courses in economics a student had
taken the greater was the commitment to conservative free-enterprise beliefs. 105 By
1976 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 researchers
in universities and CAEs will be an important determinant of how far Australia goes
along the path to ...guided-opinion democracy. There is no defence so effective
against propaganda agencies which masquerade under the name of education and
research, as repeated exposure of their real purposes through detailed critical
examination of their activities and output. Once effectively tagged with the
propaganda label the credibility of such agencies-hence their influence-is almost
irremediably destroyed. (Even the little I have myself published about EA has had, in
the judgment of Jack Keavney, their former chief executive, a very serious impact on
its reputation and credibility.) 106
The disastrous consequences for American democracy resulting from the rise of
corporate propaganda could not I believe, have happened but for an almost
unbelievable neglect by liberal American scholars and researchers to give any
systematic attention and exposure to the extent, character and consequences of this
development. 107 American scholars and researchers by the thousand have wittingly
and unwittingly helped in every imaginable way to make the monitoring and
management of public opinion by business more effective. 108 A great deal will
depend on whether or not Australian academics in the social sciences are able to
produce a very different record from their American colleagues.
It is already clear that corporations, with the advantage of abundant funds, will have
no difficulty in finding academics who will give the seal of professional (especially
professorial) credibility to ...invariably tendentious policy research conducted from
the viewpoint of business. The survey of attitudes of workers, union officials and
managers which was sponsored in 1979 by the American-owned insurance company
Sentry Holdings Ltd is a case in point. 109 Its sampling, interpretation and subsequent
promotion 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 unions
and their members.
The survey of managements and unions views about industrial relations that was
sponsored by CEDA provides another example. 111 By a systematic disregard of
contradictory data, this study was interpreted to reveal a high level of dissatisfaction
with the present industrial-relations system among corporate executives. In fact any
such conclusion accords much more closely with the known views of the studys
sponsors than it does with the evidence produced.
Given the cultural resistance that appears to be blocking the establishment of an AEItype policy-research institute independent of universities, it must be expected that
universities and university scholars in the social sciences will be subject to increasing
pressures and temptations to become ever more deeply involved in politically
motivated research on behalf of corporations. This is a prospect which should
profoundly concern academic staff associations and professorial boards.
18

Unions. Much will depend on how quickly unions can come to appreciate that the
essential weapons in the emerging conditions will not be strikes, the crude economic
power of employers, the sympathy of the government in office, or the form of the
system for settling disputes. The essential new weapon in the armoury of Australian
corporations will be what managements call communications. The purpose of the
new weapon will always be represented as a benevolent concern with improvement in
mutual 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 unions
among the general public and to weaken the tie between unions and employees.
The decisive upward and downward turning points in the history of American unions
were the Wagner Act of 1935 and the Taft Hartley Act of 1947; and these turning
points reflected one condition above all others-favourable public opinion in 1935 and
unfavourable public opinion in 1947. Malcolm Fraser built up an armoury of legal
weapons 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 negotiation
between the parties. In reality, managements freedom of action and the terms that
unions will have to accept are to a great degree predetermined by the level of
effectiveness achieved by managements two-pronged communication activities.
Over 30 years ago Whyte described American managements preoccupation with
domestic communications, and Peter Drucker acknowledged that the principal
purpose of a major aspect of this communication program had been to ...bust the
unions . 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 disastrous
consequences for the union movement. Fortunately the use of a similar strategy in
Australia is seriously hindered by the arbitration system, as it exists at present. I doubt
whether most Australian corporate managers, who are products of a more egalitarian
and less ideological culture, would carry exploitation of the communications weapon
to the lengths American managements have carried it. Nonetheless, unions must
expect 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 their
members to have nothing to do with any management-initiated communications
project (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 and
worker interests are involved at every level of the planning and execution of such
projects. In particular, workers should on no account participate in polls or surveys
initiated by employer agencies or university researchers unless qualified
representatives of union interests are involved in both the design of the survey and the
interpretation of results.
Unions need to develop more capacity to counter managements communication and
public-relations activities with competing union initiatives, including policy research

