- 7 weeks ago
Documentary, The Century of The Self Part 4 -Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00you're moving through a world in which everything is possible and nothing nothing is beyond you
00:08this is the story of the rise of an idea that has come to dominate our society it is the belief
00:15the satisfaction of individual feelings and desires is our highest priority today we're
00:22going to tell you how to get whatever you want i wanted to live a different life that wasn't
00:27available to me in the image i was born here briebus episodes have shown how this rise of the self
00:35was fostered and promoted by business they had used the ideas of sigmund freud to develop techniques
00:43to read the inner desires of individuals and then fulfill them with products
00:48this final episode is about how that idea took over politics
00:55it tells the story of how politicians on the left in both america and britain turned to these
01:02techniques to regain power they believed that they were creating a new and better form of democracy
01:09one that truly responded to the inner feelings of individuals but what the politicians didn't realize
01:17was that the aim of those who had originally created these techniques
01:21had not been to liberate the people but to develop a new way of controlling them in an age of mass democracy
01:28the roots of the story lie way back in the america of the 1920s with one man he was called edward
01:47bernays the nephew of sigmund freud bernays had been one of the inventors of the profession of public
01:53relations and he was fascinated by his uncle's theory that human behavior was driven by unconscious
01:59sexual and aggressive drives
02:03many of bernays his clients were large american corporations
02:08and he was the first person to show them how they could sell many more products
02:12if they linked them through images and symbols to those unconscious desires that freud had identified
02:18the strategy he offered them was that people could now look at the goods that were emerging within this
02:27society and not merely view those goods as things that they needed in order to deal with some specific
02:34material want but also as goods which would stroke and respond to deep emotional yearnings
02:42you know how this bar of soap or this bag of flour will make you a happier more successful more sexually
02:51appealing less fearful person somebody to be admired rather than reviled
02:58the powerful people in that world are those people who are capable of reading the public mind
03:03and giving the public uh what it wants in those terms
03:07and bernays was at the heart of it bernays was the guy who was the foremost articulator of the theories
03:15which were driving this new system
03:20by the 1980s bernays his ideas had come of age a vast industry had grown up in america devoted to
03:26reading the inner desires of consumers at its heart was the technique of the focus group previous episodes
03:34have shown how the focus group was invented by psychoanalysts employed by u.s corporations the aim
03:41was to allow consumers to express their inner feelings and needs just as patients did in psychoanalysis
03:48the information was then used to promote and design new products that would fulfill those desires
03:55and edward bernays who is now nearly a hundred years old was celebrated as the founding father of this
04:01marketing world
04:04hi doctor good to see you come on up over here there you go
04:10doctor what uh tell me again what the doctor is what are we dealing with you're the father of uh
04:15public relations what we're dealing with really is the concept that people will believe me more if
04:22you call me doctor oh i see
04:27so
04:30it's a good idea and bernays his ideas and techniques were also about to conquer britain in the 1980s
04:38unlike america the ruling elites in britain had always distrusted the idea of pandering to the masses
04:43it was epitomized by the patrician elite who ran the bbc
04:49even as late as the 60s popular programmers were referred to as ground bait
04:54their real job was to lure the viewers into watching the more serious programs the elite knew was good for them
05:00and market research reflected this attitude individuals were observed and classified
05:09by market researchers according to their social class from a through c2 d and e
05:19probably they might be c2s yes i think uh by these the way they're carrying their luggage
05:25yes no taxi no taxi and all stuffed in in the bags like that i think the lady possibly sets her
05:31own hair which is yes an indication the children are nice to dress yes they are probably uh a skilled
05:39worker a skill yes yes a skilled worker i would say so yes i was certain apprenticeship or done some
05:45that's right yes we agree then yes we think we think so yes when people were asked their opinion
05:53about both products and politics they were selected by social class and asked only strictly factual
05:58questions about what they thought leaving your own party sympathies on one side who do you think
06:04will win this forthcoming uh labor labor and tell me which you prefer
06:12which party do you think you'll be voting for this time this time you'll be voting for the liberals
06:17and who do you think will be second and charity this one thank you the idea that one might ask people
06:28what they themselves felt and desired and then give it to them was seen as alien to the ruling elites
06:34which would challenge their belief that they knew what was best for the public there's evidence
06:40in other countries in the united states for example where polls have been used before elections to
06:46interpret the mood of the public and then you give people more they want to have and that's what
06:51they ought to have but again this could be alleged to be more democratic i don't know it's very dangerous
06:57ground i think though when polls are used uh in that way but then in the economic crisis of the mid 70s
07:05british industry was forced to begin to pay attention to the inner feelings of consumers
07:11as the recession deepened consumer spending fell dramatically
07:14and the advertisers insisted that the only way for companies to survive
07:18was to make their advertising more effective and to do this they would have to delve into
07:23people's underlying psychological motives for purchasing the advertising industry started
07:29to bring in americans to run focus groups with british housewives
