If organised forms of political resistance could be efficiently thwarted
by ... subtle assimilation rather than outright
suppression, the last barricade against it was the individual's own
refusal to think and respond in the prescribed ways. The hardest task
facing any emancipatory politics today is to encourage people to think
for themselves, in a way that transcends simple sloganising and the
dictates of instrumental reason. True critical thinking requires not
just a refusal to identify with the present structures of society and
commercial culture, but a deep awareness of the historical tendencies
that have brought about the current impasse, and of which all present
experience is composed.