Originally published in Monthly Review
On his most recent album, Wrecking Ball, Bruce
Springsteen crafted a powerful statement of support for the working class, the
existence of which barely penetrates contemporary art or politics. This is not
an accident: the growing power of capital over public discourse has provided it
a forceful means through which to shape individual consciousness, and establish
an apolitical and at most technocratic understanding of power. Those at the
top, we are led to believe, are there because of their technical skills and
have risen by meritocratic means—the vast gulfs created by inequalities in
wealth, power, and privilege are ignored. In fact, gigantic
corporations—controlled by the 1% (or by the 0.1%)—dominate all forms of
production. Even in the cultural realm, the art and voices of the working class
are sidelined and squelched. Working people thus become invisible. As Occupy
has helped make clear, the 99%, though divided in all kinds of ways, share the
collective disappointment of being ruledby others, as opposed to ruling
themselves;of constantly producing and reproducing the bases of wealth and
power at the top of society, rather than fulfilling their own developmental
potential…. Power over surplus distribution—and thus nearly everything
else—is left to an unelected ownership class. The overwhelming majority of the
population is unable to locate itself in the “democratic consensus” or the
dominant culture.
In our ad-driven consumer age, it is a monumental struggle
to encourage sympathy and solidarity by bringing the stories and views of
working people to a mass audience. Indeed, one of the greatest successes of the
Occupy movement has been to force the idea into the national discourse that the
working class exists as such (we are the 99%), a notion that
is usually reserved for the radical fringe. On Wrecking Ball,
Springsteen channels and supports the proletarian discourse of the 99%, which
overcomes post-political, technocratic ideology and constructs a world sharply
divided between exploited and exploiters. He crosses over from his earlier
lament for a fallen America and the unfulfilled promise of the American dream
to rage at the “robber barons” who “ate the flesh off everything they’ve found”
and “whose crimes have gone unpunished,” calling on workers to stand united in
seeking social justice. In telling the seldom-heard stories of working people
and subjectivizing them as victims of the violence of capital, Wrecking
Ball represents an important salvo in the cultural struggle, providing
justification for and encouraging solidarity with the cause of the 99%.
In its review of the album, the popular music website Pitchfork chides
Springsteen for “rail[ing] against those up on ‘Banker’s Hill’ in the sort of
black-and-white terms that continue to plague and cleave his home country.” In
suggesting that those who have united as “the 99%” are merely troublemakers,
and that Occupy is actually a “plague” on society, Pitchfork—regarded
as a hip and liberal publication in the hegemonic discourse—paradoxically
adopts a position that would make Newt Gingrich blush. How is this possible? In
fact, the Pitchforkreview can be taken as a model to demonstrate
the shortcomings of the so-called “hipster” current. This social current, of
which Pitchfork is the ultimate expression, is the embodiment
of postmodern skepticism and relativism. Artistically, it is concerned solely
with exhibiting middle-class angst, while it presents liberation as the styling
of an individualized consumerism and pornographic self-expression. Any
transformational social project, or genuine contact with the working class, is
seen as anachronistic and totalitarian. As Arcade Firedescribed on their 2010
album The Suburbs, what appears as progressive experimentation and
“liberation” is really Rococo—trivial but elaborate ornamentation that amounts
to little more than an indication of privilege and isolation, like the
elaborate dress of the court of Louis XVI.
Naturally, this ideology—which emphasizes consumerism and
the liberation of the market while discouraging social and political
engagement—poses no threat whatsoever to structures of power and domination,
and is therefore ubiquitous. It has served to mask and even defend the marginalization
of working-class art while concealing the domination of the cultural terrain by
the forces of capital, under the guise of liberation and freedom. As Arcade
Fireput it, “they seem wild, but they are so tame.” With Wrecking Ball,
Springsteen has produced a record of startling beauty, that unambiguously
proclaims solidarity with the 99% and reaffirms the possibility of a better
world. It is a powerful statement in support of the Occupiers’ struggle against
a ruling class that is waging unmitigated war against workers and the poor. The
force of this statement, and the nature of Pitchfork’s response,
help to reveal the class bias concealed behind postmodern “common sense” and
hipster skepticism.
