A rotten business (1995)

TV Review from the July 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Music Biz (5 June. BBC2) was a missed opportunity if ever there was one. Given the task of examining such a ruthless, profit-hungry and self-serving industry, BBC2 could and should have done better. What should have been an investigative programme into manipulation and exploitation at the basest levels turned into little more than an excuse to dish up more manipulative images. Like the previous week’s programme on the British sex film, the Music Biz glorified in its subject instead of dealing with it seriously.

Of course, snippets of the truth emerged. One record executive frankly admitted that it was now commonplace to manufacture a group with the “right appearance” if nothing else, and then spend one million pounds promoting them until the teenage girls swoon. New teen-idols Let Loose were a case in point, being apparently picked for stardom largely on the strength of their dashing hairstyles rather than actual musical ability.

This was an illustration of the obvious—today's teen-orientated pop bands are groomed on the basis of their interaction with fragile teenage sexualities. While it can be argued that this has been the case for some time, from the Beatles to the Bay City Rollers, never has it been more obvious or indeed, so detached from the talent—or lack of it— of the artists involved. Never before, it should also be noted, has sex been portrayed in such an obvious way to sell records—watch any music programme on TV and it will not be long before you see some teen idols engaging in simulated sex acts performed to the syncopated rhythm of their latest hit.

Although the record company bosses are manipulative enough it would of course be wrong to suggest that it is all a brainwashing exercise—in many ways it is even more sinister. The bosses—just like Rupert Murdoch in another fine capitalist industry—say that they are just giving the punters what they want, and although this is not entirely true it is not entirely false either. Humans in capitalist society grow up with a heavily-tainted view of life, refracted through a prism where profit, competition and passive idol-worship are the chief distorters. Capitalism itself provides the ideal breeding ground for the attitudes and images that the record executives wish to portray.

The artists themselves, especially when they have already been through the mill several times, know what is going on more than most. Two of pop history's most enduring sexual icons—gorgeous pouting Debbie Harry of Blondie and gorgeous pouting Jon Bon Jovi, knew how the game worked well enough. Jon Bon Jovi gave several illustrations of how his own band had been manipulated by the record industry, but said that such was the power of the record labels, they had little choice but to go along with it.

It is not impossible for a pop group to make it big without the backing of a major label, but it is becoming increasingly difficult. Some groups in the alternative, independent sector always break through, invariably to give in to the inevitable and sign to one of the majors, this often setting the scene for a major round of wrangling between the group and their bosses—as was recently the case with the Stone Roses.

Putting on the frighteners

In the last twenty years or so the music industry has had a couple of frights prompted by a decomposing capitalism, although these were hardly touched upon in BBC2’s programme. In the mid-to-late 70s punk rock entered the scene headed by the anarchistically-inspired Sex Pistols, a band whose motto was "cash from chaos" and who amongst other things played the music bosses at their own game, taking them for a large financial ride in the process. Punk rock baffled large sections of the music industry and many companies had their fingers burnt before they bought enough of the bands off and manipulated them into doing something less challenging. The other fright was the emergence of rap music from America in the mid-1980s, some of whose performers were rather too provocative and risqué for the liking of most record executives.

Rap music, more so than punk, had its deficiencies, primarily the fact that it was violence orientated and. more often than not, sexist to boot. But rap and punk set an example in that it showed musicians need not just accept the status quo and accept every dictate from the bosses. The Sex Pistols and The Clash were among those who, in their own rather unfocussed way, brought more than a smidgen of working-class politics into the mainstream of music, though admittedly it wasn't easy.

In the late 70's a successful band called The Specials wrote a thinly-veiled attack on the music bosses entitled "Gangsters", which included this line: “And Catch 22 says if I sing the truth they won't make me an overnight star". This is a clever line, but slightly misleading. Sure, the bosses may not be looking to make any socialists an overnight star, but if you are talented and challenging enough they will have to sit up and take notice, if only because money can also be sometimes made from challenging the system rather than openly supporting it, if the market exists. Do not despair must be the message—capitalism creates its own gravediggers in music as in any other form of life and if a green-toothed monster like Johnny Rotten can bring "Anarchy in the UK" to the children of Britain. there is hope yet.

Dave Perrin

Running Commentary: Property-Owning Democracy? (1987)

The Running Commentary Column from the March 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Property-Owning Democracy?

Remember the Tories' 1983 election promise of turning Britain into a "property-owning democracy"? The prospect of "owning” their own house was undoubtedly an attractive proposition to many workers fed up with the insecurity of renting their homes from unscrupulous landlords or penny-pinching councils. However for many the dream has turned into a nightmare. As fewer council houses are built and fewer properties are available to rent, many people have been forced to "choose" a mortgage, which the building societies have been only too pleased to give them.