07:33everyone is a unique person and even though you're a group of ten today we don't want a group opinion
07:43and we want to know your ideas and your thoughts no matter how crazy it might be please let your imagination
07:50run wild because that's how very crazy things like instant coffee got born now can we get somebody this lady to be a kitchen sink and kitchen sink how do you feel
08:02with these things that are being used to clean you up well i've got to feel clean i've got to be kept clean
08:10i feel that i should hate it if i was all greasy so i've got to be easy to clean
08:14okay now the housewife this lady what would you use to clean your kitchen sink um a scouring powder
08:23of course a cloth to apply the things on and plenty of water now how do you feel as you're doing this chore um
08:34satisfied well satisfied when i have done it yes i'm doing my duty i feel it's a job well done
08:41the consumers were encouraged to play at being products from household cleaners to car seatbelts
08:47the aim was not to talk rationally but to act out and reveal their inner emotional relationship
08:52products which firmly and unmistakably underlines
09:04and then a politician emerged who also believed that people should be allowed to express themselves
09:10instead of being controlled by the state the individual should become the central focus of
09:14society some socialists seem to believe that people should be numbers in a state computer
09:22we believe they should be individuals we're all unequal no one thank heavens is quite like anyone
09:30else however much the socialists may pretend otherwise and we believe that everyone has the right to be unequal
09:38but to us every human being is equally important
09:46a man's right to work as he will to spend what he earns to own property to have the state as servant and
09:54not as master they are the essence of a free economy and on that freedom all our other freedoms depend
10:06mrs thatcher's vision was of a society in which the wants and desires of millions of individuals
10:11would be satisfied through the free market this she believed would be the engine to regenerate britain
10:18and with her a sense of power the advertising and marketing industries flourished
10:22their task was to find out what the british people really wanted and then sell it
10:29in this new climate the focus group flourished and those who ran them borrowed from the techniques
10:34of psychotherapy to delve ever deeper into people's feelings about products
10:42we're trying to understand how people feel about brands how they relate to brands that is to say
10:47what the brand's personality is as far as consumers are concerned and there are a number of techniques
10:52which are very very helpful for getting to that uh to that understanding the consumer is given crayons
11:00to doodle to express their feelings to go inside their own head pull out their feelings and somehow get
11:04them onto paper and these are ordinary drinkers expressing their feelings about drinking guinness
11:10so if you were describing a woman who somehow to you had that character what sort of person is it paula yates
11:23used to lay in bed surrounded with magazines and chocolates like a 50s starlet out of this research
11:31the marketeers began to detect a new individualism in particular among those who had voted conservative
11:37for the first time in 1979 they no longer wanted to be seen as part of social classes but to express
11:44themselves and crucial to this were the products they chose to buy we identified that there was this
11:51trend towards what might be called individualism where people wanted to still be part of a crowd but to
11:58express themselves as individuals within it to have their own personalities to be i suppose their
12:04own men i didn't want to be the same as everybody else i wanted it to be a little bit different a
12:12little bit individual it's quite individual upstairs it's not remarkable but i think it's quite individual
12:17it is expensive italiana it's italian it's expensive it's good quality a little bit different yeah we want
12:23to set our own standards so nobody else has got what we've got we just didn't want it being the
12:28same as everybody else we just want to be different business responded eagerly to this new individualism
12:35but it soon became one of the main forces driving the growing consumer boom in britain
12:41using the data from the focus groups manufacturers created new ranges of products that allowed people to
12:47express their individuality business also recategorized people they were no longer divided by social class
12:58but by their inner psychological needs if the primary need is security and belonging we call the groups
13:04mainstreamers and if it's status and the esteem of others then it's aspires if it's control it's
13:10succeeders and if it's self-esteem it's reformers and this new marketing culture began to take over the
13:16institutions previously dominated by a patrician elite in particular the world of journalism
13:23the assault was led by the profession of public relations
13:28in the past pr had been seen as seedy and corrupt
13:31but now it became a glamorous business promoting products and celebrities
13:39and one of the rising stars was another member of the freud family
13:42matthew freud the son of the liberal mp clement what freud and other pr's realized was that they could
13:50use their celebrities as levers to infiltrate advertising into the editorial content of newspapers
13:57the newspapers were offered exclusive interviews with celebrities but only if they also agreed to
14:02mention products made by freud's corporate clients in terms dictated by the company what happened with
14:10freud's was that you effectively got some kind of product placement or even product the manufacturers
14:17of the product got some degree of control over how their products would appear in print so if for
14:24example you did want to write about caprice's passion for stuffed crust pizza you would sign a contract which
14:30guaranteed that you would mention the firm pizza hut in at least twice in certain positions in the
14:36introductory paragraph of of the article that you would agree to run the pizza hut logo at such and
14:42such a size in such and such a place and of course that you would agree to run the enclosed pictures
14:47of caprice eating her stuffed crust pizza there was no choice about how you would run this article in
14:53the press you were effectively told how to run the article in the press by freud's by freud's
