Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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.

Lizabeth Cohen's "A Consumers' Republic" does much to explain how citizenship has been significantly redefined by consumerism in postwar America. The thoroughly readable book is full of insights and should interest all readers of 20th century American history. It will also prompt many to ponder how America might try to heal its frayed society while there is time available to do so.

In the Acknowledgements, Ms. Cohen explains that this impressive book was written over the course of ten years. Her thesis profited from audience feedback at numerous college lectures and presentations she made during this time and with able assistance from a number of talented student researchers. With over 400 pages of text and 100 pages of notes, the book represents a remarkable achievement and is a testament to Ms. Cohen's intelligent use of the academic research process.

Ms. Cohen is in top form when she chronicles the struggles of women and African-Americans to assert their rights in what she calls the "Consumers' Republic" of 1945 to 1975. The author provides background material by documenting how a variety of bread-and-butter consumer issues mobilized millions into action from the Depression through WWII. Ms. Cohen then shows how power gained by women and minorities through their contributions to the war effort later found expression in the Civil Rights, women's liberation and other movements of the 1950s and 1960s.

However, Ms. Cohen explains that policy makers in the aftermath of WWII were influenced and corrupted by, among other things, unparalleled levels of corporate power and ideological rivalry with the Soviet Union. Mass consumption was seen as a solution to help keep manufacturing profits high and was propagandized in order prove to the world that the U.S. was practically a classless society. The reality was different, of course. The author discusses how racial, gender and class biases were reaffirmed and institutionalized by the GI Bill and other legislative acts. As a result of Ms. Cohen's extraordinary research, the reader comes to understand that the increasingly stratified post-WWII American society that resulted was not inevitable but was shaped by powerful interests who privileged private sector solutions at the expense of the public.

In my view, the only shortcomings in this ambitious book are Ms. Cohen's failure to discuss the environmental consequences of consumerism and her omission of the student revolt against the military/industrial complex in the 1960s. But overall, these are minor quibbles. "A Consumers' Republic" delivers plenty of thought-provoking material and is a pleasure to read. The book is highly recommended to everyone who might want to gain perspective on contemporary American society and further consider where it might be headed.

I defer to the thorough review titled "Consumption and Greed" below for a synopsis of this book.

The subject matter of "A Consumers' Republic" is engrossing and the book reveals many truths that are now forgotten and swept under the rug. Cohen uses an impressive plethora of examples to demonstrate her points, and in the end I know much more about the United States' economic and social history from the 30's to the present.

Unfortuntately, Cohen's writing often becomes convoluted and difficult to read due to frequent lengthy and difficult to follow sentences. While reading, many times I had to re-read a sentence or paragraph in order to grasp the author's intent. A few times I even wanted to put the book down and pick up a less academic book - perhaps some fiction - to give my eyes and brain a break. Much of the book is well written and flows well, but these occasional roadblocks require determination to get through and prove frustrating. However, having finished this yesterday, I'm happy I persevered. The incredible amount of research and well thought out and supported thesis' are worth five stars, but the writing brings it down to four stars.

To say you are an America is to say that you are, de facto, a consumer.

This word is a defining aspect of our American world... Consumerism covers daily life, whether it be drug discounts, tourism, marketers, insurance, cars, homes, technology or just plain old product reviews. We Americans are defined by our consumption.

Lizabeth Cohen has given us a thoroughly researched, readable history on consumerism, and how it came to be such a force and part of our lives in America. She argues that after WWII the "Consumer Republic" was launched, full force, affecting life styles, government and even belief systems. Though the beginning of a consumers movement had occurred before 1940, the "Consumer Republic" took form and force after the second world war.

Cohen's writing style is informative, to the point of being academic. "A Consumers' Republic" is a history book. Thus, it may be a bit more pedantic than most general readers would like.

I found a few omissions that distracted from the overall excellence of the book. One being that Cohen does not investigate how consumerism has been incorporated into, and seriously affected, American Christianity. She does not address how Christianity, especially considering the `Protestant work ethic', helped to shaped and drive consumerism into being. She does not explore `why' Americans live to consume, "shop til they drop." Neither does she reflect on the effects that unbridled consumption have on both the social fabric of our nation or the ecological impact on our land.

That said, this book is a "need to read" for students of American history, marketing, those involved as consumer activists, and business. Recommended. 3.5 stars

"A Consumers' Republic" is one of those kinds of books that exists on the premise that it illuminates some previously unknown phenomenon. The book purports to be a "bold, encompassing, and profoundly influential book." I humbly propose that this book is none of the above. "A Consumers' Republic" is certainly not a "bold" book. Quite tepidly, actually, the author makes a weak case that is essentially a rehashing (and a mediocre one at that) of mainstream academic criticisms of popular market culture. Certianly nothing new, the ideas lamely presented by this author were actually prefigured by a factor of centuries by actual scholars such as Smith, Marx, and de Toqueville. Not bold for sure, but also lacking nuance; "A Consumers' Republic" condescends to its readers and its subjects alike. And is this book "profoundly influential," as the jacket pompously asserts? I hope not.

Lizabeth Cohen gavea speech in my school today regarding consumerism in America through her book. Her points were excellent and very interesting. Great read