But having encouraged people to become home owners, the government has now decided to punish those home-owners who have the misfortune to become unemployed. New rules have just been introduced which will mean that anyone who becomes unemployed will have only half their mortgage interest paid while they are in receipt of Supplementary Benefit and only for the first four months of unemployment. Under the old rules all the interest (but not the capital) was paid. This is bound to increase the rate of repossessions. Already one in ten homeless families are homeless because their home has been repossessed due to mortgage default.

Families faced with the prospect of unemployment and inability to pay their mortgage may decide to sell up to avoid arrears and repossession. If they do, however, the local authority would have no obligation to rehouse them since they would be deemed to be "intentionally homeless”.

For workers in this situation the security promised by the slogan "property-owning democracy" has turned out to be as illusory as it is for those who depend on paying rent in order to keep a roof over their heads.

It Pays to Advertise

It is even more profitable if you can get someone who has nothing to gain to pay you for the privilege of so doing!!

Strange as it may seem, the same person who objects strongly to paying a few pence for a carrier bag printed with the name of a supermarket, will pay pounds to advertise something else.

Guinness started the fashion years ago. In return for a cheque made out to them for the correct amount (something like 20 guineas if memory serves) you would receive a sweater with 'GUINNESS' — not even the toucan —  emblazoned across the front. Today for £18.95 you may buy a plain wool sweater by post; this price is already considerably higher than for a similar garment bought across the counter. However, for only an extra £ 1, you can have' The Times' discreetly embroidered on the left-hand side. Of course, if you don't have the odd £20 to spare, you can go downmarket and buy a Coca Cola — or if you prefer, a Pepsi — T-shirt. Slightly upmarket again, you could, in gold on black, advertise Biba. If you really want to dredge the bottom, feature the Sun with the screaming front page headline 'SID VICIOUS DEAD. Punk Star Killed By Overdose'.

One T-shirt we have not yet seen is the one advertising the fact that we are all being killed by an overdose — of capitalism!


Gorbachev the democrat?

"We need democracy like we need air to breathe", said Gorbachev in a speech to the ruling Central Committee. What he means by "democracy" is that there will be more than one candidate standing for office in elections and a bit more public debate with officials prepared to admit from time to time that things occasionally go wrong, that there are shortages and production quotas aren't always fulfilled.

Well it's better than nothing. But no-one should be conned into believing that the new, reforming Russian leadership is really concerned about giving ordinary Russian workers a voice in decision-making. What Gorbachev is undoubtedly concerned about is the failure of the Russian economy. Giving people a little in relatively unimportant areas is a time-honoured way of getting them to give back a lot more.

If Russian workers are made to feel that they do have a voice, that they are listened to, then it is quite possible they will be conned into working harder and producing more wealth for the Russian ruling class. A little bit of political liberalisation will not affect the fundamental division of Russian society into those with wealth and power and those without, unless Russian workers recognise that fundamental division and then exploit the small window of opportunity that Gorbachev has opened for their own political ends.


Bullets on the beat

Officially Britain has an unarmed police force. Unofficially things are rather different. A curious incident involving a car chase down the M1 which ended when the car being pursued ran out of petrol and shots were fired, led to revelations that for the past eight years traffic police patrolling the Nottinghamshire section of the M1 motorway, the A1 and Nottingham city centre have been carrying guns.

Charles McLachlan, Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire, said at a press conference:

  The vehicles are double-manned and weapons are carried in a locked container in the vehicle. They are two pistols, a pump-action shotgun and body armour. They are not allowed to take these weapons from the container which is permanently locked, without approval from a senior police officer.

No doubt this was meant to reassure people. But these words sound rather hollow given the trigger-happy mentality of certain armed police as shown by a series of tragic incidents over the last six years in which people have been "accidentally” shot by armed police.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the militarisation of the police is that the decision to arm police officers is not taken in public after debate and discussion but instead is made behind closed doors by the police themselves. As such decisions are deemed to be "operational" even the elected police authorities, to whom the police are nominally responsible, do not have to be consulted or even informed.

Rock 'n' Roll, the Sex Pistols and youth (1977)

From the April 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was once generally accepted that young people were to be seen and not heard. They were constantly being told to have respect for their elders, to dress decently, to watch how they talked, etc. etc. Youth were supposed to accept being “under the thumb”. In the 1950s this was changed. Due to their improved economic position, longer schooling and earlier maturity young people began to reject traditional roles and search for a new identity. Rock'n'roll music burst upon the scene. This music was exclusively for the young. It was loud, it had energy, it was audacious, it was about sex and it released the inhibitions bottled up inside of young people.

