Letter: [Also] Not amused (1979)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

[Also] Not amused

I am writing because I take very strong exception to an article in the August issue of your party journal, “We Are Not Amused” by SC. It is anti-working-class.

If SC wants to announce that entertainment is commercially based: that isn’t news. But he presents this profound information in the form of one long sneer at the working class. Anything they enjoy is mindless and only “someone else’s values” pushed at them by the capitalists. “Some kid themselves that they’re cultured”—of course, the workers are incapable of any culture of their own!

I’ve read and heard all this before, from middle-class “intellectuals” of whom SC obviously thinks he is one. He even puts in “bloody” and “bum” to show he knows how to talk down to ignorant workers who (between visiting strip clubs and watching “Crossroads”) might read the Socialist Standard.

“Someone else’s values”? Sorry, but I can’t see the difference between ITV’s and SC’s.

However, my question is; Are they endorsed by your party as the publishers of the Socialist Standard.

J Wolveridge 

London E1

Reply:

One task of the Socialist Standard is to expose the inherent contradictions of the capitalist system. Many articles deal with what capitalism is, why it cannot run in the interest of the working class and what it must be replaced by. We also spend a considerable amount of space exposing the means through which mystifying ideas are expounded, such as the political parties, the churches, the schools and the universities. The intention of the article, We Are Not Amused (August 1979), was to demonstrate not only that ‘entertainment is commercially based’, but that its “values are only put before a mass audience by courtesy of a class whose interest is hostile to yours, whose values will be hostile to yours”.

A number of commercial TV stations, theatres and newspapers are run at a loss and paid for from profits accumulated by capitalists from other industries. This occurs because the entertainment industry has valuable political, as well as simply commercial, advantages for its owners.

It is not necessary to be a “middle class intellectual” (whatever that may mean) to express the view that the working class does not possess a culture of its own. The ruling culture of any property society is that of the ruling class; The only meaningful culture for the subject class is that activity which leads to the erosion of the ruling ideology. Crossroads, The Two Ronnies and strip clubs do not constitute an independent working class culture. There can be anti-establishment entertainment (the article mentioned the satire programmes of the 1960s), but that is insufficient without a commitment to political action.

It is wrong to deduce from the article that jokes, art, TV serials, songs and dances will not exist in socialist society. The difference then will be that people will freely create these activities not buy and sell them.

On the matter of values, it is significant that ITV is currently involved in an expensive battle with its employees which largely relates to the control of programme output; we hold the view that the means of communication should be the common property of the people.

Editors.

Blogger's Note:

'J. Wolveridge' was Jim Wolveridge, who co-wrote the book Muvver Tongue with SPGB member, Robert Barltrop.

Notes by the Way: Mutiny in King Street (1954)

The Notes by the Way Column from the December 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mutiny in King Street

It has happened, and all who said it could not are confounded. After more than 30 years of fawning and grovelling the British Communists have rebelled. Through the columns of the Daily Worker they have dared to criticise the action of a representative of the Moscow hierarchy. It happened in the Daily Worker, on Wednesday, 10 November, 1954, when their correspondent, reporting the match at Wembley between the Arsenal and the Russian Spartaks, held that the Russian referee Mr. Nikolai Latyshef, gave a wrong decision. True, this is not the first time that the Communists and the Daily Worker have found themselves “out of line,” but on past occasions—as for example the support of the war against Nazi Germany in 1939—it has been inadvertent, a momentary failure to reverse fast enough. But this time there was no withdrawal, no abject confession and apology, and the next day the correspondent coldly brazenly repeated his statement:—“From where I saw it, Mr. Latyshef was wrong.”

The disputed decision caused uproar at the match and will, as the Daily Worker wrote, “be a talking point for many months to come.” Now that international athletic contests are no longer games but State occasions for enhancing stupid national prestige the incident will no doubt add its little quota to national hatreds Apart from that the moral appears to be that there is no fury equal to that of football fans whose team has been defeated by a better team.

Labour’s Mock Indignation over Commercial T.V.

