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Spring 2008 »
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Consumer Nation

By Richard M. Abrams
A BLOOMING INDUSTRY among pundits, journalists, historians, and others celebrates, although more often deplores, America as “a consumer society.” One prize-winning historian has described the country as “A Consumer’s Republic,” suggesting that consumers own the place. Another argues how consumers “shaped” American politics even from the very beginning of the nation in the eighteenth century. Still another argues that it was consumer interests that “fueled liberal politics” from at least the beginning of the twentieth century. [1] 
See, Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic (2003); Timothy Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (2005); Meg Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics (2005). Just to mention a few others: Richard Wightman Fox & T.J. Jackson, eds., The Culture of Consumption (1983); Roland Marchand, Adve...

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FOOTNOTES:

  • [1] See, Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic (2003); Timothy Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (2005); Meg Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics (2005). Just to mention a few others: Richard Wightman Fox & T.J. Jackson, eds., The Culture of Consumption (1983); Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream (1985) ; Lawrence Glickman, ed., Consumer Society in American History (1999).
  • [2] The literature on antitrust is voluminous, but on congressional intent regarding protecting competitors, see, for example, Hans Thorelli, The Federal Antitrust Policy: Origination of an American Tradition (Johns Hopkins U. Press, 1955); William Letwin, Congress and the Sherman Antitrust Law, 1887-(University of Chicago Press, 1956). As Olivier Zunz observed in Making America Corporate 1870-1920 (University of Chicago Press, 1990), p. 36, “The fight against bigness was part of a larger goal of maintaining the heterogeneous character of society.”
  • [3] See, Amy Lynn Toro, “Standing Up for Listeners’ Rights: A History of Public Participation at the Federal Communications Commission” (University of California-Berkeley doctoral dissertation, 2000).
  • [4] See, Marcia Angell, The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It; also, Marcia Angell, “Your Dangerous Drugstore,” New York Review of Books, 8 June 06. Angell is the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.
  • [5] Reprinted in his Memoirs (Macmillan, 1952), p. 140.