A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America [Hardcover]

Lizabeth Cohen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 21, 2003

The three decades after World War II are often heralded as a “Golden Era” of American affluence. But as Lizabeth Cohen makes clear, the pursuit of prosperity defined much more than the nation’s economy; it also became a basic component of American citizenship. Consumers were encouraged to buy not just for themselves, but for the good of the nation.

After a decade and a half of hard times resulting from the Great Depression and the war, the embrace of mass consumption, with its supposed far-reaching benefits—greater freedom, democracy, and equality—transformed American life. The extensive suburbanization of metropolitan areas (propelled by such government policies as the GI Bill), the shift from downtowns to shopping centers, and the advent of targeted marketing all fueled the consumer economy, but also sharpened divisions among Americans along gender, class, and racial lines. At the same time, mass consumption changed American politics, inspiring new forms of political activism through the civil rights and consumer movements and prompting politicians to apply the latest marketing strategies to their political campaigns.

Cohen traces the legacy of the “Consumers’ Republic” into our time, demonstrating how it has reshaped our relationship to government itself, with Americans increasingly judging public services—as if one more purchased good—by the personal benefits they derive from them.

Brilliantly researched and reasoned, A Consumers’ Republic is a starkly illuminating social and political history.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

After WWII, Americans' lives were shaped by economic, political, social and cultural structures premised on the notion that mass consumption would bring widespread prosperity and social equality. In an ideal America, mass consumption would "provide jobs, purchasing power, and investment dollars, while also allowing Americans to live better than ever before, participate in political decision-making on an equal footing with their similarly prospering neighbors, and to exercise their cherished freedoms by making independent choices in markets and politics." Although the postwar era offered a period of unprecedented affluence and encouraged certain forms of political activism, Bancroft Prize-winning historian Cohen (Making a New Deal) powerfully illustrates the consumer culture's failures in terms of social egalitarianism. The postwar housing shortage spawned suburbs that starkly emphasized class and racial differences; well-intentioned innovations, such as the G I bill, had little impact on women, working-class men and African-Americans; targeted marketing segmented citizens along class, gender, age, race and ethnic lines, accentuating divisions and undermining commonalities; and economic inequality expanded greatly during the past three decades. Cohen's sharp and incisive history particularly highlights the struggles of blacks seeking civil rights and women pursuing greater representation within the republic, illuminating the ways that mass consumption both helped and hindered their progress. Ultimately, Cohen asks whether mass consumption has successfully created a more egalitarian and democratic American society. The answer is balanced, judicious and laced with suggestions for how American citizens can begin to articulate a common vision for the future, even as the nation's population grows ever more diverse. 64 illus., 3 maps.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Without question, this is a difficult, demanding, and dense book--but it is also a greatly significant contribution to this season's business literature. Cohen, author of the prizewinning Making a New Deal (1990), submits a copiously researched, brilliantly conceived, and ultimately quite instructive study of American economics since the Depression. Stated in its simplest terms, her thesis, which she elaborately, even excitingly develops, is that from the 1930s until the present day, particularly since WW II, the U.S. defines what she calls a consumer republic: "an economy, culture, and politics built around the promises of mass consumption." She posits that within the second half of the twentieth century, good consumerism and good citizenship became twin concepts--ideals that were mutually inclusive. The belief arose and gained veracity that to maintain American might, the good citizen must also be the good consumer. The ramifications of this political notion are explored in various aspects of how and where Americans lived over the past half-century, with considerable attention paid to the effect of the consumer republic on black Americans. Not just for business readers but also for those who are serious about history, political science, and sociology. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 576 pages
• Publisher: Knopf (January 21, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375407502
• ISBN-13: 978-0375407505
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #641,844 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The End of Citizenship, February 8, 2003

By 

Panopticonman "panopticonman" (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (Hardcover)

From Simon Patten's reworking of the theory of supply and demand into his the theory of consumption at the beginning of the 20th century, Americans have been steadily moved away from citizenship to consumership. Lizabeth Cohen charts the stimulation of desire, describes the segmentation of the American public by marketers, real estate developers and political consultants, and traces the deleterious effects of this fragmentation upon the public sphere. She shows with detailed examples and masses of research how this discourse was created and supported by both the government and the corporation, as well as the public, and how in the process the rights of citizens were transformed into the pale substitute of consumer rights. Particularly thought-provoking is her thesis that the segmentation of the market happened in concert with the end of mass political movements, and how polictical movements are now indistinguishable from consumer movements. Well writen, with good illustrations.

32 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Consumption and Greed, March 11, 2003

By 

[e-mail] (Edmonton, Alberta Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (Hardcover)

Over the past decade Lizabeth Cohen has been at the forefront of a new type of American history: consumer's history. In this fast growing field historians look at the development of consumption and consumers, both as an ideal and as a reality, and as a new source of identity. There were reasons to be wary of this trend. Were economic realities and questions of power going to be ignored in a celebration of growing affluence? Was the integrity of culture to be ignored in a vindication of mass consumption?