The Labour Party Opposition have been making the most of their opportunity of attacking the Government’s decision to set up a commercial television system in rivalry to the B.B.C. In the House and in the Press they stormed about this sacrifice of “national” to private interests. The Labour-supporting Daily Mirror for days on end had hysterical front-page denunciations of what they said was a sell-out to Tory controlled money making interests. The Labour Party "decided to table a motion of censure on the Government for their refusal to introduce legislation to prevent political bias in the choice of groups given commercial T.V. ‘plum’ contracts.” (Daily Mirror, 4/11/54).

And earlier Mr. Ness Edwards, Labour M.P., who had been Postmaster General in the Labour Government and therefore nominally responsible for the B.B.C., raged against the Tory decision on the ground that, “under the false plea of ‘let the people decide,' this Government is allowing Big Business to decide what the people shall be allowed to see.” (Forward, 24/7/54).

All of which is of course sanctimonious humbug. To start with what difference does it make from the standpoint of freedom from bias which group of financial and entertainment interests get contracts from the new Television Authority? It is stated by the Authority that any group contemplating applying must have financial resources running into three or four million pounds, so that only very wealthy groups of investors could be considered anyway, and such groups, whatever political leanings they have or if they have none at all, are and must be concerned with making a large profit out of it.

To which, the stock Labour Party reply is that the nationalised B.B.C. is, or can be, “above party” and concerned genuinely with giving expression to all views, including those of unpopular minorities. It is a plausible story, which, however, is shattered by the fact that for 30 years, irrespective of the Government in power, the B.B.C. would never agree to let the Socialist case of the S.P.G.B. be heard on the air. We don’t expect to fare any better from a commercially controlled organisation but at least we can’t fare any worse.

The Health Service versus Poverty

Like all reformists the men who conceived the idea of a National Health Service that was to be a radical cure for a social evil failed to reckon with the capitalist environment in which it was to operate. It required actual experience to teach some of them what Socialists told them beforehand. A chilling exposure is provided by “Hospital and Community,” by Professor Thomas Ferguson and Dr. A. N McPhail, published for the Nuffield Provincial Hospitals Trust by the Oxford University Press and reviewed in The Lancet (12 June, 1954). The authors write in their preface:—

"It seems clear that further breakdown is sometimes precipitated by the transition—often sudden and dramatic— from the protective care of the modern medical ward to spartan conditions outside. Hospital treatment is usually only an episode in the general care of the patient: and the health services cannot stand in isolation from other social services. There is a 'limit to what Medicine can do to preserve fitness in the face of bad conditions of living and working."

The Lancet continues as follows:—

“Their study was made between 1950 and 1953. Of the 705 patients originally seen in hospital, 548 were seen three months later in their own homes and 474 were seen two years after leaving hospital. By that time, 171 of the original group had died, and the remaining 60 were untraceable. Of the 474 seen after two years, 265 were working at their old jobs, though 30 were judged to need lighter work and 18 were unfit for work under ordinary conditions. Of 91 who had found new jobs, 3 were thought to be unfit for work, and 33 could have done their former jobs. Some 50 had done very little work, and 106 had done no work at all, since leaving hospital. Nearly a fifth of those in work at the end of two years were in jobs which were unsuitable, having regard to the demands of the job and the conditions of the men; and the proportion doing such unsuitable jobs was highest among those between the ages of 45 and 65, and among unskilled rather than skilled labourers. After two years, only 111 of these 474 men could be regarded as cured, though a further 193 had maintained the improvement achieved in hospital; 106 had not improved, and their health was unsatisfactory; 64 were worse than when they left hospital and some were going downhill. Moreover, 129 had been readmitted to hospital on more than one occasion during the two years. These figures gain life from the case-histories which FERGUSON and MACPHAIL quote. They write of gross overcrowding; of walls "soaking and falling down" or “running with water"; of parents and children sleeping in box-beds sunk in these soaking walls; of men with failing hearts housed at the top of tenements; of unskilled labourers with heart and lung conditions returning to their jobs as navvies; of stokers with angina shovelling coal; of men finding work within their compass, but being ordered to take on heavy extras by officious charge-hands: in short they describe unending waste—waste of life and health, waste of hospital resources. These authors are admittedly writing of an overcrowded industrial area where housing is notoriously shocking, and the paper by Professor LANE and his colleagues which we publish on p. 1229 shows that in Salford at least the picture of reablement and resettlement is far more cheerful. Nevertheless FERGUSON and MACPHAIL are able to quote surveys from other regions where the findings have been similar."

