“Consumers, defend yourselves!” admonished Le Monde in November 1946. “Think before buying. Control the prices offered you.…. Your wallet will benefit, and so will the franc!” The war was over and France was liberated, but hard times prevailed. In this short announcement, Le Monde revealed the tensions inherent in the important role of the consumer in the French economy. At the same time that the newspaper chastised consumers, it urged them to empower themselves and remedy their economic situation. It called on them to be citizen consumers – buyers making purchasing decisions both for their own good and for the good of the nation. The French transition from poverty to plenty was characterized by periods of rationing, shortages, prolonged and intense inflation, and the slow results of the productivity drives of the early postwar economy. Throughout the phases of this social and economic reconstruction, consumers both organized themselves to exercise economic citizenship and were disciplined, cajoled, and called on to assume their appropriate responsibilities in the national economy.

Whereas the postwar turmoil involved numerous international and national political problems, it was the economy that preoccupied much of the population immediately following the war. Under strained economic conditions, French women exercised full citizenship for the first time, and couples and families sought to create normalcy, hoping eventually to find prosperity. It was under these conditions that postwar economic planners looked abroad, chiefly to the United States, to determine the best means of creating a stable, just, and modern mass consumer society.