In Praise of the 1% Who Don't Fit in and Don't Care

Anarchist Punk Gang muslin shirt 

McLaren & Westwood (Seditionaries, 1979)

Image via bonhams.com 

 

 

I. 

These days, the 1% typically refers to an economic, social and political elite; i.e., the wealthiest and most powerful segment of the population who own, control, and consume an ever-growing share of the world's resources.

 

The phrase is often used by those who wish to critique such inequality on the grounds that it is both grotesque and immoral. Members of the Occupy movement, for example, would often chant: We are the 99% as a unifying slogan that expressed their commonality. 

 

All this rather amuses me as an old punk; for I remember a time when the 1% referred metaphorically to a subcultural minority who prided themselves on not fitting in; members of an anarchist gang who created hell and got away with it; queer extremists aware of their own mortality, but death-defiant ...    

 

II. 

 

One of the final designs by McLaren and Westwood for Seditionaries, the Anarchist Punk Gang shirt - aka the One Per Centers shirt - is not one of their better known pieces, but it is perhaps one of their most memorable once seen (and will still cost you a considerable sum should you wish to buy an original) [1].

 

By the spring of 1979, the shit, as they say, had truly hit the fan; Sid Vicious was dead, the Sex Pistols as a four-piece band were long over, and even the Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle was losing steam [2]. 

Following an acrimonious court case brought against him by Johnny Rotten (with the backing of Richard Branson), McLaren sought refuge in Paris, and so it was left to Westwood to keep things ticking over on the home front as best she could and it was Vivienne who was mostly responsible for the above shirt (even if Malcolm approved the design).  

  

The central image of a skull is surrounded by the well-known phrase: As you were, I was; as I am, you will be. As Westwood was romantically involved with a biker at this time, it seems likely that she might have read (or re-read) Hunter S. Thompson's classic study of the Hell's Angels, where this memento mori is used as a chapter title [3]. 

One of the flagpoles on the design has the figure of 1% written above the description anarchist punk gang; the other flagpole, in contrast, carries the line made famous by Sid: 99% is shit [4].  

It's another detail on the shirt, however, that has been intriguing me for the past few days: written underneath the skull design are the following lines: 

The barrier between friend and foe is thin. At certain times of day there are only us.

I was pretty sure it had to be a quote: McLaren and Westwood often incorporated lines of text from admired authors into their designs, but I couldn't locate the source of this until it was suggested to me that it might also have a biker connection - and, yes, sure enough, it turns out the lines are from a book published in '79 by a former organised crime investigator, Raymond C. Morgan, called The Angels Do Not Forget.

 

Below, I reproduce the cover of the book's second edition (2014), alongside a photo of Soo Catwoman [5] wearing the T-shirt version of McLaren & Westwood's late Seditionaries design (which, because of its biker connection, rather nicely returns us to the pre-punk days of Too Fast to Live Too Young to Die [6]).    

  

Notes

 

 [1] The famous London auction house Bonhams sold an 'Anarchist Punk Gang' shirt in November 2023 for £1,280. Click here for details. 

[2] The album of this title had been released on 23 February 1979 (Virgin Records); the film of this title, dir. Julien Temple, was finally released in May 1980. 

      Jamie Reid's final artwork for the Sex Pistols project was for the sardonically named compilation album Flogging a Dead Horse (Virgin Records, 1980); a follow up to Some Product: Carri On Sex Pistols, released by Virgin in July the previous year. 

[3] Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, by Hunter S. Thompson, was published in 1967 by Random House.    

[4] See the post titled '99% is Shit' (2 Dec 2019): click here. 

 

[5] Image of Sue Lucas (aka Soo Catwoman) is taken from a restored photo on the Instagram account seditionaries1977 (posted on 26 Jan 2026): click here.  

 

[6] Too Fast to Live Too Young to Die was the second incarnation of Mclaren & Westwood's store at 430 King's Road (after Let It Rock, but before SEX). It specialised in biker gear for rockers and was intended to be all about speed, danger, and death. 

 

 

Thanks to Jennifer Davis Taylor for help with this post.    

