#anna mccarthy

But generally, if the concept of "the people" entered into postwar citizenship talk, it was only to embody anticollectivist values. The Advertising Council’s People’s Capitalism project, for example, co-sponsored with the State Department, invoked "the people" as a tool for teaching the moral and ethical dimensions of capitalism at home and abroad. As one of its participants explained, American capitalism worked for the people "by enlarging the freedom of the individual and extending his potentialities." As a result, "the alertness and self-assertiveness of . . . citizens will contribute to the development and maintenance of free government in the world." People’s capitalism, from this perspective, was not a contradiction but the ultimate embodiment of democratic ideals.