Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #505174 in Books
• Published on: 1996-12-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Customer Reviews

I never read this book in school...
An excellent and scathing critique of modern information systems and how those symbols can channel thought to protect the powerful.

Alex Carey examines how Management, Gov't, and other powerful interests manipulate the symbols of our cultural life to destroy union solidarity, dillute political accountability, and distract attention away from issues (and solutions) that threaten those institutions.

Very well researched and cleverly developed, it is unfortunate that Carey's career was abruptly cut short. This book and those it has inspired stand strong, albeit quietly, in the face of the information control systems that they seek to expose.

Explains the role of thought control in democratic societies
Carey points out that citizens living in totalitarian regimes have no choice but to tow the government line out of fear for their personal safeties. In free societies, Carey explains that more subtle means are used to keep populations under control. Specifically, propaganda is used to ensure that most people will think in a manner that is consistent with the corporate agenda (such as belief in the free market and business' right to unlimited profit). Carey documents how Americans and Australians have been subjected to corporate propaganda during most of the 20th Century, and explains how these efforts have perverted our democracy (for example, American's over willingness to fight communists, real or imagined, to protect capitalism). Indeed, while many Americans were conditioned during the Cold War to believe that propaganda existed only in the Soviet Union, China and other communist regimes, Carey persuasively argues that propaganda actually played (and continues to play) a more critical role in molding the attitudes of citizens in democracies.

a seminal analysis of corporate propaganda
"Taking the Risk Out of Democracy : Corporate Propaganda Versus Freedom and Liberty" is a pioneering work in the field of corporate propaganda analysis which reveals just how much of a major force corporate propaganda is in contemporary society. Alex Carey quotes the business press as stating that the public mind is the greatest "hazard facing industrialists."

"Taking the Risk Out of Democracy : Corporate Propaganda Versus Freedom and Liberty" points out that there are two types of propaganda, each of which have specific societal functions. The first type is aimed at the educated, articulate sectors of the population that are involved in in decision making and setting the agenda for others to adhere to. The second type of propaganda is aimed at the unwashed masses, to keep them distracted so as they don't interfere in the public arena where they have no business in being. All in all, "Taking the Risk Out of Democracy : Corporate Propaganda Versus Freedom and Liberty remains a seminal analysis of corporate propaganda and its uses in creating an obedient elite and a subserviant citizenry. Very enjoyable.