Matt Emmons
Rees/HIST501 US
02/22/11
The relationship between consumption and democracy in Lizabeth Cohen’s book
The Consumers’ Republic is the transition of America after World War II from a nation of
citizens to a nation of consumers. The resulting society focused on material abundance and
the freedom implicit in material security1: the American Dream as a shopping spree. This
hyper-consumerism was destructive to democracy, both as a form of government and as a
basis for a civic society. Democracy in government exists where political questions are
resolved by public vote, and political power comes from citizenship. The affairs of the
consumer, on the other hand, are settled in the marketplace; and in the market, money is
power. Therefore, the ascendance of consumerism as a political system was inherently
anti-democratic, and it began just at the moment of democracy’s apparent triumph.
The war years in America had been infused with an idealistic message of democratic
struggle against fascism, yet it was a quick transition to American corporatism when the
peace was won. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 dramatically curtailed the ability of workers
to politically organize through unions.2 At the same time, a new conception of citizenship,
concerned primarily with the individual opportunity for material accumulation, replaced
the old one, which had been defined by “participation [in] voting, military, and jury
service.”3 Americans, convinced that they had sacrificed greatly during the war years,4
were now possessed of a victor’s sense of entitlement. In the 1950s in particular, many
Lizabeth Cohen. A Consumers’ Republic (Vintage Books, New York; 2003), p. 127
p. 153
3 p. 408
4 p. 70
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Americans were convinced that the gratification of their personal material desires would
benefit society at large due to the oft-trumpeted message that “mass consumption was
creating a more egalitarian society.”5 Even the concept of “freedom” underwent a radical
shift, from freedom to think and speak to freedom to own, a change eventually given explicit
encouragement by President Nixon.6 The freedoms that democracy depends on were
eroding along with the physical environment in which they had arisen. Cohen cites the
writer Jürgen Habermas, who predicted the “rise and fall of the rational public sphere”
dependent on “accessible urban places.”7 These accessible places disappeared as
traditional urban centers were replaced by privately owned shopping malls.8 Malls, to the
extent that they allow free political speech at all, restrict its use to speakers (or
pamphleteers) who are able to afford “million-dollar liability policies.”9 The speech power
of well-funded interests, on the other hand, is amplified in these new, private, town centers;
both by the enveloping advertising of the commercial landscape and in society at large by
the power of the expanding media marketplace.
The requirement of money to exercise meaningful political speech has become so
pervasive, according to Cohen, that political office is now “feasible only for the wealthy or
their agents.”10 In a society where income inequality has expanded so rapidly,11 this fact
can only be a disaster for the prospects of true democratic government. As a result of the
diminished role of government in social planning, many important political decisions were
p. 125
p. 125
7 p. 289
8 p. 259
9 p. 276
10 p. 342
11 p. 395
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left to be decided by competing moneyed interests, rather than by democratic process, as in
the case of the ideological divide between the developers Levitt and Eichler described in
the book: the issue of segregation, as clear a job for the courts and legislature as any could
be, was initially left up to the “invisible hand” of the marketplace to be sorted out. 12 Though
consumer interest groups and activists tried to harness the power of the marketplace for
democratic purposes, the efforts rarely bore fruit. While Ralph Nader and other consumer
advocates have scored major victories, it is always an uphill struggle for the voices of
relative outsiders pitted against well-connected industry lobbyists and politicians
dependent on the largesse of the industries they must regulate. The longstanding hope that
the federal government would add a consumer agency with regulatory powers, giving the
“little guy” a permanent seat at the table, was defeated time after time by business groups,
who were able to out-“speak” grassroots organizations with their well-funded lobbying
efforts.13 The monopolization of speech was not exclusive to business in the strict sense, as
government also put the skills of Madison Avenue and the medium of the commercial
market to work for, among other things, the promotion of unpopular wars.14
As to the broader question of whether consumerism has been a net gain or loss for
the country: though initially a boon to the standard of living for many Americans,
consumerism left minority groups (women, blacks, the poor) behind from the start.15 As
time elapsed, minorities and poor Americans are not the only groups to have suffered from
the consumerist society. The overemphasis on consumerism has been a net loss for society
in general, even for middle-class white Americans, not only because it has diminished the
p. 218
p. 362
14 p. 333
15 pp. 164-165
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political power of the non-rich through its weakening of democracy, but because it has led
to a diminished quality of life. Mass consumption’s stimulation of mass production led to a
greater segment of the workforce spending working hours in repetitive industrial tasks,
removed from the interest and bustle of everyday life. Work acquired a feeling of
meaninglessness, while consumption provided a new, objective, standard by which
happiness could be measured.16 The newly suburbanized landscape destroyed many
traditional neighborhood-based pastimes and emptied old town centers, and replaced
them with the shopping mall; so much so that, according to Cohen, “consuming and leisure
[became] inseparably intertwined.”17 Americans have retreated from a once vital public
culture to a world of segregated privacy, often living in communities that are literally
fenced off from the rest of society, and conveyed by car to the nearest shopping mall.
