Consumerism In The Cold War

At the close of the Second World War, European allies along with their American counterparts took it upon themselves to divide and claim occupation of European countries that the war influenced (Brogan, 1985: 16). Allies were able to rule their own countries again, once the German occupation had been revoked. The next progression was the allies’ conjoined occupation of Germany, where Berlin, Germany’s epicentre, was segmented for all to occupy a sector (Gelb, 1986: 19).

The separation of berlin was the first initial step towards the beginning of the Cold war, as the relations between these various nations started to drift apart.

1.2 The Two Conflicting Economic Systems

To fully understand the origins of the Cold war, it’s important to quantify

Merriam Webster defines Consumerism as “the belief that it is good for people to spend a lot of money on goods and services” (Merriam-Webster. 2014). This definition is a true reflection of the consumer culture of the time. The roll consumerism played in America was deeply affected by the increase use of consumer credit for the consumption of products. This use of consumer credit by the masses was seen as an essential tool for the success of the American people. (Logemann. 2008:525). This allowed people to purchase cars, appliances, TV’s and other possessions that contributed to there social status (Logemann.

The name was coined by writer Jack Kerouac in 1948 to characterize a perceived underground, anti-conformist youth movement that originated in New York (Morgan, 2003:32). This new movement stressed about the importance of spirituality and spontaneity as well as asserting intuition of reason and Eastern mysticism over conventional Western institutionalized religion (Barbour, 1996). The “Beats” as they referred to themselves as, intentionally went out their way to question and challenge the patterns of respectability as well as shock the rest of the American culture.

The writers of the beat generation displayed a sense of freedom as they often lacked traditional structure and form. A famous piece of literature from the beat generations was the novel written by author Jack Kerouac called On the Road. What made this book so different was that it was written on a 75 meter roll of paper (Morgan, 2003:35). The novel showed the freedom of writing and lacked accepted punctuation and paragraph structure. The book was a hallmark for the possibilities of the free life (Saul,