I can think of a few things: the emphasis on foresight as a tool for competitive advantage in a market economy, emphasis on innovation, markets etc. De Jouvenel tellingly describes foresight a kind of “commerce with the future”...

But what about Western foresight, which prided itself on being explorative and open-ended - how much of it was deliberately ideological rather than ‘scientific’, designed to support ideological commitments to Western free market liberalism?

It made me think of the role of ideology in shaping not just the application of futures studies/foresight but also its methods. In the USSR, any kind of futures work had to align with Marxist teleology (scenarios don’t sit well with that). We can see how ideologically rigid this is.

To give one example, Futuribles, the organisation and research network de Jouvenel founded in the early 60s, was backed by the Congress of Cultural Freedom, a CIA-supported, anti-communist propaganda front enlisting intellectuals in the war of ideas against communism in cold war Europe.

Thanks for the good company, Anders. We don't use that term lightly!