Chapter 5 The American Temptation The Coming of Consumer Society
1. NARA, 611.51/3-1656, 16 March 1956, Memo on Franco-American conference at Arden House. Among the French guests at the Arden House conference were Jean-Marie Domenach, Raymond Aron, Alfred Grosser, Stanley Hoffmann, Jacques Fauvet, and Michel Debré. Domenach was detained by immigration authorities at Ellis Island because he had signed the Stockholm peace appeal and was released only when his political adversary Debré threatened to take the whole delegation home if Domenach were not allowed to rejoin the group (letter from Stanley Hoffmann, 20 October 1989). [BACK]
2. Le Monde, 22 July 1954. [BACK]
3. Jean-Pierre Rioux, The Fourth Republic, 1944-1958, trans. Godfrey Rogers (1987), 322-27, 358-74.
4. Ibid., 369. Still the average French consumer contracted less private debt than his European neighbors or the Americans.
5. Ibid., 370-72. [BACK]
3. Jean-Pierre Rioux, The Fourth Republic, 1944-1958, trans. Godfrey Rogers (1987), 322-27, 358-74.
4. Ibid., 369. Still the average French consumer contracted less private debt than his European neighbors or the Americans.
5. Ibid., 370-72. [BACK]
3. Jean-Pierre Rioux, The Fourth Republic, 1944-1958, trans. Godfrey Rogers (1987), 322-27, 358-74.
4. Ibid., 369. Still the average French consumer contracted less private debt than his European neighbors or the Americans.
5. Ibid., 370-72. [BACK]
6. Those most rewarded were top managers and professionals. Workers maintained a middling rank though they missed improvements in leisure and culture. Those most left out of the new prosperity were farmers, rural laborers, and those not actively employed. Yet from these groups also came the best customers for new television sets and refrigerators; they were the most eager to improve their material comforts. At the other end of the social scale top managers and professionals only modestly accelerated such purchases because they were already well equipped. [BACK]
7. Wylie, Village in the Vaucluse, 143. [BACK]
8. Rioux, Fourth Republic, 374. [BACK]
9. At one point, in order to appear to be fair, Le Monde published a series by an American entitled "Soyons juste même pour les Américains" (27-28, 30 December 1950). [BACK]
10. Alain Bosquet, ed., Les Américains (1958). Bosquet, a poet and authority on American literature, added a most unflattering commentary to these photographs. [BACK]
11. Jean-Marie Domenach, "Le Modèle américain," Esprit, July-August 1960, 1221. Subsequent articles in this series appeared in September and October 1960. [BACK]
12. Jean Cocteau, Lettre aux américains (1949), 81-82. Another reactionary polemic against "la civilisation des machines" is Georges Bernanos, La France contre les robots (1947). [BACK]
13. Duhamel joined Raymond Aron, André Siegfried, and others to debate the American danger in "L'L'Amérique et nous," Le Figaro, 11 May 1956. [BACK]
14. Diana Pinto, "Sociology as a Cultural Phenomenon in France and Italy, 1950-1972" (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1977), 167. Also Alain Drouard, "Réflexions sur une chronologie: le développement des sciences sociales en France de 1945 à la fin des années soixante," Revue française de sociologie 23 (January-March 1982): 62. Pierre Nora ("America and the French Intellectuals," 327) observed that French social scientists were blind to American social science in the 1950s because the work of thinkers like Talcott Parsons, Walt Rostow, Daniel Bell, and Seymour Martin Lipset was grounded in American uniqueness and consensus; the French viewed it as a kind of self-justification, even an ''insidious tool of Yankee imperialism." Thus Bell's End of Ideology was never translated into French. [BACK]
15. Guerin, Où va le peuple américain? [BACK]
16. Michel Crozier, "Les Intellectuels et la stagnation française," Esprit, December 1953, 771-82. [BACK]
17. Jean Fourastié, Le grand Espoir du XXe siècle; progrès technique, progrès économique, progrès social (first published in 1949); Jean Fourastié and André Laleuf, Révolution à l'ouest (1957). [BACK]
18. See the insightful study by Amar, "Instantanés américains"; also useful are the studies by Kornel Huvos ( Cinq Mirages américains, 1972) and David Strauss ( Menace in the West: The Rise of French Anti-Americanism in Modern Times [Westport, Conn., 1978]). [BACK]
19. Pierre and Renée Gosset, "The U.S.A. Through a French Looking Glass," Reader's Digest, December 1953, 36. The Gossets described their travels in L'L'Amérique aux américains, 2 vols. (1953-54). [BACK]
20. Examples of Maurois's many studies, some of which date from between the wars, are Histoire du peuple américain, 2 vols (1955-56); Histoire des Etats-Unis (1954); and Journal: Etats-Unis 1946 (1946). For Maurois's views also see Huvos, Cinq Mirages, 280-81. [BACK]
21. Words of Alexandre Koyré in UNESCO, The Old World and the New: Their Cultural and Moral Relations, International Forums of Sao Paulo and Geneva, 1954 (Paris: UNESCO, 1956), 240. [BACK]
22. Domenach, "Le Modèle américain," September 1960, 1368. [BACK]
23. From Domenach's review of a book by L.-L. Matthias ( Autopsie des Etats-Unis ) in Esprit, April 1955, 731. Esprit mockingly published an "American lexicon" that explained "credit," for example: "every honorable citizen has to pay for most of his purchases on credit, savings being a depraved virtue of decadent countries" ("Petit Lexique américain," Esprit, May 1953, 749). [BACK]
24. Claude Alphandéry, L'L'Amérique est-elle trop riche? (1960). Les Temps modernes published an excerpt of this title in its 19 December 1959 issue.
