You say you want a counter-revolution
April 29, 2017 2:09 PM   Subscribe

 
I read the news today, oh boy

QFT
posted by chavenet at 2:26 PM on April 29, 2017 [12 favorites]


I find myself peculiarly emotionally and philosophically entwined with the counterculture of the late 60-early 70s, despite being born in 1968. Many of my favorite things come from that era or are influenced by that era. But I didn't discover my affinity for that or even know much about that era other than "here there be dragons" until I was in my mid-20s.

My parents' interaction with popular music somehow never got to the Beatles, despite them living in the UK for several years in the mid-60s. Their record collection basically ends with Peter, Paul & Mary, The New Christy Minstrals, and Burl Ives. I don't have any problem with this, I love folk music and still listen to it from a lot of eras still. But they never went rock-n-roll. They never even went early Dylan. So I had to find a lot of stuff on my own or through other people.

Once I did have a door opened for me into the counterculture, I realized that much of what I had been raised on was a direct result of its existence. Sesame Street, Electric Company, Big Blue Marble, Zoom, even New Zoo Revue (only to name a few) were a major part of my childhood. I don't count Mr Rogers or Captain Kangaroo but I think they feed in there somehow too.

Sadly, following Woodstock there was the one-two punch of Altamont and then the Manson murders, and I think any possibility of the counterculture taking on larger influence in the greater culture was eliminated by those two events. Except for the clothing. Dear god, clothes in the 70s! *shudder*

Anyway, yes, it's easy to feel now that as though there was no counterculture, because so much of what it might have been has been erased, mostly across the Reagan and Thatcher eras. The reality we live in now was shaped more by those two than anything the Fab Four could have hoped.
posted by hippybear at 2:43 PM on April 29, 2017 [16 favorites]


The Beatles were the ones who wrote that song complaining about paying too much in taxes, right? I'm not at all surprised the Boomers turned out the way they did.
posted by happyroach at 3:03 PM on April 29, 2017 [16 favorites]


Ah, another article by someone who shares my name. Always weird when that happens. I should keep a list of John Harrises I encounter.
posted by JHarris at 3:09 PM on April 29, 2017 [4 favorites]


There's always more complexity; the individualism, and liberation from the authority of elders and betters, of the 1960s generation was channelled into the dismantling of the old systems (be they venerable old English banks or the social-democratic welfare state), even as the leaders were railing, culture-war-fashion, against the symbols of that age of liberation. (Thatcher famously wanted a return to Victorian-style “muscular Christianity” and public piety to counterbalance the dismantling of the post-war social-democratic settlement.) Clearly they didn't manage to tear out the roots of the new liberal order and go back to the Leave-It-To-Beaver era of hierarchy and deference. And I suspect that, even if Trump and May triumph beyond their wildest dream, what they'll have vanquished will be a mixture of what they railed against and its antithesis, as will be what ends up triumphing.
posted by acb at 3:16 PM on April 29, 2017 [3 favorites]


Ah, another article by someone who shares my name. Always weird when that happens. I should keep a list of John Harrises I encounter.

The Guardianista John Harris seems to be a leftwinger and (John Peel-era) indie-rock type from somewhere in the north of England, for what it's worth.
posted by acb at 3:17 PM on April 29, 2017


The Overton window is powerful.
posted by hippybear at 3:34 PM on April 29, 2017 [9 favorites]


Chapter 3 of Adam Curtis's documentary "Century of the Self" also addresses how 60s liberated individualism was co-opted by capitalists.
posted by scose at 3:42 PM on April 29, 2017 [8 favorites]


The blog "The 60s at 50" is great for providing cultural snapshots of that era, and just last week it commemorated a cultural development that ultimately dwarfed The Beatles in influence: McDonalds' introduction of the Big Mac.
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:08 PM on April 29, 2017


a cultural development that ultimately dwarfed The Beatles in influence: McDonalds' introduction of the Big Mac.

