US Consumerism and its Discontents
1. Beginnings 1898-1932
In 1900, few observers could have predicted that the US would dominate the 20th century very much as Britain dominated the 19th. While Britain’s industrial hegemony was slowly declining in the face of German and US competition, its Empire encompassed most of the planet (including huge stretches of the Middle East, Asia and Africa). But the British world-system began to implode in the 1910s, thanks to revolutions in Mexico (1911) and China (1911), and the cataclysm of WW I (1914-1918). The war triggered the Russian Revolution in 1917 and led to the fall of the German monarchy in 1918.
After Germany’s defeat, the US was the only serious economic rival to Britain. Yet the US did not fully exert its true geopolitical heft for another two decades. During this morbid interregnum, the US invented the Hollywood film, the automobile and road culture, and jazz music.
Media
Birth of a Nation D.W. Griffiths (US) 1915
The Tramp Charlie Chaplin (US) 1915
One A.M. Charlie Chaplin (US) 1916
The Pawnshop Charlie Chaplin (US) 1916
Intolerance D.W. Griffiths (US) 1916
Easy Street Charlie Chaplin (US) 1917
Shoulder Arms Charlie Chaplin (US) 1918
The Idle Class Charlie Chaplin (US) 1921
The Playhouse Buster Keaton (US) 1921
Pay Day Charlie Chaplin (US) 1922
Sherlock Jr. Buster Keaton (US) 1924
The Navigator Buster Keaton (US) 1924
The Gold Rush Charlie Chaplin (US) 1925
The General Buster Keaton (US) 1926
The Circus Charlie Chaplin (US) 1928
Steamboat Bill Jr. Buster Keaton (US) 1928
Cocaonauts Robert Florey and Joseph Santley (US) 1929
City Lights Charlie Chaplin (US) 1931
Frankenstein James Whale (US) 1931
Monkey Business Norman McLeod (US) 1931
Duck Soup Leo McCarey (US) 1932
Politics
Establishment of the US Empire: war with Spanish Empire, annexation of Puerto Rico, Philippines, Cuba.
Oklahoma joins US 1907, New Mexico and Arizona join US 1912
Economics
Monopoly capitalism as form: the emergence of the Seven Sisters
Spotlight on auto industry
Theory
The Ego and the Id Sigmund Freud (Austria) 1923
Class Consciousness and Reification, Gyorgy Lukacs (Hungary) 1923
Goethe’s Elective Affinities Walter Benjamin (Germany) 1925
Texts
The Iron Heel Jack London (1902)
The Wings of the Dove Henry James (1902)
The Ambassadors Henry James (1903)
The Golden Bowl Henry James (1904)
The Jungle Upton Sinclair (1906)
Ezra Pound
T.S. Eliot, Wasteland
The Great Depression signaled the demise of liberal or British-centered capitalism, and the rise of an monopoly capitalism centered on the US. Part of this transformation involved the expansion of the state, which began to reorganize vast swathes of the economy. The New Deal greatly expanded the welfare states in the US, UK and Sweden, while Fascism or Fascist-inspired military regimes took control of Japan, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal and most of Eastern Europe. Civil war broke out in China, while the first great mass movements against colonialism were ignited throughout Asia and Africa.
Media
It Happened One Night Frank Capra (1934)
Bride of Frankenstein James Whale (1935)
A Night at the Opera Sam Wood (1935)
Modern Times Charlie Chaplin (1936)
Showboat James Whale (1936) [Paul Robeson sequence]
A Day at the Races Sam Wood (1937)
Destry Rides Again George Marshall (1939)
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington Frank Capra (1939)
Stagecoach John Ford (1939)
The Great Dictator Chaplin (1940)
Citizen Kane Orson Welles (1940)
Fantasia (Multiple directors) (1940)
Casablanca Michael Curtiz (1942)
Double Indemnity Billy Wilder (1944)
The Lost Weekend Billy Wilder (1945)
Politics
Fascism, Stalinism, New Deal
AFL-CIO, the great auto strikes.
Russian WW II proverb: “The Americans paid in dollars, we paid in blood”.
