“American sociologists scientifically try to play down the effectiveness of propaganda because they cannot accept the idea that the individual—that cornerstone of democracy—can be so fragile; and because they retain their ultimate trust in man.”
This is a line from early in Jacques Ellul’s book Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes (Propagandes in the original French) as translated by Konrad Kellen and Jean Lerner. I begin with this because I believe that this does hold true for Americans; not just sociologists but left and progressive thinkers in general. This notion is why I decided to go back to Propaganda, because while I don’t agree with Ellul, he provides a great jumping-off point for thinking about propaganda as someone who doesn’t have access to the vastness of the existing literature or the ability to read outside the English language.
I see Ellul as having a complicated relationship with technique and with propaganda, which is a type of technique. He simultaneously admits that humans need technique and also harbors a deep suspicion of it, believing it to have a self-constructing logic which serves to restrict and distort human choice. These are my understandings of his approach, which I want to make sure to say so that you do not believe I’m teaching you about Ellul here. It’s important that you read him if you want to actually know his arguments. The way I’m going to proceed is to put forward my ideas which are in conversation with Ellul’s ideas, and I will diverge from him fairly sharply.
I also want to say that I have just begun the work. I’m writing this because the topic occurred to me, and I’ve re-read what I have just to get my mind working again. This isn’t a thorough review of the book.
One shift in my perspective that has helped me come to a more useful understanding of Ellul’s work is that he specifically de-qualifies statements which must be qualified. The main example is when he says that the only true propaganda is total propaganda: “Propaganda must be total. … There is no propaganda as long as one makes use, in sporatic fashion and at random, of a newspaper article here, a poster or a radio program there, organizes a few meetings and lectures, writes a few slogans on walls; that is not propaganda.”
The question I immediately ask is “how can that be?” How can we have a phenomenon which has no magnitude, which cannot be partially observed? How do we truly test a phenomenon which doesn’t become apparent until it is complete? And what is the status of proto- or quasi-propaganda efforts before we reach that full state?
The resolution, in my mind, comes from re-qualifying what Ellul de-qualifies. He is not describing what propaganda is full-stop, he is describing total propaganda only. It may have been more straightforward for Ellul to simply start from the point where propaganda has indisputably succeeded, then working backwards to describe how it succeeded. This gives us an idea of what propaganda as a fully-developed technique is, but it does not allow us to understand propaganda as a technique in development, not only in general sophistication but also in particular evolution; that is, if propaganda is the technology of the shoe, what Ellul gives us shows how a finished shoe works (e.g. how it stays on the foot, how it protects from dirt, etc.), but that doesn’t tell us how the shoemaking profession came to make shoes in this way, nor does it tell us how a specific shoe was made from start to finish.
In reality, despite Ellul’s protestations, we actually must view every act of communication as related to an act of propaganda. I’m still reading Geoff Ingham’s The Nature of Money, and he talks about the concept of “moneyness”, where something can be more or less money. Propaganda works the same way, in a sense; it is not that each act of communication fully constitutes propaganda, but the operation of direct communication bears a great resemblance to the operation of mass propaganda, differing in complexity of the subsumed relationships, the number of participants, and the manner of their participation.
Ellul does not give a hard-and-fast definition of propaganda, at least not in the beginning of the book. As I understand it, his definition would involve: 1) a design from an originator of the propaganda; 2) the ability to address a mass of people; 3) the use of enough media to surround “on all sides” the target(s) of propaganda; 4) the provocation of action spurred by the propaganda.
Clearly, I have issues with a definition based on these points, primarily the third and fourth. Instead, I will attempt a succinct definition: Propaganda is the technique of communicating to aggregates. I believe that this definition encompasses Ellul’s, as well as other definitions which he cites, without being needlessly restricted to full accomplishment. While the analysis of total propaganda does certainly provide useful insights, only broadening the definition can allow the concept to be useful as a way to understand a type of phenomena. The analysis Ellul gives is much like giving an analysis of warfare which only considers wars in which upwards of 1 million people were killed. However useful such a study is, there is quite a lot of war that is not being studied.