Thesis; Antithesis; Synthesis.
posted by acb at 4:11 PM on April 29, 2017 [5 favorites]


what, guys, you think that enlightenment through LSD and the paraphanalia needed to play and listen to the modern music the beatles created aren't signs of rampant materialism? frank zappa labeled his 1968 parody of sgt pepper "we're only in it for the money" - but in all fairness, he was much more savage with the establishment than he was the hippies

but it's too fashionable to call the baby boomers people who backed off from their dreams and turned into dittoheads and reaganites and trumpists - first of all, bob dylan and the beatles were silent generation people not boomers (along with many of the other figures of the 60s) - second of all, only a small minority of the boomers ever went the hippie way and joined the counterculture - the majority went to school, went to war, went to work - and are rebelling now that they've learned what a crock it is - unfortunately, their form of rebellion is against the forces of liberation - they want the pre-kennedy assassination america back because it was a docile peaceful time for the white middle class - it was also soul-crushing and horribly dull, but they LIKE that - and they don't realize just how unequal the common working person really was then compared to the ruling class

but you can't undo history - what happened in the 60s is that many people realized that alternatives were possible and could be had

people aren't going to forget that - people, including the greenfrog worshipping idiots of the alt-right demand their subcultural freedoms - it's too late to enforce conformity because we don't know what it is we're supposed to be confoming to - and although i don't doubt the current leaders of our country are doing their best to be repressive, you can already sense the schisms that are going to happen - the center isn't going to hold for them, either

i don't think the orange meanies are going to be any more effective than the blue meanies were
posted by pyramid termite at 4:13 PM on April 29, 2017 [23 favorites]


I just checked, and I don't have a hole in my pocket. I wonder who does.
posted by hippybear at 4:29 PM on April 29, 2017 [2 favorites]


The Beatles were the ones who wrote that song complaining about paying too much in taxes, right?

In fairness, the British taxes at the time were incredibly high, particularly at the top rate.


Specifically it was George Harrison who wrote "Taxman" and he always seemed okay with the duality of being the spiritual guy (seriously, how many of his songs are love songs that could be either to a groovy chick or to God?) and also being the guy who was most concerned about money.

And the top tax bracket in the UK was around 95% in the 1960s, although Wikipedia dryly notes, "The highest rate of income tax peaked in the Second World War at 99.25%." When Harrison sang, "That's one for you, nineteen for me," it was not much of an exaggeration.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:31 PM on April 29, 2017 [4 favorites]


I was 11 when Beatlemania hit in the USA in 1963, a particularly susceptible age to pop music trends/bands. I remember trudging through snow to buy my first '45, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "I Saw Her Standing There." I remember, jaded as I was at age 11, being surprised that they released two number one hits on one '45, assuming they would milk it for a side A and a disposable side B. I was all in, and saw them in their last tour, in 1966. In 1967, with Sgt. Pepper's release, I started taking pot and acid, at age 15-16. I graduated from high school in 1970, the year the Beatles broke up. In short, I grew up with the Beatles as my personal soundtrack and inspiration, and haven't lost my love of the band yet. (Although I had moved on to jazz in a few years.)
posted by kozad at 5:16 PM on April 29, 2017 [5 favorites]


You only pay the highest tax rate on the top part of your income. By the time you make enough to hit the 95% tax bracket - even in the social democratic-ist era in Britain - you're doing, like Jack in the boat, very nicely. It is exceedingly unbecoming to whine about how you are very rich indeed but not rich enough.

On the one hand, I like the premise of "let's imagine a society where the sixties counter culture never happened". On the other, the article holds up Tony Blair (!!!!) and Bill Clinton (!!!!!!!!!) as embodying some kind of positive sixties ethos. If they were the supreme political product of the counterculture, fuck the counterculture - they're an argument for staying buttoned up and uptight, frankly. Blech. Just because we have Trump and May now doesn't mean we have to be nostalgic for Blair and Bill. And indeed the utopian strain of the sixties - demand the impossible! under the paving stones, the beach! - makes settling for those greedy third-wayers seem pretty feeble.
posted by Frowner at 5:16 PM on April 29, 2017 [20 favorites]


I love The Beatles, but they played the same kind of deceptive PR games Trump and the Republicans do: those mobs of screaming teenage girls that helped earn them their hype were astroturf at the start, paid fans. That's the same pattern of behavior that's created everything about our current mess. Whether it's the CIA, the parties, the big cigarette companies, or the oil companies, they've all played exactly the same dishonest games with public perception that have helped erode trust more generally and led us to this crazy place in history where we have a president who lies almost as often as he speaks while we're just used to and accepting of that now. The counterculture was really never much more than a way of marketing to teenagers who were looser with their discretionary spending than their traumatized parents who survived the depression and wouldn't part with a single dime unless they had to. The counterculture was not the civil rights movement. That's just the branding.
posted by saulgoodman at 5:31 PM on April 29, 2017 [6 favorites]


UK tax brackets in 1966-1967 (PDF, page 23)

Rate threshold
15.5 750
23.3 2,380
32 15,300
43 19,150
46 23,000
51 30,600
61.5 38,300
67 46,000
72.5 61,000
78 77,000
83.5 92,000
89 115,000
91.5 (above)
posted by Huffy Puffy at 6:22 PM on April 29, 2017


those mobs of screaming teenage girls that helped earn them their hype were astroturf at the start, paid fans.

