Propaganda: unseen mechanism of society

ORGANIZING CHAOS

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits
and opinions of the masses is an impor­tant element in democratic
society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society
constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power
of our country.

We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas
suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a
logical result of the way in which our demo­cratic society is
organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this
manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning
society.

Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the
identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet.

They govern us by their qualities of natural leadership, their
ability to supply needed ideas and by their key posi­tion in the
social structure. Whatever attitude one chooses toward this
condition, it remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily
lives, whether in the sphere of poli­tics or business, in our
social conduct or our ethical think­ing, we are dominated by the
relatively small number of persons—a trifling fraction of our
hundred and twenty million—who understand the mental processes and
social patterns of" the masses.. It is they who pull the wires
which control the public mind» who harness old social forces and
contrive new ways to bind and guide the world,

It is not usually realized how necessary these invisible governors
are to the orderly functioning of our group life. In theory, every
citizen may vote for whom he pleases. Our Constitution does not
envisage political parties as pan of the mechanism of government;
and its framers seem not to have pictured to themselves the
existence in our national politics of anything like the modern
political machine. But the American voters soon found that without
organization and direction their individual votes, cast, perhaps,
for dozens of hundreds of candidates, would produce nothing but
confusion. Invisible government, in the shape of rudimentary
political parties, arose almost overnight. Ever since then we have
agreed, for the sake of simplicity and practicality; that party
machines should narrow down the field of choice to two candidates
or at most three or four.

In theory, every citizen makes up his mind on public questions and
matter on private conduct. In practice, if all men had to study
for themselves the abstruse economic, political, and ethical data
involved in every question, they would find it impossible lo come
to a conclusion without anything. We have voluntarily agreed to
let an invisible government sift the data and high-spot the
outstanding issue so that our field of choice shall be narrowed to
practical proportions.