If there was one thing that Mark Fisher was aiming for in writing his Acid Communism, it was the reinvigoration of pop cultural potentials that were previously rife within the 1960s and 1970s.
In his introduction to the unfinished project, he discusses The Beatles expressing an anti-work ethic on “I’m Only Sleeping”, for instance, and saw this as a radical sentiment that had the potential to flick switches in the popular imagination.
Of course, the Beatles are an interesting example considering just how huge they were, but they were also a pretty soft option…
Since picking up my first one in 2013, I have developed a habit for buying reggae and dub records about how shit landlords are. Now there is a radical message smuggled inside a pop cultural phenomenon — and one that is still going strong too.
Yeah, work is bad, but hey, maybe just kill your landlord? Yeah, I get it, dancing is fun, but ever think about the abolition of private property whilst you’re doing it?
I came across a new one earlier today — the first new one for a while — so here’s a post celebrating killing landlords and smashing babylon.
Like Simon Reynolds said in his Mark Fisher memorial lecture: “‘Babylon’ is a far more powerful word than ‘neoliberalism’.”