The Greening of America, 25th Anniversary Edition

by Charles A. Reich

The 25th Anniversary of the Groundbreaking Classic. "If there was any doubt about the need for social transformation in 1970, that need is clear and urgent today....I am now more convinced than ever that the conflict and suffering now threatening to engulf us are entirely unnecessary, and a tragic waste of our energy and resources. We can create an economic system that is not at war with human beings or nature, and we can get from here to there by democratic means."--from the new Preface by Charles A. Reich.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, History, Environment, Sociology, Philosophy, Counter Culture

433 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Charles Alan Reich was an American academic and writer best known for writing the 1970 book The Greening of America, a paean to the counterculture of the 1960s.

Reviews

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

"There is a revolution coming. It will not be like revolutions of the past. It will originate with the individual and with culture, and it will change the political structure only as its final act."

The Greening of America is about a Revolution. Unfortunately, the Revolution envisioned by Charles A. Reich has not yet come to pass. Written in 1970, when the country was in the middle of the Vietnam War, on the eve of the Arab Oil Embargo, of an economic downturn, and of social upheaval and urban decay which he could not have foretold, Reich saw a bright, nonconformist future which began with the youth of his day. Instead, those youth (now aging Baby Boomers) became the yuppies and ecstatic capitalists of the 1980s, who fed the machine against which Reich rages.

"The goals of a new consciousness are nothing less than the recapture of life itself." (311)

Reich structures his argument around three types of Consciousness:

Consciousness I: (19th century) "the traditional outlook of the American farmer, small businessman, and worker who is trying to get ahead." (16)

Consciousness II: (first half of the 20th century) "represents the values of an organizational society." (16) II is relentlessly conformist, consumed with status and materialism.

Consciousness III: "is the new generation." (16) Reich sees III as the hope for significant cultural and social change. III is sick of the Corporate State and the artificial reality it forces upon them.

"It is only by change in individual lives that we can seize power from the State." (327)

All that is needed to subvert the Corporate State, Reich argues, is to cease believing the lies it peddles: happiness is directly related to success; success means lots of money and status; in order to achieve money and status, one must conform to the State, even to the point of destroying one's true self. How does one fight this system? Simple: do your own thing. Screw the money, screw the status.

"To be a manual laborer, a technician, a secretary, means to live wholly without the recognition that the higher statuses deem so essential to the health of their egos." (315)

Part of the reason people have such a hard time with fighting the system is that the system rewards those who conform and who overachieve. If one is a simple laborer, that labor is not valued. Never mind that it's the simple laborer who constructs the buildings in which the Machine operates...

For all its subversiveness, however, The Greening of America does not advocate the overthrow of the US Government, nor does it suggest that a completely new system of government is necessary. Reich takes, in some ways, a Structuralist approach to change. He argues that we need not change the structure of our government in order to overthrow the Corporate State. Instead, we need only change our consciousness and our values; through this change, he claims, we will inevitably reconfigure the government. The governmental structure which was created through the Constitution is one which is not, in and of itself, defective or corrupt. On the contrary, it is the values of society which have become corrupt. Once those values have shifted and a new Consciousness has come to the fore, that Consciousness will be able to work within the structure which has already been established. What are these new values which inform the new Consciousness? They are anti-materialist, anti-corporation, and non-conformist. They are pro-family, pro-environment, and pro-human being.

So, 38 years after this book was first published, we live in an age which is as relentlessly materialistic (if not more so) as ever. Today, people are more concerned with appearance, status, and stuff than ever before. This is particularly true among the youth, who value their iPods and iPhones, Gucci handbags and Diesel jeans, above their intellectual and spiritual growth. Their parents (those for whom Reich had so much hope) value big houses and automobiles which continue to deplete the planet's natural resources, and believe that these possessions represent the best they can do for their children.

Yet there is a growing undercurrent in the twenty-first century which may represent the maturation of Consciousness III. There are still those of us who are sick and tired of the Machine and the lies it feeds us. There are those of us for whom the 9-to-5, with a retirement plan and benefit package, represents not security but stagnation and repression. The Machine is still churning out shiny things that it convinces us we "need," but a resistance is growing. And according to Reich's theory, all we need to do is say "no." It's terribly simple: the Machine cannot survive without the people who continue to buy into it (both literally and figuratively).

The Greening of America is more relevant today than it was 38 years ago. Though students rarely engage anymore in sit-ins or protests, the youth of the twenty-first century is creating its own methods of peaceful subversion. The advent of the Internet (not even a blip on Reich's 1970 radar) and its unrivaled possibility for user-created content is a double-edged sword: it can cut off the new Revolution by flooding the Consciousness with images of plastic beauty and disposable pleasures; or it can provide the vehicle by which the new Consciousness can be spread to more people than we can imagine.

