ILLUSIONISM AND SOCIAL CONTROL: A STUDY OF CAPITALISM'S MENTAL MANIPULATION MAGIC
manipulation; social control; fetishism; mass psychology
Based on the assumption that human beings are not completely rational and are not immune to external influence, the intention here is to analyze the mechanisms that allow influencing behavior and, more specifically, those used in capitalism for the purpose of social control. From the concepts developed by Marx, Freud and their heirs of Critical Theory, the fundamentals of social manipulation and some characteristics of the subject of capitalism, a product of these subjectivity formation techniques, are presented. Allied to this, the very tools that allow the exercise of subjective control are analyzed. The thesis brings into question how advertising, based on the knowledge bequeathed by psychoanalysis, created a structure that made it indispensable for any enterprise and enabled the creation of a machinery to influence behavior. Furthermore, it also discusses how technology has updated manipulation mechanisms through new forms of advertising on social medias and the creation of a way of life based on technological rationality. In this way, the mechanisms of social control are examined, initially in their most fundamental aspects, and investigated in their unfolding, according to the evolution of capitalism.