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Introduction
[Advertising] like a pen […] serves the purposes of each hand that chooses to take it up. It can be handled skilfully as a rapier, clumsily as a bludgeon, deceitfully as a dagger, or lightly almost as a feather (Harris and Seldon, 1959, p. 79).
Advertising in a Free Society set out to produce a treatise of advertising as a key mechanism of free markets on behalf of the British think-tank the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA). Post-war Britain had transitioned out of a period of austerity towards an era of consumerism in the 1950s and had consequently witnessed a surge in advertising at levels not previously experienced. This resulted in growing criticism of its necessity and role in society, particularly by left-wing critics. Harris and Seldon’s thesis maintained that advertising played a crucial role in free markets, with the alternative being the perils of the state-planned economy where advertising was merely propaganda.
The origins of the IEA can be traced to the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) and Friedrich von Hayek, a key proponent of market libertarianism. The group comprised intellectuals, journalists and academics – including Karl Popper, Walter Lippman, Henry Hazlitt, Milton Friedman, George Stigler, Ludwig von Mises and Walter Eucken – and was conceived in Pèlerin, Switzerland, in 1947, concerned with the rise of socialism in the aftermath of the Second World War. Von Hayek (1944) (who later joined the board of the IEA) was particularly influential having wrote The Road to Serfdom, in which he warned that state-planned economies intruded into the lives of its citizens and resulted in state-sponsored domination. Von Hayek met and persuaded British businessman Antony Fisher (who was impressed by The Road to Serfdom) in 1945 to create a scholarly organisation with the goal of advancing free markets. Concerned with planned economies and the growth of left-wing politics in Britain after the Second World War, Fisher finally raised the money to found the IEA in 1955 and restructure it in 1957, with the partnership of Ralph Harris and Arthur Seldon. Fisher handpicked Harris (a lecturer at St Andrews) and Seldon (a journalist and former researcher at the London School of Economics) based on their energy and belief in free markets. The IEA ultimately became an...