In my humble opinion, this is one of the most important books of the twentieth century. It deserves to be revived in the twenty-first.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

i'm beginning to think this was a bad idea...i'm only 1 page into this book and it's already talking about how the youth movement of the late 60s/early 70s will be a strong and lasting one that will eventually overtake all ages and generations. the punk and metalhead inside me are crying their angry little eyes out....

okay, so a couple of weeks have passed, and i've finished the book, and i've had time to form a complete opinion of it and here's where i stand:

i got something out of reading this book, but by no means was it enjoyable. although, if you're settling in to read a nearly 40-year-old, 430 page political treatise about the human condition after the industrial revolution, my guess is you're not really looking for an "enjoyable" read.

anyway, the best part of this book is the first 200-or-so pages, or, let's say 8 chapters. in them, charles reich, a law professor at yale, discusses largely what's wrong with society--the things that technology and industry (and the corporate state) have deprived us of, and the mindsets/personalities/"consciousnesses" that have developed from that. it's all very on the nose and for the most part agreeable. many of his ideas verge on anarchism and the idea that lies behind it of taking responsibility for your own actions, though he never actually mentions the word "anarchism" and even goes so far at one point to say that he's not advocating the loss of government (though it's arguable that that even has to be part of anarchism).

after that, however, he spends the remainder of the book talking about how the hippies will save us all. really. the title, "the greening of america" might as well be "let's all smoke pot and love one another," because that's what his argument boils down to. while i'm definitely generalizing here, and he does have many good points about what needs to be done to buck the reigns of the corporate state that we've settled ourselves into, it's also really hard to take him seriously. with 30 years more of societal developments behind us from when this book was written, the hippie movement that he so loves and cherishes has fizzled out and fallen prey to exactly what he warns might happen: the energy and idealism of youth are forgone for a piece of the pie. this is quite possibly the most frustrating part of the book, too, that he lays out what has happened to many an other youth movement, but then is completely blind to the fact that history repeats itself.

he has total faith in idea that hippie-dom is so strong a lure that it will spread beyond just the youth, and in hindsight, it turns out he was just a sucker.

if he weren't so obsessed with hippies, reich would have had a pretty good and fairly timeless argument on his hands. we as a society have to not forego technology and industry in an attempt to return to the moral/spiritual/personal fulfillment of a bygone age, but rather we have to learn how to utilize and control technology and industry to create better and more satisfying lives for ourselves by letting the machines do our dirty work, allowing us to be freed for higher, or at least more fulfilling, pursuits. learning can't be the territory of the young, or if it has to be, then youth has to extend for life, because as soon as we stop learning, we're dead.

and that's my book report. pfew...

[A. Johnson · Rating 2 out of 5]

"OK, boomer." This was the first political book that was a contemporary commentary at the time (1970)--and I typed (and I mean typed) a long report that was both agreement and retort. The book is a hodgepodge--ramblings of Reich made me think he smoked too much hash while writing it. Yet, he had a point. After reading it, I summarized his main complaint for my in house historian & Doctor in Economics. He gave me some great points, mostly background that Reich omits from this piece. Now, some 50 years later, I see that Reich wrote from his feelings and less from information.
Nonetheless, we still need to make America livable. The big institutions still get big breaks. While increasing minimum wage won't hurt, it won't solve the problems: the tax rates for the poor and middle class are still punishing.

