From the issue dated January 3, 2003
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The Politics of Mass Consumption in AmericaBy LIZABETH COHENI was born in February 1952, and, after what was then a standard five-day stay at the hospital, I moved into my first home, in Paramus, N.J., a brand-new ranch-style house in one of the many subdivisions being carved out of Paramus's woods and farms. My parents had recently bought this 960-square-foot house for $11,990, thanks to $2,000 in savings crucially supplemented by a 4.5-percent GI mortgage for which my father qualified as a World War II vet. The GI Bill had already subsidized his business-school education. Dorothy Rodbell and Paul Cohen had married three years earlier, when they were 22 and 29, respectively. For a long four months, they had lived with my mother's parents in Manhattan as they navigated what was still a severe housing shortage following the war. In April 1950, they moved into a newly built garden apartment right across the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee, N.J. Less than two years later, they became new suburban homeowners. My family's suburban voyage did not end in Paramus. Four years later, my sister now in tow, we moved three miles away to a larger, more expensive house in a more established, solidly middle-class town. Whereas our neighborhood of young families in Paramus had been socially and economically diverse -- Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, professionals living next door to factory foremen, people employed locally as well as Manhattan commuters -- our new town was more of a conventional bedroom community. Four years later, when I was 8, we were on the move again, this time to an upper-middle-class suburb in New York's Westchester County. Beyond my parents' upward mobility, measured through their serial acquisition of more-expensive homes in communities of ever higher socioeconomic profiles, New Jersey's inadequate and overly property-tax-dependent system of school financing had driven them away. Our new town had nationally touted public schools and a population willing and able to pay for them with steep property taxes, necessary despite New York's greater state support for its local schools. During those first eight years of my life in New Jersey, I watched postwar mass suburbia develop, what I call "the landscape of mass consumption." New limited-access highways bypassed slower, established commercial routes. Along their path, suburban settlements sprouted on what had been fields of corn, celery, spinach, and cabbage. Shopping centers -- in my case, Paramus's Bergen Mall and Garden State Plaza -- became the new centers of community life, providing a place to spend a Saturday, to attend an evening concert, to take the children to visit Santa Claus, to see candidates campaign. Like many in my baby-boomer generation, I grew up in a world of kids on the block, in overflowing schools, and on television, where so many programs and advertisements seemed to have been made just for us, from Captain Kangaroo, Romper Room, and The Howdy Doody Show when we were young to The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, Lassie, and American Bandstand as we grew older. But my world was not only defined by class and age; race mattered as well. In both of the New Jersey towns, I remember few people who were not white: a handful of highly educated immigrants from Taiwan, no African-Americans. The most prominent social division we lived with was between public-school and parochial-school kids. In the more privileged community in Westchester, our recently built subdivision was located very near to the substantial homes of two African-American families, one that of a doctor, the other of a dentist. Significantly, those families had built their beautiful, custom houses on large plots of land on the edge of town. When new homes went up and expanded the town to its geographical borders in the early 1960s, the two black families found themselves suddenly surrounded by neighbors, but still on the social margins of the community. Was I ever conscious during these years, from 1952 to the mid-1970s, of living in what I call a Consumers' Republic, an economy, culture, and politics built around the promises of mass consumption, both in terms of material life and the more idealistic goals of freedom, democracy, and equality? Probably not, but I did grow up cognizant of the privilege of living in such a prosperous United States, whose bounty I expected to be available to all Americans. Where it was not -- in the trouble spots we called "the Deep South," "Appalachia," and "Harlem" -- action needed to be taken. It is doubtful that I undertook any deeper analysis of the more complex underpinnings of the affluent society in which I grew up. I tell my own story at length here not because it is unusual, but, quite the opposite, because it is not. The outlines of my life just recounted were common patterns lived by many Americans in the decades following World War II. Although there are a variety of ways that historians might conceptualize the second half of the 20th century, I have put Americans' encounter with mass consumption at the center of my analysis. I am convinced that Americans after World War II saw their nation as the model for the world of a society committed to mass consumption and what were assumed to be its far-reaching benefits. Mass consumption did not only deliver wonderful things for purchase, the televisions, air conditioners, and computers that have transformed American life over the