Now that Lizabeth Cohen's new book has been published we can see that those reasons were misguided. This is a thoroughly documented book that is unusually scrupulous in the attention that it pays to problems of class, gender and race. Cohen starts in the thirties, looking at consumer movements and boycotts, and at two differing ideas of the consumer. One is the "citizen consumer," who is the hero of the book, the consumer who protects his (and very often her) rights and does not placidly accept what businesses deign to give them. The other, more prominent, consumer is the Consumer as Purchaser, the Keynesian consumer who stimulates the economy by his purchases. We then go to the war, and see how the government sought to limit price increases with the help of citizen cooperation. We learn about the many female volunteers, while we also learn that African-Americans, who most needed it, got the least help and the least employment with the OPA. Then we go to the postwar world where, despite popular support, Congress abolishes the OPA. Meanwhile the new consensus, the GI Bill, and the boom of suburbia promise a brave new world of abundance for all, or almost all.

Although women unions and minorities have used consumption and consumer's rights movement to express their grievances, one of Cohen's major themes is how the consumer's republic failed to break down the hierarchies of society and indeed reinforced them. Race was the most obvious failure. Although it has been told before, it is still shocking to learn that black soldiers in the Second World War were excluded from stores and restaurants that German Prisoners of War could freely enter. Cohen also reminds us that shabby treatment of Afro-American soldiers was not merely confined to the South, but to the whole country, including in the West where they were previously non-existent. This takes us to New Jersey, Cohen's native state. Although it had public accommodation laws dating back to the 19th century, storeowners often excluded black customers. Indeed, during the Depression both the Salvation Army and the Red Cross would refuse to help African-Americans in some places. In what is the tour de force of the book Cohen, based on massive amounts of evidence, discusses the struggles in New Jersey for successful civil rights legislation, and the racial segregation and outright exclusionism of the suburbs (encouraged by consumer prejudice, business practice and federal guidelines). We learn about New Jersey's selfish politics of localism, how school funding is based on inequitable local taxation, and of the difficult fights to ensure adequate funding for all.

Especially helpful is Cohen's description of the limited effect of the GI Bill. Most of its students would have gone to university anyway. The poor found that its educational benefits wouldn't be of much help to those who hadn't graduated from high school or who were looking for vocational education. Women and African-Americans faced further hurdles in trying to invoke the GI Bill. They faced outright discrimination, blacks couldn't easily enter the traditional veteran's leagues, and one popular one they did enter was red-baited to death. Both groups had second-rate status in the army, and African-Americans were given much more dishonourable discharges for criticizing their mistreatment. Women, for their part, had trouble getting credit cards, and when working women applied with their husbands for a Veteran's Administration Loan, the wife would have to promise she was either infertile or would get an abortion if she became pregnant. Women also had to step aside for returning veterans so that their proportion in one city university fell from 20% in 1940 to 14% in 1947. Meanwhile, the working class did not vanish in a wash of affluence. They kept their identity, which was enforced by a certain class segregation in suburbia.

Cohen also looks at the growth of shopping malls. She discusses how they were isolated from minority populations (one inner-city youth was killed in 1995 crossing a seven-lane highway because the mall were she worked did not allow buses to stop there). She also points out how they work to limit free speech and distort resources. She then goes to look at the rise of market segmentation in the fifties and sixties and how advertisers and businessmen concentrated their efforts at specific groups. She then discusses the rise and fall of the consumer's movement, as Ralph Nader, Rachel Carson and others inspired a great rush of pro-consumer legislation and greater regulatory effort in the sixties. But the consumer's movement had weaknesses as a truly enthusiastic mass movement, while attempts to institutionalize a consumer's voice in government were defeated in the seventies. There are some weaknesses in this book. As a discussion of advertising, it is less stimulating than Jackson Lears' "Fables of Abundance." More could be said about the pernicious effects of advertising for children, including the insane Reagan administration decision to allow the replacement of educational programming with program-length advertisements for toys. And there is not much about the culture of consumption, a problem that has vexed intellectuals from Veblen to Adorno. But as an account of how consumerism moved decisively from working for the common good to what is good for me is best for all, Cohen's work has no rivals.

19 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars "consumer's ranks could include both everyone and no one", February 9, 2005

By 

Neal Alexander (Cali, Colombia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (Paperback)

The above quote from the book reveals its fundamental problem. Consumerism is stretched to include (for example) racial equality, housing policy, and politics: this dulls any edge the concept might have as an analytic tool. What is a consumer? We're told "the word's original meaning" - - "to devour, waste and spend" - - but not its current one. The author tries to distinguish between the "citizen consumer" and "purchaser consumer". The supposed dichotomy between these roles was no more obvious to me than to those consumer advocates who - - to the author's apparent surprise - - "found it possible to endorse both simultaneously".

So the book is a kind of grab bag of the USA's post-war social problems, often using the author's home state as an example. At times, she seems on the verge of dissecting New Jersey as Mike Davis does Los Angeles (high praise from me), but never quite sustains such a level. For example, there's a fascinating account of how policies of "upzoning" were used to create homogeneous suburbs of large, expensive, detached houses. But when explaining how this led to racial polarization - - in an era of supposed desegregration - - she can only show us the 'after' map, not the 'before'. However, the use of photos, advertisements, and newspaper cartoons is exemplary: often amusing, sometimes shocking.

Towards the end of the book, the author finds it necessary to expand the concept of "consumer" to "consumer/citizen", and finally to "consumer/citizen/taxpayer/voter": a clear sign of a dead end. On the final page, her vision is vague and feeble: we "could reinvigorate the liberating aspects of the purchaser" and "could seek to reverse the trend toward the Consumerization of the Republic by not shrinking from articulating the important things that only government can do". Hardly a programme of action. But maybe that's too much to expect.