19

as the AMWU has done. On the public-relations front unions will continue to be at a
great disadvantage until they can educate their members to appreciate the need to pay
for some public-opinion monitoring. Unions badly need reliable feedback from polls
on 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 service
industries, where they inconvenience a maximum number of people and discredit
public ownership, rather than in private industries where neither of these results
follow. It must never be forgotten that, no matter how many strikes the union
movement wins, it will in the long run come to disaster if it loses the support of public
opinion. If American union history has not conveyed persuasive warning on this
point, nothing ever will.
In sum, the future shape of Australian society depends in significant degree on a
number 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 such
methods, and especially of cultural resistance within the Australian business
community, which is not to be expected within the American-controlled sector
generally, or in the American-dominated advertising industry in particular.
2. the extent to which unions become aware that the greatest threat they now face is
the growth of a management communications octopus, that will have the capacity to
come 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 to
counter these threats.
4. the extent to which scholars at universities and other tertiary institutions either join
the Morgans of this world in pursuing a corporation-controlled political agenda, or
challenge and expose the incipient but rapidly growing mind-management industry
for 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 on
commission for corporations, and call this activity research.

Authors Note: I am indebted to Trudy Korber for extensive contributions to the

research on which this chapter is based.

20

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 States
Developments The Australian Director, February 1981, pp. 10-14
3. I. Marsh An Australian Think Tank? CEDA Study M61, University of New South
Wales, 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 Economic
Development 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,New
York: 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 Wilsons 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 the
War Princeton University Press, 1939; for adaptation of this program by the private
utilities see F. McDonald Insull University of Chicago, 1962, pp. 171-72 and 182-83

21

16. Federal Trade Commission Summary Report, Document 92, Part 71A 70th
Congress, First Session, p. 18, cited in K. Schriftgeisser The Lobbyists Boston: Little
Brown, 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 Free
Speech 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 Annual
Convention of the Congress of American Industry (1935). Cited in S. Rippa
Organized Business and Public Education: The Educational Policies and Activities of
the 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 Free
Speech 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 Free
Speech and Rights of Labor, 76th Congress, First Session, Senate Report No. 6, Part
6, Part III, The National Association of Manufacturers, Washington: Government
Printing 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 of
the US Chamber of Commerce), he urged the importance of selling the American
Way to America. Skilful and intelligent publicists must unsell millions of
Americans on a lot of economic tommyrot. It is not a job today of selling
merchandise ... Our merchandise is and must be ... the American system of individual
initiative and profit as contrasted with a regimented economy. We are selling America
itself to Americans who have forgotten what America has symbolized (Selvage Vital
Speeches 1942, p. 145). War conditions inhibited the launching of the proposed
program until 1945.
26. In 1946 a consortium of Wisconsin businessmen ... helped to finance and
engineer McCarthys rise ... to the US Senate. An aura of big business ... enveloped
the Senator ever since ... the 1952 presidential elections. Money contributed by his
22

well-heeled supporters also followed him unquestioningly into other strategic

senatorial contests: C.J. Murphy McCarthy and the Businessman Fortune April
1954, pp. 156-58 and ff. For moral support given to McCarthy at the height of his
infamy 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 yet
go 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 How
Good is Economic Education? Fortune July 1951, p. 126; D. Bell Industrial Conflict
and 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 of
US corporations i.e., big business-declined from 70 per cent in 1968 to 20 per cent
in 1974 and 17 per cent in 1978 (J. Henry From Soap to Soapbox: The Corporate
Merchandising 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). The
Clemenger advertising agency, Melbourne, which appears to be playing for
Australian 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 the
National 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 Is
Government 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 to
Push 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

