UMass Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press

Critiques of American Consumer Culture, 1939–1979

Book Jacket: "The Anxieties of Affluence" by D. Horowitz

Daniel Horowitz

A wide-ranging exploration of conflicting American attitudes toward affluence

Winner of the 2005 Eugene M. Kayden Press Book Award for the best book in the humanities published by an American university press

A Choice Outstanding Academic Book

This book charts the reactions of prominent American writers to the unprecedented prosperity of the decades following World War II. It begins with an examination of Lewis Mumford's wartime call for "democratic" consumption and concludes with an analysis of the origins of President Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech of 1979. Between these bookends, Daniel Horowitz documents a broad range of competing views, each in its own way reflective of a deep-seated ambivalence toward consumer culture—a persistent but shifting tension between a commitment to self-restraint and the pursuit of personal satisfaction through the acquisition of commercial goods and experiences.

To explain why affluence has caused so much anxiety in America, Horowitz focuses on key works of cultural criticism that stimulated public debate during what many have called the golden age of modern American capitalism. Some of these books, such as John Kenneth Galbraith's The Affluent Society, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, and Ralph Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed, are well known, while others, like Ernest Dichter's The Psychology of Everyday Living, David Morris Potter's People of Plenty, and Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb, may be less familiar. Still others, such as Martin Luther King Jr.'s Where Do We Go from Here?, have been overlooked as critiques of American consumerism. All were enormously influential in framing popular discussion of a range of troubling issues, from the relationship between morality and prosperity to the challenges the spread of wealth posed to the national character, to the natural environment, and to those who did not share in the country's bounty.

In his final chapter, Horowitz examines the writings of three leading intellectuals—Daniel Bell, Robert N. Bellah, and Christopher Lasch—whose views shaped President Carter's response to the energy crisis of the 1970s. An epilogue carries the story forward to the turn of the new century, as Americans find themselves grappling with the political and cultural implications of a new wave of prosperity.

"How—and why—have Americans struggled to make sense of consumption, morality, democracy, and capitalism? Horowitz elegantly and insightfully explores America s preeminent 20th-century answers. Weaving influential ideas about consumption through the fabric of American social, cultural, economic, and political life, he carefully and clearly explains how each interacted with the others. His narratives of public intellectuals lives and thoughts elucidate the nation's changing tensions between morality and affluence, including the decline of Cold War-era confidence in "democratic affluence." Horowitz analyzes key writers who influenced public discussions, activisms, and policies. To the expected list of consumer culture critics that includes Lewis Mumford, Daniel Bell, Christopher Lasch, and Rachel Carson, Horowitz astutely adds such high-profile social activists as Betty Friedan and Martin Luther King Jr., and the manner in which appraisals of consumer culture shaped their thinking. Horowitz even provides a rare look at a political figure (President Jimmy Carter) engaging leading intellectuals while pondering his sense of national malaise due to crushing materialism. For balance, Horowitz includes thinkers who either celebrate consumption or accept it as natural and inevitable. A volume of exceptional accessibility and clarity. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All collections."

Choice
"A wonderful contribution to the field of recent American intellectual history. Horowitz deftly elucidates some of the most important works of the mid-twentieth century concerned with consumer abundance and its moral and political significance. The writing is always accessible, and the whole work offers a crystal clear overview and analysis of the meanings 'affluence' had in a crucial period of the past century."

Howard Brick, author of Age of Contradiction:
American Thought and Culture in the 1960s

"An impressive and important book. . . . In a field that is sometimes flooded with abstractions, Horowitz's approach—which focuses on specific people, debates, and texts—is welcome. There has been surprisingly little scholarship on post-World War II American consumer society, and this book certainly is the most thorough that I know of."

Lawrence B. Glickman, author of A Living Wage:
American Workers and the Making of Consumer Society

"Horowitz's study of affluence and its discontents raises some crucial questions that should make for stimulating debate in the history classroom. . . . History instructors at all levels would do well to consult the Horowitz volume and incorporate the discourse of modern affluence into their classes, for these are essential questions with which students must grapple in the twenty-first century."

Teaching History

Daniel Horowitz is professor of American studies at Smith College.

American History / American Studies
376 pp.
$29.95s cloth, ISBN 978-1-55849-432-9
February 2004
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A volume in the series Culture, Politics, and the Cold War

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