On the Cover of the Rolling Stone: Revolution in the U.S.A.

Singer-songwriter Richard Shindell often introduces performances of his song “Che Guevara T-Shirt” with a story of the irony of the t-shirts.⁴ Che the great anti-capitalist revolutionary has had his name and image thoroughly co-opted by the shirt makers not for revolutionary purposes but to make money for the company owners—the capitalists.

This is not a new story. Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979), immigrant to the U.S. and well known neo-Marxist and critical theorist of the 1960s, argued that in the contemporary capitalist world there is no escaping such co-optation. We are made “one-dimensional” by capitalism’s single-minded orientation toward greed and growth.

Canned Revolutions

The upshot is that there can be no genuine revolution or cultural revision from within the system—the genuine revolutionaries, à la Che Guevara, must operate from outside it to make significant changes. To ground a revolution, contemporary society would have to allow for a “new subject”—a new kind of person—who is not manipulated by the web of political and economic power. But, Marcuse says, in the present situation the “power and efficiency of the system, the thorough assimilation of mind with fact, of thought with required behavior, of aspirations with reality, militate against the emergence of a new Subject.” ⁵ For Marcuse, the illusion of freedom for revolution is perhaps the most dangerous and pernicious feature of the industrialized capitalism of the twentieth century: “The totalitarian tendencies of the one-dimensional society render the traditional ways and means of protest ineffective—perhaps even dangerous because they present the illusion of popular sovereignty” (p. 256).

In similar fashion, another member of Marcuse’s philosophical cohort, Theodor Adorno (1903–1969), argued specifically that American art—especially popular music—was thoroughly co-opted by capitalism, a feature of our general commodity fetishism. He argued, for example, that jazz was music sold to democracy and therefore was artistically at the bottom of the barrel. To be capitalistically popular or “pop,” is, for Adorno, a mark of debasement and aesthetic inferiority. Adorno argued that such music and art become tools of dominance and oppression—they can be used to manipulate the “desires” of the masses and can thus be used to control political orientation.

Adorno’s addendum to Marcuse’s concern for one-dimensionality is important because it suggests that the one place where one might think one could find revolutionary freedom—the arts—has also been co-opted. Marcuse was himself tempted by the suggestion that the “aesthetic dimension still retains a freedom of expression which enables the writer and artist to call men and things by their name—to name the otherwise unnameable” (p. 252). But he came to side with Adorno, arguing that the popular arts have simply become “an omnipresent ingredient of the administered society” (p. 239); they help create a society in which we have become “possessed by our own images.” (p. 250).

We use Bob Seger’s “Like a Rock” and the Band’s “The Weight” to sell Fords and Chevys. Our co-opting actions are blatant and profoundly rude, and yet we act as if nothing important has happened. In this cultural milieu, Bruce Springsteen’s work fares no better; from the standpoint of philosophers like Marcuse and Adorno, he would be neither an important artist nor a revolutionary thinker—he is just another Jersey boy in the employ of the economic-political junta of the U.S. innocently selling “America” back to those who suffer under its manipulative activities.

Is Springsteen Co-opted?

We know that Springsteen has critical things to say about American culture. From “Factory” to Tom Joad and Magic we find him offering critiques of our industrial practices and our government’s decisions. In his youth he flew “the flag of piracy” and “broke all the rules”; he told tales out of school about being born in the U.S.A. Perhaps we could go even further. The whole of Springsteen’s body of work, even when it is celebratory, reveals our own dissatisfactions with the drudgery of our labor, with the aimlessness of our acquistiveness, and with the Hollywood imagery of our political bureaucracy.

Yet, from the perspective of Marcuse and Adorno, Springsteen and the rest of us are deluded if we believe these criticisms make any difference or if we believe Springsteen’s music is genuine art. Allowing Springsteen—or Tupac or Eminem—to “critique” our culture is merely a sop to Cerberus and has no revolutionary payoff. After all, we are not even free to “choose” Springsteen; we are sold music-candy by Columbia Records and the rest of the corporations as they control the production of the music—they “release” things for us to listen to. More importantly, they control the distribution of the sounds—why else would they be so fundamentally committed to the legal control of the internet? This new venue not only threatens their profits, it threatens their control and manipulation of the market.

Can Springsteen, or any other American artists, survive Marcuse’s critique—his analysis of all of us as beings co-opted and controlled by an industrial-political structure that has grown so efficient as to be immune to any internal critiques? Let’s take a look at the “bad news” first and then see if Springsteen can offer an alternative reading of his own practice.

