MIND INDUSTRY
101
it is valid for all human history ever since the division of labor came
into being, it could not be formulated before the times of Karl Marx.
In a society where communication was largely oral, the dependence of
the pupil on the teacher, the disciple on the master, the flock on the
priest was taken for granted. That the few thought and judged and
decided for the many was a matter of course and not a matter for
investigation. Medieval man was probably otherdirected to an extent
which our sociology would be at a loss
to
fathom. His mind was, to
an
enormous degree, fashioned and processed from "without." But the
business of teaching and of indoctrination was perfectly straightfor–
ward and transparent - so transparent indeed that it became invisible
as a problem. Only when the processes which shape our minds became
opaque, enigmatic, inscrutable for the common man, only with the
advent of industrialization did the question of how our minds are
shaped arise in earnest.
The mind-making industry is really a product of the last hundred
years. It has developed at such a pace, and assumed such varied forms,
that it has outgrown our understanding and our control. Our current
discussion of the "media" seems to suffer from severe theoretical limita–
tions. Newsprint, films, television, public relations tend to be evaluated
separately, in terms of their specific technologies, conditions and pos–
sibilities. Every new branch of the industry starts off a new crop of
theories. s Hardly anyone seems to be aware of the phenomenon as a
whole: the industrialization of the human mind. This is a process which
cannot be understood by a mere examination of its machinery.
Equally inadequate is the term
cultural industry
which has become
common usage in Europe after World War II. It reflects, more than the
scope of the phenomenon itself, the social status of those who have
tried to analyse it: university professors and academic writers: people
whom the power elite has relegated to the reservations of what passes
3. A good example is the current wave of McLuhanism. No matter how
ingenious, no matter how shrewd and fresh some of this author's observa–
tions may seem, his understanding of media hardly deserves the name of
a theory. His cheerful disregard of their social and political implications
is pathetic. It is all too easy to see why the slogan "The medium is the
message" has met with unbounded enthusiasm on the part of the media,
since it does away, by a quick fix worthy of a card-sharp, with the ques–
tion of truth. Whether the message is a lie or not has become irrelevant,
since in the light of McLuhanism truth itself resides in the very existence
of the medium, no matter what it may convey: the proof of the network
is in the network. It is a pity that Goebbels has not lived to see this
redemption of his
oeuvre.