14:58it's a rise of the corporate culture and the rise of business to traditional journalists this
15:05infiltration of advertising into the editorial pages was a corruption of their profession but
15:11to mrs thatcher's allies like rupert murdoch who owned the sun and the times it was part of a democratic
15:17revolution against an arrogant elite who had too long ignored the feelings of the masses they hate to
15:25see someone communicating with the masses they feel that newspapers the written word is not for the
15:29masses that should be left to television or perhaps to nobody you're very proud of the sun and as the
15:34sun is not represented tonight in your film you just took page three which one seems so fascinated
15:38with about page one page two every other page of the paper that was typical piece of slanting and
15:44elitism by the bbc who after all in order to get viewers for this program put on a very sexy episode
15:50of star trek just which i was watching out in the room there i don't think they put it on to get us
15:54viewers i think we just are lucky to they try to carry viewers into these show programs you know how
15:59it's done by the late 80s mrs thatcher and her allies in advertising and the media had brought the
16:07desires of the individual to the center of society as last week's episode showed it was the same
16:15transformation that president reagan had brought about in america both politicians had encouraged
16:22business to take over from government the role of fulfilling the needs of the people in the process
16:29consumers were encouraged to see the satisfaction of their desires as the overriding priority
16:36to thatcher and reagan this was a new and better form of democracy
16:40but to their opponents in the parties of the left they had summoned up the most selfish and greedy
16:49aspects of human nature ronald reagan and margaret thatcher both embraced an economic philosophy
16:57that says the unit of judgment was not only the individual but it was the individual's personal
17:03satisfaction the individual's own unique happiness and well-being it was in a sense the triumph of
17:13regarding individuals as purely emotional beings who have needs and wants and desires that need to be
17:21satisfied and can be satisfied unconsciously it goes way back to the early part of the 20th century to
17:31freud to notions of the unconscious the assumptions that we are in terms of our rational minds we're
17:39little corks bobbing around on this great sea of hopes and fears and and desires of which we are only dimly
17:47aware and that the role of a marketer the role of somebody selling something including a politician
17:54is to appeal to this great swamp of of desire of unconscious desire
18:05the left believed the opposite that the way to create a better society was not to treat people
18:11as emotional isolated individuals but to persuade them to realize that they had common interests with
18:17others to help them rise above their individual feelings and fears let me assert my firm belief
18:27that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself nameless unreasoning unjustified terror
18:37which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance this idea had flourished in america in the
18:46depression of the 1930s president roosevelt faced with the chaos caused by the wall street crash encouraged
18:53americans to join together in trades unions to set up consumer groups and to pay for a welfare system for
19:00those trapped in poverty his aim was to create a collective awareness which would become a powerful
19:07weapon against the unfettered power of capitalism which had caused the crisis that idea had driven the
19:14democratic party for 50 years but now roosevelt's inheritors railed vainly against the effects of the
19:21self-interest encouraged by president reagan
19:24there is despair mr president in the faces that you don't see maybe mr president if you stopped in
19:35at a shelter in chicago and spoke to the homeless there maybe mr president if you asked a woman who had
19:46been denied the help she needed to feed her children because you said you needed the money for a tax break
19:52for a millionaire or for a missile we couldn't afford to use the worst thing ronald reagan did was to
20:00make the denial of compassion respectable he said you've worked hard you've made your money you shouldn't
20:07have to feel guilty about refusing to throw it away on people who choose to be homeless and who choose
20:15not to work that's what he said he said it with an elegance and a kind of benign aspect
20:22that disguised its harshness do you think we can do anything about it well why not if we can work
20:29together now to look after the lives of the people here i don't see why we couldn't work together
20:33afterwards to clear up the mess and help build a better world in which these things can't possibly
20:37happen the qualities we've learned from comradeship and common suffering are not going to be wasted
20:42after this war it's out of experience like ours that the new world will be built
20:46that same idea of marshalling the collective force of the masses to challenge the entrenched power of
20:55wealth and business but also led the labor party to power in britain after the war
21:01but in the 80s labor like the democrats in america lost election after election as millions who had once
21:08voted for them switched their allegiance to the conservatives there is going blue just about
21:16everywhere sweeping the country the rural parts of britain now for they are the party of yesterday
21:23and tomorrow is ours in the face of this a growing number within the labor party became convinced that
21:31if they were ever to regain power labor would have to come to terms with the new individualism
21:35of britain who had been a lifelong labor supporter
21:44gould believed that labor's leadership had become corrupted by the same patrician arrogance
21:49that dominated all britain's institutions they denigrated and disapproved of the new aspirations
21:55of working-class voters labor stopped listening to these people and i remember the best example of this
22:03was after the election of 1983 which was the election above all where the people's voices just were not
22:10heard and i had dinner with a leading uh labor party figure who'd been involved in the defeat heavily
22:18involved in involved in the defeat and his wife said god these working-class people these working-class