The term “rock’n’roll” was stolen from the black American rhythm-and-blues singers who used it as a euphemism for sexual intercourse. When the American record companies discovered that youngsters were buying these records they were both surprised (pleasantly, no doubt) and embarrassed. Surprised, because previously rhythm-and-blues was exclusively black music, played by blacks for black audiences. Embarrassed, because young white Americans were now going into the black districts to search out R-&-B records and attend concerts, which was unacceptable at the time (the Ku-Klux-Klan were furious). However, the record companies did not want to miss a good thing and so they re-wrote rhythm-and-blues songs to exclude the sexual content (“Dance with me Henry” for “Work with me Annie”) and had them recorded by white singers. Despite the efforts of the record companies and a wave of protest from the media, the churches and police forces from countries all over the world, rock’n’roll retained its basic character and popularity with young people for many years.

Ever since rock’n’roll “Youth” have been in the news. They have had an identity as a consumer group. The manufacturing industries discovered that they had a huge new market. A survey carried out in Britain estimated that people between the ages of 13 and 25 were drawing about £1,480 million a year in wages. The accompanying report concluded: “. . . there is now a business as well as a moral and psychological necessity to understand young people” (Dr. Mark Abrams, 1959). Once this was apparent, manufacturers turned over a large amount of their production to commodities aimed at the “youth market”. Note the high proportion of advertising today which is directed towards young people.

Youth have been associated with several “subcultures” over the last two decades. There were the “mods” who were around in the middle ’sixties. Their main hallmark was their dress: Paisley shirts, tartan socks, the mini-skirt etc. The styles had to be new, modern. Later on came the “hippies”. They rejected what they called the “materialistic” outlook and placed the emphasis on “awareness” or “aesthetic sensibility”. The ultimate hippy protest was to “drop out” of society by taking on a different life-style, forming small communes etc. The movement eventually died when it was realised that underneath all those mystic trappings the hippies were just another enormous group of consumers who bought gramophone records, stereos and drugs instead of cars, televisions and houses.

Next came the “skinheads” who had their origin in the East End of London, which at the time was going through tremendous change. Population was on the decrease, the docks and industry in general were moving out, the jerry-built terraced houses were being replaced by jerry-built tower blocks. The youth of this area formed the skinhead gangs and through them reacted violently to the violent changes going on around them. Unfortunately most of their anger was directed at immigrants who were, to them, a useful scapegoat. Consequently “Paki-bashing” became one of the activities pursued by some skinhead gangs. The latest sub-culture is the “Punk Rock’’ scene which has caused an almighty scare in the newspapers (and consequently among parents) in Britain. The “Sex Pistols”, it seems, will bring about the downfall of everything that is “good” about young people today. What happens when we compare the reaction to punk rock to what was said about rock’n’roll fans 20 years ago? “Notice! Stop: Help save the Youth of America. DON’T BUY NEGRO RECORDS. The screaming idiotic words, and savage music of these records are undermining the morals of our white youth in America”. (The Story of Pop, No. 1, 1974).

We’ve taken a very brief look at different ways youth have behaved at different times. One might conclude from the above that youth are rebellious. Many of them attempt to be “unconventional”. As for revolutionary, no! Certainly not! The sub-cultures mentioned above have been to a large extent “protests” and not practical attempts to solve social problems. We would also point out that a large section of young people are and always have been thoroughly conformist; the sections chiefly dealt with here and those who rub society up the wrong way.

What are the problems that face young people today? Do they differ that much from their parents? Just how wide is the so-called “generation gap”?

Few people, it seems, are happy at school. How often do we hear “School work is boring” or “School is a waste of time”? Why is there this feeling towards schools? We would say it is because schools do not operate with the objective of interesting pupils but of stuffing in facts and information which will enable you to go out to work for an employer for the next fifty years of your life. The education system is there to satisfy the needs of industry and commerce. The recent speeches of Jim Callaghan and Shirley Williams testify to this. Of course there is no guarantee that you will get a job when you leave school; you may well go straight onto the end of the dole queue.

Another complaint of the young is that there is little or nothing to do in their leisure time. Apart from the youth clubs with their emphasis on table tennis and orange squash, and maybe the odd disco, what is there? Well there’s television. Watching tv is the most time-consuming leisure activity of 65 per cent. of all 16-year-olds. (Britain's 16-year-olds, National Children’s Bureau Report, 1976).

The older generations suffer the same problems. While the young are bored and frustrated at school, their parents are bored and frustrated at work. If the only escape from TV for many of the young is the disco, then for many of the parents it is the local pub. The so-called “generation gap” is a myth. Most people want a reasonable standard of living, decent working conditions; nobody likes being fed up or bored and yet nearly everyone is. Why?