Plutocracy

Plutocracy by Stationjack

neatoshop.com

 

 

Unfortunately, plutocracy does not involve being governed by an ancient Greek god of the underworld [1], nor the empowering of Mickey Mouse's dog. 

 

It means, rather, living in a society where a super-rich global elite lord it over the rest of us; i.e., where 1% own and control everything and 99% fight over the loose change thrown their way [2]. 

 

It's not a new word: it's not a new idea: it's not a new phenomenon. But plutocracy is very much the reality of the world we're living in today; a socio-economic and political reality that I would describe as undesirable and, in the long term, unsustainable (as the elite eventually discover to their cost).     

I suspect that most people would agree that the tyranny of wealth is vulgar and objectionable, wherever they are on the political spectrum [3]. Indeed, opposition to plutocracy as socially destructive is one of the few things that unites everyone from Nietzsche to Noam Chomsky [4], including Ursula Brangwen, who declares a preference for an "aristocracy of birth rather than of money" [5] and seems to believe, naively, that only a toff can save us ... 

 

Unfortunately, however, the hereditary model holds out no hope; something that even the Queen's grandson, Prince Harry, has grasped, thus his and Meghan's decision to up sticks and move to California. As Nick Cohen writes, they have "judged the modern world with calculating eyes and placed the ultra-capitalist entertainment industry above old royal privilege" [6]. 

 

He continues:     

 

"The Sussexes have followed the prophecies of Marx and Engels by concluding that the traditional aristocracy is finished. [...] If you doubt me, ask how many British people can name a duke or an earl [...] The power of inherited wealth is stronger than it has been in a century and the explosion in inequality [...] will make it more powerful still. Yet in terms of the status the Sussexes seek, the old aristocracy of birth counts for next to nothing [...]" [7] 

 

I think that's probably true, though it's not a particularly new insight. For as Cohen indicates, Marx and Engels were announcing that the old world order was dissolving way back in 1848 [8]. 

 

And when, eighty-years later, D. H. Lawrence published his final novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover, he'd also reached the conclusion that the old aristocracy no longer existed as a distinct social class; they may belong to a super rich 1%, but like the rest of humanity they have become robot [9].

 

Cohen concludes his interesting piece:

 

"The Sussexes present a real threat to the monarchy because they have seen its irrelevance, as many more will once the Queen dies. They have soberly concluded that whatever privileges it brings are as nothing compared with the money and status that belongs to the real aristocracy of the celebrity industry they are so determined to join." [10]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] There is often confusion regarding the etymology of the term plutocracy. It does not derive, as many people mistakenly think, from Ploutōn (Πλούτων) - i.e., the ruler of the underworld in classical mythology. It derives, rather, from the name of the Greek god of wealth, Ploutos (Πλοῦτος). However, Ploutōn was frequently conflated with the latter because, as a chthonic deity, he ruled the deep earth where mineral wealth is located.   

 

[2] In 2011, the Occupy Wall Street Movement popularised the term 1% in reference to America's richest people, who, at that time, controlled at least a third of the country's wealth. We are the 99% quickly became a unifying slogan of the protestors and is now implanted as an idea in the cultural and political imagination. 

      In May of that same year, the Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote an article published in Vanity Fair entitled 'Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%', in which he criticised growing inequality and argued that the United States has become a plutocracy. Click here to read this article online. 

      Finally, it might be noted that another economist, Paul Krugman, has since questioned whether we ought to refer to the 99.9%, as it has been an even smaller group - the top 0.1% (i.e., the richest one-thousandth of the population) - who have made the most outrageous gains in recent years. This is also the argument made by Chrystia Freeland in her book Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else, (The Penguin Press, 2012).

 

[3] It's interesting to note that both communists and fascists were united in their opposition to capitalism on the grounds that it would eventually lead to a plutocracy. 

      The Nazis, for example, liked to characterise the Third Reich as a People's Community [Volksgemeinschaft] in their propaganda and contrast the life of a typical German worker with that of their British counterpart. Hitler claimed that National Socialism rejected the rule of money and he prided himself publicly on being the only head of state who didn't have a personal bank account. 

