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I N D I A N A M A G A Z I N E OF HISTORY
The Anxieties of Affluence
Critiques of American Consumer Culture, 1939-1979
By Daniel Horowitz
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2004. Pp. x, 339. Tables, notes, index. $29.95.)
In The Anxieties of Affluence Daniel
Horowitz provides an in-depth intellectual history overview of the critics
of America’s culture of abundance. In
so doing, he admirably complements
his The Morality of Spending (1985>,
which examined the topic during the
period from 1875 to 1940. For
Horowitz, the distinctiveness of latetwentieth century critiques of consumer society lies in a new puritanism
or ethic of self-restraint found alongside the democratic discourse of
achieving satisfaction through commercial goods and services. He begins
with the Second World War, when
Lewis Mumford and others in the
Office of Price Administration sought
to mobilize the war effort into a promotion of “chastened consumption”
by encouraging citizens to reject
materialism, embrace the good life,
and fight for the principles of democracy and community In an excellent
study of two emigres, Ernest Dichter
and George Katona, Horowitz sets out
the early Cold War context in which
American democracy was equated
with mass consumption as consumers
were encouraged to spend their way
toward prosperity and away from the
social and economic instabilities that
had ravaged Europe. Nevertheless,
anxieties remained, and Horowitz
steers his way through ideas on the
morality of the market by focusing on
a number of key figures: J. K. Gal-
braith, Vance Packard, Betty Friedan,
Paul Goodman, Oscar Lewis, Martin
Luther King, Jr., Rachel Carson,
David Potter, Michael Harrington,
Ralph Nader, and Paul Ehrlich. His
narrative ends with a study of Daniel
Bell, Christopher Lasch, and Robert
Bellah, three figures who symbolized
the change in the critique of affluence
in the 1970s,as the energy crisis made
abundance no longer a moral problem for the rich but a problem for all.
Significantly,President Jimmy Carter
drew on the jeremiads of all three in
his infamous 1979 “malaise” speech
in which he suggested that the problems of American society lay not in
the policies of his government but in
the people who increasingly turned
inwards towards self-gratification.
Throughout, Horowitz emphasizes the persistence of modern
moralism in an age of affluence but
also stresses important changes. Critics in the 1950s targeted the psychological problems of comparatively
wealthy suburbanites, although by
the 1960s the focus shifted towards
critiques which would inspire alternative visions and social movements-King’s civil rights, Nader’s
consumer protectionism, and
Ehrlich‘s environmentalism. Horowitz
stresses the hegemony of the Cold
War consensus in the 1950s which
equated democracy and mass consumption. A good intellectual histo-
REVIEWS
rian, he highlights the power of books
both to inspire movements and to reset the terms of public discussion.
Perhaps the only criticism of
Horowitz’s narrative is that it implicitly celebrates those alternatives to
consumerism that the author finds
personally inspirational. A brief epilogue highlights the promotion of
excess that immediately followed
Carter’s dour warnings and then passes over the next two decades to examine the recent popular “post-moralist
celebrations of affluence” (p. 254):
that no post-9/11 critiques of consumerism exist (save those of Islamic fundamentalists), and that
Americans are once again being
encouraged to spend their way out of
trouble. Such selection both reflects
the political proclivities of a generation of historians and denies the popularity of continuing critiques of
consumer society. One might see
Horowitz’s narrative of market anxieties as the legacy of modern moralism, so often reflected in historical
treatments of consumer society that
end on a pessimistic note (usually
around in 1980). On the other hand,
the approach ignores the significance
of texts such as Naomi Klein’s N o
Logo (2001), interesting not so much
for her actual arguments but because
a whole new generation of social
activists, concerned with the global
excesses of consumer society, have
embraced her aims. As Horowitz’s earlier book demonstrates, there has
been a long-standing critique of the
market-suggesting that it is unlikely that criticism will come to an end
now. However, in his focus on the
period 1940-1980, his analysis of the
continuities between the likes of
Mumford, Galbraith, Nader, and
Lasch is unlikely to be surpassed.
MATTHEW
HILTON
is senior lecturer in
history at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom, and author of
Consumerism in Twentieth-Century
Britain: The Search for a Historical
Movement (2003).
History and September 11th
Edited by Joanne Meyerowitz for TheJournal of American History
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003. Pp. xi, 273. Notes, illustrations, maps, index.
Clothbound, $59.50; paperbound, $19.95.)
For many people, especially those
who travel, daily life bears sharp
reminders that things have not been
the same since September 11th. In
Washington, D.C., there are now conCrete barriers surrounding the Capitol, the White House, and the
Washington Monument. In New
Zealand, too, there has been a dramatic increase in airport security. We
seem to have lost our innocence.
However, the scholars who contribute
to this valuable collection of essays
placing the events of September 11th
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