I enjoyed reading the book ‘Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture became Consumer Culture’. The following is a summary from the last chapter in the book. I am inclined to believe that there is definitely a lot of truth in the authors’ thesis.

“...countercultural theorists routinely take concrete social problems and trace them back, in one way or another, to a gigantic “technocratic” apparatus of conformity and repression. For example, environmentalists take straightfowards problems like pollution and blame them on some deep structure of Western rationality (as opposed to an incompleteness of the system of propoerty rights) Antiglobalization activists take the homogenizing effects of trade and blame them on an emerging “Empire” of capital, while ignoring the fact that these same tendencies have been manifest in trade relations since beginning of history. Consumer activists look at the obnoxiously depressing spectacle of brand-consciousness in our society and blame it on a fundamental requirement of the mass production system, rather than simply on the exploitation of a preexisting competition for distinction among consumers.”

The authors cite lively examples to prove the above points. A very thorough debunking of activist progressive left.