alternative, as is also argued by Duncombe in the previous chapter on zine-culture.
According to Heath and Potter, this form of resistance is fruitless and based on a
misconception, as society today is very different than it was back in -68. Today
“rebellion is not a threat to the system, it is the system.” (178) They propose that we
do not live in a spectacle, but on the contrary, we live in a much more prosaic
world,
It consists of billions of human beings, each pursuing some more or less plausible
conception of the good, trying to cooperate with one another, and doing so with vary-
ing degrees of success. There is no single, overarching system that integrates it all. The
culture cannot be jammed because there is no such thing as ‘the culture’ or ‘the system’.
There is only a hodgepodge of social institutions, most tentatively thrown together,
which distribute the benefits and burdens of social cooperation in ways that some-
times we recognise to be just, but that are usually manifestly inequitable. In a world of
this type, countercultural rebellion is not just unhelpful, it is positively counterpro-
ductive. Not only does it distract energy and effort from the sort of initiatives that lead
to concrete improvements in people’s lives, but it encourages wholesale contempt for
such incremental changes. (10)Instead of working for real social change and engaging in politics or civic partici-
pation, the counterculture still nurtures a belief that their oppositional protest
style and actions against the “machine” will liberate the “masses”. Instead, the “pac-
ified” workers are quite happy with being part of the capitalist project as it appar-
ently pays off and produces wealth, even for them. The workers that should be
“liberated” show no interest in the counterculture struggle. Instead Heath and Pot-
ter show that the rebels who aim to overthrow capitalism all serve it very well, as
they develop easily exchanged cultural capital and also engage in the market,
‘the system’ seemed to take this form of rebellion in its stride. This lack of discernible
impact presented a serious threat to the counterculture idea. After all, according to the
countercultural rebels, the problem with traditional leftist politics was that it was
superficial. It aimed at ‘merely’ institutional change. Countercultural rebels, on the
other hand, were supposedly attacking oppression at a deeper level. Yet despite the
radicalism of their interventions, it was difficult to see any concrete effects. (35)The concrete effect has instead been that the counterculture is perhaps the core of
the market today, the motor of the “creative economy”. Counterculture as a politi-
cal critique is flawed, as it is just actualizing the market, intensifying consumerism,
speeding up its process and forces. To the system’s rejoice the counterculture say
the oppose and still grow a belief that their “resistance” will bring the system down.
The subversion tactics of counterculture subverts everything except capitalism it-
self, as it amplifies the race for being “cool”.
the critique of mass society has been one of the most powerful forces driving consum-
erism for the past forty years. [...] Books like No Logo, magazines like Adbusters and
movies like American Beauty do not undermine consumerism; they reinforce it. This
isn’t because the authors, editors or directors are hypocrites. It’s because they’ve failed
to understand the true nature of consumer society. They identify consumerism with
conformity. As a result, they fail to notice that it is rebellion, not conformity, that has
for decades been the driving force of the marketplace. (101f )We buy counterculture products to show that we are not fooled by the system.
However, this act has a dubious impact on the “hegemonic culture”. It is instead the
former hegemony that lies shattered. The “traditional” or “hegemonic” values have
a hard time finding an intellectually respectable and thriving culture of its own,