The Ideology of  Cultural  Development:
Theoretical foundations for research and action on
communications

Brian M Murphy

The United Nations Education Science and Cultural  Organization  (UNESCO) is on
the verqe of instituting a global  communications programme which could have a
nrofound effect upon the practice and use of media and culture throughout the
world - most particularly underdeveloped  regions like southern Africa.

At the end of t981  international  bureaucrats met in Mexico  City to put finan-
cial flesh on the bones of an 'International  Programme for Development
Communications'  (IPDC).  The programme has, as a minimum  requirement, re-
sponsibility for assisting Third World nations to construct media  structures
which accurately reflect the cultural aspirations of their people while main-
taining, on behalf of furious representations from Western  states, a 'free
and balanced flow' of information and culture throughout each region.

As in the case of many other, lofty international  pronouncements  the aims of
the IPDC are burdoned with compromise.  At national and local  levels the
temptation will be to dismiss the IPDC as yet another statement of good in-
tentions far from the realities of 'on the ground1  cultural  activities. How-
ever, these temptations should be resisted.  Already  groups, agencies and  in-
stitutions concerned with the role of media in development have taken up the
ideals expressed  through the IPDC.  They are lining up new kinds of programmes
for the training of journalists, the use of the media in adult education and
agricultural'extension, and the construction of local  media networks which
aim at giving expression to the cultural  interests and information requirements
of people at the base of developing societies.

The fact that these programmes will, through the IPDC, have access to pre-
viously unavailable funds means that there will be a sea change in the orien-
tation of many national communications structures.  Whether these changes will
benefit  'grass roots' populations or simply provide a new source of capital
and expertize to local elites for an extension of repressive national com-
munications systems will depend a lot on the ideology  underpinning  IPDC
operations.

IPDC is the result of a ten year investigation of national and international
communications, sponsored by UNESCO, which culminated in the 484 page Final
Report of the International'Commission for the Study of Communication Problems.
Fifteen commissioners  under the Chairmanship of Ireland's former Foreign
Minister, Sean McBride, brought together specific  research  reports from
media analysts located throughout the northern and southern  hemispheres.
The evidence provided by many of the reports draws attention to the role of
information in society.  Their conclusions hinge on two opposed  interpreta-
tive ideologies:  functionalism and historical  materialism.

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It is the purpose of this review essay to highlight  these  ideologies  by
examining  the critique  of both offered  by Armand  Mattelart, one of the
researchers whose work  is included  in the McBride Report, and  to use this
critique  to characterise  the approach of two major exponents  of  these
ideologies:  Rosemary  Righter and Anthony  Smith.

Mattelart and Siegelaub present a compendium  of critical  studies which, they
say, are united  in the aim of "dismantling  or merely  describing  the mechanisms
of the bourgeoise's  ideological  domination  to reveal  levels of critical  con-
sciousness which  in turn, represent  levels of resistance  to the status quo" (1).
At the outset, Mattelart warns  that the current  ideological  confrontation
between  functional ism and historical  materialism obscures  the fact  that there
are actually  two major  'factions' operating  at the level  of analysis.  One,
dependency  theory, has been embraced  by revisionist  researchers  and  is largely
incorporated  into  the McBride report presenting  a  'neo-Marxist'  perspective
on culture.  The other, which draws on  a classical  Marxist  tradition  em-
phasising  base-superstructure  relations within  and  between  societies  has been
pushed to the edge of the  international  literature on  communications.

First, the book  offers a section devoted  to the  'Bourgeois  Ideology  of Com-
munication1  where  prejudice  presumption, and authoritarian  inclination  of
functionalism  is documented, particularly  in relation  to communications in
development.  The history of functionalism  in communications  is traced  to its
origination  as a  'theraputic and operational' adjunct of psychology  aimed
at the construction  of ever more efficient one-way  relationships  between
message  transmitters  and passive audiences within  the commercial  marketplace.
In another essay, Marshall  McLuhan's analyses are said  to be  "prophetic
doctrines" creating  a sensational  techno-determinist  "meta-language" whose
messianic character  supports the confirmation  of bourgeois  social  super-
structures as the end-point of history.  By accepting  as the centre of their
s.tudy 'accomodation' and  'control  analysis', functionalists  limited  sociology
in all  its spheres  to the simple quantification  of processes and effects with-
in societies  leading  to  'solutions' essentially  irrelevant to actual  political,
economic or historical  conditions:

Since true history can only be  written  by analyzing  the  history
of crises, the  interpretations of social  processes and  phenomena
that may be offered  by bourgeois sociology are doomed  to remain
forever at the halfway stage  ...  (Therefore)  ...  these  sociologist's
encyclopedic  knowledge masks their incomprehension  of the inter-
play of social  forces, as well  as their structural  incapacity  to
apprehend  and  retain the decisive moments when the hegemony  of
a given class  is challenged (2).