[Julio The Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short review: "Hippie dream". No, Chuck. You don't say. Like, wow, man. THE GREENING OF AMERICA is that rare book that manages to be both silly and (semi)prophetic at the same time. Back in 1970 bands of stoned-out roadsters, whom we called in the U.S. "Hippies", roamed the land in search of transcendence and opposing whatever their parents were into this week. The air and water were killing us so the first Earth Day was proclaimed. Lo and behold, Charles Reich, a Harvard Professor drop-out (yes, just like his predecessor Timothy Leary) published THE GREENING OF AMERICA. The title is not just an unintended reference to his cashing in on current fads but his proclamation that "we are in the midst of the third American revolution, which will not be violent and no one can stop." The first revolution or "Consciousness I, to use Reich's hipper language, was the pioneer expansion into the West that made us (and U.S.) the world's breadbasket. Consciousness II came with the Industrial Revolution that put consumer items at the command of most Americans. Now, at the start of the Seventies we had reached Consciousness III (yes, readers called it The Third Reich) which took the best of I, self-reliance, and II (feeding, clothing and housing most everyone) but turned their values inward. The free III people rejected the warrior ethos of pioneerism in favor of peace and the middle-class conformist values of II in favor of self-development; sex, drugs and rock and roll certainly, with the proviso that personal growth, not GDP, was the true measure of a great nation. What Reich got wrong is thinking that such a Consciousness was compatible with advanced capitalism. What Reich got right was that such a Consciousness could be compatible with advanced capitalism. That is not a paradox. The Silicone Valley supermen and women are billionaires in blue jeans. They can, and do, drop acid and are fine with dropping bombs on other countries.
P.S. After publishing this manifesto Reich disappeared for a long while only to resurface in the mid-Seventies with his second and last book, a memoir entitled THE SORCERER OF BOLINAS REEF. Other than informing us that he had always been a gay man it has no other political or personal merit for the reader.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in the early 70's, during the latter days of the Viet Nam War and not too long after Woodstock. It was a seminal and at the time highly influential and formative book for me. I still find it so, and there seem to be so many parallels today with those times. We see the racist resistance of the Tea Party, reactionary thinking by religious, fundamentalist groups, resistance to equal rights and equal pay for women, and the on-going wars of capitalism, and suppression of the vote in a deeply divided society. I still find this book highly influential and perhaps I can at 67 still describe it as formative. Part of the thesis of the book is that we should still be "becoming" and following our dreams. I think this is an important book for everyone to read whether or not you were coming of age in the late 60's or if you are in your twenties now. I was moved to reread the book after recently finishing Rick Perlstein's "Nixonland," which repeatedly referred to "The Greening of America." Some of the descriptions of rock music, flower power, and the struggles of young people to break out of stereotypical roles and ways of doing things to find their dream despite the pervasive influence of the "Corporate State, might seem quaint at first, but as I said in the beginning of this review, the parallels between these times and those are powerful, and what seemed quaint at first becomes familiar in a different context with a bit of reflection and a little sense of history.

[Clif Hostetler · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book back in the early 1970s. The Greening of America expressed enthusiastic praise for the counterculture of the 1960s and its values. In retrospect its message seems naive because it predicted the baby boomers would be a politically progressive generation, and we now know how that turned out.

If I remember correctly this book contained a graph showing the rise of CO2 in the atmosphere versus time. If it wasn't this book it was one I read at about the same time. If it was in the book it would have been in the context of the need for a simpler life style so as to not mess with the earth's climate. Anyway, for several years I was concerned about global warming, but through the 70s and 80s nobody else seemed to be worried.

So then I developed a theory that all that CO2 being released into the air was simply CO2 returning to the atmosphere where it was located at the time of the dinosaurs. All that CO2 probably caused plants to thrive, and all that lush green growth could explain why some dinosaurs became so large (i.e. lots of stuff to eat). I began to joke that CO2 in the air was causing the obesity epidemic. So my concern about atmospheric CO2 turned into a joking matter.

But then came the release of Al Gore's movie about climate change, and the whole world seemed to jump on the climate change band wagon. So my message since then has changed back to, "I already knew about this ever since 1970."

[Czarny Pies · Rating 1 out of 5]

Add four stars to my rate if you are looking for a comprehensive manifesto of the Flower Power movement.

I was greatly impressed when I read this ludicrous book as a 16 year old. Reich argued that wearing bell bottoms and smoking pot were progressive actions that would lead to a better, greener society. Fortunately, I was smart enough never to have admit having read it when I arrived on a university campus two years later.

For someone attempting to understand Hippies and the Counterculture of the Vietnam war era The Greening of America is a valuable document. Otherwise it is simply preposterous.

[Aaron Crofut · Rating 2 out of 5]

Obviously I didn't read the whole thing. If the newest edition didn't bother to include segments on Consciousness III, I'm not wasting my time with it.

Why did I read this book at all? Everyone, including Reich himself, is well aware that the prophecy failed. I read it because 1) a free copy landed in my lap and 2) to learn just what it is Reich was raging against.

The secular and Marxist eschatology failed, but the religion still holds. Consciousness III is no longer clearly defined or spoken of as imminent, but has become a hazy goal used to justify conquering the perceived enemies of the Left. The most ironic part of this book is that modern day Leftism is a textbook example of Consciousness II, or the Corporate State. Reich noted that propensity of reformers, but never realized its full potential towards soft totalitarianism. There are a small number of opinion makers enforcing their beliefs on all who enter large structures (corporations like Google or Facebook, colleges, the administrative branch of government at all levels, the media, increasingly any business that isn't local and sometimes those, too) through a massive bureaucracy indoctrinated in the prevailing ideology who rigorously hunt out thought crime. These organizations pride themselves in helping those they see as lower than themselves while simultaneously looking down on those people with disdain. Look at the rhetoric concerning the poor of, say, Kentucky. "I did Teach for America to help those poor stupid racists." The issue is not public vs. private entities so much as elites in government and business vs. non-elites.