Gonna Buy Five Copies for My Mother

In the November 1st 2007 issue of Rolling Stone, Springsteen is interviewed by Executive Editor Joe Levy in an article entitled “Bruce Springsteen’s Restless Heart.” Of course his image graces the cover—again—together with his well-worn Fender. Turn the page and one encounters a two-page spread photo of a Chevy Malibu. As we’ll see, the issue is top heavy with Chevys—are we to suppose this is an accident given Springsteen’s endless talk of Chevys and Camaros and his claim in “Pink Cadillac” that his “love is bigger than a Honda, it’s bigger than a Subaru”?⁶

For those who don’t remember and for those who never knew, Rolling Stone started as an “underground” magazine—it was anti-war and anti-establishment. It was counter-cultural, poor, and rife with criticisms of big business and the U.S. government. To be sure, the recent issue includes an article venting against the “hucksterism” of capitalist-turned-politician Mitt Romney, an article documenting the doom of global warming, and a two-page ad by The Gap which says that the next generation can change the world in part by purchasing its “Red” trademark t-shirts. The ad implies that some of the purchase money will go to the “Global fund to support programs which provide HIV/AIDS prevention, care, and treatment, including ARV medicine, in Africa.” There is no suggestion that a direct contribution to the fund might be even more useful and efficient.

All of these efforts at political correctness are nevertheless surrounded and underwritten by a host of famous folks selling everything from cars to televisions to whiskey. Perhaps the most heady evidence on behalf of the outlook of Marcuse and Adorno is a twelve-month calendar inserted into the issue in which famous musicians pimp their “favorite” Chevrolets. It’s interesting that they each became Chevy fans for this issue. For someone like me, who took thirty years off as a reader of Rolling Stone, the response is a stoned out, “Huh”? Where’d the magazine go, man? Jake Dorman of Farmington, Connecticut, agrees with me at least in part. That’s because the previous issue of Rolling Stone had included a retrospective on Hunter S. Thompson that was, of course, promoting a new book about Thompson’s life and was put together by some former employees of Rolling Stone.

Dorman’s response to the magazine concerning that issue was published on page 10 of this one: “I enjoyed your article on Hunter, but maybe it’s time you stopped dwelling on the past and tried to make RS relevant by hiring writers who are as revolutionary as Thompson.” Relevant? Revolutionary? Man, this thing is about sales, subscriptions, and the bottom line—no money, no revolution. Hey, why not make a Hunter S. Thompson t-shirt to go with Che Guevara? Probably been done, dude—check out the t-shirts and rock ’n’ roll memorabilia at the back of the issue!

It gets worse. The issue includes a review of the Eagles’ dual CD Long Road Out of Eden. In the review we find out what many had already found out: that the Eagles “have chosen Wal-Mart as the album’s exclusive retailer.” The ghost of Thompson might be asking in irony, “Where was Wal-Mart when I needed them?” But note the reviewer’s subsequent line: “There is the inevitable contradiction in buying a record that attacks corporate greed and blind consumerism in songs like ‘Do Something’ and ‘Frail Grasp of the Big Picture’ from a superchain with a bleak record on employee rights and health care.”

That Hegelian word “contradiction” was itself co-opted by Marx and Marcuse. Hey, man, do your remember Steal This Book? I think we’re gettin’ ripped off again! Do you think? The revolutionary mag with the glossy ads is selling you the “critical” CD retailed in Wal-Mart. Marcuse’s point: no one hears the critique or the revolution; there’s no revolution and no critique. There is only an image being sold to wealthy Americans who indeed have a frail grasp of the big picture!

And now Springsteen. He’s on the cover of Rolling Stone. Good for them—good for him. Coincidentally, his new album Magic has just appeared and, if you turn to the “Charts” on page 102, you’ll find it at “Number 1” in the “Top 40 Albums.” It’s ahead of Soulja Boy and Rascal Flatts. Good for them—good for him—good for Columbia Records. Another week at that spot earns someone something. So, here’s the philosophical question again: can Bruce Springsteen, who is again on the cover of Rolling Stone, be an effective social critic and a genuine artist? Can he be any sort of revolutionary? Marcuse and Adorno say “no”—their analysis of the current system says there is no way out unless one is all the way out. The greed and growth of American capitalism have wrapped up the commodity known to us as Bruce Springsteen and sold it to America. He is de-fused, de-clawed, and has no aesthetic edge. As the reviewer noted, this is just the “inevitable contradiction” of American capitalism.

Socratic Revolution?