Throughout the period when Western capital was establishing  its dominant inter-
national  position, and  particularly  in the post World War  II period when the
bourgeois  notion of progress became the de facto definition  of development
applied  to the Third World, functionalism travelled  as the core piece  of
cultural  baggage.  Mattelart offers Latin America  as a case study.  At the
beginning  of the  1960s three developments  brought a rise of interest  in
communication  studies:  expansion of television and  the creation of a market
for U.S. programmes;  emphasis on the  'diffusion of modern attitudes' in
rural  areas  in an attempt to turn peasants  into market oriented  farmers;
campaigns  for birth  control  and education  'up-grading'  in an attempt to
create a fundamental  pre-condition  for a transition from  latifundia  economics
to industrial  economics, allowing  the introduction  of multinational  manu-
facturing  concerns  and Western  style consumerism  urges.

The Processes and  Effects of Mass Communications, a bock edited  by the Americans

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Wilbur Schramm and Donald F Roberts, was  the bible of  this mission.  Trans-
lated  into Spanish, it became the guiding  text for journalism  and communica-
tions schools throughout the region.  "Books and manuals on  functional ism
were translated  by USIS (United States  Information  Service) and  thousands
were distributed  in the universities by the  U.S. embassies" (3).

In time  popular action against functionalist  inspired  development  policies
and  projects became widespread.  Peasant  revolts, ad hoc  strikes and liber-
ation movements grew out of a reaction against a quickly  evaporating  food
base, radical  reductions in living standards, growing  frustrations with
urban  industrial  wage slavery, and cultural  dysfunctions  caused by the
penetration of media encouraging consumer  accumulation.  Unable  to recog-
nize the structural  contradictions underlying  this social  disslocation  or
understand  the politisation  it occasioned, a generation of social  scientists
steeped  in functional ism offered treatisies  on how the situation might be
'controlled' or how the people caught up  in the process might accomodate to
their  inevitable position.  In more extreme  situations  functionalist socio-
logists have become experts in the methods of psychological  control,
propaganda and  "the semantics of violence" (4).

Protected  in their ignorance, from the stark  reality of oppression which  their
ideology  sustains, and resplendent in their occupation  of science, with  its
catchwords  'balance' and  'objectivity', Western media  sociologists  continue
.to work as ideologues on behalf of the state/capital  superstructure.  Most
recently they have engaged  in what they call  a  'rear-guard' action within the
communications and culture sector.  The  'challenge of the Third World" con-
tained  in the UNESCO  inspired debate is seen as a threat  to that cultural
freedom  insured through the capitalist  'market-place of  ideas' where social
balance us assisted by the mechanics of accomodation.  The argument turns on
the notion of the  'free flow of information'.  The social  scientists, believing-
information alone will  have a liberating  effect on individuals  requiring
'socialisation for development1, ignore the  integration and dominance of
Western media monopolies and their drive to turn all cultural  expression to
the replication of capitalist'values.

The most  recent'and potent expression  of this  ideology within  the  international
debate is set out by Rosemary Righter  in her book Whose News?  Politics, the
Press and the Third World.  Righter takes up a position within  liberal  demo-
cracy where the functionalist  ideology confers  neutrality  on the acts of
observation, description and elucidation.  Yet she  is plain enough about her
bias when she says:

Whatever there may be in the accusation  that  'the way mass
media deal with  issues impairs understanding, making  intelligent
decision - and policy - making  impossible, and precludes the
existence of an adequately  informed  participatory  democracy1,
the market system with all  its  imperfections  has a good  claim
to coming the nearest to doing  the job (5).