Reich was often insightful, if not original, in seeing how large hierarchies work. What he failed to understand is that hippie power or the ever vague "The People" are not answers to that.

The problem with this book is that those insightful moments have to be sifted out from piles of nonsense. Reich seems to understand non-elite America almost exclusively through movies, songs, and novels, all of which are of course created by elites. While I couldn't find a direct reference in the text of the book, Reich's acknowledgements didn't surprise me when Small Town in Mass Society was said to be a key work influencing the author. I both read that book and grew up in "Springdale"; the authors could never understand the almost spiritual level of community that once reigned there. Ironically, I'm no longer sure that is the case, but not for the reasons mentioned by Reich, Vidich, or Bensman. My point: Reich didn't understand ordinary Americans because he apparently never lived with them. It's like studying bugs; an entomologist might know bugs but can't understand their consciousness, to use Reich's phrase, especially if he never meets one.

Then one has to plow through the standard Marxist/Leftist jargon. What the hell are "non-human ends"? Is the economic choice really between snowmobiles and hospital equipment? Even if it was, might not people want snowmobiles? Such and such activities are only participated in for appearances? I must have missed where Mr. Reich became Grand High Poobah of Authentic Activities.

My notes on this book literally go like this: Pg 27-8: "Reich is correct that IR destroyed integrated life...all was a whole rather than segmented (life, work, family, religion, etc.)" pg 29: "Nonsense- Man did not work for his "inner need" before capitalism, he worked not to starve to death! The meaning came through religion/community." Moments of clarity followed by rants about the "system" keeping us from enjoying "real peanut butter" (yes, that's mentioned as proof of our wayward society).

For all of that, I'm not dismissing this book and wouldn't encourage others to, either. The problem of rootlessness, lacking community, lacking culture, anomie, ennui is a very real one, and due to the rise of social media and the greater ability we have to move to follow a career, the problem is far more acute today than in 1970. I don't think the answer is going to be political or economic or even social, but metaphysical. Socialism is metaphysically bankrupt, the modern Right is pushing an equally bankrupt capitalism, both are dipping into racial identitarian politics which at first glance (but only first glance) seem to offer a deeper meaning to life. One can see the degree of their failure in how much they focus on fighting the other side rather than explaining in detail the teleological end of their own philosophy.

For at least trying to express such an end, I give Reich credit. But he was wrong.

[Nicole McCann · Rating 5 out of 5]

i originally picked this up at a used bookstore because i thought it was about environmentalism in the 70s. i was a little confused when flipping through it a little later and not seeing chapter titles i would associate with that subject. left unread, i picked up another book by james gustave speth, a professor at yale, called "the bridge at the edge of the world." in that book speth talks about when he was a student at yale his professor, charles reich, wrote a book called...guess..."the greening of america!" (subtitle is How the Youth Revolution is Trying to Make America Livable)what a coincidence! i had it on my bookshelf! so i finally read it and loved it! definitely 70s revolutionary spirit mixed with a historical account of how people have changed in their acceptance and participation in society and government. he broke up it up into three segments, consciousness I, II, and III. here's an excerpt:

"in a place of the world seen as a jungle, with every man for himself (consciousness I) or the world seen as a meritocracy leading to a great corporate hierarchy of rigidly drawn relations and manoeuvers for position (consciousness II), the world is a community. people all belong to the same family, whether they have met each other or not. it is asa simple as that. there are no "tough guys" among the youth of consciousness III. hitchhikers smile at approaching cars, people smile at each other on the street, the human race rediscovers its need for each other." p. 203

[Cassandra C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although 45 years old now, Reich's 'The Greening of America' is profoundly insightful about today's society. The first half In particular brought clarity to my understanding of political and social dynamics at play in the world. While his predicted cultural revolution certainly hasn't played itself out as dramatically or swiftly as Reich indicated, his third consciousness, with its refusal to be enslaved by 'the machine' and commitment to shaping its own unique lifestyle, is evident in a growing subset of the population.

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this years ago when it came out. I was talking to my mother about it - she said "Everything the hippies said about technology was right."

So I want to revisit this.

[Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the books that transformed my life (another was The Chalice and the Blade) and gave me the idea for an unconventional solution which I lived for over one year.

