Reply to a Young Punk

The following is a piece I have dug out from my hard drive, with minor amendments. It was an email response to a message from a young American idealistic kid who thought punk rock could change the world. His name is also Martin J Willett.

I am of the right age to have seen punk the first time around. I knew they were a bunch of wankers then and not a lot has changed. Some punks had some kind of a philosophy, most were just sheep. I am quite willing to accept that the punk movement has a core of beliefs running through it which has remained stable over time and is held with sincerity, but so has Mormonism, and they are a bunch of deluded wankers too.

My key point is that the punk movement is a protest movement, it is designed to protest. It is not designed to change anything. The point is to oppose and to enjoy the ride. Show me one punk in a position to influence the community for the good and I will show you a thousand selfish nihilistic protestors whose sole contribution to the community is in bad-mouthing its institutions.

You make a point of the community spirit among punks. That feeling is quite common in many kinds of crowds. You can get that feeling in any crowd with a common identity and some agenda, whether it is a sporting crowd, a music festival, a national celebration, the Nuremberg rallies, a revival meeting or a lynch mob. You are not the first person to find himself by getting lost in a crowd and mistaking the psycho-dynamics of the crowd for some quality shared by the members of the mob. I have experienced the feeling of common purpose with crowds before and I have learned how transient it is and how shallow. Nothing lasting can be built upon such a fleeting phenomenon. Preachers and politicians regularly use crowd dynamics to generate short term effects among their followers, but the best that such events can do is to focus minds for a few weeks, it is not possible to use that energy permanently. If you want to see other versions of the same thing try going to a Baptist church, a Bills game or an Amway meeting, but as an outsider you will not get the same buzz, just as I couldn't as a fat middle-aged man at a punk concert.

You quote Bakunin at me, so I'll respond with a Lennonism “If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain't going to make it with any one any how.” No American majority is ever going to be impressed or swayed by “foreign commie intellectuals”. Besides, I disagree with the sentiment completely. There will be a power in the land whether you want it or not. If there is not a democratic government there will be a warlord, fascist state, military or gangster government. In those cases laws and constitutions have no power. Many on the libertarian right think that by specifying constitutional limits to the power of the government that they can stop a fascist state, utter nonsense. A fascist state, a warlord or a military junta would not care what the constitution says, they recognize the reality of power, and in the absence of a powerful democratic constitutional government they would be quick to offer their services.

Anarchism is a fundamentally flawed concept because it does not acknowledge the fact that government is not optional, if you do not exercise power some other force will step in. If the people abstained from voting for any president, House or Senate then there would be a general or colonel in the White House before nightfall. You know that, all history in all countries teaches that. No large state has run for more than a few hours without a government or at least the imminent prospect of one. Some things do not or cannot change. Besides, the Colonel or General would be absolutely correct in his thinking that his running the country would be preferable to allowing the country to “descend into anarchy” and be ruled by gangs and militias.

If you try to resist a corrupt and fascist regime you will start a civil war. The end result will be a new form of military dictatorship. Do the names Castro, Mao and Pol Pot mean anything to you? Every single country that has ever existed as a state has continued to exist as a state until taken over by a larger state. Revolutions replace one government with another government. There has never been a revolution that has removed government, not one has even come close.

Most people across the face of the planet would be very happy to trade places with you, to have a democratic system of government that was largely free of corruption. Democratic countries have the power to make life better for their citizens and they use it. Removing power removes the chance to make improvements. You claim to be interested in anti-racist causes, can you imagine what an America without government would be like in this regard? Slavery would not have been abolished, companies would be paying blacks lower wages or using slaves and they would be getting away with it, as they would be selling at lower prices and thwarting well meaning attempts at boycotting their products in exactly the same way as farmers who keep animals in conditions well below what the consumer would prefer. Millions of people want chickens reared in better conditions, and would do anything to achieve it, except pay higher prices for eggs and chicken than the next man. I want those higher standards, I would pay the higher prices, but not while most people do not. The same would be true of slavery, discriminatory wages and many other issues. None of these issues can be addressed without a government to enforce the agreement to observe higher standards. Countries without welfare systems have huge numbers of beggars on the streets, few people give to beggars but the majority can agree to raise taxes and distribute welfare payments equitably.

Democratic governments are never going to be cool, it is a physical impossibility, cool is defined as opposition to the accepted status quo in an acceptable way, therefore the moment a majority elects a government it becomes cool to oppose it. If your wildest dreams came true and society was run the way you envisage do you really think that the next generation will accept it and not feel the need to strike the pose of rebels themselves?

The political dimension to the punk movement is very similar to the political dimension of the organized racist parties in Britain. There has been a National Front and a British National Party for several decades now, their national memberships sometimes fall as low as a few dozen people. They pose as formal parties, they talk the talk but they have no prospect of walking the walk. They are playing a game, secure in the knowledge that they will never have to actually do anything. They can promise anything, sound professional or visionary, play clean or start fights. It doesn't matter what they do they know they will never achieve power so they can play, pose and strut all they want. The political organizations attached to music and sub-cultures are in the same boat. They can set small aims and go for them, or large ones and fail heroically, or they can simply bleat on semi-incoherently about some general malaise in the world. Generally they prefer the latter. Beatniks, hippies and punks have been doing it for decades, all very earnest, all very safe. They never have to face the big decisions, the tough choices, the compromises. They can say that the world is wrong, that there is a better way, they never put up, they never shut up.