The book sets out the  'problem'  in narrow terms:  for generations the Western
liberal concept of press freedom has "matter-of-factly"  underwritten  the
service of democracy by mass media.  She  sees this as a  "non-ideological
purpose".  Now this definition  is challenged  by a strictly  ideological  notion
of communications  in society which  is held with  "evangelical" purpose.
Righter sets out to examine the pros and  cons of the arguments and  evidence
• by the Third World.  Righter finds that  there have, indeed, been  instances
of misrepresentation.  There has been an over-abundance  of American  content
in international  news.  Training does seem  to transnvit Western values and
•concepts  (all to the good, one expects  she  is saying).

69

On the other side, Righter says most  Third World governments are openly
totalitarian.  Any move to offer these regimes more control  over mass media
would create a dangerous situation  for journalists, media  institutions and
individual  citizens.

Well  meaning social  democrats who have advanced the dependency analysis are
seen as pons in the hands of hypocritical  tyrants and feudal  elites.  Marxists
are portrayed  as heartless manipulators ready to serve any faction bent on
the destruction of liberal  democracy.  Structural  and  ideological  analyses
which draw lines between Western capitalism and  the dominated  periphery by
examining  the  integrated apparatuses of state and  ideology are dismissed as
so much  "conspiracy  theory".

Instead  Righter points to the "fact" that "blanket criticisms of the free
market approach to information necessarily do not concern themselves with
the widely differing patterns of ownership"  (6).  She portrays a "diversified
condition of control  and competition" throughout Western nations where each
government insures there are no monopolies.  She goes as far to say that
because of the heavy responsibilities of public trust to ownership of mass
media many corporate citizens are making considerable sacrifices to take up
their role.

The pressures exerted  by the audience which may  "vote with  its pocket book"
creates an arena of competition  guaranteeing a media  responsive to the public
interest.  In the end, Righter agrees that certain  reforms within the system
could be useful.  But to allow governments and international  institutions the
power to make these reforms would be an unacceptable precedent.  Better to
allow the levelling  influence of the market and journalists themselves control
the affairs of the mass media.  It is a clear and seductive re-statement of
the Western mythology of individual  freedom, pluralism, and the  independence
of the press.  The concept of reform advanced  is particularist.  It seeks to
modify behaviour according to functionalist maxims and techniques.

This book has thrust Righter into the centre of the Western struggle to de-
flect the criticisms of current cultural  hegemony.  Operating from the pages
of the London Sunday Times as a specialist in North-South affairs and the
New International- Information Order and hailed as a  "voice of objective re-
sponsibility" by organs like the International  Press Institute  (London) and
the Columbia Journalism Review (New York) her notion of reform has come to
signify the "middle path" for embattled media multinationals  and  various
Western governments.

The fact that the United States, for one, has refused  to contribute funds to
the  IPDC and  is encouraging  'independent arrangements' for the development of
culture and communications projects' is a clear sign that the Western state/
capital  superstructure has rejected the conclusions of UNESCO's McBride report
and will  put its considerable economic might behind  'alternative plans' de-
signed to maintain dominance through the appearence of accomodation orches-
trated  by the ideology of reform contained  in the functionalist creed so
neatly outlined by Righter.

In rejecting, or at least by-passing, the blatant functionalist  hyperbole
of Righter et. al., McBride has accepted a body of work based on dependency
analysis which, according  to Mattelart, is so flawed  that plans  instituted
in its wake could  cause the very degeneration of communications  under
totalitarian control  envisaged by apologists for the multinationals.

Dependency analysis grew up amongst radical  economicts based  in Latin America
who viewed with alarm the failures of functionalist dominated  development

70

operations and sought a clearer explanation  of the structural  problems
affectinq nations in this region.  The analysis postulates a history of re-
lations between nations where, during the period of growth  and expansion of
capital ism, a condition of unequal  exchange came to characterise development.
In fact, as long as this condition of unequal  exchange existed, the nation
in the  'one down1  position would be  'underdeveloped'  in direct  ratio to the
appropriation  of surplus to the centre of the capitalist system from the
peripheral nation.

The researchers charted the history of these unequal  relations through various
staqes of colonialism and  'independence' to the present day.  They were able,
then  to look at each sector of social  process  in terms of the extent to which
that'sector is in a 'one down' relationship with outside forces and  is there-
fore being underdeveloped or is causing  underdevelopment.

