Chapter 4 - State Consumerism in Advertising, Posters, and Films

Summary

Chapter 4 examines the evolution of three forms of economic propaganda—advertisements, posters, and films—to reveal the move toward greater state consumerism, and reveals the ways the CCP navigated the central contradiction between its socialist rhetoric and its capitalist policies. While the Soviet Union provided ideological cover for the CCP’s embrace of consumerism, the party also used public discourse surrounding consumerism to promote restraint. These forms of discourse all attempted to subordinate people’s material desires under a propaganda blitz of messages proclaiming the importance of hard work and frugal living. The CCP’s brand of consumerism thus attempted to castigate individual material desires as bourgeois and celebrate social consumption in its stead. The CCP’s social consumption celebrated collective achievements that benefited the entire nation, such as expanding production of goods and infrastructure like nuclear weapons, bridges, collective dining and childcare, and health care. The CCP used their growing propaganda apparatus to promote consumerism even as it attempted to shape—and at times even suppress—consumerism’s self-expanding, compulsory nature.