With a groundbreaking, interdisciplinary approach to German political and social theory, Confronting Mass Democracy and Industrial Technology provides fresh insight into the thought of many of the most influential intellectual figures of the twentieth century. Its essays detail the manner in which a wide range of German intellectuals grappled with the ramifications and implications of democracy, technology, knowledge, and control from the late Kaisserreich to the Weimar Republic, from the Third Reich and the Federal Republic through recently unified Germany.
Scholars representing the fields of political science, philosophy, history, law, literature, and cultural studies devote essays to the work of Nietzsche, Weber, Heidegger, Lukács, Schmitt, Marcuse, Adorno, and Habermas. They also discuss the writings of such figures as Brecht and Freud, who are not primarily thought of as political theorists, and explore the thought of Helmut Plessner and reformist theorists from East Germany who have been little studied in the English language. In the process of debating the nature and responsibilities of the modern state in an era of mass politics, unparalleled military technology, capacity for surveillance, and global media presence, the contributors question whether technology is best understood as an instrument of human design and collective control or as an autonomous entity that not only has a will and life of its own but one that forms the very fabric of modern humanity.

Contributors. Seyla Benhabib, Richard J. Bernstein, Peter C. Caldwell, Richard Dienst, David Dyzenhaus, Andrew Feenberg, Nancy S. Love, John P. McCormick, Jan-Werner Müller, Gia Pascarelli, William E. Scheuerman, Steven B. Smith, Tracy B. Strong, Richard Wolin

During World War II, U.S. businesses devised marketing strategies that encouraged consumers to believe their country’s wartime experience would launch a better America. Advertisements and promotional articles celebrated the immense industrial output that corporations achieved during the war. These commercial messages positioned wartime technologies and corporate expertise as the means to streamline America and invent a socially hygienic future free from poverty, slums, drudgery, filth, and—for some businessmen—the New Deal administration.

From Submarines to Suburbs surveys the development, strategy, and effect of these campaigns over a span of twenty pivotal years. Cynthia Lee Henthorn takes a close look at how pre-fabricated suburban houses, high-tech kitchens, and miracle products developed from war-related industries were promoted as the hygienic solutions for establishing this better America, one led by the captains of free enterprise.

As Henthorn demonstrates, wartime advertising and marketing strategies tying consumer prosperity to war were easily adapted in the Cold War era, when a symbiotic relationship between military standing and standards of living intensified in a culture dependent on defense spending. Were the efforts to engineer a better America successful? Using documentary evidence in the form of numerous advertisements, From Submarines to Suburbs stands as a significant contribution to understanding how today’s “better” America evolved.