Among the remedies advocated by the authors is the need for better housing: “ . . . in many cases rehousing offers the only hope of improvement”

The Lancet says:—“The living conditions described by these authors were destroying the health not only of the patients who were studied, but of their wives and children.”

We can agree with the Lancet's conclusion that “this impressive study shows once more how our very intentness on cure can take our minds off prevention,” but what the authors and the reviewer fail to realise is that what they describe are aspects of the poverty problem, and the only cure for that is the “prevention” of capitalism by abolishing it.

Religion, Handmaiden of Russian Capitalism

Capitalism in Britain, France and many other countries has had to face the problem of preserving religion and the church, because they are a useful aid to the ruling class, and of curbing their power when they threaten to become a “State within a State.” Russia has followed a similar course and a new Government statement shows the dual attitude of simultaneously encouraging anti-religious propaganda while protecting the Church against too-zealous opponents who take literally the old Leninite denunciations of religion. The following is from the Daily Worker (12/11/54), in which their Moscow correspondent summarises a statement issued by the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party.

“Some Party officials and newspapers had gone too far in the campaign against religion by being offensive to the priesthood and churchgoers.

“These cases occurred when believers quite unjustifiably were considered politically. unreliable. Often anti-religious propaganda sunk to the level or trivial anecdotes.

“The central committee gave stern notice that it would in no circumstances countenance activities affronting clergy or believers.

“It was no good disregarding the fact that among loyal, active citizens there were some who held religious views. The Party's attitude toward such people should be tactful and considerate.

"It was foolish and harmful to have any suspicion about a Soviet citizen for his religious convictions.

"In Socialist lands, the Church played a different role than in capitalist countries where they supported the ruling classes, though this did not prevent some members of the clergy from sharing the viewpoint of the working class, the statement said.

“In the Soviet Union at present the clergy were generally loyal toward Soviet power—therefore, the battle should be only on ideological grounds.

“Mr. Khrushchev emphasised that correction of mistakes must not lead to the lessening of anti-religious propaganda “which is an integral part of the upbringing of the working masses.” He said the Party could not be impartial and neutral toward religion.”

This Overtime Business

The action of the dock strikers who fought to have overtime made voluntary instead of compulsory and whose leaders claimed a “complete victory” while telling them to go back and “do all the overtime you can” has drawn attention again to one of the lamentable developments of recent years, the widespread practice of overtime being a normal thing in industry. In past years trade unions fought continually to reduce hours of work with the intention of having more leisure, but since 1938 though standard hours have been generally reduced from 48 or 47 to 44 or less the average hours of work of adult men are actually slightly above the pre-war level, 47.7 hours in 1938 and 48.3 in April of this year. This is one of the reasons why, although wage-rates for the standard week have increased on average about the same as the cost of living, average earnings have risen considerably more; the hours worked in excess of the standard week of 44 hours are reckoned as overtime and paid at usual overtime rates.

A Times correspondent (26/10/54) wrote:—

“More overtime is being worked in Britain today than ever before in peacetime. In many industries employers rely on regular overtime to fulfil their commitments and workers rely on regular overtime to maintain their standard of living.” 

This development has come about with the tacit or open approval of many trade unions and was encouraged by the Labour Government as it is by the Government now in office, just as both Governments have sought to increase piece-work, another feature of capitalism that was once opposed by active trade unionists.

The irony of the situation is that whereas in the 19th century it was the employers and their newspapers that resisted workers demands for shorter hours it is now left to that organ of capitalism, The Times, to suggest (in an editorial 5/11/54) that “the excessive extension of systematic overtime is having a number of undesirable results,” and to ask for inquiry into the possibility of reducing it.

Edgar Hardcastle

Schlock, Payola and Gyp Sellers (1960)

From the May 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

We live in stirring times. Rockets landing on the moon, bigger and more powerful weapons to ensure peace, and scientifically minded and humane world leaders prepared to use these weapons if peace is no longer possible. Capitalist civilisation in the mid-twentieth century has certainly produced a unique morality and given us poor ignorant workers a set of social values very difficult to live down to.