We say it is because of the system of society in which we live — capitalism. A system based not on the satisfaction of human needs but on the realization of profits by a small minority. In capitalist society, making a profit is what matters. If goods and services are not going to make a profit they will not be produced, regardless of the social consequences. Thousands go without a home and millions go hungry because it is not profitable to produce houses or food far those who cannot afford the market price.

What then is the solution to today’s problems? We say that it is the establishment of Socialism:

• a world-wide system of society based on COMMON ownership, not state or private,
• a democratic society WITHOUT leaders,
• a system in which things will be produced solely for the satisfaction of HUMAN NEEDS,
• where education will be freely available not only for the young but ANYONE seeking knowledge.

That is Socialism. That is what it means. Do young people agree with us? Do they want to establish Socialism? The answer is, sadly, only in small numbers. However, things are improving in that young people nowadays do show more interest in the world they live in and the solving of problems they see around them. We think the following is a good example of this.

 

A gang of skinheads as “The Collinwood” were asked to write a book expressing their views about such subjects as schools, jobs, violence, etc. After thinking hard about what they had written they came to this conclusion:

We need to change society. Change frightens people, any people. Not only the upper classes but our parents and us too. Change means revolution. People, even those who write and talk about revolution, think it means smashing everything up, bombing and shooting and killing people. They don’t hear when you talk about peaceful revolution, they still imagine bombs and things. They don’t realise that we don’t want to harm them as people but change the way we live. Most of the people who talk about revolution think of themselves as leaders and they want to take over after the revolution and replace the people who control us now. Instead of believing in equality they believe in power.
It is through equality that we get rid of class and exploitation.
The Paint House: Words from an East End gang. Penguin, 1972. Edited by Susie Daniel and Pete McGuire.

These words came from youths who, just two years earlier spent a part of their time “Paki-bashing”. Day by day there is more evidence why problems arise in capitalist society and the establishment of Socialism comes a little closer. We urge all workers (young or old) to consider our ideas, to decide whether or not Socialism is a practical solution to today’s problems. Socialism won’t be brought about by magic. It has to be understood, desired and worked for. If you agree with us you will be welcome to join the party (which incidentally has nothing as patronising as a “youth section”) and participate with us in the work for Socialism.

Ian Westgate

Punk rock's silver jubilee (2002)

From the June 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Oh bondage, up yours!” - Poly Styrene

The angry, rebellious, nihilistic sounds of 1977 that were known as “punk rock” changed my life and that of thousands of others. It was not that nihilism itself was attractive to me. Indeed at the age of 15 I was already thumbing the works of Karl Marx and the Socialist Standard, and moving away from merely opposing the class system towards arguing for a better, classless, one. For me, however, punk was the soundtrack of my budding revolutionary stance for a political alternative to capitalism, namely socialism, a society without wage labor, money, classes, or the state. Few of the lyrics of the songs from this musical tradition were ever so explicit in expounding this vision. No, for those of us who were teenagers at the time, punk was not in any meaningful sense a movement (as the World Socialist Movement was) as much as a moment when everywhere there appeared glorious signs of cracks in the fabric of the system's ideology.

So many youngsters, including myself, were giddy in the very mania of that moment as it offered us permission to revel in our anger and disgust at the world with its vacuous culture. We were participants in an extraordinarily surreal social event that outdid, in its sheer extent, the effects of the works of prior surreal artists equally intent on putting their spanners in the works such as the early Lettrists or Dadaists, or the later Situationist International that did more explicitly critique the systemic totality of commodity production with its alienating spectacle.

One could observe elements of that rebellious punk attitude in the young Elvis Presley of the “Sun Sessions” before he became a second-rate movie star and a GI (and a full twenty years before he died - the very year punk was born - as a sad, bloated, drug-addicted, lifeless monster unable to face his impossible fame). Similarly, the 1965 single My Generation by The Who also embodied the spunk of what would become punk, but was a relatively rare occurrence at that time. After the ebullient garage rock tradition of the 1960s (e.g. the Standells, Love, Chocolate Watch Band, Sonics, Electric Prunes, 13th Floor Elevators), the Glam Rock bands such as the Sweet, Slade, Alice Cooper, T. Rex, Suzi Quatro, and early Bowie, similarly stood out like a sore thumb with their loud clothes, boisterous, decadent manner and androgynous look.