22:23people they just you know we give them education we give them chances in life what do they do they read
22:28the sun and they just don't vote for us and there was such a gap between these people just trying to
22:35make lies for themselves better lies themselves and the kind of elitism of the labor party that was just
22:42such a chasm that that had to be filled gould became part of a small group of modernizers centered
22:50around peter mandelson their aim was to reconnect labor with the lost voters
22:56to do this gould turned to the technique he knew well from his work in advertising the focus group
23:04gould commissioned focus groups in suburban areas across the country with small groups of
23:08voters who had switched to mrs thatcher people were encouraged not to talk rationally about policies
23:16but to express their underlying feelings and what gold discovered was a fundamental shift in people's
23:22relationship to politics they no longer saw themselves as part of any group but as individuals
23:30who could demand things from politicians in return for paying taxes just as business had taught them to do
23:37as consumers
23:38and i found that the people had become consumers people now wanted to have you know politics and
23:46life on their own terms i mean not just in politics but in all aspects of life too people see themselves
23:53as they are as autonomous powerful individuals who are entitled to be respected who are entitled to have
24:01the best not just in um you know going to tescos or wherever but the best in terms of health and in
24:08education too all this was about getting the labor party to understand the people really really really
24:15had changed and the labor party had not and unless the labor party changed it would not win
24:20philip gould now set out to try and persuade the labor party that they would have to make concessions
24:25to what he called the new aspirational classes and he was going to face implacable opposition
24:33in the run-up to the 1992 election gould argued that the only way to win was for labor to promise
24:38not to put up taxes but the shadow chancellor john smith angrily refused labor would stick to its
24:45fundamental policies they would fight the election with the promise of tax increases to
24:50create a fairer society and as the campaign began it seemed as if philip gould was wrong
24:58the traditional polls consistently showed labor ahead despite the conservative campaign message
25:04the labor government would put up taxes
25:11even the conservatives oldest allies in the press became convinced that by harping on about tax the
25:17conservatives were cutting their own throats the worry about the tories must be that they're not at
25:22the moment conveying a sense of grip and being in control and unless they can do better than that i
25:28think they're going to lose it is the other thing is that they still say that they are going to go on and
25:33on with this one single message of tax and i think i mean part of the difficulty this morning was that you
25:39had a whole lot of people who've been going to the same press conference for seven days had virtually the
25:45same message thrust at them and i kind of getting bored and restless and hitting back on it i think
25:51the media sense a big story coming in the tories being defeated and the labor party too was convinced
25:59it would win and finally return to power it's now time to meet the men and women who will form the next
26:07government
26:14and now it is time time for the next prime minister neil kinnock rose running labor's campaign believed
26:24that by modern presentation they would attract back the voters yet keep the old policies
26:30but philip gould was convinced that labor were going to lose through his focus groups he knew
26:38that the very people who were telling the traditional pollsters they would vote labor were in reality
26:43preparing to vote conservative out of self-interest but they were too embarrassed to admit it
26:51and john major also knew this because his focus groups were telling him the same thing
27:00what do you make of the poll which puts labor five points ahead
27:05feel out the streets that matters
27:07is feeling good on the streets it is feeling good on the streets yes
27:10has been feeling surprisingly good on the streets for some time
27:14quite surprisingly quite out of line with uh opinion box don't ask me to explain it but the deal's all
27:22anyway come on no lads you must sit down we're waiting to go
27:25it's okay john major's victory in 1992 was a disaster for the labor party
27:33the small group of reformers centered around peter mandelson and philip gould
27:37were convinced that the only way for the party to survive was to change its basic policies
27:43but their ideas were rejected by john smith who had now become leader
27:48philip gould left britain to go to work for the campaign to elect bill clinton president
27:53in america the 1992 election during it and afterwards people felt under great strain and
27:59really did feel demoralized and dejected and then to go from this to the clinton campaign it was an
28:05extraordinary experience because here suddenly i found articulated many of the ideas that i'd had but
28:12not fully myself been able to encapsulate or to articulate if you want a president who will restore
28:20the middle class reclaim the future for the middle class and restore the american dream
28:25vote for bill clinton in new hampshire and send a signal to the country that we are coming together
28:31what gould discovered was that like the labor party the democrats had also been doing focus groups
28:36with swing voters the difference was that bill clinton had decided to tailor his policies to fit with
28:43these voters desires above all with their ferocious belief that they should only pay tax for things
28:49that benefited them not for the welfare of others i have no idea what percentage of my tax dollars go
28:57to welfare but even if it's a minuscule percentage you know even if it's a quarter percent you know it's
29:04still too much for the people that are receiving these benefits that that are basically non-productive
29:11the clinton team decided that to win they had to promise tax cuts for these suburban voters and they
29:18also used the focus groups throughout the campaign to check every appearance speech and policy with them
29:24for their approval what clinton called the forgotten middle class became central figures in a new type of
