gestion apparatus is at work with two purposes: first, to con-
stantly increase the individual's appetite for new commodities;
and secondly, to direct these appetites into the channels most
profitable for industry. Man is transformed into the consumer,
the eternal suckling, whose one wish is to consume more and
"better" things.

Our economic system must create men who fit its needs; men
who cooperate smoothly; men who want to consume more and
more. Our system must create men whose tastes are standardized,
men who can be easily influenced, men whose needs can be
anticipated. Our system needs men who feel free and inde-
pendent but who are nevertheless willing to do what is expected
of them, men who will fit into the social machine without fric-
tion, who can be guided without force, who can be led without
leaders, and who can be directed without any aim except the one
to "make good." ^* It is not that authority has disappeared, nor
even that it has lost in strength, but that it has been transformed
from the overt authority of force to the anonymous authority of
persuasion and suggestion. In other words, in order to be adapt-
able, modern man is obliged to nourish the illusion that every-
thing is done with his consent, even though such consent be
extracted from him by subtle manipulation. His consent is ob-
tained, as it were, behind his back, or behind his consciousness.

The same artifices are employed in progressive education. The
child is forced to swallow the pill, but the pill is given a sugar
coating. Parents and teachers have confused true nonauthori-
tarian education with education by means of persuasion and
hidden coercion. Progressive education has been thus debased.
It has failed to become what it was intended to be and has
never developed as it was meant to.

-xi-