[...] The expansion of consumerism was accompanied by a dampening down of industrial conflict and class struggle. The contradictions between Capital and Labour receded from the centre of attention and its place was taken by conflicts grounded in age, in gender, in nationality, in race, and above all in the yawning gap between the developed and underdeveloped worlds, between the colonisers and the colonized. Moreover, these conflicts appeared primarily as political and cultural struggles for self determination, political liberation and cultural autonomy. To many observers on the left it seemed that culture was not just one important site of struggle among others, but perhaps the most important. This misreading of history reached its height during 1967-1968, when for a brief moment it seemed that the construction of a radical counter culture coupled with the control of key institutions of transmission would bring about a bloodless transformation of capitalism.