A Second Review of Ehrenberg’s “The Life of the Automobile"

                                                        A young Ehrenberg

 

Back in 2009 I wrote a review of The Life of the Automobile  on a day I was suffering with the flu.I highly recommend it. See https://automobileandamericanlife.blogspot.com/2009/10/brief-review-of-ilya-ehrenburg-life-of.html .I forgot about that, and most recently reread the book while exercising on a bike at the Rec Center and prepared to write a review. 

Written during the first half of 1929, this work is a critique of both capitalism and colonialism. It has very interesting insights of the movers and shakers as they compete for resources like oil and rubber in the months leading up to the Great Crash. Hoover,  Churchill, plantation owners, and oil barons like Walter Teagle are all mentioned in an insightful way. But then too are the little people that weave their way into and out of  the story, including the the cab drivers, stock speculators, assembly line workers and Malaysian rubber workers. Eherenberg’s tale begins with Andre Citroen, his ambitions, his name in lights on the Eiffel Tower, his penchant for gambling, and above all his quest to produce more cars and make more money, only to squander it at the casino. 

There is plenty of suffering across the board in this book. Capitalism and automobiles have redefined time, and time places stress on people squeezed in from all sides. Only the elites are in control, as the rest of us are blown in a wind the has its origins in speculation and the economic growth fetish.

The take away from this book -- remove the ideology -- is that the automobile reorganized the 20th century world. Energy (oil) was now paramount; large amounts of capital were now both commonplace and critical to success; class structure was reorganized; national power took on a more global scope.