In broad terms, the approach was expanded  into a viewpoint  from which one
miqht understand economic and social  interrelationships between nations and
population groups throughout the world.  In the area of communications and
culture the categories were applied to each stage  in the development of the
mode of communications production  (eg. telegraph, railroad, radio, television
etc).  In this way dependency analysis became a  'backdrop' to critical  studies
of the structural  role of international  media which was delivered  to UNESCO.

A number of major research reports and books have been forthcoming over the
past five years  (7).  One of the most recent inclusive of evidence which  sums
up the underlying  attitude of many decision-makers attached  to UNESCO has
been provided by Anthony Smith's The Geopolitics of Information; How Western
Culture Dominates the World.  Smith draws on content analyses from the 'quali-
tative' school  (developed alongside functional ism where empiricist  scientific
methodologies advise a technique for counting  simple recurrence) to prove
the complaints of bias within  international  news. 
He criticizes the myopia
of the liberal  "free market" definition of media  in society  saying that the
free market is now a single mass market which  has been exported  in tact to
the Third World under the guise of the "free flow of  information":

In practice what has happened  is that western economic models
have been introduced tieing the receiving  society ever closer
(but in a condition of dependence) to Western companies;  then
came the introduction of technology of a kind which  has rendered
the society  helplessly expectant  of Western cultural
content, which has in turn  'softened  up' the local  elites for
the further spread of Western economic  patterns.  The technology
has been offered  in a cool  value-free mood, but  it is quickly
•enveloped  in ideological  and political  clothing  of a kind re-
jected by many within the receiving countries (8).

But Smith says neo-colonialism, pre-meditated  or inadvertent, is only one aspect
of the case, and to overstate it would  be misleading.  He does not see cultural
domination as central  to the continuing  pre-eminence of the bourgeois  structure
of dominance.  Rather, the thrust to swamp all competition  is just as much a
product of the "natural  forces" of capitalism as of the "wish to colonise
culturally".  He seems to think the  two may be separated.  Smith concludes
that the multinationals move like "blind  elemental  forces" driven by one  impulse
- for growth and profits, a process separate from political  or ideological
motives.

Smith does not accept Righter's stereotyped  notion of Third World nations and
leaders.  He believes many of the administrators  in these newly  independent
states are searching for a specific cultural  identity.  They see the con-
tinuing Western bias iVi media as ethnocentric.  This drives them to

71

ethnic protectionism.  Smith clings to this  ideal  of cultural  repatriation
- a subtle  reworking of that liberal  pluralist  trend  towards  'community access'
in the media which  swept the Western world during  the 1960s and 70s and edu-
cated so many of those now populating charity based development agencies.

In the name of this social  democratic  ideal  Smith  is ready to support  structural
as well  as functional  re-alignments.  He leaves  the feeling  that by achieving
some sort of balance  it may be possible to accomodate  the aspirations of
national  cultures to the Western doctrine of  'a free flow of  information'.
Mattelart says  this trend  has two fatal  flaws.  First  it assumes that the
fundamental  contradiction  is in the  "international  division of labour"
between nations.  That  is, the equation  sets nations against nations without
reference to the complex  nature of all  these nations:

The integrating myth of the "global  village" has as a function
to level  out the particularities which are expressed  in each
social  formation  ...  In literature on this  theme there are
few analyses which are capable of explaining  how  imperialist
power works  in connection with  internal  bourgeoisies and the
local  ruling classes which  serve as its relay accomplice (9).

Small  wonder, then, that dependency analysis of communications  is the one
most preferred  by oligarchic  nation states.  Western analysts have, as
Righter shows, made this weakeness a central  plank  in their critique of the
McBride report and its recommendations.  They need  only say that obviously
oppressive governments cannot represent the people  in these nations to justify
the utter logic of a "free flow of information" offering  all  the people access
to "constructive democratic ideas".

Mattelart poses a different corrective.  He calls for a return to historical
materialism which offers a clear vision of base-superstructure relations.
Attention  to class formation within and between  societies would  allow re-
searchers  to see how, for example, the one way flow of wire service news not
only dominates  individual  Third World  nations, but how the information and
profits from that dominant form are shared out between capitalist classes
from the  'periphery' as well  as the centre.  Then  it would be clear that
access to international  media assists the continuing  hegemony of local  elites
- no matter which corporate form generates the structure.  In effect:

To pose the problems of imperialism  therefore means posing  the
problems of the classes which act as its relays  in these different
nations.  This also means treating  the question of the  relations
between  the local  ruling classes and the metropolis, and weighing
their degree of independence vis a vis the hegemonic power.  In
an era that abounds with denunciations of the multinationals, it
is urgent to analyze the notion of national  culture  ...  cultures
elaborated  and managed by the ruling classes of each nation (10).

