On defining certain leftism ideologies as punk

Abstract

Although it seems that the relationship between music and politics is not tight, in fact, the relevance between them is quite close (Street, 2012). There are some evidence can prove that both of the two can interact and shape each other. A number of musicians expressed their political ideas in their own way that they were expert in (Currie, 2012). The desire to voice politically can be said that it runs through the entire human history, and it is not limited by time and geography (Bennett, 1993). As for Europe, people in ancient Greece used poetic songs to convey their praise for Polis and democracy. Beethoven, a world-famous musician, used classical music to express his political views. One of the most significant example is the Third Symphony (“Hero”)—he implied his dissatisfaction with Napoleon through this composition (Street, 2012). In terms of the Eastern world, ancient Chinese used folk songs to deliver the complex emotions of the replacement of the dynasty in feudal era (Lan, 2009); after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, there was a large number of anthems that promoted their nationalist values (Clark, Pang and Tsai, 2016). In turn, music also has an impact on the formation and change of political ideas. From such perspectives, it is reasonable to believe that the two complement each other and give more meaning to each other. After the end of World War II, punk is perhaps one of the most influential and political forms of music in contemporary period. Although the earliest punk was born in the United States, the first country which truly politicised it was the United Kingdom
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(Strongman, 2008). After the emergence of British punk, the same type of music related to politics has appeared around the world (Laing, 2015). Therefore, in this dissertation, the politics-related punk is defined as the British punk. Correspondingly, the punk movement studied here also refers specifically to the British punk movement since 1976. The punk movement, as its name implies, was a large-scale collective action that occurred in a specific period which was related to punk music. In this campaign, a large number of political ideas was put forward, some of which still have an impact on today (Thompson.2004). It can be said that although the punk movement lasted for a long time (generally considered to be in the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s), which unleashed a huge energy. Some scholars believe that punk movement made a certain contribution to the blossom of contemporary ideology (Worley, 2017). Then a topic is worthy to be questioned: how did punk actually affect contemporary ideology? Even further, did the punk movement itself develop a new ideology? In the political context, ideology can be mainly divided into two categories: left and right, and the former one will be focused in this dissertation. Putting together the points that has been mentioned above, the core question of this dissertation is: is there any leftism ideology can be defined as punk? Exploring punk movement may not only find a new ideology, but also provide new ideas for analysing political affairs and issues. For example, from the perspective of punk ideology, the advantages and disadvantages of US President Donald Trump’s trade protectionism perhaps can be found in a different way. Because of that this writing is about the exploration and analysis of ideology, this article will be an empirical
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dissertation. In other words, in the process of writing, this article will choose to extract information and theory from other literatures to complete the research. In the literature related to the history of punk, perhaps as a result of its peculiarity (the short duration, for instance), the vast majority of relevant history is written down unacademic ways. Among these texts are mainly the autobiography of musicians, biographies written by other authors for certain bands, the compilation of oral history of members from multiple bands, and the history of contemporary music written in more popular ways. Although it is difficult to find historical information from formal literature, it does not mean that the content in the informal literature cannot be used. For example, Sex Pistols' former vocal singer John Lydon (who used the name Johnny Rotten when he was in the band) and guitarist Steve Jones' autobiography provided a number of content about the band's development process and ideas, while this band is largely considered as one of the most important bands in the punk movement; Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain's work "Please kill me: the uncensored oral history of punk" contributed a variety of oral reviews from the participants of the punk movement; “England's Dreaming, Revised Edition: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond”, a book written by Jon Savage, completes the status and details of punk movement’s development in the early stage. Although few scholars have specifically recorded the rise and fall of the punk movement, there are still some researchers who study the cultural, social and political influence of punk. For example, Matthew Worley focuses on the political and cultural
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aspect of punk in the book "No future: punk, politics and British youth culture, 1976-1984"; the Subcultures Network at the University of Manchester has compiled a book called "Fight back: punk, politics and resistance", which includes several scholars' research on punk in politics and sociology. However, it is a pity that most of these documents only regard punk as a social movement. Although they more or less mention the relationship between punk and political ideology, there is hardly a literature to find out whether punk created a new ideology. From this perspective, the core issues raised in this paper may have certain value because such a research is still a blank.