gat

in metaphor.) The rarely encountered 1923 edition had great influence on Walter Lippmann’s post-WWI generation,
and the triumphant final version of 1939, which is easiest to locate, on Roosevelt’s.
The Great Transformation_
One of the finest academic studies of the origins of our time and its economic antecedents is Karl
Polanyi’s The Great Transformation. Published in 1944, it has been kept in print ever since.
Polanyi’s explosive conclusion states unflinchingly that we must now become "resigned to the
reality of the end of our liberty." How did he figure this out in 1944? By extrapolation from the
track of modern history which he regarded as unidirectional and which teaches us that the end of
liberty is "a necessary evil." At the end of his book, Polanyi offers a perfect public relations
solution to the anguish of losing freedom. By cleverly redefining the word to mean "a collective
thing," the loss of liberty will not hurt so much, he says. This kind of therapeutic Newspeak has
been a dominant element in national life for most of the twentieth century, infecting every
schoolroom. Professional manipulation of attitudes by control of language and images, once the
stock in trade of a few men of bad character like Edward L. Bernays, is a common tool of
leadership. Polanyi’s wish for us to be deluded (in our own best interests) has become the daily
bread of everyone.
Walter Lippmann’s disrespect for commonality became official government policy during the
Franklin Delano Roosevelt years and has remained so ever since. One way to chart the
transformation is through the taxing power which should be seen as a way to diminish individual
choice in favor of bureaucratic choice. Prior to 1947, less than one twentieth of an average
income went for taxes, in 2004 the fraction is much, much larger. Some powerful dynamic now
works to take care of us as if we were permanent children. Think of forced institutional schooling
as the surgery where out dependency implants are first installed.
The political basis for the schools we have and for the politics of schooling we struggle against
was laid down just before the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk. Where we are today is a kind
of intertidal stage in which the last remnants of the historic American tradition are being set aside
to make way for a thoroughly planned global economy and society, an economy apparently
intended to be scientifically managed by a professional class of technicians at the bottom, a
professional proletariat of rootless, well-paid men and women in the middle, and a small group, no
more than 1 percent, of knowledgeable managers at the top.
Propaganda
To get where we got, public imagination had to be manufactured from command centers, but how
was this managed? In 1914 Andrew Carnegie, spiritual leader of the original band of hard-nosed
dreamers, gained influence over the Federal Council of Churches by extending heavy subsidies to
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