Land of Desire : Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture

Rating:
Summary: Love for Sale
Review: A landmark work, LAND OF DESIRE by William Leach traces the spectacular rise of the consumer economy from 1880s to 1915. What's surprising about this genealogy of consumer culture is that so many of the contradictions of life in America --being asked to think of oneself in cold economic terms, (training oneself out for the marketplace, being efficient, punctual, and, enterprising at work) while at the same time being asked to surrender one's inhibitions and spend, spend, spend, have been there since the beginning. It has changed little, but we have.

Consumer credit starts in late 1800s, along with advertising, along with the whole notion of "customer service," (borrowed from Christian service and debased by capitalists), bogus "profit sharing" programs to mollify workers (but only under the threat of union organizing). The turn of the century store owners created consumption palaces (like today's malls) to facilitate profligacy (moving seamstresses off the main selling floor so as not to interfere with the fetishistic fantasy goods, a strategy which finds its current expression in sweat shops well off the premises in the Third World). They spread the Parisian idea of fashion from the realm of clothing to every kind of consumer product. And marketing hasn't changed one bit since then either. One department store used a kind of "Sprint Friends and Family" promotion in 1910 to get people to volunteer likely friends for charge accounts.

Leach identifies three matters he believes are central to the why and how the culture of consumer capitalism came to be the way it is: 1) the development of a new commercial aesthetic (the visual materials of desire such as lights, color and glass), 2) the collaboration among economic and non-economic institutions (an interlocking circuit of department stores, investment banks, hotel chains, and the entertainment industry, but also museums, and universities, 3) the growth of a new class of workers he calls the "brokers: admen, lawyers, investment bankers, museum curators, magazine editors, and experts of all sorts. By 1895, in Leach's words, they had "injected a new 'amorality' into American life, indifferent to virtue and hospitable to the ongoing inflation of desire." According to Emily Fog Mead, an ad expert (and mother of Margaret), writing in an economics journal in 1901: "Accompanying all the early stages of innovation is a fear of wrong-doing, of disloyalty to ideals, and of the coming destruction of the foundation of society; but the next generation has no conscientious misgivings."

Leach notes that this new regime required new ideological underpinnings. Simon Patten, a turn of the century economist, provided them. As the leading light of Wharton's new school of business (yet another invention of this era), he argued that in the new world of mass-produced consumer goods, economic theories of scarcity were anachronistic. This effectively scuttled the writings of Ricardo and Smith, and allowed the new view that mass-manufactured goods and their ready availability would serve to create a standardized set of desires, a common language of aspiration, and thus ameliorate the small differences between immigrants, the poor, the Negro. In other words, Patten equated material "goods" with the social "goods." This blurring of the two has been going ever since. Quoting Leach, quoting historian of religion Joseph Harountunian on this point: "The 'good' is not in goods. The good is in justice, mercy, and peace. It is in consistency and integrity, in living according to truth and to right. It inheres in men and not in things. It is other than the goodness of goods and without it goods are not good."

Leach also identifies elements of America's earlier civic mythology that were appropriated by the new consumer ideologues: 1) The cult of the New. Phrases like New World, New Heaven on Earth, New Nation (conceived in liberty) were common currency in American since its founding (Emerson, Whitman, Douglass espoused versions of the New) As Leach notes: "By the end of the century, however, commercial capitalism had latched onto the cult of the new, fully identified with it and taken it over." "Fashion and style were at the center, expropriating folk design and image, reducing custom to mere surface and appearance."..."Market capitalism [esp. this most radical aspect of it] subverted whatever custom, value or folk idea [that] came with in reach. No religious tradition had the power to resist it, no immigrant culture."

2) "The Idea of Democracy, like the idea of the New and the idea of Paradise (also part of the American mythos and contained within America's millenialist yearnings), began to change under the influence of the new industrial economy. "Gradually, wealth lay less in land and more in capital or in the money required to produce new goods. This pecuniary wealth was owned by a small minority; but at the same time, growing numbers of Americans were losing control of their work, becoming dependent on others --on the owners of capital--for their wages and well-being." "This fostered a double-sided conception of the democracy of desire. It stressed the diffusion of comfort and prosperity not merely as a part of the American experience, but instead as its centerpiece." "...The 'free-market' would allocate to Americans an infinitely growing supply of goods and services. American culture after 1880 -- children as well as adults, men and women, black and white -- would have the same right as individuals to desire, long for, and wish for whatever they pleased."

There was resistance to these appropriations, but eventually "material desires and pecuniary values came to constitute the base measure for all other values, even for ''the dim inner world by which men judge what is for them worthwhile.' Eventually, everyone signed on: Herbert Hoover, as Secretary of Commerce in the Twenties greatly expanded the Department of Commerce to help business, to provide "statistics" and "strategies" for the spread of consumer capitalism all over American and all over the world. Sadly, since then, the business of America has become its only business. A truly remarkable book.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting story, not enough analysis
Review: In William Leach's Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture the author ignores the topic of leisure by making it self-evident through consumerism. Leisure, and in turn consumerism, became actual businesses to the likes of the Straus Brothers and Marshall Field, as well as to by-products of consumer industries such as banks, hotels, and museums. Leach's book brings the nature of leisure full circle, from Veblen's Leisure Class to leisure of the working class, whose consumption boosted businesses that used working-class techniques based in the theatre and vaudeville as "showmanship" in the shop window.

Rating:
Summary: perfect
Review: Leach has written a wonderful book on the true roots of modern American society. Ever wonder why the only public meeting place extant is the shopping mall? Because "they" want it that way. Find out who they were - and are. But beware. You're probably one of them!

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, scholarly, beautifully written
Review: Ostensibly a history of the department store in America, this book is a revelatory primer for those wishing to understand the origins and growth of the culture of comsumerism in the United States. As Leach convincingly documents, consumerism is an artificial, carefully crafted construct clearly traceable to particular people and places in our history. Their paradigm of consumption, Leach further shows, is one that has come to consume American culture in general--and, increasingly, world cultures beyond it.

Rating:
Summary: Snooze
Review: This has got to be the most boring book in the world!!!! I have to read it for one of my college courses and it is very nauseating. 30 pages on the history of window decorations!! Give me a break! If you're into analyzing the advertising industry, try Social Communications in Advertising by Leiss. Its a much better book and its much more interesting!

Rating:
Summary: Interesting story, not enough analysis
Review: W.R. Leach writes about the beginning of consumerism in the U.S. around 1910/20. He writes with much verve about his theme, which makes the book an ageeable read.
But for my taste the book is somewhat short on analysis. For example: there is much talk of the connection between selling and religion, but if this connection was by random or if there were some deeper links is left open.
If you are new to the subject of this book and you want an interesting read: get it. But be aware, the answers for a lot of questions this book poses are not to be found here.