Is there better news? We think Springsteen answers the question asked above honestly and autonomously. He thinks that even as he is sold to us, he has the opportunity to speak to us from his restless heart, to admit if and when he has been co-opted, and to risk succeeding or failing as a genuine artist. This is Springsteen’s residual and resistant American populist politics, and it survives the Marcusean critique because he doesn’t buy the premises Marcuse and Adorno are selling. He thinks there is a mid-world between sheer autonomy and sheer co-optation.; the “inevitable contradiction” is for him not a foreclosure on his freedom but a living tension with which he freely struggles.

The ambiguity of Springsteen’s response to the U.S. is the crucial first step in his response to the charge of co-optation in Marcuse’s account of the one dimensional man. For Marcuse, one is either outside the system as a free revolutionary or inside the system as a co-opted slave of economic and political manipulation. One is either in the Matrix or out—there can be no Neos or Trinitys who work both sides at once. The ambiguities Springsteen proclaims in song must for Marcuse be themselves co-opted outlooks since Springsteen still operates within the American capitalist system working for Columbia Records. Springsteen’s own worldview holds no such necessity—unlike Marx and Marcuse, and like Socrates and John Dewey, he projects a political theory of possibility and risk. Let us return to his interview with Rolling Stone with this in mind.

Springsteen claims his music is in an ongoing dialogue with his audience. Both in particular performances and by way of his recordings he sees himself in a transactional situation—there is a process of mutual influence and suggestion. He has always seen his music as engaged in this transactional process, even before he became well known:

It comes down to trying to make people happy, feel less lonely, but also being a conduit for a dialogue about the events of the day, the issues that impact people’s lives, personal, social, and political and religious. That’s how I always saw the job of our band. That was my service. At this point, I’m in the middle of a very long conversation with my audience. (Rolling Stone, p. 52)

It’s interesting that he thinks of it as work. Pop music is not often described as a “service industry” but Springsteen sees himself that way or, perhaps more accurately, as engaging in a kind of public service. Most importantly, this description leads into a different conception of what it means to be a revolutionary than the one presented by Marcuse. Springsteen’s revolutionary must both give voice to a perspective and must listen to the voices of other perspectives around him. The cultural changes to be effected in this way must always be in transition; one does not simply step out of a capitalistic world into a socialistic or communistic world. The conversation is where it’s at for Springsteen’s revolutionary—in this much we might call him a Socratic revolutionary. And herein lies the importance of ambiguity.

Art for Freedom’s Sake

From earlier songs like “Factory” and “Born in the U.S.A.” to the present “Radio Nowhere,” “Magic,” and “Long Walk Home,” Springsteen has exercised a steady voice of concern for and complaint against various aspects of American culture. At the same time, there is much about our culture that his music celebrates. He is a spokesman for the America that can laugh at itself, critique itself, and can work to right itself. But he is a staunch critic of the America that is insular, exclusionary, dogmatic, unrelentingly narrow and afraid to grow. The Socratic revolutionary Springsteen invokes stands in the middle of this ambiguous relationship to America and engenders conversation through his art. Springsteen buys the suggestion that a free artist is in a unique position to alter a culture—not as a propagandist for any side, but as a revealer of cultural practices and as an imaginer of alternatives.

The initial evidence supporting Springsteen’s freedom as a revolutionary artist is his ability to listen. When he shifted gears after Born to Run and recorded things like Lucky Town and The Ghost of Tom Joad, his audience talked back. He heard applause from the intellectuals in the audience for his down-to-earth reflections on personal life and political damage. Those inspired by the energy of Springsteen’s social realism of the American northeast talked back in other ways. Springsteen recalls the many times he’s heard someone say, “I liked the old Bruce better . . . .” Even as he listened to the critical voices, he refused to sacrifice his artistic vision of the moment to imitate the sound many of his fans had fallen in love with. His freedom was exercised in his willingness to write and perform songs that were not the old Bruce, even when his audience resisted.

“Listening,” for a Socratic, does not mean “agreeing with.” He stuck with his own vision and left it to others to follow him or not. His freedom was exercised in his willingness to shift from stadium concerts to singing solo in small theaters around the world. It was exercised in his pursuit of music history and of satisfying the folk dimension in his heart when he turned to the originary work of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, two models of the American Socratic revolutionary. In short, Springsteen was in conversation but he was not driven by his audience—or his producers—even as he listened to them. The Marcusean artist, after all, should have ridden the wave of “Born to Run” for all it was worth not just some of it—Springsteen is not Bon Jovi.