[Luke Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written during the height of the Vietnam Conflict/ hippie counterculture movement, Reich makes the argument that a nonviolent revolution has just begun in America, one that cannot be reversed or resisted.

Many critics of the book point to the obvious failure of what we now call 'boomers' to change society in a way they promised to do in the 70s as a failure of the book in overexaggerating the importance of the movement, but I do not see Reich's faith in the younger generation as a shortcoming. I think it admirable that a professor at Yale, belonging to a different age range than his students, would see their point of view as not only valid but commendable, and write a scathing review of The State they and their peers rebelled against.

This was a dense slog of a read, and I don't think Reich intended for it to be a page turner. However, I loved it because I haven't been exposed to Reich's line of thinking very often in life, and it was incredibly interesting to see someone react to many of our facts of life today- long commutes, reliance on technology, loss of community, general phoniness- with hope that they would be rebuked by his students and their peers.

The fact that these problems- problems Reich seems assured the counterculture movement would not only snuff out but use to its advantage- persist is not a flaw of the book in my opinion, but an intriguing historical artifact and a reminder that these facts of life don't necessarily need to be facts of life. I would absolutely recommend this book to any of my 4 GoodReads friends.

[John Reichert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this 50 years after it was published, and it’s still ahead of its time. Create your own consciousness and abstain from the corporate state.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poor Charles Reich. Not only did he confuse fashion with serious social politics, he wrote a book that didn't quite stand the test of time. Bell bottom jeans just faded, and just what did hippies accomplish, if marijuana is still illegal?
Well, yes, they did stop a war and hound an already beleaguered president out of office, but academics like Reich were mostly hidden in their ivory towers while the real revolution took place in people's hears and minds. At least, he was making some attempt to understand it unlike many of his peers, but he was still trapped in his hangups.
His division of society into three grades of consciousness smacks of exclusivity and prejudices, as well. Real social change might have made some accounting itself for a little more tolerance. Instead, legions of uniformly dressed youth(whole tie-dyed armies of them)assured of their social and moral superiority over the "Consciousness I & II" tribes, spoon fed and ungrateful residents of the most affluent society in human history,(such rebelliousness could only have come from an abundance of leisure- the real proletariat had to keep jobs and a roof over their heads!)made a big deal out of being "better than" an older generation that wasn't quite so ignorant of sex as the kids ever could give them credit for.(How did all those baby boomers get here, anyway).
People like Reich, perhaps, indulged the fantasy that once industrialization had made industry redundant, nobody would ever have to work again... Of course we know that now to have been a lie, -(for every earnest Digger helping provide food to the immigrants of San Francisco's Summer of Love, there were 20 or more of these who did nothing but take, with no concomitant sense of responsibility)-
and industrialization combined with cybernetics has only but succeeded in destroying & robbing countless millions of decent jobs in what can presently be called an economy in decline... millions of redundant lives. Nor were they all so completely ignorant of real liberal & tolerant values.I'm writing this 30+ years on in hindsight because I shared some of those silly prejudices myself for a time. But I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.

[Kerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hippie manifesto that praised the counterculture movement of the 60s and called for a widespread conscious awakening across the US. That worthwhile call to arms harkens back, in many respects, to the American transcendentalism of Emerson and Thoreau. For that reason and for the strength of Reich's writing, I really enjoyed the book's first few chapters and the overall premise. However, after a few chapters I grew a bit depressed and pessimistic because so many of Reich's arguments / points re: the youths of the 1960s (now collectively known as boomers) have been said about subsequent generations. Similarly, his claim that the youths of the 1960s would slowly grow into that newfound consciousness, which he dubbed consciousness III (as opposed to I and II, which refer to that of America's founding agrarian society and the organizational society post-Industrial revolution, respectively), would seem to fall flat fifty years after he published this book. Rather than successfully blend the 60s ideals of egalitarianism, personal freedom, free love, etc. capitalism, the boomer generation rejected much of the former in favor of the latter. If Reich's premise had held true, America would not be in the state that it is in 2021; hence my pessimism about my generation and those to follow holding on to the ideals of our youth through our middle and old age. Guess we'll see in another 50 years.

[Garrett Dunnington · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most definitely the best book on the philosophies of the counterculture. I don't even know where to begin... I am a philosophy major so I get a lot of the logic behind it. There's no need for me to criticize it because it contained very valuable information. I think it still has application-value. I am adding it to my top list.

[Tony Scungilli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wowie Zowie. Published in 1970 and still very relavent, maybe minus the patchouli and lovebeads, but maybe not. I suggest you burn some incense, put on your bellbottoms and learn a thing or three about how we need to improve our shit, you dig?

