First Published: Workers Viewpoint, Vol. 2, No. 9, October 1977.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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The 1950’s. The working class was groaning under recession after recession. The capitalists had launched a campaign of vicious repression (“McCarthyism”) during the Korean War. It was a time of the “Cold War’’ when the capitalists increased their ideological attack on the American working class. They pushed the glories of conforming to the “American Dream” and “bourgeois “respectability” – the “respectability” that allows one to slit your neighbor’s throat for personal profit as long as it is done politely.
The Russians had sent up Sputnik and the American bourgeoisie frantically pushed youth to “study hard, go to school, become a businessman,” while at the same time in the Black Belt South made sure that Afro-American children were denied the opportunity (much the same as they continue to do today). It was a time when the petty bourgeois American Dream was wrapped in the likes of a Pat Boone; complete with his white buckskins, “Ivy League” sweaters, and college fraternity connections.
But for the vast majority of working class youth, both white and Afro-American, the “promise” of the Pat Boones was no reality. There were no college fraternity pins in the future of working class youth. There was unemployment and oppression. There was a life of exploitation and hardship – of overwork and underpay.
It was in this climate of the 50’s that we can understand the tremendous popularity of Elvis Presley. He was popular certainly not because of what his songs said. They did not promote the fighting spirit and traditions of the working class against the monopoly capitalists. Not by a long shot. They did not even, for the most part, deal with the reality of working class life. They were run-of-the-mill bourgeois love songs. The content of his lyrics, like all bourgeois love songs, reduced life to whether, or not one was going to sleep alone. More than that, they focused on the problems of personal romance. His songs focused on self. In other words, his songs, like all bourgeois love songs, turned people away from class struggle and toward “head” struggle. For Presley, the “fight” was between your “head and your heart,” not between the oppressed and the bourgeoisie.
However, class distress takes on many different forms. The “phenomenon” of Elvis Presley offered to the masses, particularly the white working class youth, a way to show their dissatisfaction with the bourgeois myth of the “American Dream.”
First, there was Presley’s background. He was the “good ole boy from Tupelo, Mississippi” who made “good” not by conforming to “clean-cut respectability” but by rebelling against it. His background as a trucker and laborer allowed white working class youth to identify with him. His hairstyle, the “d.a.” and clothing was, the very opposite of the clean-cut crewcuts and clothing of the college-bound petty bourgeoisie of the 50’s. His style was an act of defiance from the youth from the “wrong side of the tracks. ”
He was the “greaser,” the “JD,” the “hood,” the drop-out. The capitalists were even alarmed at his popularity before they were able to use him effectively to divert the sentiment into harmless channels, like clothing styles, etc.
Presley’s style, like the style of the early white rock and roll stars such as Bill Haley reflected rebellion of working class youth as well as a sense of working class pride. Their style had a definite and visible difference from the petty bourgeois and bourgeois youth. So strong was the mass sentiment that even bourgeois movies of the period had to reflect the trend. Movie stars like James Dean and early Marlon Brando became popular. Even in the most petty bourgeois media family of them all, the Ozzie and Harriet TV show, Ricky Nelson had to change suddenly from “clean-cut” to rock star – “d.a.” and all. The social phenomena of “Rebel Without A Cause” (the name of a popular James Dean movie of that time). reflected the primitive and unconscious resistance of the working class youth being smothered by bourgeois society of the 1950’s.
Then there was the form of the music itself. Not the bland sweetness of the Perry Comos or the Pat Boones, but music which had its roots in working class tradition – “people’s music.” It took Country and Western music which had evolved from the music of the hills and mines of West Virginia and Kentucky, the dustbowls of Oklahoma, the bayous of Louisiana – songs and traditions sung by the masses of poor white laboring masses and rooted in the reality of oppression – and combined it with rhythm and blues – the music that traced its roots to the national oppression of the Afro-American masses in the Black Belt South. It was the music that had traveled from the red clay of Georgia’s fields and the shanties of Mississippi and South Carolina to the tenements of South Chicago.
