Beginning to See the Light: Sex, Hope, and Rock-and-Roll

Introduction

Introduction Uitil I started putting this collection together, I did not realize how consistently I've been obsessed with the idea of freedom. In one way or another, my pieces on such apparently diverse subjects as rock-and-roll and feminism, radical politics and religion reflect my belief in the possibility of a genuinely democratic culture —a community based on the voluntary cooperation of equals. If this book can be said to make one central assumption, it is that there really is such a thing as liberation, however hard it may be to define or describe, let aloneattain. My definition is political; it assumes the need for organized opposition to the present social system. But it is also psychological; it has to do with self-knowledge, with the ability to make conscious choices and take responsibility for them rather than act compulsively from unconscious (that is, unadmitted) motives. Since on some level we never really believe the illusions and rationalizations we insist on porting around like boulders from some totemic mountain, it is a relief to drop the burden—or so I've always found. Still, I never feel quite comfortable talking about choice and responsibility. Those words usually imply an antimaterialist xiii Introduction moral and religious outlook—a fact that, to my mind, reveals the limitations of both materialist and moral/religious vocabularies. I don't believe in "free will," if by that one means choice unconditioned by its material context, but I do regard the idea of freedom as inseparable from the idea of the individual self, the subject who chooses. We are shaped by history and culture, by our economic and social situations, yet we are not just passive recipients—or victims—of external pressures. It is human beings who create history and culture, who change their situation or fail to do so. I think there is an aspect of the human personality, a core of basic— if you will, biological—impulses, that transcends and resists the incursions of an oppressive culture. And I think the craving for freedom—for self-determination, in the most literal sense—is a basic impulse that can be suppressed but never eliminated. Politically, this view of freedom aligns me with cultural radicals rather than socialists; as I see it, the enemy is not capitalism per se, but the authoritarian structure of all our institutions, including those—the family, especially—that regulate our so-called private lives. From a conventional Marxist perspective the individual is a historical artifact, invoked by the rising bourgeoisie as a rationale for capitalism; since the concept of individual freedom is a mask for the reality of class exploitation, it is illusory, or at least fundamentally suspect. I would argue rather that it was in part the impulse toward freedom that led to the bourgeois rebellion against feudalism; that the bourgeoisie did not create the individual, only the conditions for the emergence of self-conscious individuals as a powerful political force. From this standpoint capitalism is a massive paradox, particularly in its later stages. On the one hand, bourgeois democracy represents the first great phase of the cultural revolution; capitalism has instituted certain basic civil rights, supplied the libertarian ideas behind all radical movements, weakened the authority of the patriarchal family and church, allowed masses of people unparalleled personal freedom and social mobility . Yet the corporate state and its global empire are themselves authoritarian, hierarchical structures. Most Americans have little xiv Introduction or no control over the conditions of their own working lives, let alone the overall direction of the economy, nor do our formal democratic rights give us real power to determine public policy. The colonized people who have contributed to the enrichment of the capitalist West share neither its prosperity nor its relative freedom . And the imperatives of the marketplace set people against each other; the comforts of middle-class life are bought at the expense of the poor, liberty at the expense of community. Under these conditions our emancipation from the coercive bonds of traditional societies exacts a high price—even for the privileged—in insecurity and psychic isolation. Obviously, the next phase of the cultural revolution requires a radical alternative to capitalism. But because the socialist-minded left is inclined to focus on the second half of the capitalist paradox while ignoring or discounting the first, much of what passes for a radical critique of this society is insidiously conservative. The tendency...