History and Consumerism

I think in both high school and college history when I was lectured on the years immediately following World War Two, and on how the US finally pulled itself out of the Great Depression, and prevented another one from happening immediately after the war, my instructors always phrased it this way, "Factories began building consumer goods instead of tanks and war planes."

This is indeed true, but what is left unsaid is what drove them to make that switch. This phrasing suggests that the factories and companies acted alone, as if they were answering a demand that they knew was already there, that had just sprung up since the war had finished. That's seriously how it was taught to me.

Perhaps it would have been considered "too liberal" or too "down on America" if they had phrased it a little more accurately:

The government had an enormous stake in the factories that had been producing weapons of war by the thousands, and it was the government who had essentially paid all the workers in those factories. What were they to do once those factories weren't needed for the war effort any longer? The nation would sink back once again into depression. To prevent this, someone awfully high up suggested we change our entire economy from one based on agriculture, to one based on consumer goods. And that's just what happened, by God. And it's been just that way for 60 years. The consumer culture was pushed upon the American citizen by its own leaders. Washing machines and cars and refrigerators. Microwaves and televisions.

The consumer culture was sold to, nearly forced upon, the average American. And, it can't be sugarcoated: the fact is, Design shares some of that blame.