This approach would  also return a historical  aspect to the materialism which
has become a fetish  in the hands of dependency analysts who derive their
position from an economic  interpretation of development essentially  incapable
of locating real  experience.  The interests of capital  do move  like "sharks"
searching out profits  in an almost blind elemental  contest  - as Smith-says.
However, these are not timeless  thrashings.  They are responses  conditioned
by a system, capitalism, which has evolved  its structure and content through
history.  Researchers who  ignore the historical  dimension of capitalism will
inevitably  risk missing  the central  importance of the state/capital  nexus
driven to maintain cultural  domination as a part of its survival  requirement
or fall  prey  to a series of conspiracy  theories  fed on the evidence of
financial  agglomeration.

72

To redress the balance, Mattel art and Siegelaub provide a complete  section
in their book which draws together exerpts from Marx, Engles, Gramsci  and
Mao.  The te;• \s are marshalled  to show not only that any materialist  inter-
pretation of culture fails if it does not place base-superstructure  relations
at its centre but that many  recent Marxist analyses  have erred  by according
a simple economic determinism to this relationship.  The  base-superstructure
relation  in communications must be seen as part of a rich and complex  evolving
historical  condition portrayed  as much  in the  ideological  nature of the modes
of cultural  transmission as the structure of their role  in society

Central  to the study of communications  from this perspective, particularly  in
an era when new technologies and combinations of capital  make mass  audience
media a part of everyday  life in all  its stages of development, is a clear
perspective on the relation between communications  and  the domonant super-
structure.  Capitalism came of age during  the post feudal  confirmation  of
mercantile monopolies.  The superstructure! ambience of the dominant capita-
list class led it to direct the state towards the protection  of the monopoly
market system, making that the centre of  its material  survival.  The  ideology
attending the growth of the capitalist  system held as  its core mythology  the
freedom of the individual  in the marketplace:

This principle of individualism, of fragmentation, is the very
basis for the ideological  disorganization  of the oppressed
classes which  is needed by the ruling  classes  if they are to
impose their hegemony  ...  The forms of transmitting  reality,
the very concept of  information  in capitalist  society  must
reproduce this principle (11).

These forms are culture and communications.  They are one component within  the
material  structure of the ideological  superstructure.  Therefore  the matrix  in
which the mass communications network develops  is underwritten  by the network
of commodity exchange relations protected  by the state  superstructure  through
its own material  structure.  From this  vantage research  into  communications
which accepts uncritically  the superstructural  position of the dominant  ideo-
logy and  ignores the dialectical  relationships  between  base and  superstructure
in any historical  period cannot hope to unveil  the complex  patterns of cultural
reproduction contingent upon domination.

This failure to grasp the structure of historical  reality may be seen as en-
demic to both functional ism and dependency  analysis, turning  the second to-
wards reformist policies  inevitably  supporting  the hegemony of the first.

Mattelart singles out a second flaw  in modern materialist  studies of communi-
cations, of which Smith  is a lesser example.  This  fissure  grew out of an
attempt to locate the process of ideological  transmission  and  impregnation.
Researchers  looking at the content of media and culture  sought out a more
effective means of locating meaning  than the  'quantitative' method  of counting ac-
crued  information.  Rejecting a simplistic  'score card'  identification  of
common topics and stereotypes  they focussed  on the  "production of discourse"
- common themes repeated over and over within the process of communicating.
For analytical  tools they drew on Marxist-oriented  studies of  linguistics
and semiology, particularly  the work of Roland  Barthes, Julia Kristova  and
Christian Metz.  In time the methodology  thus constructed  was used by de-
pendency theorists looking at international  media  and  became the basis for
many of the content' analyses appearing within and alongside  the McBride report,
report.  These theories of language and knowledge  draw heavily on the Marxist
epistomology developed  by Louis Althusser.  Fundamentally  the  AlthusseHan
concept of knowledge calls for the application  of materialist  categories
to a piece of intellectual  evidence.