Consider the advertising profession. Is it not one of the most typical of capitalism’s great institutions, and also one of the most necessary processes between the raw material and the commodity we consume? If there was no advertising, how would we know that our very life depended on our using pink toothpaste? In fact, without advertising, how would we know what to eat, drink, wear, inject, smoke, etc.? We would be completely lost.

But now, of course, we have Commercial Television, and can therefore learn all these vital facts while sitting in a state of complete mental relaxation (or even stupor) in a darkened room before the Magic Screen. It puzzles us considerably how our forefathers existed without television, and yet they seemed to bumble along somehow.

Recent investigations show, however, that television is nowadays assuming its rightful place in the home. A survey of 200 homes in a town in Northern England revealed that three homes had bathtubs, six had hot water, four had their own toilets, but 125 had television sets!

Time magazine of 9/11/59 quotes Mr. Walter Lippmann (a famous American critic) as saying that the U.S. laissez-faire policy has turned TV into "the creature, the servant, and indeed the prostitute, of merchandising.”

Mr. Lippmann’s strong words were uttered following disclosures that certain American TV quiz programmes were “fixed." As is only right and proper when a National God is in danger, a minister of religion (and also a participant in the quiz shows) girded his loins and defended his God (Time, 16/11/59). “Most of us have a great deal of larceny in us," drawled the Rev. Charles ("Stony") Jackson of Tullahoma, Tenn. "The fact that I am an ordained minister does not make me a saint.”

If a licensed representative of the Almighty can fall into temptation, is it any wonder that lesser mortals (including children) were persuaded to collaborate in the deceptions of the quiz shows? The same edition of Time reports that “. . . of 150 quiz witnesses who appeared before the New York County grand jury and swore before God (or on their affirmations) to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, no less than 100, said District Attorney Frank Hogan, had lied.. . .” Obviously these upright, honest, American citizens had been well trained by their contact with the elevating atmosphere of Commercial Television, which in turn draws inspiration from the worthy sponsors of its programmes.

A former advertising chief of one firm involved in the “fixed quiz show” saga neatly summed up the whole subject when he thought that producers “ were living between the mixed values of show business and advertising, and moral values were lost sight of ” (Time, same issue).

"Moral values” notwithstanding, it is plain that, under the beneficent influence of this great “free enterprise" system of ours, the marketer of commodity A must employ ail means (fair or foul) to beat the marketer of commodity B to the lion’s share of the market. One of the means he employs is to purchase the talents, the "integrity,” the showing time, etc., of TV networks, which, in turn employ all means (fair or foul) to attract audiences for their programmes.

These recent disclosures of some of the mystical practices and rituals of commercial television have been said to "tarnish" that great institution’s "Image." it is all rather as if someone had testified that the Virgin Mary was not really a virgin at all, and that the "miracle cures 'at Lourdes were faked.

Payola

"Everybody has become so suspicious that if you say ‘Oh, my God!’ on television, people think you're being paid off by the Holy Father." (Famous actor quoted in Time, 23/9/59.) Now actors, like other workers, must live. They must pay their agents and their psychiatrists, pay off their former wives, eat, etc. And, to help make both ends meet, it is only natural for them to look out for some “perks’’—such as the rewards they get for mentioning brand names of commodities (or even making indirect references to such commodities) on television programmes. For instance, one famous comedian said, "Look, Mom, no cavities! ” (the slogan ot a certain brand of toothpaste) on a TV show, and another comedian greeted a guest star with, "What’s this you're wearing—My Sin? ’’ This "plug" was reported to have resulted in "payola" to the tune of $1,000.

If it were not for those gentlemen (called "disk jockeys") who play gramophone records on radio and television, how many of us would ever hear or remember the folk music of our day which emanates from such inspired sources as Archer Street in London? Fortunately for us, these wise men are quick to spot the very best records and then see to it that we hear them over the air at frequent intervals. For the record industry is a thriving one, and record companies will pay a lot of money to sell us excellent records of, say, the amatory aspirations of pre-pubertal boys.

