Abstract

There is a dangerous tendency in left wing culture critique to create an increasingly dense web of latent capitalist functions that cut off every possibility of the development of transcendent identities, energies, and actions. The danger is two-fold: it prevents us from appreciating and acting upon liberating potentials when they present themselves; it creates a fatalistic mask, of functional necessity whereby we cannot see failures as the truly tragic losses of opportunity they are. This is illustrated by Buxton's thesis that the rock music of the counterculture was “affirmative.” and functioned to create an expanded consumerism. Such arguments assert that the capitalist commodity form penetrates into ever more indirect areas of life closing off their potential for liberation.