On Edward Bernays's Engineering of Consent
After finishing the documentary “Propaganda: Manufacture of Consent” (Propaganda, 2020) and the article “Engineering of Consent” written by Edward Bernays in 1947, I have come to understand how the ruling class and the capitalists, of which Bernays faithfully served, have shaped public opinion in modern society.
What stands out immediately is the contradiction implied by the term “engineering of consent”. Linguistically speaking, “engineer” is a scientific process of external change and influence to generate a desirable goal, while “consent” suggests an autonomous, voluntary agreement of the subject. This term by itself carries lots of contradictions that cannot be resolved, which I’d further discuss.
Truthfully, I am impressed by Bernays’s skills in using scientific knowledge to shape the public ideology, but at the same time, disgusted because he used it in the service of the ruling class’s interest, leading to the struggle and oppression of millions of people all over the globe.
Edward Bernays was highly regarded as the inventor of modern Public Relations and a marketing genius in the 20th century (NYT, 1997). A nephew of Freud, Bernays studied the manuscript on human consciousness and unconsciousness. He later came up with the conclusion that it was the impulse and unconsciousness that dictate human behavior, thus one controls the unconsciousness, controls the action.
Bernays went further by studying “The Popular Mind” by Gustave Le Bon, which analyzed the characteristics of crowds. In his work, Le Bon affirmed Freud’s writings that the crowd is driven by “impulsiveness, irritability, incapacity to reason, the absence of judgement of the critical spirit, the exaggeration of sentiments, and others.” (Le Bon, 1992)
According to the documentary Propaganda, Bernays first tested this knowledge by working with the American Tobacco Company. During the 1920s, smoking was exclusively a man's activity. Wanted to profit off the untouched market of women, Bernays and the American Tobacco Company reframed the cigarette as a “Torch of Freedom” (McCutcheon, n.d) for women.
Freedom, a value once rooted in liberation and struggle, in concrete material conditions that were fought relentlessly by oppressed women all over the world, had been reduced to an aesthetic. The advertising campaign of Bernays painted the women who smoked as modern, intellectual, and empowering. To smoke is to be liberated from society! As a result, sales of tobacco went through the roof, along with lung cancers. Unfortunately, this wouldn’t be the first nor the last time the revolutionary values are being co-opted into commodities with an underlying agenda.
Proudly, after deceiving people about the cigarette and driving up the consumerism rate, Bernays was hired by the great USA government to work his magic and justify their upcoming imperialism and colonialism projects. The Vietnam War, the Iraq War, South American CIA-backed coups, and the ongoing genocide of Palestinians were just a few projects conducted by the US fascist regime to accumulate wealth and capital.
The propaganda not only reframed the violence and bloodshed of imperialism into “defense of democracy and freedom”, but also hid the financial motivations to gain the support of Western citizens. The entire people from the East were dehumanized in the process, reduced into “terrorists, savages, and barbarians”. All these process was exposed and criticized through Orientalism (Said, 1978), a book by Palestinian scholar Edward Said.
Entitled, proud, and unstoppable Bernays, for the first time, published “Engineering of Consent”, with the nuts and bolts of lying and deceiving the masses. He argued that the democratic leaders cannot wait for the masses to come up with the correct idea, but instead they must lead the masses toward their goals.
Communication, advertising, and legal institutions were used as tools to deceive the people. What terrified me the most was that this practice was built on the assumption that ordinary people were incapable of making decisions that were good for themselves, and therefore must depend on the great leaders. Ordinary people under capitalism were completely stripped of autonomy and treated without respect and rights.
Propaganda, in contrast to Social Investigation and Class Analysis (Manibat, 2024) - a Maoist practice to directly engage with the masses and fully subordinate to the public interest, strikingly exposed how little capitalism cares about the ordinary people and only feeds us consumption goods and sugar-coated ideas.
The modern manifestation of Bernays' practice, namely post-modernism and liberal ideas, is widely taught at universities and accepted by even the most progressive thinkers. For example, reframing sex work as empowering to women. This ignores the economic coercion that drives women into the industry due to not having their necessities met. It isn’t a choice if it is between doing sex work or starving. Unsurprisingly, big corporations like Pornhub that profit off sex workers and the vulnerable position of women are the ones that reinforce the narrative that hookup and sex work are empowering to women.
It blinds the masses of those who are in control of the means of production, not women nor marginalized communities within the sex work industry, and hides the coercive nature of sex work, thus giving people an illusion of empowerment through their bodies.
Instead of everyone uniting under the liberation of the working class, seizing the means of production, a lot of the feminist movement became superficial and harm-reduction only.
In conclusion, the public’s legitimate desire for dignity and freedom is redirected into consumerism or symbolic action that benefits those in power. This is Bernays’ method perfected: manufacturing a sense of autonomy while maintaining control.
Reading The Engineering of Consent makes it clear: ruling classes do not rely solely on violence to maintain power. They deceive the people, flooding society with messages that normalize exploitation and disguise it as freedom. Every day we participate in this system — working long hours for wages that barely sustain us, while the owners take home the surplus value of our labor. Consent is not freely given when the choices are engineered.
Sources:
Leipold, J. (Director). (2020). Propaganda: The Manufacture of Consent [Film]. Icarus Films. Copyright 2018.
Le Bon, G. (1992). Crowds, psychology, and politics, 1871–1899 (p. 130). Cambridge University Press.
Author Unknown. (1995, March 10). Edward Bernays, ‘father of public relations’ and leader in opinion-making, dies at 103. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/1995/03/10/obituaries/edward-bernays-father-public-relations-leader-opinion-making-dies-103.html
McCutcheon, J. (n.d.). Torches of Freedom Campaign. In American Women in Tobacco Advertisements, 1929–1939. Digital History – Histoire Numérique. University of Ottawa. Retrieved August 11, 2025, from https://omeka.uottawa.ca/jmccutcheon/exhibits/show/american-women-in-tobacco-adve/torches-of-freedom-campaign
Bernays, E. L. (1947). The engineering of consent. Retrieved from http://www.fraw.org.uk/data/politics/bernays_1947.pdf
Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. Pantheon Books.
Manibat, D. (2024, January 29). The Marxist framework and attitude on social investigation and class analysis. Material Journal. Retrieved August 11, 2025, from https://materialjournal.net/social-investigation-and-class-analysis/