29:31reactive politics candidates for the presidency in the united states had been prepackaged and
29:40designed for many many years what was new was an attempt to use very sophisticated or pseudo
29:49sophisticated techniques to plumb the public psychology to find out precisely what the desires of the
29:54individuals were and then to come up with a candidate and a platform and images and words that exactly
30:04responded to those deep desires this was packaging at a new level this was polling uh at an extreme i'm
30:12not going to raise taxes on the middle class and the middle class needs a break government is in the
30:18way it's taking more of your money and giving you less in return in the name of the hard-working americans who
30:26make up our forgotten middle class i proudly accept your nomination for president of the united states
30:35stay focused talk about things that matter to people you know it's the economy stupid okay
30:42but clinton's campaign team led by james carville and george stephanopoulos did not believe that they
30:48were capitulating to the selfish desires of the middle classes tax cuts were the price they had to
30:53pay to regain power but once in power they would still fulfill traditional democratic policies
31:00and help the poor who had been neglected under reagan above all with the reform of health care
31:06they would pay for the tax cuts by cutting defense spending and increasing taxes on the very rich
31:14in this way they believed they were forging a coalition of the new and the old voters
31:19both of whom could be satisfied probably for the first time in a generation tomorrow
31:24we're gonna win and that means that more people are gonna have better jobs
31:29people are gonna pay a little less for health care get better care and more kids are gonna go to better
31:34schools um so thanks
31:42but the democrats optimism was to be short-lived in november 1992 clinton was triumphantly elected
31:50president but within weeks his administration discovered that the budget deficit was far greater
31:56than they had anticipated at a meeting in the white house in january 1993 the head of the federal
32:03reserve told them that the deficit was nearly 300 billion dollars there was no way they could borrow
32:09any more without panicking the markets and causing a crisis the only way to pay for the proposed tax cuts
32:16would be to cut government spending not just on defense but on welfare
32:20clinton was faced with the choice between the old politics and the new and he chose the old the tax cuts were dropped and he tried to inspire the country with the old democratic ideal of government spending to help the poor and disadvantaged
32:38tonight i want to talk with you about what government can do because i believe government must do more
32:47to put people to work now to create a half a million jobs jobs to rebuild our highways and airports to
32:53renovate housing to bring new life to rural communities and spread hope and opportunity among our nation's
32:59youth healthcare reform sounds like a great idea to me well i know but some of these details sure scare the
33:04heck out of me like what well like at the start of the clinton administration many of us including i believe
33:12president clinton himself reverted back to an older tradition tried to lift the public to talk about genuine
33:20ideals beyond the individual and that reform agenda being not only universal health care and child care
33:27and dealing with the widening inequalities in our society and homelessness many things that many
33:35citizens just particularly middle-income citizens didn't want to deal with but the suburban voters who
33:42had been promised tax cuts were not inspired by bill clinton's vision they felt betrayed and wanted revenge
33:48their opportunity came in 1994 with the congressional elections the republicans led by newt gingrich
33:59promised huge tax cuts and to dismantle the welfare system the voters who had defected to clinton
34:06switched sides yet again and the republicans won both houses of congress in a landslide
34:10in a landslide well i think it's a tremendous vote in favor of smaller government lower taxes and in
34:16a sense uh renewal of the thatcher reagan tradition and i think in that sense it's pretty decisive it
34:22means that the welfare state is going to be less hospitable for people who are not willing to take
34:27responsibility for their own situation no question about it i think this is today is the beginning of the
34:33the end of the welfare state for clinton it was a disaster faced with a hostile congress there was no
34:40way for him to get his reforms through his personal popularity plummeted and it seemed certain he would
34:46not be re-elected in two years time in desperation and without telling his cabinet clinton turned for
34:53help to one of america's most ruthless political strategists dick morris what did he want you to do save
35:01his butt clinton was in serious trouble uh he had lost the 94 election he had lost control of congress
35:10and he hired me to come back and help save him so he was basically asking me to perform roughly the
35:15same role as a life preserver what if you're drowning what maurice told clinton was that to win re-election
35:23he would have to transform the very nature of politics the crucial swing voters in the suburbs now
35:29thought and behaved like consumers the only way to win them back was to forget all ideology and
35:36instead turn politics into a form of consumer business clinton must try to identify their personal
35:43desires and whims and then promise to fulfill them if he followed those consumer rules they would follow him
35:52i said that i felt the most important thing for him to do was to bring to the political system the same
35:57consumer rules philosophy that we that the business community has because i think politics needs to be as
36:06responsive to the whims and the desires of the marketplace as businesses uh and it should needs
36:12to be as sensitive to the bottom line profit so votes as a business is i think that all of this involves
36:20it's really a changed view of the voters so that instead of treating them as targets you treat
36:26them as owners instead of treating them as someone it's something that you can manipulate you treat
36:32them as something you need to learn from and instead of feeling that you can stay in one place and you
36:37can manipulate the voters you need to learn what they want and move yourself to accommodate it
