In the documentary “MC5*: A True Testimonial” the legendary MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer recalls his future prospects as a teenager growing up in Detroit, prospects which would most likely include working in the auto industry: “You grow up in Detroit, that’s your birthright… I had to face the prospect of working there for the rest of my life… so I found some guys who wanted to start a band.”
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Like many counterculture young people in their day, The MC5 dabbled in leftist politics. Kramer and his buddies were both residue of the 1960s and new DNA for the 1970s and the punk rock movement. To The MC5, Detroit was a cultural hellhole of industrial capitalism that was trying to fleece them out of their labor and their liberty, and they wanted no part in it.
Life was all mapped out for them: school, maybe a stint in some imperialist war, career, house, kids, retirement, repeat. It reeked of top-down engineering and it was boring. As an American, you had a birthright of liberty, and life in a depressing factory churning out products to line the pockets of fat cats who didn’t even know your name seemed like prison.
That was big money alienating you from the fruits of your own labor and denying you your liberty.
As New Left intellectuals moved against capitalism in academics and popular culture, the capitalism that was providing many families with the cushy existences that made the counterculture possible in the first place, manifestations of this critique swayed large segments of the population to clamor for solutions.
Realizing it nearly impossible to get a largely sedentary middle class off its collective ass to destroy the government of the most privileged people on earth, some of the would-be revolutionaries embraced reform as a compromise. In stepped the politicians and their social reforms agendas. After all, who is going to argue against something as noble-sounding as “reform”?
Reform, both political and social, is not so much against wealth as it is in favor of a redistribution of wealth, and is the very definition of modern American politics. Musicians and intellectuals can prattle on and on about the evils of wealth, but the vast majority of them seek it just like everyone else.
Some of the counterculture’s ideology was co-opted by politicians. In Detroit’s case, like many other American cities, it embraced big government and is now completely broken.
Capitalism has proven that it can pull people out of poverty. It cannot, however, compete with a government intent on reform. Governments have a monopoly on force that no corporate entity can match. Industry sees the writing on the wall. It gets into bed with politicians, guaranteeing security for some while promising scraps for others, all in the name of benevolence, hope, and change.
Other opportunists jump into the bed too, filling the space with as many as the bed will hold. The American economy is then reduced to an orgy of gonzo corporatism. Wealth that could provide several decent paying jobs now goes to one overpaid bureaucrat or union member. When a problem pops up, well, the government can just print some more money. Prices go up, and our households struggle.
There is irony in the fact that the reformers are in it for themselves, just like the fat cats that the counterculture loathes so much.
One thing in favor of the fat cats: at least they were honest about what they did and why. The reformers hide their careerism and graft under a cloak of public good. It’s the utterly insidious nature of the New Left, neo-conservatism, and any related agenda.
“We’re gonna free the hell out of you.”
The MC5 saw it clearly in 1971: “You’re the perfect target for the double cross.”
Detroit now looks like a bombed-out city during World War II. This is not freedom, this is slavery.