The rise and fall of the consumer's democracy: Class, consumption, manhood, and citizenship in American public relations and popular culture, 1945--1972

This dissertation traces the rise and fall of the idea of the working-class male consumer citizen, and the ideological concept of the "consumer's democracy" of which he was a citizen, from the immediate postwar period through the early 1970s. The analysis particularly emphasizes the impact of the Du Pont chemical company's employee and public relations programs, workingmen's magazines, and the television sketch The Honeymooners on that process. The project demonstrates in the early postwar period, business leaders sought to define working-class consumption as a political process in which individuals united as a collective of consumer citizens in commitment to achieving national economic progress. They argued the American worker played a critical role in building the consumer's democracy as both assistant producer and primary consumer of American material abundance. The idea of the working-class consumer citizen constituted a direct response to the cultural and political power of the prewar American labor movement, as business leaders drew upon and reoriented understandings of working-class solidarity and commitment to social progress, to link blue-collar working men to their families, their jobs, and the nation. As evidenced by similar discussions of class, consumption, and citizenship in postwar popular culture, the consumer's democracy provided a framework for debate on these topics. Although business interests attempted to shape American consumer culture into a unified commitment to national economic progress during the early postwar period, the economic and cultural contradictions of their vision subsequently undermined that project. Collapsing blue-collar labor markets and the perception that consumer citizenship threatened patriarchal relations within the working-class home shattered the dream of working-class consumer citizenship by the early 1970s. This study contradicts the widespread belief that postwar American affluence helped to shape a "classless" society. Business leaders attempted to build the postwar consumer's democracy on a collective vision that linked working-class men together as a "class." Furthermore, the ultimate collapse of working-class consumer citizenship stemmed from the distinct gender and occupational histories of the working class.