36:43to get inside the minds of the swing voters morris brought lifestyle marketing into politics for the
36:50first time he went to one of america's most prominent market research firms called penn and shurn
36:56and commissioned what they called a neuro personality poll
37:02it was a massive survey of hundreds of thousands of voters
37:06but the only political questions it asked were to find out whether someone was a swing voter or not
37:11or not or not or not all the other questions were intimate psychological ones designed to see
37:17whether swing voters fell into identifiable psychological types well we were asking people
37:23like um you know do you think you're the life of the party uh do you think uh when you when you see
37:30things that uh you like to have a list and organize them uh do you uh do you typically uh you know try to
37:37plan things ahead or do you like to be more spontaneous where do you like to go what sports
37:44do you like to play what would you do with your spouse in a romantic weekend so we were asking people
37:50some very personal questions about their own lives to try to see were the kinds of people that were likely
37:55to change their vote also possessing of certain kinds of personality traits and in fact they were
38:04the neuro personality poll allowed the clinton team to segment swing voters into different lifestyle
38:12types they were given names like pools and patios or caps and gowns who were urban intellectuals
38:19living in university towns from this the team could identify ways in which they could make individuals
38:26feel more secure in their chosen lifestyles just as business had learned to do with products
38:31politics dick morris called it small bore politics tiny details of people's lives and personal anxieties
38:39which politics never even thought about or noticed before but which now have become the key to winning
38:45power it was an america that focused on day-to-day practical concerns should i wear seat belts should i stop
38:56smoking uh should i wear a school uniform uh is my neighborhood being protected it was a not so much
39:06a new individualism as the social order as we have known it had broken down so we got into people's heads
39:13understood their psychology about lifestyle about values what they thought was important what issues
39:19they wanted politicians and particularly the president to address and these issues proved to be very very
39:24different from what the conventional wisdom had suggested as the election campaign began clinton
39:30revealed morris's new approach to a shocked white house all traditional policies were to be dropped
39:37instead he would concentrate exclusively on policies that targeted the worries of the swing voters
39:43v-chips would be fitted into televisions to prevent children from watching pornography
39:47and mobile phones would be fitted into school buses to make parents feel more secure
39:54dick morris also persuaded the president to spend his leisure time in the same way as particular
39:59groups of swing voters he sent clinton on a hunting holiday dressed in exactly the gore-tex
40:05outfits a group called big sky families liked the aim was to reflect swing voters lifestyles back to them
40:12the liberals in clinton's cabinet hated this approach i would say well dick why have a campaign
40:20this was the 1996 campaign if all the president is going to do is offer up these little bite-sized
40:26miniature initiatives that appeal to people's uh desires uh like consumers buying soap v-chips that you
40:33could put in your tele televisions so you could make sure that your children did not have pornography
40:39and and school uniforms why talk about them they're they're so mundane and they're so tiny
40:45and he would say back if we don't do this we may not get re-elected uh and i would say what's the
40:51point of getting getting re-elected if you have no mandate to do anything when you're re-elected
40:55and he'd say what's the point of having a mandate if you can't get re-elected
40:58isn't the ultimate goal getting re-elected but morris's new politics were an extraordinary success
41:08clinton's ratings among the swing voters began to soar and dick morris along with the marketeer mark
41:14penn took effective charge of making white house policy mark penn set up a huge call center in an
41:21office block in denver and every night hundreds of telephone operators called swing voters in suburbs
41:28across the country to check with them every detail of policies that clinton was proposing
41:35the policy was made by a group of people manning telephones in denver colorado placing calls to
41:42voters in places like westchester and uh pasadena and asking them what they wanted from their government
41:50and asking them very specifically about specific policies that bill clinton was considering would you
41:55be more likely to support him if he offered this particular government service or if he offered
42:00that one those people told them what they thought mark penn transmitted that to bill clinton and it came
42:05out of his mouth so essentially it was suburbanite voters suburban voters in the 90s were creating
42:13american domestic policy and some of its foreign policy as well
42:17uh yeah mark penn was polling on questions like whether we should bomb in bosnia things like that
42:25maurice also insisted that clinton make a symbolic sacrifice of the old politics to convince the swing voters
42:31to trust him in august 1996 clinton signed a bill which ended the system of guaranteed help for the poor and unemployed
42:40welfare would be cut back after two years in order to force people into work the new system was called
42:47welfare to work and would he said be a hand up not a handout
42:55it was the effective end of the guaranteed welfare system created by president roosevelt 60 years before
43:02for many in clinton's cabinet it was also the end of the progressive political ideal
43:08that roosevelt had represented the belief that one used a position of leadership to persuade the
43:14voters to think and behave as social beings not as self-interested individuals
43:21dick morris and the pollsters had won and by that i mean that the people who ultimately got to the
43:29president shaped the president's mind were those who viewed the voters as just a collection of
43:37individual desires that had to be catered to and pandered to it suggests that democracy is nothing