and they were so good at it every other band seemed to use them, too
posted by pyramid termite at 6:45 PM on April 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


The Koch brothers were behind Beatlmania??
posted by Chitownfats at 6:46 PM on April 29, 2017 [2 favorites]


now all we have to do is figure out why so many of these young women were trying to sneak into the hotel rooms, too - maybe there was a brand of bath towels they wanted to hype
posted by pyramid termite at 6:59 PM on April 29, 2017 [2 favorites]


GOOGLE PETE BEST
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:03 PM on April 29, 2017 [8 favorites]


It is exceedingly unbecoming to whine about how you are very rich indeed but not rich enough.

You didn't build that riff.
posted by IndigoJones at 7:22 PM on April 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


On the other, the article holds up Tony Blair (!!!!) and Bill Clinton (!!!!!!!!!) as embodying some kind of positive sixties ethos. If they were the supreme political product of the counterculture, fuck the counterculture - they're an argument for staying buttoned up and uptight, frankly. Blech. Just because we have Trump and May now doesn't mean we have to be nostalgic for Blair and Bill. And indeed the utopian strain of the sixties - demand the impossible! under the paving stones, the beach! - makes settling for those greedy third-wayers seem pretty feeble.

Some of the sniping from the generation wars reads that way- there's a narrative that the Boomers were spoiled white kids dabbling in activism and threw it all away to become yuppies, that counterculturalism just became an easy way to justify '80s individualist capitalism. Its the line of Adam Curtis, at least - he critiqued individualism in The Century of Self and goes all the way to accuse Trump of being influenced by that same culture.

Not that millennials, or Gen X, are much more innocent. Look at how '90s cyberpunk utopian visions of the internet have created the modern Web and the tech startup scene of today.
posted by Apocryphon at 8:09 PM on April 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


'90s cyberpunk utopian visions of the internet

There was a plan, man. If VRML would have taken off things would be different.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:18 PM on April 29, 2017 [4 favorites]


Using Huffy Puffy's chart above, and imagining 250,000 pounds of income (which would be like eleventy cajillion dollars today) coming to one of the fab four in 1967, we get this tax bill (sorry to mobile users):
threshhold    taxed     @          tax      running     %    take home
       750      750   15.5      116.25       116.25   15.5      633.75
     2,380    1,630   23.3      379.79       496.04   20.8    1,883.96
    15,300   12,920   32.0    4,134.40     4,630.44   27.0   10,669.56
    19,150    3,850   43.0    1,655.50     6,285.94   32.8   12,864.06
    23,000    3,850   46.0    1,771.00     8,056.94   35.0   14,943.06
    30,600    7,600   51.0    3,876.00    11,932.94   39.0   18,667.06
    38,300    7,700   61.5    4,735.50    16,668.44   43.5   21,631.56
    46,000    7,700   67.0    5,159.00    21,827.44   47.5   24,172.56
    61,000   15,000   72.5   10,875.00    32,702.44   53.6   28,297.56
    77,000   16,000   78.0   12,480.00    45,182.44   58.7   31,817.56
    92,000   15,000   83.5   12,525.00    57,707.44   62.7   34,292.56
   115,000   23,000   89.0   20,470.00    78,177.44   68.0   36,822.56
   250,000  135,000   91.5  123,525.00   201,702.44   80.7   48,297.56
Which of course handily ignores any shelters or more importantly that anyone making that kind of money almost certainly got compensated in tax-sheltered ways (being unfamiliar with UK tax laws) might be shares, real estate, deferred funds, whatever.

As society itself benefits very little from extremely well-paid individuals, and can do lots of useful things (including creating a lot more jobs in the middle of that scale, above) with the excess being awarded to the them, the top brackets are good.

One thing that stands out, though, is the big jumps in overall percentage low down on the chart and the gently moving percentage in the middle. Stick it to the poors, I guess, even with a scale way better than the one currently in place in the US (which the cry-babies complain is too high at the maximum rate of 35%).

So fuck George Harrison, is what I'm saying.
posted by maxwelton at 8:28 PM on April 29, 2017 [12 favorites]


There was a plan, man. If VRML would have taken off things would be different.

I have a Microsoft "V-Chat" t-shirt to prove it.*

* OMG, using "the V" as slang for women's genitals was not a thing back then. I may have to reconsider actually wearing this shirt (it's never been worn, I mean, it's an awful design) just because it's now potentially hilarious.
posted by maxwelton at 8:32 PM on April 29, 2017


So fuck George Harrison, is what I'm saying.

