Words by: Beatrice Hon-Jacobs (She/her)
In the hellscape of late-stage capitalism, where any critique or rebellion is absorbed, neatly packaged, and sold back to you, what can we learn from BrewDog as a corporate souvenir of punk subculture?
“Yes, that’s right, punk is dead/It’s just another product for the consumer’s head.” – Crass, ‘Punk is Dead’, 1979.
Brewery and pub chain BrewDog is perhaps one of the most cringe-worthy, pernicious embodiments of the commodification of punk and, more broadly, of capitalism’s parasitic tendency to subsume and commodify its own critique. Marketing itself as an anti-establishment, disruptive force in the industry, BrewDog used the terminology of punk while receiving a plethora of complaints against them for fostering a toxic workplace of bullying, sexual harassment, and prioritising profit over the mental health of their employees. I have always thought of BrewDog, and their flagship beer Punk IPA, as an embarrassing accessory of Gen X dads who left punk in the 80s only to send their kids to private school in the 2000s. In the hellscape of late-stage capitalism, where any critique or rebellion is absorbed, neatly packaged, and sold back to you, what can we learn from BrewDog as a corporate souvenir of punk subculture?
BrewDog was founded in 2007 by Martin Dickie and James Watt, the latter being the son of millionaire James Watt Senior who provided financial support in the company’s early days. Despite this, BrewDog presented themselves as an anti-establishment rebellion against ‘bland and insipid’ big beer corporations – somebody tell James Watt to not throw stones from glass houses. Their marketing strategy consisted of shock value, controversy, and publicity stunts. To name just a few examples, they drove a tank down Camden High Street, named a beer Speedball after the mixing of heroin and cocaine of the same name, launched a ‘non-binary, transgender beer’ after an ad campaign received complaints of transphobia, and created Pink IPA: Beer for Girls for International Women’s Day. This anti-woke spin on punk feels reminiscent of those who adopted the libertarian streak of the subculture only without the ideological criticisms of capitalism and consumerism. This punk to anti-woke pipeline is seen in former punks-turned-right -wing, such as John Lydon publicly supporting Donald Trump.
BrewDog pitched itself as the start of a “craft beer revolution” and launched the crowdfunding initiative Equity for Punks which allowed over 200,000 consumers to invest in the company and ‘share in its success and growth’, boosting the company’s finances by over £100 million. These investors are likely to receive no return on their investments as the company has gone into administration, leading to the closure of 38 UK bars and 484 job losses. The pivotal moment in BrewDog’s demise has been attributed to Watt and Dickie selling shares to American private equity firm TSG, making £50 million each. How punk is that?
This led to Watt’s reckless spending in the pursuit of an unrealistic valuation goal and eventually led to the downfall of BrewDog. The company was further affected by negative publicity following a series of complaints and investigations into their working conditions. In 2021, an open letter on Twitter from 61 former staff members accused BrewDog of fostering a culture of fear, citing instances of bullying and cutting corners on health and safety. The letter alleged that ‘growth, at all costs, has always been perceived as the number one focus for the company’, prioritised over the mental health and safe working conditions of employees. The BBC investigative documentary Disclosure: The Truth About BrewDog uncovered multiple claims against James Watt for inappropriate behaviour towards female staff. In response, BrewDog threatened to sue the BBC, complained to Ofcom, and hired private investigators to try and find dirt on one of the interviewees. This chasm between BrewDog’s so-called punk brand image and their actual business practice reveals the fundamental paradox of “punk capitalism”. James Watt seems to have understood and cynically pounced on the probability of punk as a commodity and, ironically, anti-capitalism as a product and brand.
In his 2009 book Capitalist Realism, Mark Fisher famously referred to the Fredric Jameson quote, ‘It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.’ Fisher’s titular concept asserts that it is now impossible to imagine any coherent alternative system to capitalism. He builds off Jameson’s work on postmodernism as the cultural logic of late-stage capitalism, characterised by pastiche and revivalism, and Slavoj Žižek’s work on the dissemination of anti-capitalism within capitalism – specifically in Hollywood. According to Fisher, capitalism has already incorporated existing rebellion, critique, and counterculture, and is now in the process of precorporation. This is the process of capitalist culture pre-empting and shaping desires and cultural alternatives to ensure they are neutralized before they even emerge.
So, what does this have to do with BrewDog? To me, BrewDog is a microcosm of capitalist realism and precorporation. James Watt has sensed a gap in the market (specifically in the beer industry) for the inevitable desire for cultural alternatives to corporations, or what he refers to as “big beer”. He has cynically pre-empted, packaged, and sold a desire for something new – for an alternative to capitalism. So, what is left of punk apart from H&M sex pistols t-shirts, biopics starring the alumni of prestigious private schools, and cans of IPA sold by a company infamous for their poor working environment?
Capitalism’s parasitic tendency to consume all externality has rendered punk merely a souvenir of something that feels non-existent today – subversive subcultures. BrewDog embodies this incorporation of existing alternatives and preemptive inclusion of possible desires for rebellion in the future. But, I don’t want to end this piece on a note of bleak, doom and gloom, lethargic nihilism. Capitalism sustains itself on the basis of the impossibility of any alternative. So, when you feel the desire for an alternative system, don’t buy a punk branded product or passively consume a Hollywood film with anti-capitalist messages. Read about alternatives, talk to people who share your desires, and try, if you can, to imagine something new.