The loss of class-consciousness brought about by the relentless acquisition of
consumer goods has led to a massive transfer of power to business interests, who have
used that power to decrease government regulation. Monopolies created by unfettered
(and government assisted) capitalism have allowed manufacturers to lower workers’
expectations for wages and benefits, and, ironically, for the quality of the consumer goods
themselves. The promise of “Reaganomics,” that “competition will ensure that savings will
trickle down to consumers,”18 misstates the essence of the profit-motive. The “competition”
is not to provide the most value to consumers. It is to sell products with the least actual
value for the highest cost possible. The goal is to provide less value for more money, and to
ensure the least trickle-down possible.
p. 161
p. 270
18 p. 390
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Substantive advancements for civil rights have only come through government
intervention and protest-based political activism, as opposed to boycotts or informed
buying. Though at times used as a tool to advance civil rights (most famously, perhaps, at
the Woolworth’s lunch counter in 1960 and the Montgomery bus boycott a few years
earlier19), consumerism ultimately failed minorities. This applies to the rights of women
and racial minorities, but also to the much broader and difficult-to-classify category that we
call “the poor.” Cohen notes the benefit that consumer activism had for minority voices in
society: Because all Americans spend the same dollars regardless of skin color or gender,
places of business should, in theory, be inherently egalitarian. Overall, however, the
evidence that Cohen presents shows that the market-based society is a realm dominated by
the power of money, which is not distributed equally.
The trend of mass consumerism seemed to promise new freedom for women, as the
access to “labor-saving” devices promised a measure of freedom from the drudgery of
housework. During the war the methodology of shopping and homemaking became a
patriotic occupation, and women “turned a customary responsibility into a new political
opportunity.”20 Though women’s concerns gained a preeminent space in the consumerist
post-war society the radical nature of the women’s consumer movement, like that of the
consumer movement in general, was dulled. As recently as 1939, the League of Women
Shoppers had been derided as “communist” by business interests for their strident
consumer activism,21 but the post-war movement, as exemplified by Consumer Reports
p. 185
p. 83
21 p. 59
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magazine, dovetailed neatly with employers’ and manufacturers’ interests. Just as the mass
market became ascendant, the government struck a huge blow against women’s power in
the marketplace with the GI Bill. By failing to address lenders’ preference to give mortgages
to GIs who were white and middle-class, the bill “underwrote rather than challenged
longstanding discriminatory practices.”22 Among the many groups who were
disadvantaged, women were the most severely affected, as they received almost no direct
benefit from the bill. As suburbs and shopping centers replaced old downtown commercial
areas and residential districts, consumerism created a “feminized landscape” both in the
home and in public places, but this “did not increase women’s social and economic
power.”23
While suburbanization failed to advance the cause of women’s rights, it was
positively damaging to black communities, even those in the North, who were excluded
from many of the new neighborhoods by inequality in lending and by outright segregation.
Expanding residential segregation led quickly to severe educational inequality.24 (This
inequality extended all the way up to the college level, where admissions offices failed to
honor the promise of the GI Bill for black students.)25 Newly segregated black
neighborhoods also fell victim to “red-lining” by banks, discouraging investment and home
buying.26 In this new environment, the old policies of segregation by business owners took
p. 156
p. 279
24 pp. 250-251
25 p. 169
26 p. 170
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on a different dimension, as traditionally public town centers were replaced by privately
owned, and often segregated, malls.27
Cohen suggests that black consumer activism was an effective tool, but her book
reveals a different dynamic: that the effect of market-based politics, when assessed in toto,
has favored the wealthy over the poor. Though it may be true, in part, that “[m]ass
consumption begot a mass civil rights movement,”28 this mass movement had more to do
with mass media than mass consumption per se. Certainly, blacks strove mightily to assert
their rights as consumers, but it is hard to see that those particular efforts have yielded
anything like equality, especially when compared with the gains that have been won by
taking action as citizens in the political arena. The cup of coffee that held such “powerful
symbolic value” for James Baldwin29 may have been just that: mere symbolism. An
“empowered consumer” is just another customer from the perspective of the cash registers
of desegregated businesses, and whatever power the black dollar had to “speak” for its
wielders, that power was more than offset by the opposing dollars in the hands of
segregationists. Unfortunately, the power to boycott is effective relative to how much
purchasing power a community wields, a metric in which the less-affluent black
communities fall short, but in which the holders of the status quo never do. As Cohen
describes, white business owners who opened their doors to black customers soon closed
their doors permanently, due to the power of the white boycott.30 Only with government
regulation of business (like the 1964 Civil Rights Act) does major change occur,31 and even
p. 184
p. 190
29 p. 189
30 p. 187
31 p. 188
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that led, in the context of the surging mass-market economy, to further segregation of
opportunity, as the customer base of black-owned small businesses migrated to the green
pasture of the mass economy.32 Market “segmentation” by advertisers and producers
further captured the black dollar,33 and consolidated corporate power in America. Further,
in a fashion similar to the empty feminization of public spaces, American mass culture has
become inundated with images of black athletes, musicians, and other “stars”, while society
continues along the path of deepening inequality.
Consumerism has been an unhealthy way of life for Americans that has undermined
the ability of society to function as a true democracy. Despite unequaled levels of affluence
in the nation as a whole, large segments of society have been left behind, while the majority
of those in the middle have seen their fortunes plateau in the early seventies, and then
quickly diminish. The predicament that a would-be consumer activist finds him or herself
in may be viewed in light of a statement by a Kennedy staffer, Robert Lampman, in 1963,
that , “it may be easier to arrange new ways for government to do things for consumers
than to arrange ways for consumers to participate in government.”34 The statement
accords with Cohen’s findings, yet Lampman fails to note a fundamental problem: that
“consumers” are citizens, and if they aren’t fully represented without special
“arrangements,” then it’s not really a democracy.
p. 327
p. 253
34 p. 366
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