last half-century. It also dictated the most central dimensions of postwar society, including the political economy (the way public policy and the mass-consumption economy mutually reinforced each other) as well as the political culture (how political practice and American values, attitudes, and behaviors tied to mass consumption became intertwined). In the aftermath of World War II, a fundamental shift in American economy, politics, and culture took place, with major consequences for how Americans made a living, where they dwelled, how they interacted with others, what and how they consumed, what they expected of government, and much else. Other historians have stressed the cold war as the fundamental shaper of postwar America. The Consumers' Republic had close ties to the cold war, not least of which was its powerful symbolism as the prosperous American alternative to the deprivations of communism. But much of importance in America's postwar history happened outside the cold-war frame, and applying it too exclusively can obscure other crucial developments. Although the Consumers' Republic that flourished in the aftermath of World War II went into retreat during the 1970s, its legacy remains. We still judge the health of our economy by indicators such as housing starts and consumer confidence and spending. When President Bush and other national leaders seek strategies to cope with threatening recession, whether as a result of a contracting economy or paralysis brought on by the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, they crank up the machine of mass consumption through tax cuts and other stimulants in the expectation that consumer spending can bring us through, to "Keep America Rolling," in the words of General Motors' recent advertising campaign. Economies in which consumers fail to consume serve as negative examples. The Japanese, whose success as a new democracy after World War II was tied to their launching of a vibrant mass-consumption economy, have been criticized recently for refusing to buy their nation out of an intractable economic depression. I hope that my analysis complicates our understanding of the so-called Golden Era of postwar prosperity that lasted approximately from 1945 to 1975. I want to convey that such a period of unprecedented affluence did much more than make Americans a people of plenty. In reconstructing the nation after World War II, leaders of business, government, and labor developed a political economy and a political culture that expected a dynamic mass-consumption economy not only to deliver prosperity, but also to fulfill American society's loftier aspirations: more social egalitarianism, more democratic participation, and more political freedom. In their ideal America, a mass-consumption-driven economy would provide jobs, purchasing power, and investment dollars, while also allowing Americans to live better than ever before, to 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. But the Consumers' Republic did not unfold quite as policy makers intended. In its ambition, it helped reshape many aspects of postwar American life, most notably the nation's class and racial profile, the gender dynamics within families and workplaces, the social landscapes where Americans lived and consumed, the way economic markets were structured, the way politics were practiced, and the way the American state evolved. At times, as when African-Americans and women used their influence in consumer markets to assert themselves politically, or when young people and senior citizens gained greater recognition as profitable market segments and then, in turn, as political constituencies, a prosperous Consumers' Republic substantially advanced the progressive goal of social inclusion. And in its seductive ideal of democracy and equality through prosperity, it provided true inspiration to a wide range of Americans, not only the creators of a Consumers' Republic, but also some of its critics, whether welfare-rights activists seeking a fair shake at credit or New Jersey Supreme Court justices ruling that the decent housing and schooling provided in well-off communities needed to be more widely accessible. But at other times, the dependence of a Consumers' Republic on unregulated, private markets wove inequalities deep into the fabric of prosperity, thereby allowing, intentionally or not, the search for profits and the exigencies of the market to prevail over higher goals. Often the outcome dramatically diverged from the stated objective to use mass markets to create a more egalitarian and democratic American society. Solving the nation's severe postwar housing shortage by building communities of private homes pegged to distinct sectors of the real-estate market created a suburbanized metropolis more hierarchically stratifying than equalizing, as variant tax bases and property values provided localities with greatly divergent revenues to finance basic services like schools. Letting private developers dictate the nature of public space in mass suburbia through privately owned shopping centers -- increasingly aimed at distinctive markets and withheld from consumers of undesirable race, age, and class -- segregated customers by purchasing power, while also limiting free speech and assembly. Market segmentation and its application to politics differentiated consumers and voters along class, gender, age, race, and ethnic lines, accentuating what divided Americans and undermining common concerns. And economic inequality expanded greatly during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. The