43:43more and should be nothing more than pandering to these unthought about very primitive desires
43:53primitive in the sense that they are not even necessarily conscious just what people want in terms of
43:59satisfying themselves and the same triumph of the politics of the self was about to happen in britain too
44:12in 1994 tony blair had become the leader of the labor party and the reforming group centered around
44:17peter mandelson became all-powerful
44:19the leader of the people who were to vote conservative and were considering voting
44:29labor and they wanted understood that they are financially pressed and that there are limits to
44:47uh the extent to which taxation can be improved they they think that crime is an issue that matters
44:52to them and should be uh respected they you know they want welfare to go to people who deserve welfare
45:00not to people um who do not this was seen of by many in the labor party as selfish i never saw that
45:06it was selfish i believe that you know a dad or a mom doing their best for their family isn't selfish
45:12they're just doing the best for their family and that's what people do
45:14a crackdown on those who make life hell in their local neighborhoods through noise or disturbance
45:19law and order is a labor issue today
45:24philosophy of campaigning is let's concentrate on swing voters let's focus group them to find out
45:32what they want and what will appeal to them and let's just relentlessly push those themes in the election
45:37something is happening to you after promising to put money in your pocket
45:47the conservatives are quietly taking it away philip gull was was crucial because he gave the raw material if
45:57you like for these politicians to do uh this kind of politics in that when he came up with stuff they'd follow
46:05it you know pretty much without exception blur himself would pour over these sort of 12 page memos
46:13and say well this is what we must do we want people to earn more to consume the good things of life we
46:20want people to pay lower taxes gordon brown says the labor government would hold the main tax rates
46:26unchanged the labor government will not increase the basic rate of tax
46:31i want to make it clear that i will not increase tanks in fact the labor party does stand for middle
46:38england those that aspire to do better to get on in life and be ambitious for themselves and their
46:43families will do better with labor groups of eight people drinking wine and nibbling you know cheerios
46:49um what they thought determined effectively everything that the labor party did
46:55and although those running the campaign like to portray the new approach as their invention
47:02it was in fact copied from the americans even down to the phrases that the american marketeers had tested
47:08on their swing voters peter mandelson and his team were in the united states watching what we did and
47:14copied almost verbatim our approach in their 1997 campaign the benefit system should be about giving
47:23people a hand up not just a handout mandelson's not a fool if he's anything he saw something that worked
47:31so why not do it and i can remember reading their manifesto and saying to myself they just took it
47:38like stock and barrel you know on one hand you're proud and on another hand you're a bitch and as in
47:45america labor was forced to drop policies that would not directly benefit the swing voters
47:51even if it meant sacrificing its fundamental principles the commitment to public control of
47:56industry which was enshrined as clause four of the party constitution was dropped the aim of clause four
48:04had been to use the collective power of the people to challenge the unfettered greed of business but now
48:10tony blair was faced with crucial voters who no longer saw themselves as exploited by the free market
48:16they saw themselves as individual consumers who were fulfilled and given identity by what business
48:23delivered them the new clause four promised not to control the free market but to let it flourish
48:29business is more powerful than government it is quicker it is more creative business is the lifeblood
48:37of the country from this come all the benefits that society needs employment investment i think frankly
48:45there is only one part of getting business right and that's new labor what new labor did suits people who
48:52exert power in society not through the political system or not through the democratic political
49:01system so it suits big business and it suits interest interest and it suits the status quo um you know
49:08those three things of course just off the top of my head being the things that the labor party is supposed
49:12to be you know a counter force too what that means is big business get to carry on exerting their power
49:20behind the scenes getting their way because there's no countervailing pressure countervailing pressure
49:25isn't going to come from you know eight people sipping wine in kettering here he goes turning an awful
49:31lot of other blue seats red as well
49:38very happy very relieved very exhilarating but those who masterminded labor's victory in 1997
49:45saw it as a triumphant vindication of a new form of democracy by understanding and fulfilling people's
49:52inner desires through the focus group they were giving power to individuals not treating them as faceless
49:58groups who were told by politicians what was good for them i don't believe i don't see the focus group as
50:07some marketing tool i see the focus group as a way of hearing what would people have to say
50:14and i see the focus group as a way to a new form of politics what the people give the people can take
50:24away we are the servants they are the masters now 1997 was i think fundamentally important in that i think
50:34it is the end the end of the uh elitist politics that's dominated britain for so much of the last uh
50:43hundred years
50:51in 1939 edward bernays sigmund freud's nephew created a vision of a future world in which the consumer
50:59was king
51:02it was at the world's fair in new york and bernays called it democracy
51:08it was one of the earliest and most dramatic portrayals of a consumerist democracy a society
51:14in which the needs and desires of individuals were read and fulfilled by business and the free market
51:22the world's fair created a spectacle in which all of these concerns were met and they were met by westing
51:29house and general motors and the american cash register company and company after company presented