One important reason that I broaden this definition is because I can broaden it. As I said, Ellul is giving us a theory of the finished shoe. Because of that, he must consider only shoes that have been successfully made, which means he’s limited to describing how those shoemakers do it. But you must also consider that Ellul’s definition of a shoe is probably restricted in a way he is not aware of. When you read his description, you may find that boots are not included, nor are slippers, nor are sandals, and therefore the method of making those types of footwear are not included.
This is the effect I see in Ellul’s insistence that total propaganda is the only true propaganda. In my view, he has adopted this position because it is easily defensible. A total propaganda has a very high probability of succeeding, or at least, its probability is probably much higher than a non-total propaganda. That is a somewhat repetitive statement, but I’ve said it that way on purpose; the key here is not that total propaganda absolutely does have a higher probability , it is that total propaganda appears to have a higher probability. It “makes sense”, in a “common sense” way, that if “man is surrounded on all sides” they will be much more susceptible to this propaganda. It is also why he makes several other leaps, like the fact that propaganda needs to affect groups who have commonalities.
Many of these insights are useful, but they come out of a flawed study. My own study of these phenomena is in its early stages. I do believe that propaganda works, as Ellul does, but not by the exact same mechanisms. Ellul seems to believe, regardless of his protestations, that propaganda is essentially a psychological operation; I propose this because he places his emphasis on ideas such as trends in society, the intensity of the propaganda itself, the role of opportunity and chance, and so forth. I believe, on the other hand, that propaganda works through shaping direction-of-thought, which I will call apprehension.
The most ready way I have to explain the concept of apprehension is through coercion, and the easiest way to explain coercion is through the form which most know: death-coercion. This particular phrase is probably new, as far as I know I’ve made it up, but it’s simple: death-coercion is coercion through the threat of death. I make the substance of the threat obvious here because while coercion is usually defined as the use of force to make someone take some action, I will define coercion as the attempted reduction of another person’s options to compliance or suffering a specific consequence. That is to say, credible coercion means that the person being coerced either complies or, by not complying, suffers.
This is not all there is to say about the concept of death-coercion. There are two clear weak points in this concept, of course. The first one is one I already made obvious: if that threat, the reduction of options, is not a credible threat, then the coercion doesn’t have force. The second weak point is in the substance of the threat itself. If the person being threatened doesn’t care about the threat, the coercion doesn’t have force. Of course, that does not mean that the threat is no longer credible, only that executing the threat will not move the threatened person. Because the point of coercion is not actually to execute the threat but to achieve compliance, we have to view an executed threat as a failure of coercion as-such.
We also have relationships being created here. The fact that one party has made a credible threat to the other forms a specific relation on this subject; the threat-making party now has the quality of “capable of making credible threats in such-and-such situation” in relation to the threat-receiving party. This influences further actions. If the threat-making party continues to make a threat, this changes the apprehension possible by the threat-receiving party. Let’s say that party A, the threat-making party, says that they will kill party B if they attempt to leave The House. Before this happened, if the microwave oven stopped working in B’s house, they would leave The House, go to a store, buy a new microwave, and return home. Now, with the threat, B’s decision making changes. It’s not as though A did not exist beforehand, but now that B is aware of the threat being made, B will naturally rule out simply leaving The House. Perhaps B will communicate with A to try and have the microwave fixed, perhaps they will simply make an order for a new microwave (as long as that isn’t part of the threat), or perhaps they will simply go without.
What has changed here is the circumstances, and primarily the circumstances of thought, not of the world outside. Remember, the threat must be credible, not factual; it must be believable and believed, that is all. We’re not talking about B going outside and running into a person who physically pushes B back into the house. We’re talking about a state of affairs where B still thinks about their broken microwave, but now has another concept to deal with – the threat – and navigating this means that the ultimate end of their thought is likely to be different than what it would have been before that threat existed.