No doubt our readers will by now appreciate that disk-jockeys only tend to “ride” (i.e., ‘plug”) these winning records if they are offered some inducement. Some may consider that the mere playing of these musical treasures would be reward enough, but we regret to state that many disk-jockeys in America have been discovered to have accepted monetary rewards or expensive presents. Some of the more influential disk jockeys have financial interests in record companies and even singers; this may possibly also influence their choice of records.

The latest development in this interesting chapter of honesty and “morality” in American show-business is the emergence of a specialised type of “payola" —to wit, “girl payola” American record companies were recently reported to have shipped two aircraft loads of girls to "entertain" disk-jockeys attending a conference in Miami; doubtless the record companies hoped that, inspired by the love of a good woman, a disk-jockey would oblige by playing (repeatedly) the “right” record on his show after the tiring conference was over. Could business ethics and “morality” be better exemplified?

Despite McCarthy-like government investigations most people involved in the “music business” in America would prefer to retain the status quo, “payola" and all. As Time reports: “The last thing most people in this industry want is to clean it up,” admitted one musician, “ It’s too lucrative for too many people.”

Gypping the Sucker

Thanks to the benign influence of modern commercial television, the fairground quack, the huckster, and the pavement confidence-trickster, have been incorporated in those intellectual offerings of the Silver Screen—the “commercials.” American TV audiences have been so saturated with their high-pressure brand of “commercials” that a special device (called a “blab-off” switch), by which the exhortations of the peddler of a commodity may be summarily silenced, is in great demand. The sale of these “blab-off” switches is much deprecated by the sponsors.

But we digress. Despite apparent differences, the fairground huckster and the TV "commercial" are fundamentally similar: there must be, in both cases, the capitalist duality of seller and buyer. As the chairman of the American Federal Trade Commission investigating alleged dishonesty in advertising methods stated (Time, 4/1/60): "In the blunt language of the street . . . the gyp seller depends on the sucker buyer and can't exist without him." Thus the "gyp seller" and the "sucker buyer" take their place alongside other classical dualities—Holmes and Watson, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, and capitalist and worker.

Here are some interesting little deceptions practised by American TV "commercials":

 Sticking food particles to a plate before putting it in a dishpan to demonstrate the inferiority of a competitor’s detergent.

  Lacing breakfast cereal with ice cream so that child models will smile with delight at being served the advertiser’s particular brand. 

  Saturating a sponge with a powerful bleach to prove how one cleanser leaves a stained sink sparkling white, while competing brands leave black smudges.

  Filling a coffee pot with hot wine because real coffee tends to photograph like crankcase sludge.

   Icing a bake-it-yourself cake with shaving cream because real icing melts under hot floodlights.

(Time, 4/1/60.)

Even responsible executives in the American advertising hierarchy feel that deception in advertising methods would be difficult to eradicate. Said one (Time, 4/1/60): “Dishonest advertising is here. It is real. And whatever the percentage, the amount is large and is not diminishing.” The same outspoken executive went on to ask: “How can four different cigarettes all be lowest in nicotine, lowest in tars; how can three different headache remedies all work fastest? ” He has us there.

One of the most important principles of our private property society is “He who pays the piper calls the tune.” Members or representatives of the owning class pay large sums of money in attempts to capture the market from their rivals, and are not greatly concerned about the methods employed. In other words, the end justifies the means; a philosophy which must inevitably lead to trickery, dishonesty and cynicism.

Those who support the private property system would no doubt argue that advertising, “commercial” TV, “show business" (in. short, the topics we have discussed here) are examples of “freedom,” “democracy," and “incentive" — alleged hallmarks of capitalism.

Socialists would rather argue that capitalism, with its inexorable drive for expanding markets and more profits, is forced to foster cheating, sham values, artificial desires, and inequality (both political and economic), in its blind drive to its goal—the sale of the commodity.