Kinda harsh, huh? I don't think he ever became a tax exile, like the Stones and pretty much every other enormously wealthy show bizzer in England did. It was at least half a song about bureaucracy in general. They did get that OBE for all the zillions they and their tsunami of interest in British rock brought in to the country. Can't a guy snark a bit?
posted by Chitownfats at 8:42 PM on April 29, 2017 [3 favorites]


Re: Harrison, tax evasion, etc. Taxman was on 1966's Revolver; the band had finally come into money but didn't yet know how to shelter their earnings.

Although George was the Beatle to pay the most attention to their financial situation, the others were aware as well. “We were pissed off with the tax situation,” remembers Ringo. “We went into one mad scheme where we paid a guy to go and live in the Bahamas and hold our money for us so it would be tax-free. And in the end we had to bring all they money back, pay the taxes on it and pay this guy. So we might as well have just left it where it was. It was a scheme that someone had put forward with Brian (Epstein) and we went for it.” Link.

(Harrison later appeared in "The Rutles: All You Need is Cash" as The Interviewer, because he had a terrific sense of humor (especially about being a Beatle)).
posted by Iris Gambol at 10:26 PM on April 29, 2017 [6 favorites]


Not that millennials, or Gen X, are much more innocent. Look at how '90s cyberpunk utopian visions of the internet have created the modern Web and the tech startup scene of today.

Indeed: worth noting that from the very start the utopian future of the early Silicon Valley folks usually ignored class, race, access, and embraced a short-sighted techno libertarianism. I'm likewise suspicious of the "oh, if only" attitude of the FPP. I think a lot of the people at forefronts of either revolution (and in a lot of ways the WELL dudes were all former hippies anyway) got exactly what they wanted (complete personal freedom), even if it meant changing uniforms partway through the game. That is to say, that I'm highly suspicious of old men waxing rhapsodic about a future that might of been.
posted by codacorolla at 10:29 PM on April 29, 2017 [4 favorites]


'90s cyberpunk utopian visions of the internet

U-topian visions? Of cyberpunk?
posted by rodlymight at 11:41 PM on April 29, 2017 [7 favorites]


Yeah, there’s nothing Utopian about cyperpunk.
posted by pharm at 11:52 PM on April 29, 2017 [2 favorites]


To be fair, pizza delivery and brain-implanted data broker were still actual jobs held by actual humans.
So it was a little bit optimistic.
posted by fullerine at 12:14 AM on April 30, 2017 [11 favorites]


And the top tax bracket in the UK was around 95% in the 1960s, although Wikipedia dryly notes, "The highest rate of income tax peaked in the Second World War at 99.25%." When Harrison sang, "That's one for you, nineteen for me," it was not much of an exaggeration.

Come back when the top bracket goes over 100%. “You are talking nonsense”, Pomperipossa said. “That many percent does not exist!” For she was not particularly familiar with Higher Mathematics.
posted by effbot at 12:50 AM on April 30, 2017


people aren't going to forget that - people, including the greenfrog worshipping idiots of the alt-right demand their subcultural freedoms - it's too late to enforce conformity because we don't know what it is we're supposed to be confoming to

I bet they said something similar in the late days of Weimar Germany.

If some faction of the alt-right does prevail and emerge with tyrannical power, they won't need continuity to an existing form of conservative conformity; they can come up with their own, buttress it with made-up myths (a lost golden age before feminism/Marxism/&c., “Judaeo-Christianity”, the Aryan Master Race, &c.) and reinforce it with terror. Apply enough terror, and nobody will point out that the myths are Saparmurat Niyazov-level batshit insane.
posted by acb at 4:25 AM on April 30, 2017 [6 favorites]


Not that millennials, or Gen X, are much more innocent. Look at how '90s cyberpunk utopian visions of the internet have created the modern Web and the tech startup scene of today.

Has anyone claimed that Ayn Rand was the first cyberpunk author yet?
posted by acb at 4:26 AM on April 30, 2017 [3 favorites]


I bet they said something similar in the late days of Weimar Germany.

i bet weimar germany wasn't armed to the teeth like we are - and if the last few decades have taught us anything about terror, it's that anyone can practice it - and will practice it if they're pushed far enough

look at syria for a good example
posted by pyramid termite at 4:36 AM on April 30, 2017


In terms of taxes, it's always sounded to me like you got quite a lot for your money in the high and palmy days of UK semi-socialism - all your healthcare, since this was before semi-privatization, all your education including university, pretty good unemployment benefits, access to subsidized housing if you were working class, various benefits for children, decent retirement benefits and a retirement age earlier than in the US. (And a knock-on effect of high tax rates is that it flattens social inequality - the amount that rich people have to spend on, like, yachts, is not as different from the amount that regular people have to spend on movies and a night out as is it in more unequal countries.)