With this concept, we can see that coercion does not require force: only death-coercion, or other similar types of coercion, need force. All that is needed is that the person doing the coercion is able to make the person coerced believe that they can carry out the threat that they are making, and that the threat is meaningful enough to the person coerced that they are reasonably likely to comply rather than suffer the threat being carried out. Threatening to mark up something valuable unless you get your way is coercion even though the only “force” involved is applying the paint or whatever it is.
This is a brief sketch of one manner of communication, one particular type of interaction. I don’t want to spend the time right now to go through iterations and a typology, that may come at a later date. What I hope is that the example of death-coercion (and coercion more generally) will allow you to conceptualize how communication and knowledge of concepts can affect the process of thinking. I have written about this in a slightly different context in Traffic, Code, Flow, and Boundary; while we are accustomed to thinking of thinking as the production of thought, we can also think about thinking as bringing our awareness from one place to another as well as the process therein.
Here I will come back to Ellul, because I find his writing about how propaganda works to be accurate. He says that propaganda works by speaking to the individual within the crowd, by being to speak to the crowd as a group of individuals and each individual as a member of the crowd, somehow unique, separate, and general at the same time. How I would modify what he says is that this propaganda technique works because the commonalities that make a group what it is also imply that the people who make it up are possessed by and invested in the same concepts, which means they are likely to respond in similar ways when given similar triggers. In effect, because of their commonalities, the same technique (either the a technique being duplicated or the literal same single instance) can be assumed to work on all (or, at least, a significant number) of that group’s membership.
Again, I’ve laid this all out so that I can have a theoretical basis for making a simple claim: propaganda works. As Ellul says, this is not simply about changing ideas but about provoking action. Ellul assumes that propaganda (and technique more broadly) is creating a divide between thought and action; this is something I heartily disagree with. Instead, thinking has to be considered as an action, and the provocation of thinking in a certain manner is an outcome of propaganda which we can consider successful.
What I am saying here is not that propaganda is capable of brainwashing people. Propaganda is much more mundane than that. Like Ellul says, propaganda is not distinguished by being made up of lies, it’s distinguished by its intention to manipulate actions, and facts accomplish this more readily than lies do. Propaganda works not by altering the mind but by presenting different understandings through the creation and destruction of incentives. War propaganda promises adventure, glory, heroism, gratitude. For those who are not interested in war or any of those promises, the propaganda doesn’t work. But for the group of people who are, this propaganda informs them either that going to war will provide great things that the person also likes (adventure, glory, etc.) or informs them that the way to gain the promises is by going to war. There is much more to the full operation of a propaganda machine – for instance, the more that a military can actually substantiate its war propaganda, the more convincing that propaganda will be, which means that the military must have the means to do so – but this is the basic mechanism by which propaganda works.
And when it’s put in this way, it shouldn’t be any wonder that propaganda works. While people can often be savvy enough to identify propaganda, it is often the case that propaganda is simply a communication that one would agree with. In this day and age, it’s a fairly common experience to share a news story which seems plausible and mundane, only to find out that it’s a total hoax. What is the difference between marketing and propaganda? In technical terms, there isn’t one. We are all susceptible to new information as long as it has some relation to information we already have and if it fits our worldview, whether or not that new information is “true”.
I don’t make this point so strongly in order to argue that people have less than free will. Quite the opposite. Rather than viewing the operation of propaganda as an affront to personal freedom, as Ellul does, I would rather understand it as part of the general problem of communication and understanding. Even coercion, as we’ve seen, doesn’t necessitate a certain action. That does not change the fact that coercion makes a person unfree to some extent, it is a reduction of options (or, more accurately, a certain consequence placed upon non-compliance which fundamentally changes the choice of compliance). However, being put into a cage does not mean that a person is docile, it means that they are caged. In the same way, while propaganda and coercion work to restrict the expression of options, they do not restrict the innate quality of free will itself.