This thumb-nail sketch of the kind of world capitalism has made, with its own peculiarly twisted type of "morality," may help to show why ordinary workers, who would normally never dream of cheating at a card game with friends, are drawn into the sordid deceits of “phoney” quiz shows. It is of particular interest to Socialists because the deceits and trickery of the advertising business are only reflections of much larger deceptions—those of the apologists, politicians, and spokesmen of capitalism. Perhaps by aiming our Socialist dart at one target, we may hit both. '

Michael La Touche

The Great White Elephant (1958)

From the January 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Advertising In Modern Life

When they talk of the marvels of modern times and the loftier race that welfare reforms have brought to being, it is interesting to browse through the ads. in the papers and the television channel. Here, dress-suited prigs sit amid fake period furniture eulogizing cheap tinned soup; pasty youths sip their tonics and slick their hair in hopes of catching the boss's eye; fagged-out, rushed and noise-ridden people by the score swallow pellets and powders by the ton for the noise and rush to continue. Here, in fact, is as great an indictment as could be made of civilization in the mid-twentieth century.

Pure and simple, advertizing is salesmanship: convince the man and he buys your goods. In 1788, toothpaste makers were claiming that their stuff would "faften fuch as are loofe, keep fuch as are already decayed from becoming worfe, prevent the Tooth ach, perfectly cure the Scurvy in the Gums . . .  likewife render the Breath delicately fweet, and remedy all thofe diforders that are the confequence of fcorbutic Gums and bad Teeth." Sixty years ago the most popular soap powder was boosted as "possessing high detergent properties in a concentrated and effective form. Cleanses without injury to skin, fabric or texture."

It has long ceased to be as simple as that Then—years ago, a hundred and seventy years ago—you take it or leave it. Now, to leave it is impossible (except for the blind and the recluse). The advertizing man is no longer a huckster seeking new additions, one by one, to the satisfied buyers of Bloop. His aim is whole social groups, even whole generations, for whom life without Bloop would hurt or be shameful He is sociologist, psychologist, con-man, poet and maker of dreams, with nowhere private and nothing inviolate to him—not the innermost thought nor the smallest room.

There are a hundred means to this assault on social consciousness. Appealing to snobbery and prestige: it is smart to drink this, superior to smoke those. Linking prestige with pride in home or person: clean your home the modern way—and surely you don't still shave with the old soap-and-brush method? Evoking authority with tit-bits of pseudo-science, or vague references to clinical knowledge: the hair is a tube with roots, the intestines are twenty-six feet long, doctors and nurses know all about Blobbo.

The cornerstones of most advertising, however, are Fantasy and Fear. The strip-drawn advertisements for cosmetics, beauty soaps, beverages, and the rest, are explicit, deliberate fantasies of romance or success. In the best-known of them all the strips are peopled by an entire mythology of seemingly real characters: masterful executives, paragon wives and paternal fathers and, of course, the family doctor, benign and wise, sitting back recommending the hot drink that will send Henry bounding up the ladder of success. Or there is the fantasy in prose and a single picture, setting forth a desirable world with which buying some product will somehow put one in touch. Drink Crossbread's, and you commune with Old England, oak beams and dray horses; or Washington's, to be in spirit among the big-thighed footballers and six-hitting batsmen; open an account at the Lowland and enter the semi-detached realm of bowler hats and deference, chequebooks and U-conversations with the Manager.

And there are the sexual fantasies, the dreams of allure, enticement and capture. First shy glances drawn by white soap, first embraces made inoffensive by pink soap; erotic spells cast by shampoos, face creams and cheap perfumes with expensive names (Nuit dans l'Ecurie, one-and-three). Dreamiest, most voluptuous of all are the corset and underwear advertisements, with their Vie Parisienne pictures and their lyrical lore

“The line forms . . . in at your waist,
With a gentle lift of pride up there.
Dance Time, new summer guile . . .
With padded undercups,
And low-hugging Lastex round your back. . . ."

It is wrong to suppose, however, that the sales depend only on those who can share these fantasies. Equally, they set standards for the rest. For every girl who daydreams enslaving Fred by Gluggo, another girl fears the consequences of not using it The advertisements, in fact, make the consequences clear; before the happy ending to the strip a wise friend takes Jean aside and tells her why Fred avoids her.

