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[[File:A_Consumers'_Republic.jpg|left|250px|thumbnail|<i>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375707379/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0375707379&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=7e6b72eee89df711dce584977325b019 Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America]</i> by Lizabeth Cohen]]__NOTOC__
''This article was originally published on [http://videri.org/index.php?title=A_Consumers%E2%80%99_Republic| Videri.org] and is republished here with their permission.''
Liz Cohen’s second book serves as a beautiful companion piece to Alan Brinkley’s <i>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679753141/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0679753141&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=5064bd8b8b8a09a8d8e8b716215c1c17 The End of Reform]</i>, which highlighted the New Dealers’ embrace of consumerism as the basis for liberal policy in the face of political reversals and persistent depression in the late 1930s. If the government cannot regulate business and labor to the benefit of all, it can at least put dollars in the citizens’ hands, to make them consumers and get the economy flowing. <i>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375707379/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0375707379&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=7e6b72eee89df711dce584977325b019 Consumers’ Republic]</i> takes this pattern through the postwar years and up to the present when conservatives have inaugurated a period of deregulation, privatization, and economic individualism.
In Cohen’s view, the New Deal idea of “the interests of consumers are the same as those of the nation” has been replaced by “what’s best for me is best for America.” In any case, the mantra of this period is “buy, buy, buy,” and Cohen insists that choices in the market were often politicized. Disney’s notorious miser, Scrooge McDuck, first appeared shortly after the war, along with the notion that “thrift is now un-American.”
Cohen lauds the reinvigorated consumer movement of the 1960s, which sought to protect people from unsafe products and curb industrial excesses like pollution. In a sense, this activism can be seen as limiting the range of options on the market, by questioning what levels of danger consumers may be subjected to or actively pursue. In any event, this surge of public concern seems to have reduced in strength by the late 1970s, when Jimmy Carter disdained Americans’ “worship of self-indulgence and consumption” and was promptly replaced by a GE spokesman who cut taxes.
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