Advertising

"Advertising keeps the wheels turning" is a true, if trite slogan, for it is indeed upon advertising that the existence of modern Capitalist society depends. Status seeking, though "exposed" by authors like Vance Packard, continues unabated in a society oriented towards material possessions and money as the ultimate in objects of desire.

Advertising encourages people to buy things they have no real need of and even things which may actually be harmful to them, such as cigarettes. Cheap culture and ' good living" are peddled indiscriminately.

Business interests control much of the Press and other means of propaganda, as well as Advertising so that the need for material comfort, free enterprise and liberty, and the dangers of Socialism are dinned into a receptive public. It is generally considered that the Welfare State has gone "far enough", or even "too far" towards Socialization.

In fact, Socialism, as far as it has been carried in countries such as Britain and New Zealand, has served only to give a fillip to the Capitalist system.

So long as a reasonable degree of material prosperity continues, there seems little likelihood of change. To say that modern Capitalism "contains within it the seeds of its own destruction" is nonsense. The only immediate threat to its supremacy is an external one—that of International Communism.