Paraphrased from Marx’s famous dictum, this little cartoon draws attention to the wonderful, little bourgeois toys that Marx could have never even dreamed would be available for proletarian consumption (and entertainment!): iPods, computers, televisions…

In fact, Marx probably would have never gotten around to composing the Communist Manifesto. He would have been too busy posting on tumblr.

 “Bourgeoisie you have understood nothing.” A poster made during the May 1968 student riots in Paris.

Before WWII, higher education had been only for Europe’s wealthier classes, but in the postwar era there was greater equality in higher education, and a whole host of middle-class kids—baby boomers— were now able to get a university education. Reducing and eliminating tuition, government subsidies, and scholarships also helped bring about higher enrollments.And enrollments did grow dramatically as a result of these new policies; in France, for example, 4.5% of youth attended university in 1950, but this number jumped to 14.5% in 1965.

The May 1968 student riots began with middle-class youth (they were later joined by the working class, who went on strike, almost crippling the French economy). The generation that revolted in the ‘68 riots were relatively affluent and had been the targets of mass advertising and consumerism. Popular culture was primarily consumed by the middle classes and reflected middle-class interests. The products of postwar popular culture—music, television, films, Coca-Cola— were advertised as lifestyle choices; buying and consuming such products not only communicated to the outside world the socio-economic privileges that you enjoyed, but also were indicative of who you were as a person.

The ‘68 riots was, in effect, a bourgeois response to bourgeois consumerism. Students demanded a greater voice in administration of their universities in May ‘68; they took over buildings, invited industrial workers to support them, and were keen on starting a revolution. As these protests spread all over Europe and abroad to America (most notably at Columbia University), it became clear that the students were protesting against the authoritarian nature of university administrations and harbored anti-war, anti-imperialist attitudes. Most striking, however, was that these movements were really about the narcotic of mass consumerism— the fundamental rejection of bourgeois values that had become increasingly identified with the ownership of products that were massively produced, advertised, and consumed in the postwar era.

With the assistance of Gustave Eiffel, Le Bon Marché boasted the first metal roof structure in the world, making it a monument of architectural innovation.

New industries in the late 19th century helped expand the market for consumer goods, which brought the economy out of stagnation by the end of the century. Overseas imperialism also opened new markets for European consumer goods. New forms of retailing and marketing appeared—department stores, chain stores, packaging techniques, mail-order catalogs, and advertising—which simultaneously stimulated and fed consumer demand.

A new way in which goods were being consumed was through the development and construction of department stores in the mid-19^th century.  Department stores, such as Le Bon Marché in Paris (apparently the first department store ever) sold a wide selections of consumer goods under one roof. These modern stores increased the economic pressure on small traditional merchants who specialized in selling only one kind of product. In a traditional shop, the retailer (who was also the producer) offered a single product—gloves, for example—in limited quantity at a fairly high price. Oftentimes, this price was not set and the customer would haggle with the shopkeeper until a price was agreed upon. “Browsing” was virtually unheard of— an individual who entered a shop was expected to make a purchase.

Department stores, however, made profits from a quick turnover of a very large volume of goods set at low prices. In order to stimulate sales, department stores sought to make shopping a very pleasant experience by offering well-lit expanses filled with alluring items, well-trained and friendly clerks, in-store reading rooms, and restaurants.

Middle-class women especially were encouraged to patronize these stores even though critics had charged that these stores turned sober housewives into irrational shoppers, who were wasteful of family resources and let their consumer fantasies run wild in a store like Le Bon Marché. Indeed, women were the ones who primarily participated in the vast expansion of consumerism and domestic comfort that marked the end of the 19^th century and the beginning of the 20^th century. Women filled their homes with manufactured items such as clothing, china, furniture, carpets, drapery, wallpaper, and prints. In these decades, women’s pursuit of fashion in their home furnishings seemed to lean towards imperial motifs as Empire began to increasingly invade the domestic spaces of the bourgeois household: Persian-inspired designs were seen on textiles, oriental carpets were laid across floors, wicker furniture was placed in drawing rooms, and Chinese porcelain was used at mealtimes. 

Un bar aux Folies Bergère by Édouard Manet (1882, English: A Bar at the Folies-Bergère)

Edouard Manet was born to a bourgeois family that boasted political connections to the Swedish monarchy and the French judiciary. Manet could have had a brilliant career in either the army or law, but instead chose to strike out and become an artist instead, with a particular focus on topics that were of interest to 19th-century bourgeois gents such as himself: domestic pleasures, leisure activities, and events that touched upon French political and foreign interests.

Manet’s work is what prompted his critics to coin the term “impressionism” in the first place. A Bar at the Folies-Bergère is a famous painting and tries to mirror, almost quite literally, the traditional still-life painting. Unlike a traditional still-life, however, this painting shows objects of commercial consumption in a setting where leisure itself was consumed.

Many art critics believe that Manet intended this painting to be a social commentary on late 19^th century life—especially the disconnection that people felt (which one may see in the expression on the barmaid’s face) to the social encounters of modern life. Shop girls and barmaids such as this one shown above had to supplement their meager incomes through prostitution, and the foreboding image of the bourgeois, well-dressed fellow in the background suggests that the woman herself could have been seen an object of consumption.