51:35itself as the sort of centerpiece of a society in which human desire and human want and human
51:42anxiety would all be responded to and would be all be met purely through the free enterprise system
51:49there was this sort of notion that the free market was something that was not guided by ideologies or by
51:55political power it was something that simply was guided by the people's will
52:02this was the model of democracy that both new labor and the american democrats had bought into
52:07in order to regain power they had used techniques developed by business to read the desires of consumers
52:14and they had accepted bernays's claim that this was a better form of democracy
52:23but in reality the world's fair had been an elaborate piece of propaganda designed by bernays for his
52:29clients the giant american corporations
52:34privately bernays did not believe that true democracy could ever work
52:38work he had been profoundly influenced in this by his uncle's theories of human nature
52:45freud believed that individuals were not driven by rational thought but by primitive unconscious desires
52:51and feelings and bernays believed that this meant it was too dangerous to let the masses ever have control
52:58over their own lives and consumerism was a way of giving people the illusion of control
53:05while allowing a responsible elite to continue managing society
53:14it's not that the people are in charge but that the people's desires are in charge
53:20the people are not in charge the people exercise no decision-making power within this environment
53:26so democracy is reduced from something which assumes an active citizenry
53:32democracy to something which now increasingly is predicated on the idea of the public as passive
53:39consumers the public as people who essentially what you're delivering them are doggy treats
53:47the problem for new labor was that it believed the propaganda they took at face value the idea promoted by
53:54business that the systems invented to read the consumer's mind could form the basis for a new type of democracy
54:01once in power new labor tried to govern through a system that philip gould called continuous democracy
54:10but what worked for business in designing products led the labor government into a bewildering maze of
54:16contradictory whims and desires
54:20for much of labor's first term the focus group said that the railways were not a high priority
54:24and labor's policies faithfully reflected this but now those same groups are blaming the government for
54:31not having invested more money sooner in the railways
54:36the point about focus group politics is that there isn't one because people are contradictory and
54:41irrational and so you have a problem in terms of deciding what you're going to do if all you do is
54:48actually listen to a mass of individual opinions that are forever fluctuating and don't really have any
54:53coherence and crucially and not set in context so that's why people can say you know um i want lower
54:59taxes and better public services of course they do you know you say um do you want to pay more taxes to
55:06get better public services people are less sure they then don't believe that if they do pay more taxes
55:12they will be spent on better public services so you end up in this quagmire where you know the truth
55:16is a politician has to say look this is what i believe i believe that you should pay slightly more taxes
55:21to make better public services and i pledge that i'm confident enough to actually use that money
55:26wisely do you want that vote for me yes or no and that's what blur has failed to do tony burton around
55:32and sort of tries to feed back to them what they already believe and given what that what they believe
55:37is sort of a load of individual incoherent contradictory nonsense that's all he has to offer and then he
55:44wonders why people don't get him you know they don't get him is because they're looking for someone to do
55:48something that they can't do themselves which has actually come up with a coherent political opinion
55:52that they might have faith in new labor are faced with a dilemma the system of consumer democracy that
55:59they have embraced has trapped them into a series of short-term and often contradictory policies
56:06there are now growing demands that they fulfill a grand division that they use the power of government
56:11to deal with the problems of growing inequality and the decaying social fabric of the country
56:16but to do this they will have to appeal to the electorate to think outside their own self-interest
56:24and this would mean challenging the now dominant freudian view of human beings
56:28as selfish instinct-driven individuals which is a concept of human beings that has been fostered
56:34and encouraged by business because it produces ideal consumers
56:38even though we feel we are free in reality we like the politicians have become the slaves of our own desires
56:51we have forgotten that we can be more than that that there are other sides to human nature
56:57fundamentally here we have two different views of human nature and of democracy you have the view
57:06that people are irrational that they are bundles of unconscious emotion that comes directly out of freud
57:17and businesses are very able to respond to that that's what they have honed their skills doing that's what marketing
57:23is really all about what are the symbols the music the images the words that will appeal to these unconscious feelings
57:32politics must be more than that politics and leadership are about engaging the public in a rational
57:43discussion and deliberation about what is best and treating people with respect
57:50in terms of their rational abilities to debate what is best if it's not that if it is
57:57freudian if it is basically a matter of appealing to the same basic unconscious feelings that business appeals to
58:05then why not let business do it business can do it better business knows how to do it business
58:10after all is in the business of responding to those feelings
58:19i see trees of green
58:24red roses too i see them bloom for me and you and i think to myself
58:34what a wonderful world
58:44i think to myself
58:46what a wonderful world
58:54oh yeah
58:58oh
59:05oh
59:07oh
59:09oh
59:11oh
59:13oh
59:15oh
59:17oh
59:19oh
Recommended
58:53
|
Up next
58:57
56:24
23:10
25:12
24:41
46:21
46:04
25:36
59:02
59:01
59:00
41:39
55:35
55:05
25:00
1:24:33
1:24:48
59:00
25:06
1:24:49
24:17
Be the first to comment