“There Is No Such Thing as Society”, Margaret Thatcher
Ironically, in pulling down the edifice and social constraints of the more conservative past, the liberal 60s generation’s counter-culture actually sowed the seed of a later oppressiveness from which we now suffer.
As Clive Hamilton puts it in Growth Fetish: “Margaret Thatcher should be thankful to Alan Ginsberg and Timothy Leary…freedom from the fetters of career and family, and freedom of sexual expression were noble in themselves, but it is now evident that demolition of the customary social structures did not create a society of free individuals. Instead it created an opportunity for the marketers to substitute material consumption and manufactured lifestyles for the ties of social tradition.” xviii
The 1960s was the era in which the Citizen shifted to an individualistic Consumer of endless products and political sound bites. The role of corporate Communications and PR was key in this shift, but it was principally driven by advertising. Great US corporates formulated TV programmes (the soap opera) in order to create slots, to sell ads, to sell products. When Thatcher famously stated that “there is no such thing as society”, she was merely reflecting the Consumer greed of the era, announcing a political selfishness; a virtual acknowledgement that community had been usurped by the “loadsamoney” self. A population indulging in the delights of Consumerism was easily seduced by this political dogma that suggested specific benefit to the individual rather than to society as a whole.
A population indulging in the delights of Consumerism was easily seduced by this political dogma that suggested specific benefit to the individual rather than to society as a whole.
Bernays and his colleagues sold the vision that business was a key element of democracy and could respond to inner desires in a way politics could not. This helped turn Citizens into passive selfish Consumers, who fed the economy and kept out of politics. Walter Lippmann wrote that the general public are “ignorant and meddlesome outsiders” who should be mere “spectators of action”, apart from the periodic choice among the “responsible men”. This worked for politicians at the time and in the 1920s Herbert Hoover, as US Secretary of Commerce, encouraged the development of a suburban world as a Petri dish of consumption and need. Even where voices cried out for a better sense of balance, they were overwhelmed by the rush to consume.
