I had this hanging on my bathroom door for years.

I have this hanging on my bathroom door now. :)

This image pops up a lot, but I've always wondered if it was meant to be serious. I understand that we live in an ironic age, but it's not like ironic, self-mocking and humorous ads didn't exist before the 1990s. As time passes and inside jokes lose their meaning, it gets harder and harder to correctly interpret texts with their original meaning and context intact. But, if it is serious, I think Gwen's on the right track for understanding it's meaning

I only wonder what anthropologists and historians a hundred years from now will think of Stephen Colbert. Will they be in on the joke too?

While it is hard to know for sure whether or not this is a joke, I'm inclined to think it is intended to be serious.

The possible threat of communism-- of an uprising of workers like those in Russia-- was a huge concern in post-WWI America (and then again in post-WWI McCarthyism). The the WWI-era Committee for Public Information (an independent agency set up by the government) mobilized propaganda techniques that were very new at that time (demonizing an enemy, like the Hun during WWI) and were based on the ideas of Edward Bernays, who saw the benefits in propaganda for both the government and for businesses. For Bernays, propaganda meant making people believe that they needed whatever it is you wanted them to buy (a new car, a war etc.) and to do this, public relations had to create a whole doctrine to make sense of the world for people. The threat of Bolshevism was often used by businesses during this time to advocate for consumerism-- the freedom we have as Americans to buy cars etc. (sound familiar?)

And when you take into account WWII posters created just a few years later by both the government (office of war information) and businesses (like Texaco), this washroom sign seems even less like a joke during the 1930s. WWII posters demonized the Germans and Japanese not only as a call to support war, but to encourage workers not to take breaks on the job (e.g. http://www.flickr.com/photos/headovmetal/1759847780/), not to be wasteful at home (posters showing saved cans literally becoming bullets), and buying war bonds literally saving American lives. The entire country had to be united against a common enemy to make WWII possible-- even women's hairstyles (short and neat) were mobilized for the war!

Now whether or not readers took it seriously is another issue!

I've had this hanging in my bathroom since college. Yikes! About 10 years now. It always struck me as only slightly tongue-in-cheek. The idea that the right paper towel can keep someone from (gasp!) going commie--rather than fair wages, good benefits and a sense of autonomy--makes me giggle every time.

'One soft-yet-absorbant paper towel away from anarchy.'

There's a really interesting discussion here about whether this poster is a meant to be taken seriously, or simply meant as a joke. And I wonder if both arguments have some merit.

Perhaps the poster was meant to be funny at the time. But with the looming "threat" of communism, such humor would have had a serious edge. At the time, perhaps this was dark, topical humor; today, it just seems silly and absurd.

I’ve seen this multiple times over the past 20 years since I was in college and I never really once doubted the seriousness of the poster’s message. While we might be tempted to view such posters through the lens of contemporary ironic interpretations, we must not forget the political climate of the 1920s-1930s. We must also remember how much the fear of communism (real, imagined, or manufactured) played a role in American advertising into the Cold War era.

Anti-Communist sentiment in the United States really surfaced in the first “Red Scare” in 1919-20 as public fear arose that the Russian Revolution might be replicated. Though the Industrial Workers of the World and the Communist Party lost membership during the first Red Scare, they bounced back (particularly due to their opposition to the rise of fascism in Europe) and gained members through the 1930s.

Did the folks at Scott Paper really think that use of cheap paper towels would transform workers into Communists? Probably not, and perhaps that’s where one can see the potential humor or irony. However, they were willing to connect that one minor issue to the broader set of “important courtesies” that organized labor would increasingly demand. And they simply saw the potential of using this fear of communism to advertise to other large corporate customers.

If you look at the history you can see other examples of this "worker accommodation" behavior. Bismarck's "social policy" was aimed at just this: Give workers, the poor and elderly some relief so they wont be easy prey to radical ideology.

In Japan they copied this strategy when industrializing around the 1900s ("Meiji restauration" if you want to look it up). The oligarch government actually used a two-pronged strategy: While making laws to protect workers against harsh working conditions and other excesses of capitalism they cracked down on any socialist or communist organization. (to this end they made among others the "peace preservation law") The first attempt of forming a communist party was shut down the day after its founding (!).