Rock music, which had begun in the early 1950s as an initially uniquely homogeneous and hugely marketable expression of youth culture, had turned at times political in the 1960s, but by the early 1970s had evolved into the staid and conservative domain of millionaire rock bands selling out sport stadiums – The Who, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Genesis, Yes, Led Zeppelin, King Crimson and other exponents of so-called “prog rock”. That is why an increasingly discontent brand of British musician (and, better still, non-musician!) wanting to express his or her alienation from – and disgust at – the status quo found inspiration in the angry American sound of the MC5, New York Dolls, Stooges and eventually the Ramones, who played legendary concerts in London on 4 July 1976 (with the Flamin' Groovies and the Stranglers), and on 5 July at Dingwalls, to an audience that included future members of Siouxsie and the Banshees, Damned, Generation X, Sex Pistols, and the Clash.

Rock musical trends tend to reflect the economic state of the marketplace. The invasion of Beatlemania and that poppy, jangly, pretty sound itself (after the Beatles had abandoned their own Cavern-era punk sensibility in order to assimulate to the requirements of a major label career) were simply reflections of the market optimism that accompanied the boom of the economy during that time, and the creation of the youth market, which in rock was largely a rehash of black soul or blues music packaged for a white audience (from Bill Haley to Elvis through to the Beatles). This post-war market made the cuddly Mop-Tops, it wasn't the other way around as the impact of the Fab Four is often portrayed. The Vietnam war and the progressive slumping of the economy into the 1970s, a time of inflation, massive unemployment, strikes, and general discontent, fuelled the disco and progressive rock sounds as consumers fled into a fluffier escapism. Punk rock was the other side of the dialectical tension, the nihilistic side that contrasted the misery of the times with the hypocrisy of such events as the Queen's Silver Jubilee celebration in 1977 and of culture in general, like the rock music industry itself (“because the music that they constantly play, it says nothing to me about my life” as Morrissey of the Smiths was to sing in “Panic” a decade later).

God saves the queen

Despite its modest beginnings in 1976 with such pub rock bands as the Stranglers and Eddie and the Hot Rods, 1977 was the year that punk finally exploded. Myself, my friends and an entire generation had never heard songs exhibiting such courage as that of the Sex Pistols and of dozens of other bands that crawled out of the woodwork with ripped clothes, colorful hair and safety pins in their cheeks. One could not, and still cannot, hear them without being affected, infected (“God save the queen” Johnny Rotten sang during that Silver Jubilee year, “the fascist regime, they made you a moron, a potential H-bomb . . . god save the queen, she ain't no human being, there is no future in England's dreaming, don't be told what you want, don't be told what you need … god saves the queen, 'cos tourists are money, and our figure head is not what she seems” – this song went to Number One in the Top 20 although actual listings of hits in the English charts left a puzzling empty space in their highest place as the song had been officially banned by the BBC).

Picture by Gee Vaucher: 'Bloody Revolutions'

The album “Germ-free Adolescents” by the X-Ray Spex contained the wonderful Oh Bondage Up Yours! critique of patriarchal domination. The song Obsessed With You was about the packaging of artists by their management but could just as well have been (as Poly Styrene's very name also suggested) about the alienating life of consumption (“you are just a concept, you are just a dream, you're just a reflection of the new regime, you are just a symbol, you are just a theme, you're just another figure for the sales machine”). The song Art-I-Ficial , as the title cleverly implies, was a more precise attempt to find the lost self in the world of commodity production, of the rule of things (“I know I'm artificial but don't put the blame on me, I was reared with appliances in a consumer society”).

The Adverts were one of the most fascinating, musically adept, and political of the early punk bands (having been formed in 1976), exemplified by the songs on the classic album Crossing The Red Sea With The Adverts. “Bored Teenagers” was amusingly about “bored teenagers, looking for love, or should I say emotional rages.” “No time to be 21” was a song about being young in a society without a future, with “no hope and all that shit, no chances, no plans, I think I'll be somebody else, or else a madman, it's no time to be 21, to be anyone. We'll be your untouchables, we'll be your outcasts, we don't care what you project on us, it's no time to be 21.” The Adverts' songs were often dark (“Drowning Men” and “Bombsight Boy” don't get more Orwellian as descriptions of life in capitalism), and more in the realist tradition, but also tended to inspire and empower (from Drowning Men again, “shall we rise from sunken places, walk the streets, unnatural graceless, wipe the smile from your faces, if we can make it”). In not only facing, through these songs, the sheer ugliness and debasing of life in the system, but facing it together, there often came (and still comes) a courage to keep going, a human reaching out of the ghetto for the sun, for the future, for our future, perhaps. That I think is the power of the nihilism in punk rock that has been all too often misunderstood – the affirmation that is often found in negation. It is after all a rejection of the totality and not just its parts that will yield for us the new world that we will posit in its place. Punk was similarly a throwing of earth upon the whole grave that something beautiful might just grow from it. Or so it felt to me and to thousands of others.

