ABSTRACT
Since 1900, different schools of thought have emerged in the United States concerning the implications of propaganda for the rational-democratic society. The conversation among progressive propaganda critics, communication practitioners, rationalists, communication scientists, conservative humanists, and political polemicists reveals the panorama of American experience with and interpretation of mass persuasion. Although selectively remembered today, this dialectic provides an ideological critique that is not only powerful, but historically grounded in the vicissitudes of American culture. When fully recovered, the long-standing American dialogue on propaganda supplies a useful alternate vocabulary to Marxism for analyzing the diffusion of ideology through such ostensibly neutral channels of public communication as news, entertainment, government agencies, religion, and education.
