The Real Enemy?

That implacable leaper at conclusions, British Historian Arnold Toynbee, 72, now trains his erudition on a new target. He calls it "Madison Avenue"--by which he means not only U.S. advertising, but also the affluent society and much of U.S. business philosophy. In a remarkable, just published pamphlet--based on a speech delivered at Williamsburg, Va., in June--Professor Toynbee roundly condemns "Madison Avenue" as un-Christian and basically unAmerican.

"In the Western world of our day," says Toynbee, "the tempter's role is being played by everything we sum up under the name of Madison Avenue. A considerable part of our ability, energy, time and material resources is being spent today on inducing us to ... find the money for buying material goods that we should never have dreamed of wanting had we been left to ourselves."

Madison Avenue's first assault on human cupidity, Toynbee asserts, is by finesse. "The strategy is to try to captivate us without allowing us to become aware of what is being done to us. If this sly approach does not do the trick, Madison Avenue has further psychological weapons in its armory. If all else fails, it will resort to sheer bullying." Then Dr. Toynbee reaches a startling conclusion: "I would suggest that the destiny of our Western civilization turns on the issue of our struggle with all that Madison Avenue stands for more than it turns on the issue of our struggle with Communism."

The True End? Toynbee contends that Christ would have rejected "this skillfully engineered besetting temptation." So would the Founding Fathers, for "disposing of the maximum quantity of consumer goods was not the purpose of the American Revolution. What is more, it is not the true end of man." According to Toynbee, Madison Avenue is also unsound economically: "An economy that depends for its survival on an artificial stimulation of material wants seems un likely to survive for very long."

As an alternative, Toynbee proposes that the U.S. channel its wealth toward uplifting the world's hungry through more massive foreign aid. "Instead of spending our earnings on unwanted consumer goods for ourselves," he asks, "why not spend them on meeting the basic and pressing needs of the majority of our fellow human beings?"

By Bread Alone? This question--which Americans were debating long before Toynbee seized on it--ignores a worldwide phenomenon. What the world's masses, particularly in underdeveloped nations, now aspire to is not just a bare subsistence. Convinced by the U.S. ex ample that poverty is not an essential condition of human existence, men from Karachi to the Congo are demanding an affluent society for themselves and are working toward it.

Though U.S. admen admit that inexcusable waste and silly, shoddy products do exist in the U.S. marketplace, they insist that even the most sophisticated modern advertising cannot artificially create desires, but can only stimulate existing desires by telling people what goods can be had, what they are like, what satisfactions they bring. By so doing, the admen argue, their trade contributes to mass demand for products, mass employment, mass distribution and mass buying--all of which are essential elements in the creation of mass affluence. Madison Avenue's case for itself thus closely mirrors the case for free enterprise. It rests on the premise that men have a right to free choice, and given that choice will build themselves a better society than those who have their choices made by others, no matter how high minded.

A closer-to-home view of U.S. advertis ing came last week from Charles H. Percy, 41, socially aware chairman of Chicago's camera-making Bell & Howell Co. He urged businessmen to sponsor TV programs that contribute to the edification rather than the "stultification of the minds of our people." He suggested that advertisers stop sponsoring "stories of a Wild West that never was" and follow his own company's example by pumping their TV budgets into "controversial public-service programs." Said Percy: "While we recognize that the primary tasks of a business corporation are to provide goods and services and to make a fair profit, it is imperative in the face of the determined challenge from the Communist nations that the business community participate in and contribute to the leadership and education of the free world."

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