ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the genealogy of propaganda and public relations back through the political economists Adam Ferguson and Ferdinand Tönnies and the French royalists Hippolyte Taine and Ernest Renan. The lineages of thought and politics that extend between these thinkers and propaganda are important on at least four grounds. First, these lineages give to propaganda the idea that the economic and political relations of liberalism are responsible for the destruction of the traditional social order and creating a power vacuum has left the publics unguided, confused, and highly suggestible. Second, as a result of the degradation of traditional authority and its replacement by the naked self-interest of capitalism, a host of unsavory and destructive agents have stepped in to fill the leadership void. Third, the lack of order and the infiltration of destructive social leaders is driving society to revolution and self-implosion. Finally, a transformation in the leadership is needed to take place to prevent the end of civilization. These four ideas would be drawn upon and transformed in propaganda to produce the need and justification for a new business elite to take up the government of the publics through propaganda and public relations, not just to improve their businesses but to save civilization itself.