      (It should be noted, however, that the German Führer did have several secret accounts in Switzerland in which he deposited the not inconsiderable royalties earned from Mein Kampf and that the NSDAP received financial support from big business and wealthy benefactors from its earliest days. It is often wise to take what the Nazis say with a pinch of salt.) 

 

[4] Noam Chomsky describes America as a plutocracy masquerading as a formal (but dysfunctional) democracy. See, for example, his essay 'Plutonomy and the Precariat: On the History of the U.S. Economy in Decline', The Huffington Post, (May 8, 2012), which can be read by clicking here.

       Nietzsche, like Marx, recognised the increasing dominion that money had acquired over every aspect of modern life and whilst little interested in developing a detailed political critique, he repeatedly voiced his concerns with this trend. Even in his earliest writings, such as 'The Greek State' (1871/72), for example, he makes clear his contempt for the moneyed aristocracy (i.e. the plutocracy) who threaten social cohesion. 

      Readers who are interested can find the above essay in On the Genealogy of Morality, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson, trans. Carol Diethe, (Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 164-173. 

 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow, ed Mark Kinkead-Weekes, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 427.

 

[6-7]  Nick Cohen, 'Behind the glitz of the Sussexes lies a simple truth: our aristocracy is dead', The Guardian (28 August 2021): click here.

 

[8] In The Communist Manifesto (1848), Marx and Engels describe how all values are resolved into exchange value and old social structures and modes of existence incorporated into the global market place, as people increasingly look to the latter for answers to questions that are not merely economic, but metaphysical; questions of what is worthwhile, what is ethical, even what is real. In the end, money determines everything and there is no other nexus between people than sheer self-interest.    

 

[9] As Connie informs her husband, Sir Clifford Chatterley, he is not a genuine master of (or amongst) men: "'You don't rule, don't flatter yourself. You have only got more than your share of the money, and make people work for you [...] or threaten them with starvation.'" [9]  

      D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 193.

      

[10] Nick Cohen, op. cit.  

99% is Shit

I remember once being told by a friend that he understood the phrase 99% is shit to mean that the only kind of commitment that counts is total commitment. Anything less than 100% was a sure sign of someone who couldn't be trusted and whose authenticity was in doubt.

It's a perfectly valid interpretation and reveals much about the fanatic mindset of those who took the seriously extreme call to arms issued by the Sex Pistols extremely seriously.

(This was during a time when we were both scornful of so-called plastic or part-time punks; the kind of people who play their records very loud and pogo in front of the bedroom mirror - but only when their mum's gone out.)*

As a matter of fact, however, when Sid Vicious spoke about 99% being shit, he wasn't quite thinking in such terms. Rather, he meant - more brutally - that the vast majority of people, including fans, are worthless. Thus, in the same interview, he would say: 'I’ve no interest in pleasing the general public, I don’t want to, because I think largely they're scum, they make me physically sick.'

Such violent contempt for the masses was, of course, a key feature of much modern art; the avant-garde were, by definition, a revolutionary elite who prided themselves on their own difference and superiority.** 

And the Sex Pistols - at least as conceived by McLaren - belong to this tradition (contra the Clash who even at the time were sneered at for being social workers and who would doubtless echo the cry We are the 99% which became a unifying slogan of the Occupy Movement in the summer of 2011).

As do the Cash Pussies, who released their only single, 99% is Shit, in April 1979, featuring snippets of an audio interview conducted a couple of years prior with the (recently deceased) Sex Pistols bassist.***

Notes

* The lines are from the single 'Part Time Punks', by Television Personalities, (Rough Trade 1980): click here.

** According to John Carey, Modernist art was primarily concerned not only with the exclusion of the masses, but with a denial of their humanity. See The Intellectuals and the Masses (Faber and Faber, 1992). Of course, it should be remembered that Carey's book is itself 99% shit.   

*** Perhaps not surprisingly, the band were conceived by an old art school friend of Malcolm's, Fred Vermorel, and his wife, Judy, and the track was produced by Dave Goodman, famous for his work with the Sex Pistols. 

Play: Cash Pussies, 99% is Shit, (The Label, 1979): click here.