‘The Rebel Sell’ by Joseph Heath and Andrew Porter is a thought-provoking book. If you’re clever enough (and you are) to have a brain spacious enough to have thoughts provoked around in it (and you do) you’ll understand immediately that a book being described as “thought-provoking” means nothing at all, or nothing much. Everything is, in its own unique context, thought-provoking. You know how sometimes when you go to the toilet and you’re not wide awake, you can end up weeing on your feet a bit? (This can happen with or without a penis, and don’t let the women tell you any different). Well, that’s thought-provoking. It provokes thought. And what about when the back of your throat itches and you try and scratch it with your tongue but that does no good at all? That’s thought-provoking too. Getting splashed by a bus not bothering to slow down while driving through a puddle? It provokes thought. It is thought-provoking. So what about this paragraph, from ‘The Rebel Sell’:
“”The idea of a counterculture is ultimately based on a mistake. At best, countercultural rebellion is a pseudo-rebellion: a set of dramatic gestures devoid of any progressive political or economic consequences and that detract from the urgent task of building a more just society. In other words, it is rebellion that provides entertainment for the rebels, and nothing much else. At worst, countercultural rebellion actually promotes unhappiness, by undermining or discrediting social norms and institutions that actually serve a valuable function. In particular, the idea of a counterculture has produced a level of contempt for democratic politics that has consistently handicapped the progressive left (not least, by refusing to acknowledge the distinction between compromising and ’selling out’).”
This is thought-provoking in the sense that you might not agree with it. If its authors are right, you’re quite likely even to take offence at it – but when you reflect, you’ll likely discover that most of what you read, you chose to read because you expect to agree with it. You’re just not as virtuous as you think you are.
I realised precisely this while reading ‘The Rebel Sell’. It had a picture of a coffee cup emblazoned with Che Guevara’s icon-face on the cover. I expected it would be a gently-mocking, almost-intellectual expression of niggling doubt at the real political potential of smashing Starbucks’ windows while wearing a gas mask, but it was much more. The book’s actually a full-on critique of the very idea of ‘counterculture’. Heath and Porter argue that the whole idea of ‘changing the world by changing yourself’ as a credible ideology, by claiming psychological, philosophical and political depth, achieves the opposite of its proclaimed intentions, and is ultimately shallow by comparison with what’s become far less fashionable: traditional left-wing political action within the existing democratic institutional framework. Smelt the system, rather than smash it. Beginning with the claim that 1960’s individualism was an unnecessarily paranoid reaction to enforced conformity of Nazi Germany in particular, and to mass-production capitalism in general, they move through a total rejection of the foundation of Freudianism (denying the very existence of ‘the subconscious’) to the argument that left-wing politics has been reduced to what is essentially the commodification of the self-help industry.
Thought-provoking, in the sense that I’ve been meaning to get around to just that sort of thing for several months now, and probably already would have if I had the self-discipline to get out of bed earlier on my days off.
The problem the authors (at least of whom is Canadian, obviously, by the way) are highlighting is that the ‘countercultural critique of consumer capitalism’ is in actual fact the ultimate expression of consumer capitalism: individual self-expression is not subversive. It’s subservient. Capitalism needs an ever-increasing variety of ‘individuals’ demanding that their own particular needs be satisfied by ‘the system’ in order that they can ‘express themselves’ and ‘assert their individuality’. All this achieves, from an economic point of view, is increased competition and consumer choice. It poses no challenge to capitalism because it is capitalism. Assuming otherwise is based on the outdated Marxist position that capitalism is basically about mass production and homogeneity, which involves subjugating the people and forcing conformity, against the natural inclination of human beings for freedom and self-determination, when capitalism is really a lot, lot cleverer (and more human, perhaps even more humane) than that. Ouch.
They put it better than I do:
“The power that the myth of counterculture has exercised over political consciousness in the past half-century is ultimately a testament to the massive trauma inflicted upon Western civilization by Nazi Germany. After the Holocaust, what had previously been only a moderate distaste for conformity, common among artists and romantics, got pumped up into a hypertrophied abhorrence of anything that even smacked of regularity of predictability. Conformity was elevated to the status of cardinal sin, and mass society became the dominant image of a modern dystopia. Many of those who naturally have come forth as champions of the people in an earlier century became increasingly afraid of those very same people – afraid of the latent potential for violence and cruelty that supposedly resided in their hearts. For the progressive left, the wound was even deeper. Many became afraid not just of fascism, but in many cases of society itself. The left began to distrust many of the basic building blocks of social organisation, such as social norms (including etiquette), laws and bureaucratic forms of organisation. Yet without these building blocks, it is simply not possible to organise large-scale cooperation among human beings”.
Oh dear. Back to work. Better still, stop expressing yourself. Or if you really want to be sincere, lie. It’ll provoke thoughts.