73

However, Althusser has been criticised by Marxists convinced  of the need to
see ideological  formulations as "reflections" (Lenin) of dynamic material
interactions between  infrastructure  (base) and  superstructure.  The Althus-
serian semiologists are accused of divorcing  intellectual  behaviour from on-
going social  reality so as to artificially  'freeze' moments of discourse,
categorize  them and then draw generalizations.  Mattelart calls this a
dangerous trend  towards "formalism" which  has become particularly self-
defeating  in the area of film studies.  There

the over development of the narrative theory, of the analysis of the
production of discourse, and the sanctification of language may
also be viewed as other examples of a tropism which has drawn the
study of communication towards the literary field (12).

Evidence of  ideological  penetration and manipulation  in peripheral  regions
presented to UNESCO in this format have been ridiculed by functionalists as
ridicuously  narrow.  For every  ideological  'theme' said by Althusserians to
prove a general  case, the functionalists can provide a wide variety of
quantitative content analyses showing Western media adequately  'covering'
specific Third World  issues.  Mattelart's antidote for this problem  is to
get researchers out of universities.  He says the abstractions of Althusserean
Marxism have developed because the universities of the bourgeois West are "less
and less in touch with national  reality defined  in terms of classes" (13).
Universities within capitalism are charged with the construction and main-
tenance of bourgeois ideological  hegemony.  Marxist's caught in this system
are reduced to mimicing the functionalist "micro-analysis" of social behaviour.
According to Mattelart, conducting research  into communications within this
environment can produce "a counter-facination with  power" which will  actually
"re-validate the myth of imperialism's omnipotence and omniscience" (14).
In effect, then, the materialist notions of content, as well  as structure,
operated by dependency analysts like Smith  lead to a  'neo-Marxism' which
underwrites the authority of the state and the supremacy of the distant
'expert'.

Seen  in this  light, the reformism recommended by the McBride report and the
construction of the IPDC will achieve little more than another wrinkle in
the already complex development equation.  Development professionals with
a new source of funding will  arrive in Third World countries  in ever larger
numbers to assist  'national  development policies' which do not confront
structural  contradictions at their root but simply re-work an original
functionalist concept of communications spear-heading  the  'trickling down'
of  innovations from the  'top' or  'most advanced  sector' of society.

To break this vicious  circle Mattelart and Siegelaub enlarge or. their call
for a return to fundamentals of historical  materialism.  Class domination
through control  of state and ideological  superstructures is exactly that -
domination.  There are dominated classes and they have within  themselves
the ability to react to domination by creating their own consciousness,
their own ideology and their own media of communication for their culture.
For example, while functional ism was creating a theory and methodology for
using communications to assist development these very actions created a
backlash against the integrated economic and ideological  oppression
orchestrated  by capitalist liberal  ideology:

The meaning of the message is not limited to the stage of trans-
mission.  The audience may also produce its own meaning.  The
class consciousness and social  practice of the listener-reader-
spectator either allows him or her to accept or reject the inexor-
able, totalitarian effect of the message, its McLuhanian  fascination

74

Therefore a dominant message may have the opposite  effect of

what is intended, and may be returned  to the sender  ...  In the
hierarchy of struggles, this form of defensive resistance guaran-
tees, prepares and supports other responses to the hegemonic
culture, which constitutes an offensive  resistance.  Through
this resistance, the popular movement, based on various  levels
of consciousness attained  in its reality, engenders  its own
communications networks for defending  its interests (15).

To prove this Mattelart and Siegelaub have peppered  the book with documentation
of popular media growing out of reaction to dominant structures of communica-
tions and culture throughout the Third World.  Here, says Mattelart, is the
true development media.

In these struggles, during the 1960s and  '70s, it was crucial  to:

determine the class character of the so-called  'mass culture', and
and to evaluate the degree to which the different genres and
other divisions characterising  the mode of production of the
dominant messages  (comics, magazines, television etc) in the
existing society could be used  in another definition of social
relations with the reader or television viewer.  Finally, it
was important to detect the concrete alternatives  for popular
power which had started to germinate precisely  in this area,
the communication front of the cultural  battle (16).

