Just a Minor Threat

"These figures gave punk its explicit politics—and a series of fervent internal debates. Was punk cultural revolution or political dissidence? Should punks embrace anarchist communalism or Marxist social democracy? Could clean-living straight edge principles be more of a threat to authority than decadent rock and roll excess? Could any amount of cooperation with the corporate music business coexist with DIY independence? Were the small-scale cottage industries fostered by independent labels, performance spaces, and zines too much of a compromise with capitalism? Should punks dig in to squatter collectivism, direct action, and anti-capitalist organizing instead? Here were 'the smartest kids in the history of adolescence,' as the Life in Hell cartoonist Matt Groening put it, a half decade before he created The Simpsons, working on the great dilemma of their times: how to revive progressive and radical culture in the face of the country’s swing to the right."

Samuel Zipp at The Nation reviews Kevin Mattson's We're Not Here to Entertain: Punk Rock, Ronald Reagan, and the Real Culture War of 1980s America.