Of course, if you're making umpteen squillion pounds, you probably think "NHS? Fuck the NHS, if I didn't get taxed, I could use my millions to pay for my healthcare if I got sick, and keep them if I didn't". But that's because you are a terrible person.
posted by Frowner at 5:43 AM on April 30, 2017 [15 favorites]


Yeah, there’s nothing Utopian about cyperpunk.

In the sense of the literary genre, that's arguably true - even if it's not a description of a perfect society, it's definitely a white male power fantasy, and definitely places a lot of power in spunky hacker types as heroes and agents of change.

In the sense of things like Mondo 2000, the WELL, and early WIRED reporting it's absolutely false. All of that stuff breathlessly anticipated that computer technology would free us from our bodies (and therefore prejudice), allow frictionless, classless capitalism, and bring about a smart-drug fueled social revolution.
posted by codacorolla at 6:16 AM on April 30, 2017 [4 favorites]


Yeah I wasn't referring to cyberpunk as a sci-fi genre so much as the subculture with the same name.
posted by Apocryphon at 9:50 AM on April 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


In fairness, the British taxes at the time were incredibly high, particularly at the top rate.

"In fairness" has never been used more literally
posted by Automocar at 11:33 AM on April 30, 2017 [3 favorites]


we get this tax bill (sorry to mobile users):

It's very impressive and looks lovely on my iPhone!
posted by Room 641-A at 3:20 PM on April 30, 2017


Yeah, there’s nothing Utopian about cyperpunk.

In the sense of the literary genre, that's arguably true - even if it's not a description of a perfect society.


The genre is dystopic. It’s kind of the point - there’s no "arguable" about it. The Wired / Well / Transhumanist crowd are something else entirely: I guess you could claim that they looked at the lives of the rich depicted in the world of cyperpunk and decided that they wanted some of that?

Which reminds me of a great essay I read about a UK journo discovering (after some trials and tribulations) that the people at the centre of that nexus were all put-on blowhards who were making it up as they went along. No way I’ll be able to find it though.
posted by pharm at 11:19 PM on April 30, 2017


Not really. I think the cyberpunks really took to heart the punk aspect of the setting and saw it as a counterculture against the faceless corporate elites that dominated the worlds in the novels. They saw that tech had both the the potential to enslave, and to emancipate. Information wants to be free and all that. I think if they were to be faulted, it was for buying in the same individualist-centered, utopian pipe dream, ineffectual activism that many of the hippie movement also did. They bought into the trappings and subculture without actually creating real change. But it wasn't because they wanted to be zaibatsu execs. I don't know if any of them sold out- was Peter Thiel one of them?

Of course, I might have created a tangent. Most of the modern disruptors deemed to be bad actors in tech are not former cyberpunks. But they also bought into utopian dreams of the internet, the "making the world a better place" canard, elevating an industry to have moral weight, to be more than a money machine. And in failing those dreams, they end up mirroring the failures of '60s and '70s counterculture. There's a common pattern here of self-identified visionaries scoffing everyone else to build their own better world, regardless of the cost.
posted by Apocryphon at 12:27 AM on May 1, 2017


To follow up on my "fuck George Harrison" comment: The thing that pisses me off, and this is even more true of corporations like Google or Apple, is that if you "live" in and benefit from a particular locale but you then use legal tricks to make it seem like you live elsewhere to not pay into the society you're benefiting from, you're a complete shitstain.
posted by maxwelton at 9:20 AM on May 1, 2017 [5 favorites]


It’s kind of the point - there’s no "arguable" about it.

Nah. As pointed out above, there's a difference between a novel that's an actual dystopia, and a novel that uses dystopian trappings to present a white, male, nerd power fantasy of heroism through harnessing technology. By a wide margin, Cyberpunk (as a literary genre) is the latter. If anything, the dystopic elements of corporate control, surveillance technology, and income inequality just serve to heighten the experience of the fantasy, and the technological/heroic capabilities of the hero.
posted by codacorolla at 11:38 AM on May 1, 2017 [1 favorite]


Yeah, its total bullshit. Beatles didn't need to pay anyone to like them, they were the fucking BEATLES.
posted by agregoli at 11:41 AM on May 1, 2017


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