[Phyllis]

assigned reading for Freshman year at Vandy 1971.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think everyone in the United States should be required to read this book.

[Muna · Rating 1 out of 5]

No....maybe I should try again another day. I couldnt even make it past the first chapter.... Yikes

[noblethumos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Charles Reich’s The Greening of America, first published in 1970, is a landmark text of late 20th-century American social thought, capturing the optimism, cultural upheavals, and generational divides of the era. Written by a Yale law professor at the height of the countercultural movement, the book became both a bestseller and a touchstone of the period’s intellectual climate, emblematic of the broader attempt to make sense of the transformations unleashed by the 1960s. Reich’s work is not a conventional historical or sociological study, but rather a hybrid of cultural analysis, political critique, and visionary manifesto.


At the core of the book is Reich’s thesis that American society has been marked by three successive “consciousnesses.” Consciousness I, rooted in 19th-century individualism and Jeffersonian liberalism, stressed self-reliance, entrepreneurial spirit, and the values of small-scale democracy. Consciousness II, which Reich associates with the bureaucratic and corporate age of the mid-20th century, placed emphasis on organization, expertise, technological rationality, and centralized power—values that, in Reich’s view, created alienation and conformity. Finally, Consciousness III, emerging in the 1960s youth and countercultural movements, represented a new sensibility: one that privileged personal freedom, authenticity, environmentalism, communal values, and the rejection of consumerist materialism. Reich presented this third stage not merely as a protest movement but as the harbinger of a fundamental cultural transformation.


One of the most distinctive features of The Greening of America is Reich’s rhetorical style. His prose is highly idealistic, infused with a moral urgency that straddles between prophecy and advocacy. Rather than analyzing the counterculture from a detached, sociological perspective, Reich identifies with its ethos, portraying it as an emancipatory force capable of overcoming the limitations of earlier modes of life. In doing so, the book offered a vocabulary for many young Americans who sought to articulate the significance of their generational revolt. Yet this celebratory tone also drew criticism, with some accusing Reich of romanticizing the counterculture and underestimating its contradictions.


The book’s historical significance lies in the way it captured the zeitgeist of an America in flux. Written amid the Vietnam War, civil rights struggles, and growing environmental awareness, Reich’s work framed the cultural revolution as more than a transitory rebellion; it was, in his view, the precursor to a more humane, decentralized, and ecologically sensitive society. The metaphor of “greening” symbolized both renewal and a shift toward organic, life-affirming values. In retrospect, however, the transformative potential Reich envisioned was not fully realized. The subsequent decades saw the consolidation of neoliberal economic structures, a retrenchment of corporate power, and the commodification of many aspects of the counterculture.


From an academic standpoint, The Greening of America is both illuminating and problematic. It illuminates by articulating a generational consciousness with uncommon clarity, providing scholars of American intellectual history with a key primary source for understanding the cultural politics of the 1960s and 1970s. At the same time, it is problematic in its lack of empirical grounding, its overgeneralizations, and its tendency toward idealist determinism. Reich’s schema of three consciousnesses, while rhetorically effective, is historically reductive and leaves little room for social complexities, contradictions, or the persistence of older cultural forms.


Nevertheless, the book’s enduring value lies not in its predictive accuracy but in its symbolic role. It stands as a testament to a moment when many Americans believed that cultural change could bring about profound social transformation. Today, it is often read less as a roadmap than as a cultural artifact—revealing the aspirations, anxieties, and utopian hopes of a transformative era in American life.

GPT

[Parker Rush · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a major intellectual impasse dividing so many humans of different generations, demographics, and assorted approaches to the great question of how life is to be lived. This continental divide between consciousness types is deceitfully simple but its implications are vast. In one respect there is the person ripe for adventure who experiences and therefore knows, and in another situation, the cautious onlooker who theorizes but ultimately refuses the plunge and is thus limited to conjecture.

The degree of separation between these two levels of awareness is evidenced by the man or woman who ascends peaks of mystical experience but must blunt their accounts of the ineffable through the poverty of verbal expression in which biographers can only hope to assemble a piecemeal account of transcendence. Or it might be the drug experimenter hungry for any and all experience who oscillates between the highest bliss or the terrors of self-actualized hells while the neighbors next door simply watch the 6 O’clock news and eat TV dinners. The bottom line is the same: those who penetrate from within gain a knowledge both esoteric and totally unavailable (mentally, physically, and psychically) to those living comfortably, well-insulated lives along the periphery. Once the doors of perception are cleansed, things will never appear the same again and will remain in a state “infinitely” obscure to the uninitiated or garden variety curious.