This is one kind of fear played up by the ads.; fear of social or matrimonial failure. It hardly needs building- up, in a world of perpetual insecurity where most people know only too web that jobs and sweethearts are easily lost. There is fear of disgrace (someone isn’t using Pungo —see the offending noses wrinkle); fear of general inadequacy, of being talked about for remediable failings. This is the secret of the great soap-powder campaigns of recent years. In terms of competition, one may wonder how much is achieved by persuading housewives to change from Diz to Duz, particularly when both are produced by the same firm; but that isn't the real point The effect of seven years' competitive insistence that each soap powder washes whiter, adds brightness, is whitest of all, is whiter and brighter than white itself, has been to make whiteness a social value, something which no woman dare neglect for fear of censure and shame.

The strongest theme of all is fear of harm or deprivation to loved ones. Somebody's mum isn't using Gippo; somebody's baby girl has to ask if the jakes has been made safe for her with Fizz. The wake-up beverages play heavily on this, too; tiredness threatens a man's income just when his daughter has won her scholarship or his widowed mother looks to him for help. It is wrong to sneer at this kind of fear and say people shouldn’t be taken in by it. Nobody wants to be lonely or unpopular, still less to have his children deprived of companionship or opportunity. The advertisers find their material in natural, sensible feelings which are whipped into fears because our world is an insecure and frustrating place.

In a buying-and-selling society, the realm of advertising is unlimited. It goes far beyond the hoardings, the advertisement pages and the television commercials. Thus, in any woman's magazine, where half the space is taken up by advertisements, much of the remainder goes the same way:  fashion pages, beauty articles, stories grounded in the same dream-world as the adverts. The same applies for most magazines and papers. Holiday guides, technical pieces, the Christmas spirit; even the chit-chat about a personality may be, indirectly, advertisement of what he sells.

What are the effects of all this ? There is, of course, the known influence of advertisers on the Press. Large-circulation papers draw about half their revenue from advertisements, the smaller-circulation ones about two-thirds; half a page in the Daily Express costs £3,000. It would be surprising if newspapers did not defer to their advertisers' interests. Mainly the influence is indirect, a standing deterrent to certain kinds of criticism: "A newspaper that receives a large revenue from company prospectuses may have an unconscious bias in favour of our present financial system; and the paper carrying frequent advertisements of patent medicines may, without any conscious deviation from rectitude, give too little weight to the medical profession's views on such goods. A famous editor has, indeed, written unashamedly of 'such needless folly as putting the report of a fatal motor smash alongside of a motor advertisement'.” (“The Newspapers," Oxford Pamphlets on Home Affairs, 1944.)

Occasionally, more direct pressure has been brought to bear. An ex-editor of the Daily Herald stated that his paper’s policy during the Munich crisis was modified on account of the advertisers. In 1938, a British Medical Association advertisement, headed “Is All Milk Safe?” had to be modified to avoid prejudice to the milk industry’s campaign. In his American Freedom and Catholic Power, Paul Blanshard gives several instances of coercion by advertisers in the U.SA Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to think (as some people seem to do) that newspapers would be substantially different without this influence; after all, the newspapers support capitalism and the advertisers are the capitalists.

The social effects of advertising go much further. Implicit in all of it is the commercialising of every human relationship: people are valued in terms of their possessions and buying habits, the dentifrice they use, the gleam of their shirts. In this world, as E. S. Turner remarks in his amusing Shocking History of Advertising, “loyalty means always buying the same hair oil. . . . A bride is not a young woman on the edge of a great adventure; she is a conditioned consumer, who, by buying the right cosmetics and the right brassiere has captured her man.'' A generation ago, How to Win Friends and Influence People was the salesman's obsession; now, it is the customer's.

Half-a-dozen minor revolutions in social consciousness—none of them making anyone better off—have been effected or assisted by advertising. The whiteness-phobia, the speed-craze, the conception of beauty and, newest of these, the odour-phobia. In recent times the deodorant business has extended its target from bad breath and strong perspiration to skin smells, cooking smells, “sudden smells" and vegetable smells. It seems on the cards, in fact, that in a few years all natural smells will have been outlawed and abolished, and nothing will be left except the scents of disinfectant and furniture polish. What is worth mentioning about the odour-ads. is that they are easily the lowest, nastiest and most objectionable of all advertisements at the moment (and that, by the way, is really saying something): where, one wonders, are the good taste and culture of which the capitalist class—and, no doubt, the artists and copywriters, too—has always claimed so much ?