This is an important point because we do have to separate propaganda from coercion. One may involve the other and vice versa, but propaganda does not fundamentally work via the reduction of options, but rather the supply of new concepts which change the relationship with those options. A piece of “war propaganda” which tells citizens to sign up for the military or be executed is not (properly speaking) propaganda, it is simply coercion; a more proper piece of propaganda which similarly works on the fear of death would say that signing up is the only way to protect from the enemy rampage, that being watchful is the only protection against death, statements like that. So when I say that propaganda does not restrict free will, I’m not making the minimal claim I made earlier. What I’m saying is that propaganda presents options and information which will probably have certain effects without acting in a strictly coercive manner. People are always free to agree or disagree with propaganda in this sense. The point is not that propaganda ensures, compels, or even directly incentivizes action, it’s that it redirects people’s thinking about their situation to suggest a certain action. Its measure of success is related to how accurately and effectively it targets concepts important to its audience.
The final point I want to make for this blog is a practical one. In his search for a morally pure democracy, Ellul completely rejects the use of propaganda. While I am not really a communist, Ellul somewhat anticipates my stance when he writes “Thus the Communists, who do not believe in human nature but only in the human condition, believe that propaganda is all-powerful, legitimate (whenever they employ it), and instrumental in creating a new type of man.” That is to say, while Ellul sees that the Communists agree with him that a technological society runs on propaganda in a sense, he specifically disagrees with the Communists’ dedication to using it.
I agree with Ellul’s fantasy communists that propaganda is legitimate, but I do not agree that it is all-powerful, and I also do not believe this is a rejection of human nature. In fact, the use of propaganda is a necessity in society for one simple reason: people are lazy. Now, that’s a derogatory way to put it, and I’m sure someone like Ellul would find a kind of haughtiness in this, but I say this as a lazy person myself. People have their interests, they look after their needs, and they do not have much attention for things outside of those two areas.
I happen to be interested in politics and in philosophy, that’s why I’m writing this and why I have any knowledge on the subject. For the academic, the most common foil in this kind of comparison is the auto mechanic, electrician, or plumber. Most academics have no interest in these lines of work. Yet, despite the insistence of insecure people on both sides of the divide, this does not imply hostility or condescension from academics towards mechanics, nor does it imply hostility or condescension from mechanics to academics. And while I may be able to hold my interest to fix a sink pipe or change my oil, if I need to rip out the pipes behind the wall, I’m going to call an expert.
Propaganda is not only words and images and the like which have a more-or-less understandable persuasive content. It is also actions, such as cutting benefits for teachers or granting them to security forces. Propaganda is policy, both in the sense that policy prescribes propaganda and also that policy has its own propagandistic function. Though Ellul finds a great deal of danger in the concept of technique, he nevertheless understands that we cannot make shoes without a technique for making shoes, and also that the having of shoes (or, at least, the possibility of acquiring shoes when needed) is generally better for humans than not having shoes. It’s surprising that he purposefully constructs propaganda in a way that means he does not have to make the same contention; that he can say that propaganda is always evil, even if it is in service of a kind of society Ellul would otherwise support.
But Ellul is wrong about this. Propaganda has to be used not only because it is occurring whether we want it to or not, but because not all people will be motivated to make themselves educated about issues of politics, and such people will be susceptible to other propaganda if there is a void to be filled. Just like I accept propaganda about which car to buy – I buy Toyotas because I look at online lists that say they are the most reliable cars, not because I know anything about why Toyotas are more reliable than other cars – most people accept propaganda about politics because they do not want to learn about politics. It is striking to me that Ellul doesn’t strictly advocate for education which might enable people to rise above propaganda but instead for a kind of withdrawal which represents a rejection of it.
Ellul may be correct that employing propaganda changes both the propagandist and the propagandized. What I do not understand is what Ellul imagines the alternative is. Humans that do not change? This observation has very little relevance unless one has quite naive ideas about human progress and purity of intention. Such ideas have to be left behind if we’re going to have a thorough analysis of propaganda and society.