Mass Politics and Consumer Culture

Mass Politics
The Nation-State provided a common framework for political action and political parties increasingly influenced by the demands and participation by the middle and working classes as universal manhood suffrage laws were adopted across Europe.

Causes

• Industrialization
• Urbanization
• Imperialism

Universal Suffrage

• 1871 and 79: Germany/Switzerland
• 1890 and 93: Spain/Belgium
• 1896 and 98: Netherlands and Norway

Social Democratic Party of Germany

• Germany's oldest political party
• Outlawed from 1878 - 1890
• Largest party in the Reichstag by 1912
• Achieving socialist reform within democratic system
• 1890s - Christian Socialist parties form in France, Italy, and Belgium

Socialism and Social-Democracy

• 1889 - Old Age Pension Laws in Germany
• 1897 - Workers Compensation in England
• 1911 - National Health Insurance in England
• First and Second International Socialist Parties

William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli

Nationalism

Zionism

Emancipation of Serfs

Results of Mass Politics

• Parties and policies for the working classes
• Social Democracy
• Increasing Secularization of Government
• Increasing demand for suffrage from women
• Growth of reactionary, radical, or racist parties

Consumer Culture

Cause: Industrialization

• Mass Production, falling prices
• Rise of Middle Class consumers
• Transportation and Communication Revolution
• Industrial Expositions
• Conspicuous Consumption

Cause: Imperialism

• Access to cheap raw materials
• Import of precious metals
• Exoticism and Orientalism

The Household

• Increase in real wages and leisure time
• Increase in education and literacy
• Demand for cultural products
• Prices for furniture, decoration, housewares falling

Sports and Leisure

Advertising and Shopping

Haussmanization

Haussmanization: The Renewal of the City

• Wider boulevards 
• Public Parks and Green Spaces
• Opera houses, performance venues, hotels
• Modernized Infrastructure