So what I want to say is that even if workers' rights are promoted or other "communist" goals become a policy this may well have the single intent of social control. So trying to keep workers happy is not alien to capitalism at all - at least it wasn't in its early not yet hegemonic state.

Thank God we now have a plan to stop Obama's agenda once and for all.

I've had it in my bathroom for years too, it's surreal to see it here. We always just thought it was funny.

The entire basis of much social protocol is the fact that people often respond very strongly to trivial slights or favors that they consider meaningful. This can be seen in the Ultimatum Game, where most westerners would rather not get any of the money at all rather than submit to the offense of an excessively unequal split.

Surely, having high-quality products available in company washrooms has a greater impact on job satisfaction than the tiny amount of money the employee is implicitly giving up from their paycheck for it. A wise employer can take advantage of this sort of thing, as can anybody who deals with people at all.

"Is Your Washroom Breeding Bolsheviks?"

No, it must be defective! How can I get it to do that?

If you watch "The Atomic Cafe" you'll see another example that, like terrorism, anti-communism was once promoted as a reason to get out and shop for America.

(Global warming was used that way in the 90s too. Just sayin')

This poster has been available at Northern Sun ("Products for Progressives") for at least a couple of decades: http://www.northernsun.com/n/s/Bathroom-Bolshevik-Poster-(4004).html?id=M9XPmbaP. I first encountered it in the pages of their print catalog, and therefore have always thought of its modern-day appearances as tongue in cheek.

The political science professors at my college had this posted on the washroom door of their office building. It was kind of hilarious because the answer was sort of....yes.

I've seen that poster before and it has never occurred to me that it could have been intended as anything other than a tongue-in-cheek attention-getter. The copy underneath is serious, of course. Bt just imagine a slick salesman saying the Bolsheviks line, chuckling, then saying "But seriously, folks, your employees really do lose respect for a company...etc"

I think many Americans really were seriously worried about Communism in the 1930s (and here I will disclose that I'm a former leftist who is now ardently anti-communist), especially given the context of the Depression. It was a time when anything must have seemed possible. There might have seemed little reason to assume that the U.S. could not be taken over by a Stalin or Hitler, and the average American might not have seen much difference between fascism and communism at that time (disclosure: I don't see much difference now).

As a leftist I was always comforted to think of capitalists as greedy, evil dolts with no sense of irony. But the truth is that capitalists, especially ones who are good at marketing, are just as skilled at seeing multiple levels of irony as anyone else (and conversely, have you ever tried to tell a joke to a hardcore Marxist? Irony is not really a big feature in the communist world view, as far as I can see). It's also interesting to note how important comedy was to people in the 1930s (as ever). And there was no shortage of humor related to Hitler in the 1940s.

Lately there has been a run on these posters, I know not why. They are available at:

http://progressiveportal.org/resources/posters.html

I actually have a copy of this poster (it may be a reproduction - it's in good quality), and I found this while trying to learn more about it. Thanks for the info!

There's some research that seems to indate that this ad was a fake version of another Scot Tissue ad that was less overt. The fake possibly appeared in Mad Magazine: http://sandefur.typepad.com/freespace/2012/05/bathroom-bolsheviks-what-were-they-thinking.html

i posted this in my office , when i was a facility manager for multiple research lab buildings. got a lot of sideways "looks" at me.

Interesting that there hasn't been discussion of the phrase "six days a week." Henry Ford instituted a five-day work week in the 1920's (collective bargaining and recognition of Sabbath had brought some five-day work weeks before that). US federal labor standards of 1938 made the five-day work week the norm. In this ad, the six-day work week is taken for granted; when did this ad first appear?

I just found this original poster tucked away in my attic. Wonder if there is any value to it. It's going in a frame either way. :)

I always assumed it was intended to be an over-the-top way of making their point, like saying, "Buy your kids clothes from our store so they don't become juvenile delinquents" or "Serve your husband our brand of chili so he doesn't cheat on you".

Okay, the sound of one hand wiping itself with a terrible paper towel is one thing, but if you do become a Communist, remember: Please don't squeeze the Chairman.

I have this hanging on my bathroom wall now!

Nice shit

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