Now the battle has shifted to the international  institutional  sphere.  Mat-
telart says the lessons of the '60s and  '70s should  help Third World  peoples
from "the framework for the construction of a popular alternative  in each
nation"  (17).  In many cases this infers a revolutionary  class  confrontation
within these nations where the national  and  international  state/capital  super-
structure must be located and defeated  in all  sectors  including communications.
There are evolving situations where this has or is happening  and special
documentation of these events  is left to a second  volume  in preparation by
the authors.

In the meantime there is urgent need for analysis of  the military aspects
of intelligence systems for, according  to the case studies which  complete
this volume, the capitalist system is moving  its  ideological  apparatus in-
creasingly in support of the most repressive aspects of  the state as
economic confusion and depression deepens within  capitalism.

In fact, the editors draw special  attention to studies on  the role of national
media under Fascism and of the forgotten contribution of  functional ism to
military intelligence because they feel  this  is the direction Western
influenced nations will move during the next twenty years.  It is a study
of direct relevance to southern Africa where the current  international
development thrust, tinged as it is with  reformism, will  leave unchallenged
the politico-military hegemony operated from Pretoria which  aims to
appropriate cultural expression  in favour of the latent transmission of
its Fascist ideology.

Notes and References

1.  Mattelart, A. and Siegelaub, S.  1979:  Communicazion  and Class struggle,

Vol. 1:  Capitalism, Imperialism. IHMRC, Paris, p. 23

2.  Ibid. p. 55
3.  Ibid. 31

75

4. 

5. 

6. 
7. 

8. 

For a clear and chilling  documentation of the contribution  of American
communications  professionals  to the spread of authoriterian  ideology
within Third World states developing modern fascism, see.Chomsky, N.
and  Herman, E.S.  1979:  The Washington Connection and Third World
Fascism:  The Political Economy of Human Rights.  (In two volumes).
Spokesman  Books, Nottingham.  In Chapter 3 (Title:  Benign  Terror),
under the section headed  "The Semantic Terror and  Violence" the authors
give just one example of how  'liberal' researchers  operate within the
structure of Western politico-military  power when they quote from a
USAID report.  USAID, the USA's major  'soft' aid agency  is deeply in-
volved  in communications  and culture projects throughout  the Third  World
including Africa:  "An AID report of 1970, for e»mple, refers to the
improving  capability of the South Vietnamese  police, then very possibly
the most extensive employers of torture in the world, as  'preventing  the
spread of violence'.  And  the 1967  'moderate scholars' statement on
Asian policy, sponsored by Freedom House (Freedom House is one of the
major Western  contributors  to the UNESCO  'debate' on  communications)
defended  the US assault on Vietnam and  passed in silence over the mass
slaughters  in Indonesia, referring delicately only to  'dramatic changes'
there as encouraging  ..."  (see p. 86).
Righter, R.  1978:  Whose News?  Politics, the Press and the Third World.
Barnet Books, London, p. 80
Ibid. p. 80
The two widely acknowledged  experts  in the field, who manage at least
one publication a year on the subject are Kaarle Nordinstreng  and Hil-
bert Schiller, but there are many others.  The best running  bibliography
on the whole area, titled Marxism and the Mass Media  is regularly pub-
lished by the International  Mass Media Research Centre.
Smith, A.  1980:  The Geopolitics of Information:  How Western Culture
Dominates the World.  Faber and Faber, London, p. 64
Hattelart and Siegelub op. ait. pp. 41 and 24

9. 
10.  Ibid. p. 59
11.  Ibid. p. 45
12.  Ibid. p. 29
13.  Ibid. p. 30
14.  Ibid. p.58
15.  Ibid. pp. 27-28
16.  Ibid. p. 33
17.  Ibid. p. 35

The three Books Reviewed are:

Mattelart, Armand, and Siegelaub, Seth.  1979:  COMMUNICATION AND CLASS
STRUGGLE, VOL 1:  CAPITALISM, IMPERIALISM.  Published  by the  International
Mass Media  Research  Centre, 173 ave. de la Dhuys, 93170 Bagnolet, France;
Righter, Rosemary.  1978:  WHOSE NEWS?  POLITICS, THE PRESS AND THE THIRD
WORLD.  Barnet Books, London;  and
Smith, Anthony.  1980:  THE GEOPOLITICS OF INFORMATION:  HOW WESTERN CULTURE
DOMINATES THE WORLD.  Faber'and  Faber, London.  Represented  in South Africa
by MacMillan

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