Mass Credit, Mass Society, and Their Discontents

Abstract

The early decades of the twentieth century saw the United States become an economically centralized nation oriented around the systematic production of fulfillment for consuming desire, a desire experienced by individuals who were increasingly understood as a mass of “consumers.” Crucially, the development of new forms of mass credit financed by specialized external finance capital helped foster and nurture this circling trail of production and consumption by providing a medium that made possible the simultaneous realization and disciplining of consuming desire.