Tuesday's ABC punk doco brings up 1999 Seattle protests

It was interesting to find Jello Biafra in Don Letts’ 90 min doco on punk (aired Tuesday 5/6th/2007 on ABC 2) claiming that Kurt Cobain had a influence on the Seattle anti-WTO riots in 1999.

The band Nirvana has inspired rebellion (e.g. the early 90s mini-riot in Canberra, when fans debarred entry ripped open a section of the ANU venue and got in to see the band). Of course it is also true Cobain himself was a bit of a mess; his lifestyle would have prevented him from being a very effective activist. In fact it has often been remarked how conservative heroin users tend to become — or already are. So given the context of the interview I take Biafra’s point to be not so much that Cobain himself was an effective rebel, but the band, and more than that, the zine and music scene in Seattle from the later 1980s on, were conducive to rebellion.

Also interestingly another “father of punk” had picked up on a similar idea in 1987. In PIL, Lydon had sung in the (average) song "Seattle"

Don’t like the look of this town
What comes up must come down…
Get out of my world.

Hardly the best PIL album (also called "Seattle" I think), but curiously prescient.

This is something many Leninist activists miss. For them the locus of struggle is the workplace, and versions, perhaps rejecting Lenin himself, generalize this into a social factory. Always the only important struggle is for wages and (social)conditions (“economic reductionism”).

I will not here deny that the struggle for wages and conditions can escalate into a “political” contestation of capital, that is become revolutionary, rather than reform the existing system and be a trade union affair. But consider how the thought of a better society can be valuable as well.

Before we do we have to admit that we don’t know what a society attained by a revolutionary, rather than just reformist, struggle will exactly be like. True, among other things we can be sure it will be a world without patriarchal class society, without racism, war and pollution. I take it only a post-capitalist society can have these and certain other salient features (for argument in favour of this assumption see "The Communist Manifesto” by Marx and Engels). But fuller detail is unavailable to us, and what we are fighting for seems hazy and unclear rather than of any assistance in real struggles against power.

For the surrealists, no probs, fall asleep and you’ve got it — dreams tell us how we could live. But dreams are unttainably fantastical, even contain logical impossibilities.

By contrast an imaginative scene might deal with future visions or what-have-you, but do it in a hands on way as they make zines and music (for e.g.). And, too, in such a scene one could hope for much argument, plotting, and in an awake sense, even dreaming. In a community based on such visions, as well as good revolutionary ideas, the limitations experienced around bands or photocopying will leave many involved wanting more. Such a community then inevitably runs up against the misuse of resources by capital; and so it can be vital to instigating another Seattle.

These observations do not prove we need a creative community for revolution, though I think, contra Leninism, this is true. All I am arguing here is that a creative community can be damn helpful to the mass, effective and radical contestation of power. The reader can further the argument herself if she tries to answer this question:

What kind of revolution do you want?