Luxury doesn't mean freedom
Margaret Canovan:
The USA in particular, after being spared the desperate poverty that wrecked the French Revolution, had become the most advanced example of a society devoted to consumption. If the French revolutionary mob had been too poor to be citizens, modern Americans, Arendt thought (echoing classical republican invective against “luxury and corruption”) were too much immersed in the pursuit of affluence. “While it is true that freedom can only come to those whose needs have been fulfilled, it is equally true that it will escape those who are bent upon living for their desires” (pp. 232f; quoting Arendt’s On Revolution, p. 139).
Hannah Arendt: A Reinterpretation, p. 139