As a Socratic revolutionary, Springsteen does not engage in conversation aimlessly. He has a pretty clear underlying “takes” on worldly affairs. For example, he is not in favor of the current war in Iraq. But for the most part he does not hit us over the head with these takes; he allows them to work their ways into his songs. If we think back to his issues with Viet Nam, we don’t find him singing Country Joe McDonald’s “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’to-Die-Rag.” He is more subtle; he works through a variety of experiences; he makes it possible for us not just to choose sides but to reflect on what the sides have to say. His songs are neither broadsides nor pipedreams empty of social relevance. Springsteen’s revolutionary art is to use his music in conversation with his listeners to open spaces of reflection on the issues at hand.

It’s not like a one-on-one dialogue. It’s more what you feel back from them. You create a space together. You are involved in an act of imagination together imagining the life you want to live, the kind of country you want to live in, the kind of place you want to leave to your children.

In “Born in the U.S.A.,” for example, especially in the version released on 18 Tracks, we are in a space where we hear both our underlying appreciation of being American and, emphatically, the serious problems we have trying to be Americans. Like Socrates, Springsteen draws no hard and fast conclusions; instead he gets us to take hard looks in certain directions. We enter the space of reflection with him and, confronted with the actualities of our own lives, are led to consider our past and our possibilities. Unlike the Marcusean revolutionary who sees us as dominated and manipulated and himself as utterly free, Springsteen sees us as like him—a bit manipulated, a bit adrift, and a bit free, but each with our own limited tools for social revision and reconstruction. This is his populism. We can imagine other ways of living and we can take small steps in the direction of those other ways.

The Best Policy

There is, however, a Marcusean moment in Springsteen’s revolutionary activity in the need for self-awareness and selfreflection. One needs a hardcore honesty to have a sense of when one is being manipulated by a bureaucracy, an economy, or a social habit and to know when one has sinned against others, the world, or oneself. This kind of honesty pervades Springsteen’s work from “4th of July, Asbury Park,” to “Pink Cadillac,” to “Radio Nowhere.” When we enter a reflective space with him, we must bring our own honesty—this is the bone marrow truth in Springsteen’s work that awakens us and drives us when we enter into conversations with him. It is only in this temper of brute honesty that we can see ourselves.

My songs, they’re all about American identity and your own identity and the masks behind the masks, both for the country and for yourself. And trying to hold onto what’s worthwhile, what makes it a place that’s special, because I still believe that it is.

For Marcuse, it’s masks all the way down and nothing is worthwhile. For Springsteen, as for Socrates, there is no specific endin-view but the unmasking makes a difference. American life at its best is an ongoing process of revision, an ongoing revolution. As Springsteen puts it: “It’ll be a lifelong journey by the time that I’m done” (p. 52).

The Socratic revolutionary Springsteen embodies is not a prophet. He may critique our ways of living and reveal the possibility of dire consequences, but he does not aim to speak for God. Unlike the Marxist revolutionary, Springsteen offers no promise of a communist utopia—he is not a member of some isolated intelligentsia. Like Socrates, he is a working person’s revolutionary. He knows that we first have to “get by.” He has a resilient faith in the American way of self-transformation that, he thinks, even the worst arrogance and demagoguery cannot fully undermine: “The American idea still has enormous power in its best manifestation. And ten George Bushes cannot bring that down—a hundred cannot bring that idea down” (p. 54).

Springsteen’s Revolution

Springsteen, as Socratic revolutionary, does not allow us to end the democratic idea of change through conversation, persuasion, and imagination. Just as Socrates refused to leave Athens, Springsteen is unlikely move to Canada. For him, as for his heroes Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, James Brown, and Martin Luther King, art is a liberator, not as propaganda, but as a site of reflection on where we’ve been, who we are, and where we might go. There will always be some darkness, some suffering, and some dysfunction. And we must be watchful of our own co-optation by anyone. But that is precisely what calls out the Socratic revolutionary. It will call out the resistance of “Growin’ Up”: “when they said, ‘Sit down’ I stood up.”⁷ It will call out commitment: “no retreat, no surrender.”⁸ And it will call out a wise sympathy: “So receive me brother with your faithless kiss, or will we leave each other alone like this, On the streets of Philadelphia.” ⁹

Springsteen has understood the basics of Marcuse’s one-dimensionality, and he has seen enough social damage to sleep with one eye open. But he also understands Socrates’s down-to-earth ways of confronting the workers of the world. Revolution is not a game for intellectuals whose lives are disconnected from the life of labor. Revolution is just another form of work—it’s a job requiring practice, repetition, sweat, and suffering. This is why one doesn’t see a bad Springsteen concert. He’s committed to the conversation, he has lived enough to sympathize and empathize with his audience, and he respects that audience. He knows, contra Marcuse, that for them, as for himself, the revolutionary task of “growing up” is one’s own personal job of work.