The Popular Front and the CP
Economics
Keynesianism: How deficit financing won WW II
Theory
Walter Benjamin Theses on History (1940)
Theodor Adorno Minima Moralia (1945)
Texts
Henry Miller Tropic of Capricorn (1938)
E.E. Doc Smith Galactic Patrol, Gray Lensman, Second-stage Lensman (1937-1940)
E.E. Doc Smith Children of the Lens (1942)
Langston Hughes
Richard Wright Native Son
After the titanic conflict of WW II, the US almost single-handedly rebuilt the world system, via the Bretton Woods accords and a permanent war economy. By the 1950s, the US consumer culture reached its zenith, and US autos, film and consumer goods exported the virtues of Americanization to the world. While the Soviet Union built its own garrison-states in Eastern Europe, it never came close to challenging US hegemony. After the Chinese Revolution of 1949, the decolonizing Third World soon became the chief battleground between the US and the USSR.
Media
The Best Years of Our Lives William Wyler (1946)
It’s a Wonderful Life Frank Capra (1946)
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein Charles Barton (1948)
Forbidden Planet Fred Wilcox (1954)
Rebel Without a Cause Nicholas Ray (1955)
Teahouse of the August Moon Daniel Mann (1956)
A Love Supreme, John Coltrane (1964)
Goldfinger Guy Hamilton (1964)
Battle of Algiers Gillo Pontecorvo (1965)
Meditations, John Coltrane (1965)
Are You Experienced? Jimi Hendrix (1967)
Axis: Bold as Love Jimi Hendrix (1967)
The Velvet Underground and Nico Velvet Underground (1967)
Electric Ladyland Jimi Hendrix (1968)
White Heat/White Light, Velvet Underground (1968)
2001 Stanley Kubrick (1968)
Economics
Monopoly capitalism as content
Bretton Woods accords
Military-industrial accumulation and its role in US economy
Case study: Motorola (Page 218-223, Wireless Horizon, Dan Steinbock. American Management Association: NY, 2003).
Politics
The national security state: Eisenhower and Khruschev
The Three Worlds: US, USSR, postcolonial countries
Revolutions in Vietnam 1945, India 1947, China 1949, Cuba 1959
1968 and the counter-culture
Theory
Theodor Adorno Negative Dialectics
Texts
Langston Hughes
E.E. Doc Smith Triplanetary (1948)
E.E. Doc Smith First Lensmen (1950)
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
The Soft Machine William Burroughs (1960)
The Ticket That Exploded William Burroughs (1962)
Nova Express William Burroughs (1964)
Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye (1968)
Maya Angelou I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970)
Toni Morrison Sula (1970)
Ironically, while the US pioneered globalization, it was also its first victim. By the late 1960s, other countries began to generate their own autonomous media and consumer cultures. By the 1970s, foreign competition and monetarism began to ravage the US industrial base. The dollar sank, while the East Asian economies and the future European Union began to catch up with the US. The US decline was exacerbated by the neoconservative turn of the 1980s (in 1985, the US became a net debtor nation). The US decline eerily paralleled the internal crisis of the USSR, which was falling further and further behind Eastern Europe.
Media
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Tobe Hooper (1974)
The Shining (1979) Stanley Kubrick
The Terminator James Cameron (1984)
Economics
The Korean and Taiwanese miracles
Export-platform industrialization in Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea
Integration in European Community
Politics
Detente and oil diplomacy
Rise of the Bush clan
The Wars on Central America: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Grenada
Theory
Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form (1972)
Fredric Jameson The Political Unconscious (1981)
Ernest Mandel, Late Capitalism
Texts
Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971)
Toni Cade Bambara The Seabirds are Still Alive (1977)
Neuromancer William Gibson (1984)
5. End of Empire 1986-2002
By the late 1980s, the US Empire began to fade away. China and Vietnam rejoined the East Asiam economy, transforming the region into a true metropole. In 1992, the European Community mutated into the European Union, the world’s first multinational superpower. In 2002, the euro replaced twelve European currencies, and the US dollar began to lose its status as world reserve currency. In 2004, the geopolitical dominion of the US Empire officially ended, thanks to the expansion of the EU from fifteen countries to twenty-five and the emergence of an autonomous East Asian economic and geopolitical bloc.
Media
Power, Ice-T (1987)
It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Public Enemy (1988)
Cypress Hill, Cypress Hill (1991)
Dr. Octagon, Kool Keith (1996)
Half Life Valve Software (1998)
Slim Shady LP, Eminem (1999)
Economics
Doug Henwood, Wall Street (1997)
Politics
Neoconservativism and neoliberalism
Theory
Pierre Bourdieu, Acts of Resistance (1998)
Mike Davis, City of Quartz
Texts
Toni Morrison Beloved (1987)