That’s why this book struck a rare chord in me. I’ve always read about the 1960s, The Haight Street culture, Vietnam etc. through the smokescreen of some cultural critic: Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer. More often than not, as “objective” reporters of the New Left vanguard they’ve adopted a critical distance and sometimes an even more critical acerbic attitude towards the entire phenomenon. These writers, while often very witty and quick to make a wry observation or two or three, are still watching a fish tank through plated glass, taking copious notes, yes, but remaining dry nonetheless. Charles Reich is the experiencer par excellence. He’s jumped headfirst into the mystical fish bowl and is here to tell us what it’s all about as someone who has smoked the grass, worn the beads, and been “with it”; Reich is a fellow traveler for anyone who has sought low and high for the ever-elusive “togetherness” of the protean hippies.

While a bit dated for modern readers, that only adds to the authenticity of its approach and relevance as a cultural artifact. The Greening of America is as much sociology as it is an insightful “trip” into the art, letters, music, joy de vivre, and cultural ethos of the Consciousness III human, what he terms the “now” generation or those who choose to live not for yesterday or tomorrow but fully engaged in the great moment… the eternal now!

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rare does a book send you with whiplash as much as this one. In my Nixon induced madness I picked this one up because Nixonland mentioned it a few times and I wanted a more at the time look and analysis at the youth movement of the age (plus it was on my girlfriend’s shelf and I was bookless at the time). I knew it would be wrong in many ways, but how wrong it was was somewhat shocking.

It’s easy to look at some analyses of the political situation and say “what no material analysis does to a mf,” and usually that’s directed at people that genuinely don’t know better. Reich knows better! He points at material analysis, hand waves it away, and then substitutes his consciousness based analysis which, while sociologically interesting, does not have a theory of change beyond “if enough people believe things it will change things” which he knows (and cites as part of his project) doesn’t work because Vietnam is happening as he writes. It feels like blind optimism, perhaps fear of what would have to happen (or attempt to happen) if systemic change were really to occur.

Part of a seemingly broad project of the 1960 and 1970s to realize that man himself needed to change in order to inaugurate a more just society- Lefebvre I think very smartly refrains from speculating too much, but this book launches into a full reveries about how the hippie consciousness is the wave of the revolution. I think his analysis of the culture is interesting, and to be honest in some cases feels like an aspirational consciousness that people on Instagram are trying to emulate. Of course, as the Instagramness implies, this consciousness is easily wielded by capital to market and funnel into the world that capital provides. If there was a revolutionary aspect to it, it was only as a self-interest, to try to avoid Vietnam service (or to get coed dormitories). The analysis of the more conservative, competitive consciousness is relatively rote, but I also found the analysis of the liberal meritocrat interesting, particularly in its assertion that they try to “dominate” their hobbies, or have control over them, rather than allow themselves to be open to surprise or vulnerability, and that they never let their passions eclipse their need to fit as a useful tool of society (he’s really obsessed with surfing and skiing for this one).

Felt like the people that watch Fight Club and Office Space and complain about “people in the 90s bitching about their soulless office jobs” but for a powerful administrative state that somewhat tried to bend business and society to the wills of the common good. You didn’t know how good you had it. Also, this dude is obsessed with types of peanut butter. Was that a thing in the 70s?

[Stephen Coates · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published the year after Theodore Roszak’s "The Making of a Counter Culture", Reich described America at the time as a corporate state (Roszak described it as a technocracy) and which he asserted to be centralised, undemocratic and run for the benefit of producers through the excesses of marketing and by subverting consumers to the needs of the state. While the claim that America, or indeed any Western country, is undemocratic is tiresomely asserted but never demonstrably argued, the real contribution of the book was his description of three Consciousnesses. The first, Consciousness I, was that of traditional businessmen and farmers trying to get ahead, focussed on material interests with some similarities to classical liberalism and which, he argued, had become the heartless, freemarket individualism of the political right. He described Consciousness II, which had originated in response to the excesses of capitalism in general and especially monopolies at the turn of the 20th century, as representing the “values of an organisational society", institutions, meritocracy, conformity and trying to make the "great society". Consciousness II was not inherently socially conservative and did facilitate a number of progressive social changes in the interests of the great society. It was Consciousness II thinking that established Roosevelt’s New Deal, allowed women the right to continue to work after marriage, abandoned the white Australia policy and passed the USA’s Civil Rights Act.

Reich’s third consciousness was that of the student movement of the time which embraced new music, informal clothes, drugs and a disinclination to join the power structures. Whereas Roszak saw the youth of the day as being largely irresponsible and incapable of original ideas, Reich saw them looking for alternative forms of consciousness which he termed Consciousness III which, he predicted, would eventually grow to include all Americans. Forecasts aside, Reich’s three Consciousnesses provide a very useful framework for analysis of political thrusts and movements that followed the book’s publication and which are still fairly valid at the time of this review’s writing.

