Although the term wasn't coined yet, the idea of engineering consent goes back even further to the Enlightenment period, when Reason sought to overthrow King an

Although the term wasn't coined yet, the idea of engineering consent goes back even further to the Enlightenment period, when Reason sought to overthrow King and Church. Weishaupt and his Illuminists (of conspiracy theory fame) reasoned that men were largely mechanistic in nature, and could be controlled by their passions. Therefore, whoever could control men's passions could control men. Their intentions were nobler then if you take them at face value (i.e. help men become enlightened beings rather than consumers), but illuminism was a crude form of the behaviorism and structural functionalism operating today. It's pretty interesting to trace the developments from then, up until the advertising and PR we are immersed in today.