25. Ibid., 100.
26. Ibid., 113. [BACK]
24. Claude Alphandéry, L'L'Amérique est-elle trop riche? (1960). Les Temps modernes published an excerpt of this title in its 19 December 1959 issue.
25. Ibid., 100.
26. Ibid., 113. [BACK]
24. Claude Alphandéry, L'L'Amérique est-elle trop riche? (1960). Les Temps modernes published an excerpt of this title in its 19 December 1959 issue.
25. Ibid., 100.
26. Ibid., 113. [BACK]
27. André Fontaine, "Les Etats-Unis vus de l'intérieur," Le Monde, 4 February 1955. Georges Friedmann, "De Boston au Mississipi [ sic ]," Esprit, June 1949, 785. [BACK]
28. Aron, in "L'L'Amérique et nous." [BACK]
29. Siegfried, in "L'L'Amérique et nous." [BACK]
30. André Siegfried, America at Mid-Century (1955), 172-75. [BACK]
31. Raymond Aron, "From France," in As Others See Us: The United States through Foreign Eyes, ed. Franz M. Joseph (Princeton, 1959), 60. [BACK]
32. William Rappard in UNESCO, Old World and the New, 195. [BACK]
33. UNESCO, Old World and the New, 198. Cushing Strout, "America, the Menace of the Future: A European Fantasy," The Virginia Quarterly Review (Autumn 1957): 569-81. [BACK]
34. Friedmann, "De Boston," 794. [BACK]
35. Simone de Beauvoir ( L'L'Amérique au jour le jour [1948]) quoted in Strauss, Menace, 260. [BACK]
36. Roy, Clefs pour l'l'Amérique, 134. [BACK]
37. Michel Crozier, "'Human Engineering': Les nouvelles techniques 'humaines' du Big Business américain," Les Temps modernes no. 69 (1951): 72-73. [BACK]
38. Julien, Le Monde, 19 March 1959. Also Claude Julien, Le nouveau nouveau Monde (1960). [BACK]
39. Sidney Lens, "L'Homme standard," Esprit, March 1959, 385-400. [BACK]
40. Albert Béguin, "Réflexions sur l'l'Amérique, l'Europe, la neutralité . . . ", Esprit, June 1951, 886. [BACK]
41. Domenach, "Le Modèle américain," October 1960, 1525, 1523, 1529. [BACK]
42. Jean-Marie Domenach, "Les Diplodocus et les fourmis," Esprit, March 1959, 431-32. [BACK]
43. Raymond Bruckberger ( L'L'Amérique des Pyramides [1952]) quoted in Amar, "Instantanés américains," 49. [BACK]
44. Jean Planchais, "Instantanés américains," Le Monde, 3 May 1952. [BACK]
45. Fontaine, "Les Etats-Unis vus de l'intérieur," Le Monde, 3 February 1955. [BACK]
46. Planchais, Le Monde, 2 May 1952. [BACK]
47. Béguin, "Réflexions sur l'l'Amérique," June 1951, 887. [BACK]
48. Domenach, "Le Modèle américain," September 1960, 1364. [BACK]
49. Julien, Le nouveau nouveau Monde, 169. [BACK]
50. Raymond Bruckberger quoted in Amar, "Instantanés américains," 53. [BACK]
51. Charles Brindillac, "Promenade aux Etats-Unis," Esprit, September 1959, 234-35. [BACK]
52. Maurois in UNESCO, Old World and the New, 313. [BACK]
53. Roy, Clefs pour l'l'Amérique, 306. [BACK]
54. Aron, "From France," 69. [BACK]
55. Alphandéry, L'L'Amérique est-elle trop riche?, 52-53. [BACK]
56. Quotations are from Ernest van den Haag, "Sur la Culture populaire américaine," Les Temps modernes, October 1958, 690, 699. [BACK]
57. Siegfried, America at Mid-Century, 352. [BACK]
58. Aron, "From France," 70. [BACK]
59. "Petit Lexique américain," 749. [BACK]
60. Aron, "From France," 70. [BACK]
61. Serge Groussard, "L'L'Amérique et nous." [BACK]
62. Winock, " 'US Go Home,' " 20. [BACK]
63. Edgar Morin, L'Esprit du temps (1962), 15. [BACK]
64. Lens, "L'Homme standard," March 1959, 394. [BACK]
65. Maurois in UNESCO, Old World and the New, 321-25. [BACK]
66. Robert Escarpit, Le Monde, 14 February 1951. [BACK]
67. Le Monde, 23 October 1957. [BACK]
68. Philippe Labro, The Foreign Student, trans. William Byron (1988), 249. [BACK]
