The assault of the classical workers' movement against the totality of the old world was completely finished after the failure of the Spanish Revolution of 1936. Ever since then, conventional wisdom has ridiculed the possibility of a new revolutionary proletariat arising. In this widely accepted view, the proletariat of the 19th century won major concessions from the dominant class and is now fully integrated into and satisfied with modern capitalist production.

Yet RIGHT NOW, RIGHT HERE, in Ann Arbor, there is concrete evidence that the great class struggles of the 19th and early 20th centuries are reasserting themselves after a long hiatus. Under the title, "Second Chance to be transformed into a more subdued music scene," the Ann Arbor Observer has reported that,

On April 30 the often raucous Second Chance rock music club at 516 East Liberty will close its doors for good. One month later The Nectarine Ballroom will emerge in its place, a high-fashion dance club with disc jockeys, video screens, top-quality liquor, and a new dance floor and sound system.

Second Chance owner John Carver says the new club will have "a friendly, high-tech look." The heavy wooden front doors will be replaced with more inviting glass doors, topped with polished aluminum. The inside will be radically changed with a new bar, neon decoration, and new woodwork and drywall.

There will be no live music at the new club except for one or two concerts a month by nationally known artists. This essentially means Ann Arbor will lose its premier rock Ôn' roll venue, a move that some observers see as another sign of the deterioration of the local live music scene. The attraction of live music seems to be waning throughout the Ann Arbor-Detroit area. Many bar owners blame the video rock boom. As one observer put it, "Why pay to see a local band do top forty when you can watch the real thing at home on MTV?"

Carver seems eager to attract a new type of clientele to the new club, which some see as his effort to reverse Second Chance's downward slide. When the 600-person club opened in 1974, Carver said it would cater to college students. But in recent years, the college crowd has been replaced by younger audiences from Detroit's western suburbs. This clientele, described by some as "seedy," is more unruly. Some potential customers are uncomfortable in the rowdy atmosphere [...]

Carver is also looking for a new crowd with more money to spend. "Ann Arbor's got a lot of fancy clothing stores," he says. "We want to give the people who shop there a chance to strut their stuff."

Carver says he wasn't forced to change his club for financial reasons. "It's not like business is terrible, but the time seems right to make the change," he says. "We've got to follow that baby boom. But who knows? It may be the stupidest thing we've ever done."

Amid all the self-contradictions here, an important insight becomes clear: the ideological spectacle of the Second Chance must change, no matter what or why; furthermore, it must change not in accordance with objective changes in the conditions of the local live music scene (which happens to be thriving), but in accordance with subjective changes in the dominant spectacle (the "Baby Boom" generation). The current ideology is "against" seedy audiences and unruly punk bands, and so ruling class lackeys like John Carver have got to realize -- and convince everybody else -- that "this is 1984, not 1974," even if all indications are to the contrary.

We note that the vanguard of these new class struggles are members of the dominant class, and not, as one might expect or hope for, members of a modern cultural avant-garde; we note that the dominant class has chosen to locate its newest battles against the working class (here figured by the youths who live in the western suburbs of Detroit) in a cultural milieu, rather than a political or economic one. This is because there is no longer a distinction between the two, between "culture" and political economy. They have both been turned into self-justifying spectacle-commodities.

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