The Chocolate Girl (known also as La Belle Chocolatière, or Das Schokoladenmädchen) is one of the most famous works by the Swiss artist, Jean-Etienne Liotard (1702-1789), and depicts a pretty maid serving a tray of hot chocolate.

See my post here about coffee and coffee houses.

At first, the consumption of caffeinated drinks were used for medicinal purposes, but soon after their introduction into European life, they were drunk for pleasure, as we all know that caffeine tends to stimulate you quite a bit (ahem!). Caffeinated beverages also tend to stifle hunger, especially hot chocolate! Drinking chocolate was first introduced into Europe by way of Spain who were exposed to the wonders of the cocoa plant from their colonies in the New World. The drink was made by pulverizing the dried beans and boiling them in water with vanilla, cinnamon, or chili peppers.

The first chocolate-drinking establishments were set up in the 17^th century and were open to those who could pay the entrance fees. By the 18^th century, all European countries were consuming chocolate, but Spain had by far the highest consumption levels in Europe and it was, for some time, reserved for the elite primarily (i.e., the nobility and the bourgeoisie).

Anonymous Interior of a London Coffee House, 1668

The social institution of the coffee house, modeled on Arab practices, began to appear in Europe in the 17^th century, and mostly in large cities. These establishments were rather small— they reeked of tobacco smoke and were mostly populated by men.

In the middle of the seventeenth century, chocolate, coffee, and tea all gained widespread, and quite sudden, popularity throughout Europe. The timing of this introduction has more to do with patterns of European consumption than it does with the various ways these crops were encountered by Europeans through colonial expansion. The import of caffeinated goods into Europe such as tea, chocolate, and coffee had profound effects on European bourgeois consumption and and what, indeed, it meant to be bourgeois. The idea of fashion as a means of social discrimination created a market for luxury and exotic goods, and caffeinated drinks were essential to the visible demonstration of possessing the exotic and foreign.

Coffee houses started to appear by the thousands in the 18th century and became the focus of the emerging bourgeois class of urban professionals where politics could be discussed and business deals were made. Men of all social classes were welcomed in the coffee house, as coffee was seen as a drink that promoted sobriety and virtue. Women were not allowed to join in on the fun, even though they were not barred from working at these establishments.

Coffee houses were places in which news was shared between certain merchant and professional classes, and some coffee houses became associated with certain professions. London coffee houses, for example, became the birthplaces of such institutions such as Lloyd’s Insurance and the London Stock Exchange.

A self-referential artifact of bourgeois youth culture from the 1960s.

This fashion newsreel advertises the ‘The New Look’ of 1954, describing the alluring and feminine features of this ‘new’ fashion, which was first made popular by the Parisian fashion giant Christian Dior in the late 1940s. The postwar model for femininity was markedly different than the image of the austere and hard-at-work woman during World War II. Instead of being essential workers and heads of families in the absence of their men, postwar women were made to symbolize the return to normalcy—a domestic, nonworking, and definitely bourgeois norm—that prioritized their obligations to motherhood and homemaking.

‘The New Look,’ which dominated women’s fashion until the 1960s, featured pinched waists, tightly fitting bodices, and big, voluminous skirts. This restoration of (what was basically) the 19th-century female silhouette invited the renewal of clear gender roles, and this look was popularized in women’s magazines, which reinforced the message that women should return to the home and renew their commitment to their domestic obligations.

Excessive consumerism in the postwar era emphasized physical beauty available through cosmetics and clothing, and women were urged to buy things that would make them look good and their families, too. European women, however, continued to work outside the home after the war and mature women and mothers were working more than ever before—especially in the Soviet bloc. The female workforce was going through a profound revolution as it gradually became less youthful and more populated by wives and mothers who would hold down jobs for the rest of their lives despite being bombarded by images of 19th-century femininity.

Some interesting questions to think about while you’re watching the video: What does the newsreel emphasize as feminine? In which situations does the narrator imagine that women might wear these fashions?

sugarmeows:

English silver-plated box with a hinged lid modeled as the head of a pug with glass eyes (c.1880)

Since I adore pugs, I had to repost this picture. This looks like a bourgeois trinket of some sort, and it’s going for quite a bit of money. What do you think was kept inside?

I imagine a woman like this would have owned a silver-plated pug box:

J. Tissot, Young Lady [and her Pet Pug] in a Boat (1870)

nuclearhugs-n-kisses:

I want leninade so..badly…so badly. ; n ;

WWLHS? (For new readers: What Would Lenin Have Said?)

Lenin wasn’t particularly known for his sense of humor, but if you were to read his April Theses, you could tell that he probably had a lot of witty one-liners and comebacks stuffed in his back pocket and pulled them out when the occasion called for it. I would imagine that, after making a snarky remark, he probably would have said something like: Reappropriating the symbols of the proletariat for bourgeois consumption… or something.

Leninade does, however, look rather tasty. Should one get hammered on this after getting sickled?