by Norman Solomon
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/09/23-5
"At the time, I scarcely picked up on the fact that "The Greening of America" was purposely nonpolitical. Its crux was personal and cultural liberation -- in a word, "consciousness," which "plays the key role in the shaping of society." And so, "The revolution must be cultural. For culture controls the economic and political machine, not vice versa." In effect, the author maintained, culture would be a silver bullet, able to bring down the otherwise intractable death machine.
...
n 1995, the same Charles Reich was out with another book -- "Opposing the System" -- his first in two decades. Gone were the claims that meaningful structural change would come only as a final step after people got their heads and culture together. Instead, the book focused on the melded power of huge corporations and the U.S. government.
Reich's new book was as ignored as "The Greening of America" had been ballyhooed; no high-profile excerpt in The New Yorker or any other magazine, scant publicity, and not even faint controversy. Few media outlets bothered to review "Opposing the System." A notable exception, the New York Times, trashed the book."
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