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Karl Marx wrote that ‘men [sic] make their own history but they do not make it in the circumstances of their own choosing’. This paper studies the lyrics of two widely respected 2000s punk rock bands Rancid and the Dropkick Murphys.With the Marx quote in mind, we expect that both bands will address the social and political conditions of the (post-) modern, post-Communist age whilst retaining some of the left-wing quasi-Marxist radicalism that is now an established part of the punk rock ethos. We find that Rancid has an ‘emotive proletariat spirit’ that identifies with San Francisco’s East Bay region as a place of working-class oppositional ‘otherness’ and with a globalized proletariat exploited by global capital and authoritarian regimes.The Dropkick Murphys plays to an ‘insider’ audience fully aware of the Irishness myth which has known ‘signifieds’ of left-wing radicalism and a Catholicism that refuses to unambiguously identify itself as simply ‘cultural’. The band’s trade union anthems reflect a nuanced understanding of orthodox Marxism. By contrast, the Murphys’ Offspring-like ‘personal politics’ lyrics are somewhat less successful as the mapping of personal politics on to the social totality remains fraught with difficulties. Does a one-night stand giving you the taxi fare to leave her house the next morning really equate to ‘the meanest of times’?

JEL Classification: M41, Z1

Keywords: The Clash; Dropkick Murphys; existentialism; Irish Diaspora; IrishNationalism; Punk rock; Rancid; The Sex Pistols.