Your argument presupposes that what is marketed as counter-culture is really, plain and simple, mass-marketed capitalist culture. But all this is doing is calling a spade a spade or, in this case, a marketed counter-culture a marketed culture - something people on this list are more than capable of working out for themselves.
The trouble is, everyone you are criticising in the "counter-culture" crowd, is, like me, going to insist that their case is exempt from the machinations of capital and is really a True Artistic Expression.
In other words, until you do us the service of telling us who you are actually against (apart from cars that go boom) and - why not? - what you are actually for, this critique is worthless, other than to lord your aesthetic superiority over everyone else's.
For your purposes, counter-culture = culture, and that's fine - I am inclined to agree. But please, let us have your definition of what culture should and can be. Again, I will probably agree with you in everything but specifics.
Simon
> From: Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu>
> Subject: [lbo-talk]
> It is difficult to have a reasoned discussion with
> the latter-days
> counter-culture crowd that believes that shouting
> swear words loudly
> trump all arguments.
>
> But what is really pathetic about that crowd,
> though, is that all their
> rebel posturing notwithstanding, they fail to
> realize that their
> "counter-culture" is in fact an
> over-the-counter-culture, a sort of
> mass-marketed McCulture, McMusic, McShowbiz - where
> the production of
> cultural contents has been finally Taylorized and
> relegated to the
> semiskilled disc-flippers, computerized sound
> assembly line workers, and
> marketers pushing that product to kids with little
> or no taste, while
> the record company owners reap most of the profits.
>
> Some "counter culture" indeed. It looks
> suspiciously like the
> Pepsi-generation with more shocking window dressing.
>
> Wojtek
___________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Messenger - Communicate instantly..."Ping" your friends today! Download Messenger Now http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com/download/index.html