[Anna Gilmore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Charles Reich expresses three different consciousnesses that make up the viewpoints of people in America. The consciousness has been created from the machine (ingrained social values, administration, consequential effects of law, work, political engagement, etc). Yes, his third/enlightened consciousness is in the past (it was based on "hippies" of the 70's). The cultural and historical viewpoint usually thought of hippies is of the drug using, sex-filled communes. Even our education today affects us and tries to keep us adherent to the machine, adherent to serve and be a career instead of self-actualization and regaining consciousness. The education today doubled with the words from older generations speak about how the hippies were ludicrous. Blaming hippies for a ludicrous lifestyle and marijuana for their ludicrous ideas is a fabulous cover from older generations in self denial, who stopped learning and who stopped resisting the machine and society's material and economic values (or who never gained an enlightened consciousness to begin with).
The present consciousness has changed from the youth of the 70's. Our consciousness is within Bernie Sanders, within non-profits, within discussion based literature classes, within discovering ourselves, within our personal responsibility tweets on twitter, and always within the hope of the youth. This book is a manifesto of hope for me. The idea that adulthood will not change our consciousness once it is gained is beautiful and inspiring. The idea that we can promote as much community as we can on the basis of love and wanting to help each other grow is revolutionary and can promote change in our society in the most organic way possible. As Charles said, may he rest in peace, wisdom is the one commodity unlimited in supply. Knowing that humans do not know how to live, we can find ourselves in depressed despair. This book sheds a light on how we can find what our souls are looking for. It shows us how we can improve America/our society/our community by improving ourselves. Here is to the forever greening of America with all ages and classes welcome.

[Denis Manis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Conforme descrito no livro, o movimento hippie, também conhecido como o movimento do potencial humano ou a contracultura, praticamente morreu no final dos anos 70. Ele foi sequestrado pelo Governo/Mídia, ou seja, o Estado Corporativo, que conseguiu incutir medo no público não apenas em relação aos psicodélicos, mas também a quaisquer estilos de vida alternativos. A mensagem deles era a mesma de sempre, centrada no materialismo: "Você não pode aproveitar a vida a menos que ganhe muito dinheiro. Compre nossos produtos e você será feliz". Assim, muitos daqueles em idade universitária optaram por fazer MBAs, entrar em relações públicas e na indústria, ou nas forças armadas para adquirir habilidades para ganhar a vida e, em grande parte, deixaram as humanidades de lado. Essa foi a conversão de 'hippie' para 'yuppie'. Como Jackson Browne expressou, eles "trocaram o brilho claro e frágil do Amor pelo brilho e pelo rouge" (nos anos 80). As coisas pioraram muito desde que este livro foi escrito, e a opção de 'abandonar' está se tornando cada vez mais viável. O Estado Corporativo, ou 'O Sistema', como costumávamos chamar, tem quase todos em seu domínio. Ele se encaixa na descrição da 'Besta' mencionada na Bíblia: Você não pode comprar, vender ou ganhar a vida (no mundo corporativo) sem ser subserviente a ele.

[Adam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Milquetoast academic intellectualism. The first clue was this made up idea of consciousness I, II, and III. The greening part made little sense, the ideas were not clearly laid out, too much standard western canon classics namedropped without much substance. Author did not correctly or clearly predict any ramifications of his revolutionary thesis. I honestly got this book over a decade ago because I thought it was a green revolution history, but it has nothing to do with the green party, or environmentalism.

[Edward · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although it was a best seller when it was published in 1970, it's an overdone and simpleminded sociological analysis of the tenor of the academic youth of that time. Herbert Marcuse's name appears numerous times in the book, and he was his go-to ideological guru and the community that Reich is writing about.

The value of reading it now is that it gives insight into what everyday students were feeling and thinking about the broader historical and political environment they were living in. One of his students at Yale was Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose thinking, and thousands of others, was clearly motivated by him. Some moved on, but others stubbornly clung to his freewheeling idealism.

[Revellanotvanel · Rating 5 out of 5]

"When the Corporate State forces its 'Public interest' truth as a substitute for man's internal truth--for the truth man creates-it cuts him off from the only
Reality he can live by.

We say a man is mad when he kills someone because an outside voice told him to. A SOCIETY is mad when it actions are no longer guided by what will make men healthier and happier, when its power is no longer in the service of LIFE. ~Charles A Reich~ (Greening of America)