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Bernays' work is certainly important but I think the amount of credit he's typically given for the idea that propaganda could be wielded in peacetime is undeserved. That distinction really belongs to Walter Lippmann, who had begun formulating the idea 5-10 years earlier and articulating it in Public Opinion (1922) and The Phantom Public (1925), well before Propaganda (1928). Propaganda was really more of a formalization of something that was already understood to exist.

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Spot on. Besides, W. Lippmann was apparently a lot more sophisticated with capacity to influence wider circles of intellectuals and mandarins. The title of Edward Herman & Noam Chomsky’s book “Manufacturing Consent” was borrowed from Lippmann’s writing where he was making the case for the elites to manage the perception of the meddlesome public.

Yes. However, I don't think it's accurate to characterize Lippmann's assessment of the public as "meddlesome". It's true that he was an elitist, but Lippmann's brand of elitism stemmed from the empirical observation that governing a large population is clearly too complex for even a representative democracy to do well (and is certainly more difficult than proponents of democracy are willing to admit, if not impossible). Unlike most forms of elitism, his view of the public as incapable of governing itself was not rooted in ideas about their moral inferiority but in the acknowledgement that it just isn't functionally possible for them to run the show. This observation led to three conclusions (which IMO are correct): 1) That democracy at scale always regresses to partisanship, 2) The idea that "the people" actually govern themselves in any real democracy is largely a farce, and 3) That a system of "representatives" and bureaucrats running the show is itself elitist.

I think it is very easy for people living in the US to tacitly accept these very dangerous assumptions given the state of our democracy. However, I would posit that the degradation of our democracy is due in part to elite acceptance of the idea that the people are either too dumb or physically incapable of governing themselves and thus governing for their own benefit.

I would strongly push back on these assumptions. The democratic structures outlined in the US constitutions are flawed by design and leads to the specious conclusion that democracy is impossible. Mass participation in the democratic process, smashing old structures, and reconstituting new structures will allow democracy and the public to thrive.

These are not "assumptions" about "the degradation of our democracy". They are factual assertions about the structure of democracy as a system of government.

I encourage you to listen to this podcast: Radical institutional reforms that make capitalism & democracy work better, and how to get them

https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/glen-weyl-radically-...

I'm not sure what that would add when his point is that if people were anywhere near rational about this, there would be no need for such a podcast because these would already be features of our democracy, demanded by the people.

They are not at all factual statements. The elite conception of the issue has become so indoctrinated in the population that it has become fashionable to regard them as such. Liberal authors are starting to come out with books that attack the idea of democratic governance. This is a bankruptcy with elites, broken structures, and a failing of liberalism (but not of radicalism).

Which among them are not factual assertions?

The distinction in such specialized brand of elitism lies merely in its sophistication, not in its essential contempt for the citizenry.

The roles of such mandarins as Lippmann accelerate the regression of democracy. Contrast that with the democratically constructive roles of people (whistleblowers, participants in labor/antiwar/civil rights movement etc.). There is no impossibility theorem proving that people cannot socially organize into functioning democracies. Slavery looked like an inevitability at some point, and certainly Lippmanns in that era were enagaged in theorizing about effective slave-ownership rather than about ways to abolish slavery.

The "farce" becomes more farcical as power keeps getting concentrated more and more into the hands of the elites, a trend that is facilitated in no small ways by the mandarins. And farcically, they do not stop calling it a "democracy" even then.

The reps and bureaucrats are meant to be (public) servants. There can be and should be efforts to effectively organize such roles in bottom-up fashions, and to keep them in line with their stated roles. If the supply water is found to have impurity in it (some large ppm), the next step is to improve it, rather than taking sewage line as its alternative.

The fact that we nowadays attribute this to Bernays' shows how he was a master of his trade.

Yes and no. Bernays was one of the players during WWI propaganda, specifically he was part of Committee on Public Information. If I remember correctly, Lippmann had in mind that particular time period when he wrote about manufacturing consent. A real eye opening account comes from George Creel, organizer of CPI. If you haven't read that yet, look into "How We Advertised America." It's incredible, I wrote a paper on this for my undergrad thesis. Propaganda of that time was so remarkable that you can use their copy as a classic example in advertising today.

Sorry if this is an obtuse question, but which part of your reply is the "no" in "yes and no"?

Well, you're right about Bernays getting too much credit. It's just at the same time he was a major player as well.

After re-reading your comment, I think we are on the same page, more or less. But Lippmann was writing about the very same work and propaganda that Bernays actively participated and "invented" during his time at CPI. Lippmann saw how it played out in 1917-1918, so he wrote about it. Bernays later wrote his book, but it wasn't journalistic work, he wrote from direct experience.

Also enjoyed reading Bernays and Lippmann.

Please note, though, that recent experimental research has also pushed back a bit on the impact of propaganda and human gullibility [0].

[0]: https://press.princeton.edu/ideas/what-do-you-really-know-ab...

This book is not itself experimental research. At best it appears to engage in some amount of summarizing experimental research. On the other hand, the descriptions or excerpts from the book on the linked page themselves criticize the applicability of various kinds of experimental research. And in other news, these are some pretty radical assertions considering how broad they are. All of this is to say that if the book isn't some kind of meticulous, incredibly well-supported, seminal take-down of what we think we know about a variety of fields, I'm gonna guess it's either chock full of anecdotes a la Gladwell or Brooks, or cherry-picking evidence a la Taleb.

Agreed, it’s a summary of many experimental research studies and the author does make radical assertions.

"... the idea that propaganda could be wielded in peacetime..."

That is to say, what is now known as "PR" came from the military, who had trained people how to do this kind of work, e.g., in the role of "press agent".

It may have existed before the First World War^a but its popular use by the private sector may have happened only after more men had been trained in "PR" and had performed this work for the military.

[a] https://www.coursehero.com/tutors-problems/Accounting/970203...

(unless i'm misreading what she's saying) another view is ".. Lippmann ... was a vehement critic of propaganda .. "

https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/viewFile/1955/907

That may be true but it's not at odds with what I wrote. Lippmann was a critic of what he believed to be the inherently partisan nature of democracy. It would be unsurprising, then, for him to be a critic of wielding partisanship. It would be fair to say that Lippmann figured out the system's structure and how it could be manipulated, and then Bernays wrote the playbook for manipulating it.

As I understand it Bernays was already working in the field long before publishing his book. His early work as a proto PR agent for the singer Caruso, fabricating myths about his prowess, does lend credence to this, as Caruso died in 1921.

It seems fair to say that there were many early adopters of this type of propaganda.

The book Propaganda is good, but you can feel the naive vision of capitalism, corporation and power in general. The author seems to genuinely believe the invisible hand will balance things out, that people won't abuse their power and that ethics were a stronger motivator than money in the system.

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