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=                        People's capitalism                         =
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                            Introduction
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::'Not to be confused with James S. Albus's economic concept known as
"Peoples' Capitalism".'
"People's capitalism" was an American propaganda meme popularized in
the mid-1950s as a name for the American economic system by the Ad
Council's Theodore Repplier. It was endorsed by President Dwight D.
Eisenhower for worldwide use by the United States Information Agency,
which employed the term to trumpet the successful aspects of the
American economy worldwide during the Cold War. The propagandists
depicted the United States as a classless society of prospering
workers versus societies of "slaves" in the Soviet Union and China.
Repplier had come to believe that capitalism had been marked by "an
unpleasant odor" and felt that an international campaign hailing the
American capitalist system was called for.

However, Repplier was not the actual inventor of the meme that the
United States had reached the ideal of classless existence. "Our
houses are all on one level, like our class structure", proclaimed a
1953 issue of the Hearst magazine 'House Beautiful'.

The propaganda campaign was first tested at an exhibition hailing the
progress driven by the "people's capitalism" in Washington, D.C. in
1956, contravening a purely formal ban on propaganda aimed at
Americans passed through the 1948 Smith-Mundt Act. The regime then
arranged for "people's capitalism" exhibits at international fairs
worldwide. The meme was concurrently picked up domestically by
supportive voices in the leading organs of the American press, who
praised the American system of "people's capitalism" in 'Life' and
'The New York Times'. The propaganda was not ignored in the Soviet
Union as a 1956 'Pravda' editorial by Dmitry Shepilov noted:


                             References
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* Castillo, Greg (2010).
[https://books.google.com/books?id=2gZxM4BdNIMC 'Cold War on the Home
Front: The Soft Power of Midcentury Design']. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press. .
* Hixson, Walter L. (1998).
[https://books.google.com/books?id=pnsqTtFxg2EC 'Parting the Curtain:
Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War, 1945-1961]. New York: St.
Martin's Press. .


                           External links
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* Preis, Art (Winter 1962).
[http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/preis/1961/05/myth.htm
"Myth of 'People's Capitalism'"] (Marxists Internet Archive).
'International Socialist Review'. 23:1. pp. 3-9.


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