It was the combination of music with the seeds of working class reality within them – two trends of music that for the most part were separated from each other – that also contributed to Presley’s huge popularity. In fact, Afro-American rhythm and blues was classified as “race” music and, reflecting the national oppression of Afro-Americans, was rarely played on the major media. Afro-American performers were, for the most part, kept to playing the circuit of Black clubs and theaters that flourished around the country. It was music that the white working class, particularly youth, were not exposed to. It was this combination – the music which had its roots in working class and oppressed nationality tradition – to which the masses responded. With Presley it was prettified, packaged, and its proletarian character watered down, but traces of it were still there. The great teacher Lenin remarked in explaining the relationship of the existence of these working class seeds in all national culture to the dominant reactionary culture this way:
The elements of democratic and socialist culture are present, if only in rudimentary form, in Every national culture, since in every nation there are toiling and exploited masses, whose conditions of life inevitably give rise to the ideology of democracy and socialism. But every nation also possesses a bourgeois culture (and most nations a reactionary and clerical culture as well) in the form, not merely of ’elements,’ but of the dominant culture. (Critical Remarks on the National Question)
This combination reflected the changes occurring in U.S. capitalist society after W.W. II. The increased industrialization particularly of the South, waves of Afro-Americans migrating to the Northern cities, all contributed to the increased contact between white working class and Afro-Americans. This increased contact brought whites into closer contact with the strength of the national movement which was beginning to stir in the Civil Rights movement. Although the contact was by no means conscious, the rebellious instinct in the Afro-American movement were picked up by white youth. One way which this rebellion was expressed by white youth was the shattering of the taboo against the enjoyment of Afro-American culture by white workers. The expression that Presley was a “white boy singing Black music” revealed this breaking of the taboo. However it also reflected the contradiction within U.S. capitalist society as well. While on the one hand, his popularity resulted from the combination of some elements, of “people’s music” of two great national cultures, on the other hand, it served to illustrate the national oppression of Afro-Americans.
Many of the songs Presley recorded were written and originally performed by Afro-Americans (“Hound Dog,” “Don’t Be Cruel,” for example). While he rocketed to international stardom and wealth, these Afro-American artists remained unrecognized. Even rhythm and blues giants such as Chuck Berry remained relatively unknown.
Indeed, there was contradictions within the “good ole boy” image itself. While connected with the life of the working class poor white Southerner, it also implied the white Southern racist. In fact, Presley himself added to this reactionary image by referring to Afro-Americans as “niggers good only for buying my records and shining my shoes.”
However, the lessons of the popularity of Presley is not to be found in the personal history of the man. He was dead ten years ago musically. He was a cultural prop of the bourgeoisie. His music pushed the reactionary culture and ideology of capitalism. His life reflected the decadence of bourgeois culture. The capitalists used him to channel off discontent and rebellion into harmless media fun. And like all artists bought and paid for by capitalism, Presley degenerated just like capitalism itself. Even his death serves them as a money-making enterprise.
The real lessons are to be found in the analysis of the basis of his popularity and what that implies for revolutionary cultural work. The combination of Country and Western music and Rhythm and Blues in Presley’s music reflected some of the contradictions in American capitalist society, due to the reactionary nature of bourgeois culture and Presley himself. However, combining the working class seeds within both cultures itself is not a bad thing. On the contrary, injected with more class conscious, communist understanding and promoting its working class content, it is a very good thing. As Lenin said, “We must snatch at, make use of, and develop to the utmost every opportunity for intercourse ... between the class conscious workers of both oppressed and oppressor nations.”
In discussing this question (which in his situation was in the context of the oppressed nation of the Ukraine and the oppressor nation of Great-Russia), he stated:
If a Ukrainian Marxist allows himself to be swayed by his quite legitimate and natural hatred of the Great-Russian oppressors to such a degree that he transfers even a particle of this hatred ... to the proletarian culture and proletarian cause of the Great-Russian workers, then such a Marxist will get bogged down in bourgeois nationalism. Similarly, the Great Russian Marxists will be bogged down .... if he loses sight, even for a moment, of the demand for complete equality for the Ukrainians, or of their fight to form an independent state.
The Great Russian and Ukrainian workers must work together, and, as long as they live in a single state, act in the closest organizational unity and concert, towards a common or international culture of the proletarian movement ... (Critical Remarks on the National Question)
Of course this does not mean that all revolutionary music should be a combination of the proletarian elements in different cultures. But what it does point up is an avenue which can be explored and its immense potential.
Under capitalism we can never replace bourgeois culture by proletarian culture as if proletarian culture can act like a shield from bourgeois ideological attack. Only under the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism can we create a favorable condition to really develop, maintain, and nurture socialist new things. However, we can and must develop fighting elements of proletarian culture from the seeds of spontaneous working class culture that exist under capitalism – identify, concentrate and popularize them to serve the class struggle.
Under the conditions of the 1950’s, the appearance of an Elvis Presley accidentally touched a hidden proletarian chord, particularly among white working class youth. While the bourgeoisie distorted and smothered these seeds of resistance, we must promote them and turn it into a weapon of the working class against the rule of monopoly capitalism itself.