“Are you taking over or are you taking orders? Are you going backwards or are you going forwards?” asked the Clash in White Riot from their first album. Their songs tended to suggest the romantic barricades version of revolution that we all know from history only leads to more violent repression, reactionary backlash, or further mystification, to the majority, of the revolutionary struggle which becomes falsely identified with impassioned rebelliousness rather than a calculated move by the masses to empower themselves once and for all. The Clash songs also tended to suggest those brands of reformist leftism (“Why not phone up Robin Hood and ask him for some wealth distribution?” in “White Man In Hammersmith Palais”) that were rife in England at that time what with the more militant branches of the Labor Party or the SWP. That is why as a real socialist I tended to be more inspired by the punk bands that did not have such overt political agendas, as they allowed me to interpret the songs on my own, and allowed their songs to truly act as the chorus of my own ideas

Stations of the crass

Even though socialists critique the majority of anarchists for their gradualism, reformism and avoidance of a political means to abolish capitalism, nonetheless the anarchist punk band Crass wrote many songs with which as a socialist I strongly identified. The songs on the album Penis Envy – possibly the greatest feminist musical work ever – featured sharp and humorous put downs of patriarchy (Beta Motel, Berkertex Bribe, Smother Love, Dry Weather), scathingly ironic descriptions of the life development of workers from birth to death (Systematic Death), and a brilliant critique of the left and the right's ideology (Where Next Columbus? – with the attack upon Marxists clearly one upon Marx's many false prophets who sprouted in the 20th Century after his death). Crass's album Stations of the Crass excavated as completely as is possible on four sides of a double-album the bowels of capitalist power, exploitation, war, poverty, ideology, and culture. These two albums remain possibly two of the finest works of political songwriting to date.

I am not he, nor master, nor lord no crown to wear, no cross to bear in stations.
I am not he, nor shall be, warlord of nations –
these heroes have run before me, now dead upon the flesh piles, see, waiting for their promised resurrection. There is none, nothing but the marker, crown or cross, in stone upon these graves.
Promise of the ribbon was all it took,where only the strap would leave it's mark upon these slaves.
What flag to thrust into this flesh, rag, bandage, mop in their flowing death?
Taken aside, they were pointed a way, for god, queen and country.
Now in silence they lie. They ran before these masters,
children of sorrow as slaves to that trilogy -
they had no future.
They believed in democracy, freedom of speech,
yet dead on the flesh piles I hear no breath, I hear no hope,
no whisper of faith from those who have died
for some others' privilege - Out from your palaces, princes and queens!
Out from your churches, you clergy, you christs!
I'll neither live nor die for your dreams,
I'll make no subscription to your paradise – Crass

Punk rock also brought an exciting and refreshing infusion of women and their points of view into a domain previously dominated by the male crotch. The Au Pairs, Crass, Delta 5, Essential Logic, Penetration, the Raincoats, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Slits, X-Ray Spex are the most obvious examples. Indeed, punk opened songwriting into literally any arena, but the political was rock's last breach of conquest. The Gang Of Four (the very name says it all) was possibly the most famous band to explicitly attack the system. The commodification of sex, the critique of the Great Man theory of history, the disgust with a society of such pervading dehumanizing rules and regulations, the scandals of those in power, and the profiteering of the entertainment industry, were some of the topics attacked in their albums. This was tight, often reggafied, punk that blasted the system with its catchy hooks.

Crass announced in one of its first few songs that “punk is dead.” They were so right – and so early in its development. Punk was born partly as a fashion commodity, and as its market expanded, it lost its shock value and became a staple in the cultural shop window, brand A to reggae's brand B, soul's brand C, and jazz's brand D. Ripped shirts were selling at expensive prices. Record labels were gobbling up as many punk bands as they could, until the market was so saturated that they started laying them off in anticipation for the Next Big Things: New Wave, Indie Pop, Grunge and Hip Hop. A Mohawk barely lifts an eyelid today. This was not totally ironic. Punk, or at least the Sex Pistols, had been partially concocted by a businessman, Malcolm McLaren, versed in Situationist theory and well oiled in the marketing power of shock value and youth appeal.

Still, for all its commercialisation, punk was inspired by a thousand singers and musicians, many of whom could barely play their two and a half chords. They were writing super-catchy hooks to insightful and rebellious lyrics aimed at drilling holes into the system's ideology. It embodied a paradox; it was part rebel, part fashion. But it brought rock as an art form to its total undoing – never again could a pop song be heard without one's nose wrinkling in distaste and derision. Among those who had been fed such staples as the classic singles by the Buzzcocks, Clash, Only Ones, Pistols, Crass, Adverts, Damned, Jam, Kleenex, Penetration, Saints, Boys, Stiff Little Fingers, U.K. Subs, Sham 69, or Wire, to name just a few, who could stomach the many styles of pop that followed, even the rebellious ones? Only hip-hop could be seen as punk's successor, expressing the alienation and disempowerment of African-Americans as punk had with British youth a decade earlier. 1970s punk was of course not a totally British phenomenon. Classic punk sprouted in all continents, besides Europe, mainly in Asia (Japan in particular), Australia, and North America.