23

36. B.A. Cummins The Advertising Councils 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; much
of the economic activity reported by the IPA in 1956 describes programs in operation
several years earlier
42. Carey Social Science Propaganda and Democracy
43. Australian Chamber of Commerce National Chamber Intensities Programme to
Promote 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 Economic
Education 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 (no
pagination, no date but in fact 1975)
50. G. Allen The Capitalist Offensive
51. J.T. Keavney Australia: Turning Away from Socialism Vital Speeches 15
February 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, May
1977
54. Television Documentary Series Newsletter, Enterprise Australia, July 1978, p. 4
Notes 193

24

55. M. Meagher Spreading the Word p. 13; Radio Spots Newsletter, Enterprise
Australia, 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 Institutes Role in the
Corporate Sphere The Australian Director October- December 1977, pp. 13, 15
59. E. Hook and J. Harding (eds) The World of Business Milton, Qld: Jacaranda
Wiley, 1982
60. The Queensland Confederation of Industry established the World of Business
Research Foundation in 1979 to receive corporate contributions (thereby made taxdeductible) towards the cost of commissioning the manuscript of the book. Its task
accomplished, the Foundation ceased to exist in 1981 ('Audio-Visual Economics
Course 1979; J.T. Keavney Economic Literacy-Industrys 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 4
September 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

25

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.) International
Papers 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
86. Burgess Economic Policy Research p. 17
87. P. Sheehan The Right Strikes Back SMH 2 March 1982, p. 3
88. Burgess Economic Policy Research p. 26
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
26

93. M. Kerr Economics in Primary Schools Economics (journal of Economics and

Commerce teachers Association NSW) April 1983, pp. 31-37
94. P. Paech (ed.) The Social Responsibilities of Business in the 1980s Sydney: The
Australian Council of Social Service, 1980; Corporate Risks in the Australian
Political Environment: Responding to the Growing Pressures Transcript of
Proceedings from the 20th Annual General Meeting of the American Chamber of
Commerce 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 612 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 Know
About 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 it
was dismissed with mockery and derision in a related commentary by Max Walsh,
managing editor of the AFR (M. Walsh Media Perceptions of the Corporation in
Corporate 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 November
1983
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 Queensland
Teachers 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 Fanatical
Believers in Private Enterprise Australian Teacher No. 1, 1982; R.M. Shanahan
Enterprise Australia: Knowledge for Whom? South Australian Teachers Journal 22
April 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,
27

president, Committee for Economic Development at the 32nd Annual New England
Bank Management Conference Boston Massachusetts, 25 October 1962
106. J.T. Keavney A Commentary by the Chief Executive of Enterprise Australia 2
September 1982. Keavney is, indeed, moved to hyperbole by the occasion. He
observes that attacks on Enterprise Australia in the journals of teachers unions have
spread like a bushfire in 1982 causing great damage. Keavney notes that bushfires
may be started by nothing more than a discarded cigarette butt and goes on to
attribute a similarly culpable incendiary role to my article (i.e., A. Carey, Social
Science 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 Holdings, 1978
110. H. Gill Managers and Workers at the Cross-Roads A Critique, Discussion
Paper No. 2, Business Research Centre North Brisbane College of Advanced
Education 1979; A. Carey, Worker Motivation: Social Science, Propaganda and
Democracy, University of NSW, 1979 (unpublished) pp. 33-35
111. Niland and Turner Control, Consensus or Chaos
112. Whyte Is Anybody Listening?
113 ibid.; P. Drucker Have Employee Relations Policies Had the Desired Effect?
American Management Association Personnel Series 134, 1950, p. 7
114 See Enterprise, the monthly bulletin of the NAM, for 1975-1980

Author: Alex Carey

Publisher/Date: Communications and the Media in Australia, E. L. Wheelwright
and K. D. Buckley (editors), Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1987 pp. 156-179
Title: The Ideological Management Industry
Original location:
http://www.agitprop.org.au/lefthistory/1987_carey_the_ideological_managemen
t_industry.htm

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