In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

162 6 Consumer Activism, 1965–1970 Ralph Nader, Martin Luther King Jr., and Paul R. Ehrlich In the late 1960s, a group of writers went beyond the influential books by Rachel Carson, Paul Goodman, Michael Harrington, and Oscar Lewis. Among others, Ralph Nader, Martin Luther King Jr., and Paul R. Ehrlich not only critiqued affluence but also turned their critiques into vehicles for consumer activism. Vance Packard and Betty Friedan had inspired activists, but neither through their books nor in their own activity did they lead consumer movements. Other writers—Galbraith, Goodman, Harrington, Lewis—had tremendous impact, but more in shaping public discussion than in fostering consumer insurgency. Carson presents a more complicated case of the connection between the writing of an influential book and the launching of a mass movement. Eight years separated the publication of Silent Spring in 1962 from the emergence of an organized social protest inspired by her writings. The careers of Nader, King, and Ehrlich, and the books they wrote, mark a major turning point in the criticism of affluence. With their emphasis on the adverse impact of prosperity, they intensified the process by which the cold war consensus was increasingly being discredited. They broke the connection that Dichter, Packard, Friedan, and others had made between social problems and psychological self-realization. More emphatically than those who went before them, they harnessed a moralist perspective to activism. Moreover, their work marks an important shift in the relationship between books, their authors, public policy, and social movements. Significantly, Nader was the first postwar social critic to write a book and then successfully develop and sustain institutions to fight for the changes he had proposed in Consumer Activism, 1965–1970 163 it. Of equal importance is that with King, and to a lesser extent Ehrlich, it was social movements—of African Americans and environmentalists, respectively —that inspired their books, not their books that inspired activism. Words still mattered, but the relationship between pathbreaking books and social movements was changing.1 The Revival of Consumer Activism As often happens, consumer activism arose during a time of prosperity. Technological developments of the 1960s increased productivity and laid the basis for dramatic changes that became fully visible later in the century. In the early 1960s, advances took hold in laser technology, and communications satellites began to dot the sky. Scientists had recently cracked the genetic code, and Xerox manufactured the first production-line copying machine. Corporations , governments, and universities were increasingly putting computers to use. Color television sets made their first appearance in American homes, and by 1967 the networks were broadcasting all their programs in color. At the same time, S. S. Kresge began to close its downtown five-and-ten-cent stores and in 1962 started to open its Kmart discount stores in the suburbs. This was the same year Wal-Mart opened its first store. During the decade Visa and Master Charge made their debut, and the use of credit cards increased rapidly. Goods imported from abroad—especially cars from Germany and electronic goods from Japan—began their transition from objects of curiosity to essential items of American consumer culture. The combination of government policy and economic boom, and the doors that opened up as a result of the fight against discrimination and poverty, helped bring millions of African Americans and others into the middle class. The percentage of women in the paid workforce continued to grow, helping to swell the ranks—and the expenditures —of the middle class. The decade witnessed the continuation of a wave of sustained prosperity. In 1963, two thirds of the world’s automobiles were driven by Americans. The GNP was increasing substantially, and both unemployment and inflation remained low. In 1996 dollars, the GDP grew from $2,377 billion in 1960 to $3,578 billion in 1970, a rise of about 50 percent. Meanwhile, in 1973, the poverty level reached a postwar low of 11 percent. Nonetheless, warning signs of more troubled economic times were not hard to spot. By the late 1960s, inflation had picked up. In 1965, for the first time in its history the United States had a trade deficit with Japan. The fruits of affluence remained unevenly distributed. In 1964, almost two thirds of whites said they were satisfied with their income, compared with less than one third of nonwhites. The consumer protests that Nader, King, and Ehrlich represented grew [18.188.61.223] Project MUSE (2024-04-24...

Share