69. Jacques Maritain, Reflections on America (1958), 29. Europeans, Maritain contended, were equally acquisitive and gadget-minded, but they were less open about it. [BACK]
70. Maritain, Reflections, 188. [BACK]
71. Julien, Le Monde, 19 March 1959. [BACK]
72. Domenach, "Le Modèle américain," October 1960, 1531. [BACK]
73. Quotes in this paragraph are from excerpts of Simone de Beauvoir's L'L'Amérique au jour le jour published in Les Temps modernes no. 10 (1948): 1836-44. [BACK]
74. Jean-Paul Sartre, Situations III (1949), 126. Quoted by Jean-Philippe Mathny, "L"L"Américanisme,' est-il un humanisme? Sartre aux Etats-Unis, 1945-46," The French Review 62 (February 1989): 458. My interpretation relies on Mathny's essay. [BACK]
75. Sartre, Situations III, 129-30. [BACK]
76. Béguin's quotes from "Réflexions sur l'l'Amérique," 887, 890. [BACK]
77. Domenach, "Le Modèle américain," July-August 1960, 1231. [BACK]
78. Aron, "From France," 71.
79. Ibid. [BACK]
78. Aron, "From France," 71.
79. Ibid. [BACK]
80. Cyrille Arnavon, L'L'Américanisme et nous (1958), 341, 345, 370. [BACK]
81. Reporting from the United States in the months of soul searching that followed the launch of Sputnik, Claude Julien explained how America's faults, e.g., its obsession with consumerism and profits, had caused its loss of technological-scientific leadership to the Russians ( Le Monde, 23 October 1957). Another correspondent, Jean Schwoebel, used the occasion of Sputnik to reproach the United States for its misplaced priorities ("Les Etats-Unis à l'heure de la recession," Le Monde, 1-7 April 1958). [BACK]
82. Domenach, "Le Modèle américain," October 1960, 1534, 1530. [BACK]
83. In the wake of 1956 several former PCF militants like Edgar Morin who had broken with Stalinism, along with other leftist intelligentsia, founded the review Arguments . See Sandrine Treiner, "La revue 'Arguments,' 1956-62" (mémoire de maîtrise, Institut d'études politiques, Paris, 1987). For the impact of 1956 on Communist intellectuals and compagnons de route, see Jean-Jean-François Sirinelli, Intellectuels et passions françaises (1990), 167-91. [BACK]
84. Quotes in this paragraph are from Albert Béguin, "Les Flammes de Budapest," Esprit, December 1956, 771-78. [BACK]
85. Harold Rosenberg, "Fantaisie orgaméricaine," Les Temps modernes no. 152 (1958): 583. This issue of Temps modernes was devoted to new aspects of American society. [BACK]
86. Pierre Nora ("America and the French Intellectuals," 329-30) locates the turning point for America's image in the years 1956-58 for a series of reasons that include the Communist "diaspora"; Gaullist anti-Americanism; the rise in the standard of living; the Algerian war; and the shift to a new language of social science. [BACK]
87. For example, see G. Rottier, "Nourriture, logement ou télévision?" Esprit, December 1957, 737-46. [BACK]
88. Pierre Emmanuel, ''Is France Being Americanized?", The Atlantic Monthly 201 (June 1958): 35-38. [BACK]
89. Le Monde closely followed this shift. See, for example, André Fontaine's series in the 31 July and the 1, 2 August 1957 issues. [BACK]
90. Domenach, "Le Modèle américain," July-August 1960, 1231, and October 1960, 1534. [BACK]
91. Pinto, "Sociology as a Cultural Phenomenon," 157 ff. [BACK]
92. Aron's course was later published as Dix-huit leçons sur la société industrielle (1962). In 1955 he published his celebrated attack, L'Opium des intellectuels, against the Marxists. [BACK]
93. Geneviève d'Haucourt, La Vie américaine (1958). [BACK]
94. Julien, Le nouveau nouveau Monde, 268-69. [BACK]
95. "Les Sciences sociales aux Etats-Unis," Esprit, January 1959. [BACK]
96. Brindillac, "Promenade aux Etats-Unis." [BACK]