deeply entrenched convictions prevailing in the Consumers' Republic -- that a dynamic, private, mass-consumption marketplace could float all boats and that a growing economy made reslicing the economic pie unnecessary -- predisposed Americans against more redistributive actions. When, after decades of postwar prosperity, economic crisis hit in the 1970s, the inequalities that had lurked barely beneath the surface rose as a specter to haunt the rest of the century. Most ironic, perhaps, the confidence that a prospering mass-consumption economy could foster democracy would, over time, contribute to a decline in the most traditional, and one could argue most critical, form of political participation -- voting -- as more commercialized political salesmanship replaced rank-and-file mobilization through parties. The increased reliance on pollsters and political consultants, in turn, further undermined the democratic character of elections, making campaigns affordable by only the wealthiest of candidates and more and more oriented toward divisive "slicing and dicing" of the electorate. Although at times scientific targeting of constituents made politicians more responsive to the will of voters, that often came at the cost of favoring special interests over common interests. In the 1960s, self-identified consumers in the Consumers' Republic would initiate a grass-roots politics of their own. It began as a consumer movement determined to create new protective legislation and regulation to hold corporations and government more accountable. But by the mid-1970s, thanks to growing resistance to giving consumers a permanent foothold in government, an economic recession of massive proportions, and an increasingly conservative political leadership, it led to a rejection of "big government" and an embrace of privatization, deregulation, and a more self-interested market relationship between citizens and government. I also hope it is clear in this rendering of the postwar era that the experiences of women and African-Americans cannot be isolated from mainstream history, as they too often are in the ghettoized subfields of the historical profession. In this telling, the struggles of blacks seeking full civil rights and women pursuing greater political and economic participation were inextricably entwined with the political economy and political culture of a Consumers' Republic. At times, the new postwar order boosted their efforts. When African-Americans launched the modern civil-rights movement by demanding equal access to public sites of consumption in the 1940s and 1950s, after being shut out during World War II, or when they protested their exclusion from society's general prosperity through urban rebellions and welfare-rights organizing during the 1960s, the supposedly free markets of the Consumers' Republic helpfully provided a measure of their segregation, a justification for action, and a strategy of protest. Similarly, women were able to turn the influence they had as consumers in the marketplace toward more political ends as watchdog citizen consumers during the Great Depression, as homefront managers during World War II, and as both the rank and file and high-ranking orchestrators of the consumer movement in the 1960s and 1970s, when they finally succeeded in securing real protections for women in finance, credit, and other markets, among their other achievements. At other times, though, proponents of the Consumers' Republic tapped into conservative gender and racial expectations to reinforce the status quo. The architects of the Consumers' Republic first promoted it as an alternative to a wartime order that they impugned as weak through its association with female-defended price controls and other state interventions. They went on to develop an infrastructure through the GI Bill, amendments to the income tax, and credit practices that reinforced a male-headed breadwinner household, even as women were entering the work force in growing numbers. Likewise, African-Americans' success in using the promises of a Consumers' Republic to justify greater access to public accommodations was offset by their failure to overcome the racial and class barriers constructed by suburbanites obsessed with preserving property values. Without denying the salience of racism, it is fair to say that the huge investment in residential property made by a majority of Americans during the postwar era discouraged risk taking in residential decisions. The growing residential fragmentation of metropolitan America over the second half of the 20th century was a broader social and political segmentation brought about by the playing out of market forces in the Consumers' Republic. Commercial spaces in the landscape of mass consumption also became stratified by race and class, with the shift from downtowns to shopping centers inadequately substituting a privatized and fragmented suburban core for the more public and inclusive "town square" of the city. Similarly, the shift from mass to segmented marketing, and particularly the adoption of those marketing strategies by candidates and campaigns, undermined commercial and political common ground. Even the effectiveness of the consumer movement of the 1960s and 1970s came to depend on its ability to mobilize consumers within narrow interest groups defined by race, class, gender, age, and so forth, propelling consumer politics further toward the pursuit of self-interest. I tread on fragile ground in making these arguments. One must beware of promoting false or naive notions of a universal "common good" and unified "public" and thereby denying the more diverse and complicated multicultural America that has greeted the 21st century. Broad characterizations run the risk of elevating the most mainstream of identities -- white, middle-class, male, heterosexual, thirtysomething -- and the narrowest of agendas to represent a more variegated America. Rather, "common" and "public" must derive from the true diversity of the nation's population. The task is not an easy one. For the United States, figuring out how to articulate a common set of political and social goals while becoming increasingly diverse as a nation is among the greatest challenges of the 21st century. I hope I have suggested some starting points. To begin with, it is important to recognize that not all divisions among Americans are sacrosanct. It is just as much a fallacy to assume that all interest or identity groups enjoy authentic purity as it is to embrace as natural a unified public. We should not forget that manufacturers, advertisers, marketers, and political operatives became invested in segmenting the whole and thereby encouraged social and cultural divisions for their own profit. Moreover, it is important to distinguish between harmless and even self-affirming segmentations of identities and interests and ones that rest on stratification and inequality. When some groups enjoy more resources and power, and hence more life choices, than others, fragmentation serves not to validate difference but instead to facilitate discrimination. Probably most important, we can do a better job, without denying the diversity of our constituent parts, of weighing one group's needs and interests against another's, negotiating not just tits for tats but resolutions to conflicts that seek justice and fairness for as many Americans as possible. Similarly, the guardians of true public space must learn to tolerate multiple claims on its use. Deliberating for the general good means not denying inevitable differences but rather assuming collective responsibility for the well-being of each other. As the United States becomes a truly multicultural nation, it is more important than ever that social groups not become competing, self-interested segments, or self-contained, oblivious islands. I have dwelt on the way that evolving patterns of residence, commerce, marketing, and politics polarized people in the second half of the 20th century. Only with concerted effort can we transcend these pressures to fragment and become a nation diverse but still unified around a common national purpose that is built on something other than war. Separating the citizen from the consumer is one tempting solution. But rather than fantasize about jettisoning a Janus-faced citizen consumer who still stands guard at our gates, we might be wiser to identify a usable legacy that maximizes its benefits and minimizes its costs. We could encourage the revival of the citizen-consumer ideal that prevailed during the Great Depression and World War II, with its commitment to building into the agencies of government a power base for consumers to assert their will. We could reinvigorate the liberating aspects of the purchaser-as-citizen tradition that provided African-Americans and women with a way of protesting against exclusion and that provided the consumer movement with a vehicle for holding corporations and governments accountable to a higher moral standard. And we 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, if the interests of all the people are ever to be considered and if limits are to be put on the power granted markets to deliver both goods and good. There is some hopeful evidence of a reversal of the drives for privatization and deregulation that have reduced government's legitimacy. For example, legislators are having second thoughts about continuing to privatize prisons, schools, ambulance services, and libraries and to deregulate power companies, as outcomes prove disappointing and the taxpayer savings appear much less than originally expected. Similarly, in the wake of the tragic hijacking of four airplanes on September 11, 2001, the federal government has taken responsibility for overseeing airport safety from bottom-line-oriented private airlines that have been blamed for many of the security breaches contributing to the disaster. And the Enron and WorldCom scandals have reawakened calls for government regulation of corporate finance and accounting practices. As one commentator has put it, probably a little more optimistically than the majority of Americans would, "Government suddenly looks good again." Even if we would prefer to decouple citizen and consumer, the best we may hope to do is to turn this inheritance from the 20th century to our advantage in the 21st. Taking nothing for granted, we can hold our mandate to be both citizens and consumers to the highest standards of democracy, freedom, and equality, dwelling not so much on whether we should simultaneously be citizens and consumers but rather accepting that, like it or not, we are both. The question then becomes, "United States citizen: consumer in what kind of republic?" Lizabeth Cohen is a professor of history at Harvard University. This essay is adapted from A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America, to be published later this month by Alfred A. Knopf. Copyright © 2003 by Lizabeth Cohen. http://chronicle.com Section: The Chronicle Review Volume 49, Issue 17, Page B7
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Copyright © 2003 by The Chronicle of Higher Education