The supreme social myth to-day, and the one which runs through all advertising of the last ten years is that of "standards of living.” Most symbolic of it, currently, is the cigarette advertisement which says "I'm raising my living standard" — by changing to a slightly dearer brand; though this writer's favourite is the television commercial where the woman spreads a margarine-and-paste tea for her family, standing in a five-hundred-pound kitchen. Perhaps the most explicit of all is the American advertisement (quoted by Colin McIver in The Anatomy of Advertising), which says

"I know my husband loves me.
"As surely as I know the sky is blue, that dreams come true, that to-day is my birthday . . .  that surely do I know my husband loves me.
"The soft gleam of our very own Gorham Sterling tells me he is thinking of me at wife, mother, hostess—dreaming and planning for our future together."

Modern advertising is the folklore (nursery rhymes and all—hear the children sing the ad.-men's jingles) of the "standards of living” age. It would be funny if it were not so tragic. While the success of a marriage is judged in Gorham-Sterling terms, the collapse of marriage is a major social problem; while people in to-day's hire-purchase paradise see themselves as far, far better off than ever before there are far, far more social difficulties than ever before. For all that has to be said about advertisements, the real criticism is of the society whose values and failures they reflect. Is there any substantial difference between the German general who said "Guns before butter ” and the rest of the world which puts commercial before human needs?

The only sensible way to organise society is for the satisfaction of human needs—that is, on the basis of ownership by everybody of the means of life and access for everybody to everything there is. No advertisements, of course, in such a world; only then, in fact, would the fine, rich wood of humanity flourish free from the dark, parasitic trees of commercialism.

Robert Barltrop

Mediaopoly (1987)

From the August 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Imagine a business where the less that is produced and the fewer customers there are, the more money is made. Impossible, you might say, even within a system like capitalism. But this is precisely what is happening in some regional ITV Companies.

Unlike any other business. ITV companies make one thing (programmes) but sell another — advertising. So it is in their financial interests to cut costs (programme making) and expand revenue (advertising).

So as the quality/quantity of programmes are reduced, audiences have dropped and advertising revenues have soared because advertisers have to spend more to try and attract their target audience. A regional TV station has the monopoly on TV advertising in its area. Advertisers have no option but to go to it. As there is only a finite amount of airtime available, its price gets driven up.

In the case of TVS, for example, which has viewer ratings forty per cent lower than average for an ITV network, this has meant that its share price has been boosted from 25 pence in 1981 to the current 380 pence. Profits have exceeded forecasts in each year of operation, rising to 14 million on a turnover of 140 million pounds last year.

Even the IBA felt moved to say of TVS:

   . . . [it] has undoubtedly enjoyed considerable success in expanding the business side of its operation and attaining high levels of profitability; but the same energy and purpose have not always been fully matched on the programme side. . . .

The mechanism by which this form of decay operates is one of commercial television's best kept secrets — the Network Agreement. The five largest ITV Companies (Central. Granada. Thames. LWT and Yorkshire) dominate the system. They produce programmes for the entire network. The remaining ten regional companies — for example. TVS — have no such commitment. This assures the big five of a market, while at the same time reducing the outlay of the smaller regional companies on programme making. This cartel has made the ITV Companies very profitable indeed.

It is all the more ludicrous that this situation is administered by the IBA. the very body charged with the statutory duty (sic) under the 1981 Broadcasting Act to secure "Adequate Competition".

Legal opinion on the Network Agreement varies, but it is probably illegal under UK law. and certainly illegal under EEC law, which would mean that the 15 ITV Companies would be liable to fines of between four and ten per cent of last year's turnover (£4-10 million). It remains to be seen if the IBA will take such action.

But then, as Margaret Thatcher has assured us, private enterprise means freedom of choice. You have been given an On/ Off switch and you are free to use it. What more choice could you possibly want?

Harvey Harwood