Punk's energy was and is infectious. It was a unique cultural phenomenon that has long been gone, though its surreal and revolutionary spirit could be heard for decades before and after it. It lives today mainly in the memories of those who shared its moment, and those who play the massive musical legacy it left behind. It was not intended to collect dust in a museum of the popular song. Rather, it was intended to replace the silent museums of death with the loud cries of the living. In that endeavor, even though few of its songs were avowedly socialist, it may perhaps be not all that far from the socialist's heart.

Dr. Who

Radical critique (1996)

Book Review from the July 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

What Is Situationism? A Reader edited by Stewart Home (AK Press, 1996, £9.95)

This is an occasionally interesting though somewhat repetitive collection of writings about the strand of revolutionary opinion which emerged out of Lettrist and other avant-garde artistic groups, principally in France in the 1950s. With their radical critique of bourgeois consumer society the situationists influenced to a greater or lesser degree both the May events in France of 198 and then, nearly a decade later, the punk rock movement.

Famously, in 1966, a group of situationist-inspired students at Strasbourg University were elected to positions of responsibility in the moribund Students' Union and immediately set up a Society For The Rehabilitation of Karl Marx. They also published various radical tracts including Khayati's On The Poverty of Student Life using unions funds, for which they attracted public outrage and eventually the attention of the police. At their trial the judge summed up situationist philosophy as well as anyone had hitherto ever done, stating "these cynics do not hesitate to commend theft, the destruction of scholarship, the abolition of work, total subversion, and a world-wide proletarian revolution with 'unlicensed pleasure' as its only goal".

Though lacking a coherent revolutionary strategy, the situationists stood out clearly against the market economy, commodity production and wage labour, advocating the creation of a socialist society of common ownership where production would be undertaken solely to satisfy needs and desires. This book doesn't explore this concept as well as it might do, however, and nothing is as well-rounded as Mark Shipway's presentation of the subject in the book Non-Market Socialism edited by Rubel and Crump. Probably the best chapter in this collection of writings is "The End of Music" by Dave and Stuart Wise, dealing with Malcolm McLaren's Sex Pistols, the rise and fall of punk rock and its relationship with situationist politics—the other writings range from the quirky (Jim Martin on Wilhelm Reich and situationism) to the near pretentious (Jean Barrot's text being the most obvious example). This said, there are far worse books around that you could add to a collection on radical politics.

DAP

Anarchy for the UK? (1999)

TV review from the May 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

BBC2's Counterblast series aims to provide a forum for unconventional, and often anti-establishment, ideas. The programme of 13 April was devoted to the anti-monarchist views of Chris Lowe. It proved to be both unconventional and anti-establishment in equal measure, giving Lowe a wide degree of control over the programme's content, which, in addition to interviews with the usual assortment of trendy left-wing academics and journalists, included coverage of some of the more extreme views of the radical fringe of the republican movement in Britain. Rarely in the history of British TV can a programme have been commissioned which ended with a call for the murder of the entire Royal Family.

But who exactly was it who should have issued such a battlecry? Step forward Ian Bone, founder of the violent anarchist group Class War. This organisation, dealt with at length in these pages on previous occasions, officially gave up the ghost some time ago, though some of its warring factions continue to claim its mantle, albeit posthumously (this is presumably why they all wear black). Bone—as well as Lowe, the programme's maker—has now set up an anarchist front organisation called The Movement Against the Monarchy. This is similar in most respects to other organisations and fronts set up by Class War such as Stop the City, concentrating on periodic and highly provocative marches through sensitive areas of the capital. Counterblast showed The Movement Against the Monarchy marching through the streets of central London on their way to Buckingham Palace, replete with black flags, with marchers dressed up as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and others carrying a guillotine. No monarchs, it has to be said, were assassinated that day but it was all good, clean fun.

Johnny Rotten, that erstwhile purveyor of anarchy in the UK, once famously stated that there is nothing wrong with the Tory Party except the people who are in it. With the republican movement in Britain that statement has a certain analogous relevance and Counterblast demonstrated this beyond all reasonable doubt. It would seem that most of the people actively engaged in the republican struggle in Britain seem to be either chi-chi metropolitan intellectuals who haven't 'arrived' until they've set up their own think-tank, or wild-eyed rabble-rousers from the lumpen proletariat intent on kicking some arse in an attempt to assuage their personality disorders. Needless to say, the vast majority of republicans in Britain—i.e. those who never get asked to star in TV programmes like this—fit neither category.

