Free Market Missionaries: The Corporate Manipulation of Community Values

S. Beder, University of Wollongong

Abstract

Throughout the 20th Century business associations and coalitions coordinated mass propaganda campaigns that combined public relations techniques developed in 20th Century America with revitalised free market ideology originating in 18th Century Europe. The aim was to persuade people that it was in their interests to eschew their own power as workers and citizens, and forego their democratic power to restrain and regulate business activity.

These campaigns have been augmented by those of corporate-funded think tanks in English speaking nations to promote free enterprise and business-friendly policies and by other strategies to encourage market-orientation such as the expansion of share ownership.

Today’s free market missionaries seek to change individual and institutional values using bolder strategies such as the expansion of share ownership and the manipulation of wider public concerns. In the end the outcome is the same, the triumph of business values over community values and the manipulation of democracy.