Youth sub-cultures always have been and always will be ineffectual avenues for incoherent protest.

Music is never going to change the world, neither is youth, or drugs or sex. Protest movements very rarely achieve anything, youth sub-culture protest movements have never achieved anything in recorded history. Political change cannot be achieved through music or youth protest. Sometimes a mass movement of ideas has achieved success while it has had a radical youth wing to it, but that is coincidence. Like thunder, a harmless accompaniment to deadly lightning, youth protests sometimes seem to have achieved a goal that has been achieved through a wider consensus. It wasn't protest marches or demonstrations that transformed America from an overtly racist country it was democratic politics, LBJ did far more than MLK. What did Malcolm X or Bob Dylan achieve? Nothing at all. There never has been a successful political movement that has achieved anything through beating its own drum and getting down to a particular groove. You are deluding yourself if you think otherwise.

The protest songs of this era will be used in advertisements for cars and life insurance in twenty years time. That will be their biggest impact on the world.

What have sex, drugs and Rock and Roll got in common? They never have, and never will change the world. The world has always been run by the middle-aged, never the young, that is not going to change. Any form of “alternative lifestyle” will alienate the majority on whose behalf any democratic country is nominally run. Glorying in such an alternative lifestyle ensures that a radical political activist will never graduate to actually have real influence. I have a couple of lessons for you from British politics. The most successful political campaign in Britain in recent years was won by a group that no longer exists. It was called the Campaign for Lead Free Air. Its aims were very simple, to get lead additives removed from petrol (gasoline). It used education, reasoned argument and temperate displays of concern. It gathered arguments, proposed concrete solutions and worked with scientists, political parties and departments of government. When it began there was no unleaded petrol available in Britain. Since 2000 it has been illegal to supply any leaded petrol. Mass rallies, boycotts, sit-down strikes and hysterical songs were never used, they would have been counter-productive. Success came by influencing parliament and government directly, resulting in a tax incentive that made unleaded fuel cheaper. This made an uptake of the alternative fuel painless. Over successive years the tax differences between unleaded and leaded fuel encouraged the whole country to convert. It was a brilliant example of a massive social and political change, a total transformation. When I was 25 unleaded fuel was a novelty, used by lentil-weaving bearded hippies, now there is no alternative. The campaign has been totally successful, and yet it went largely unnoticed by the general public. Posing and posturing is counter-productive. Why rant and scream at kids with no votes when you can present reasoned arguments to the men holding power?

The second example concerns a gentleman called Peter Hain, who was once the most unpopular man in Britain because his activities lead to the cancellation of sports events. In protesting about apartheid in South Africa he wanted to stop South African teams playing in Britain. He vandalized cricket and rugby pitches before international games. He was pilloried in the press for being a spoil-sport. His activities did make the tours very difficult. A wider campaign grew up and the question about sporting links with South Africa came onto the agenda. From that moment the pressure became more subtle and less obvious, support for a boycott became wider and less strident. Sporting links began to be severed, and academic and business links too, within a few years the isolation was total. Peter Hain was a major front man for the anti-apartheid movement but never again did he involve himself in criminal damage. He grew up. He stopped trying to be seen to be doing something and instead he started to actually do something. Today he is Leader of the House of Commons, Lord Privy Seal and Secretary of State for Wales. And of course South Africa has had two black presidents since then.

Radical things can be achieved by people in democracies, but never through posing as radicals. Just think of some of the profoundly radical things that democracy has achieved: the abolition of slavery, the defeat of Nazi Germany, putting men on the moon, formal equality of the races and sexes. None of those efforts was perfect or without cost but they dwarf any achievements of all the youth counter-cultures and radical chic rebels put together. Just consider marijuana, it has been a campaigning issue for beatniks, hippies, punks and rockers for decades, but what has been the progress? Scarcely any. If counter cultures could be expected to achieve something surely this should be something they could manage? I would go as far as to suggest that the adoption of marijuana by successive counter cultures has actually delayed the day when it becomes a socially and legally acceptable drug. If the kids were not seen to be promoting it then it could quite easily become accepted as one more slightly reprehensible vice that society can tolerate, after all, most voters have used it at one time or another and they know it isn't universally addictive.

Wanting to change the world is a great idea, but learn from history, see how change is achieved. No counter-cultural movement is ever going to change the world in reality. Ask yourself do you want to be seen to be protesting or do you want to actually make a difference?

Nothing worthwhile in the history of humanity has been achieved by young radicals unwilling to “sell out” their principles. It is a great Hollywood cliché that the world can be transformed by music, everybody lives happily ever after as the young telegenic band play their radical groove and the camera pans round to show even the fuddy-duddy old Senator and Police Chief getting down to the beat. In reality it has never happened, and it never will.

If you want to pose as a radical, maintain your credibility with your peers and get laid then music is a sound career move. If you actually want to make a positive contribution to the world then do not expect music to be the key. As a species we have many things in common that are more universal than an idiosyncratic taste in music, these human universals are not sufficient to get us unified, why on earth would anybody expect a musical form that millions hate could achieve what love cannot achieve?

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