God Save the Queen?
It is of course true that getting rid of the monarchy is a Good Thing. Even the market-loving, capitalism-cradling Americans can see that (our transatlantic cousins, naturally, preferring their monarchs to rule over some other poor bastard so they can come over and take photographs). But as the Americans have actually proved, not having a monarchy solves little by itself. If anything it gives further legs to the lie that in capitalist society all are equal before the God of the market and that there are no real class distinctions. Perversely, perhaps—and as Chris Lowe and Ian Bone clearly demonstrated—the Royal Family in the UK is the feature of British society that probably generates more class hatred than any other. It is a symbol of all that is wrong with capitalist society and should naturally go along with it—but in a process of genuine, democratic revolution which neither replaces one figurehead with another (as the academics would like) nor glories in "class violence" just for the sake of kicking the shit out of our oppressors without having a clue as to what to do next.

Socialists oppose the monarchy because in many ways it embodies the things we despise: the unfettered triumph of wealth and heredity; the existence of opulence amid squalor; the victory of idleness over creativity; and the festering legacy of the anti-democratic principle. When it comes to abolishing the institutions of class privilege, socialists take a militant and principled stand, and that is a stand unencumbered by learned think-tanks or provocatively dangled nooses, by the facile desire for a President or the tragi-comic clamour for the guillotine. This is because socialists are aware above all else that the monarchy is little more than a farcical side-show in the corporate extravaganza now conquering the globe in the name of the market. The monarchy is not "the enemy": it is but one tiny fragment of it. As socialists we don't waste our time pursuing such a narrow single-issue campaign which would bring little if any practical benefit to the working class within capitalism. Capitalism can well do without the monarchy and does just that across most of the globe, including the parts wracked by the worst inequality and suffering. What it can't do without is a compliant, docile working class which is tied economically and ideologically to the market system. And it is only this class—the working class—which is capable of realising that abolishing the laugh-a-minute royals can be only one small part of a much wider and more serious process: social revolution carried out by the majority in the interests of that majority.

Dave Perrin

The Rebel Sell (2007)

Book Review from the April 2007 Socialist Standard

Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter: The Rebel Sell: How the Counterculture Became Consumer Culture.

I finished this book wondering just what I'd been reading. It's largely aimed at the 'counterculture', a notion which seems to encompass everything from anarchism and the Sex Pistols to Naomi Klein's No Logo and the Situationists.

The countercultural critique of capitalism, so Heath and Potter argue, is far more wide-ranging than that of Marxism, which is concerned with abolishing exploitation and establishing common ownership. In contrast, the counterculture aims at a society without institutions and regulations, though it's usually very vague as to what a free society would actually be like.

But, the authors continue, countercultural rebellion is in practice counterproductive: it distracts attention from initiatives to bring about real improvements in people's lives and even encourages contempt for such changes.

To the extent that attacking such an ill-defined set of ideas makes sense, there is a fair amount here that Socialists could agree with. The whole notion of 'fair trade', for instance, has become itself part of the competitive selling industry, as has other merchandise produced by various countercultural organisations. If you buy from the Body Shop because it makes you feel morally superior, then you're just being driven by a desire not to conform.

However, it's in their positive prescriptions that Heath and Potter go wrong. You might interpret their critique of countercultural rebellion as applying also to the Socialist insistence on advocating revolution and opposing reformism. Their case for this rests on two pillars. The first is that it's better to 'plug the loopholes, not abolish the system', i.e. they advocate reforms of capitalism. But the measures they advocate are pointless, such as introducing a progressive income tax on the grounds that lowering income would lower consumption.

The second pillar is, in effect, the impossibility of a socialist society. Of course, the authors never actually deal with the idea of a society based on production for use, since they consider that the only alternative to a market system is centralised production of the type formerly seen in Russia. But they regard a market system as inevitable, and advocate the kind of ideal market described in economic textbooks (presumably because these only exist in books, not in the real world).

Writers like Murray Bookchin (author of Post-Scarcity Anarchism) are criticised on the grounds that 'in our society, scarcity is a social, not a material, phenomenon'. Scarcity therefore cannot be overcome through increasing production: fast cars and 'cool' clothes, for instance, are necessarily scarce because their value depends on providing a distinguishing feature to those who consume them. But a society of free access will work on a very different value system and so won't involve people trying to look or live differently from their friends and neighbours.

So perhaps the answer to my wondering about what the book is would be that, though the authors never use the terms directly, it offers an unconvincing defence of reformism and criticism of socialism.

Paul Bennett