"Capitalist imperialism...seeks to impose its economic hegemony without direct political domination wherever it can". - Ellen Meikens Wood, Empire of Capital

I've been reading a book lately called Christ & Empire- From Paul to Postcolonial Times, by the politically oriented theologian Jeorg Rieger. (I was inspired to do so after hearing an interview with Rieger on the Homebrewed Christianity podcast series). Rieger is well versed in the sociology of power and seems to have an intimate knowledge of most of the major critical left Continental philosophers of the past hundred years. I like Rieger's writings a lot and I'm learning a lot from him.

In tracing imperialism and colonialism from Jesus' time to our own, Rieger employs the concepts of "hard and soft power" and draws our attention to the difference between them. Hard power is pretty easy to understand. When Jesus and a thousand other dissidents were crucified outside of Jerusalem by the Romans, that's hard power. Hard power is usually violent and pretty obvious. Soft power, however, is much more subtle and difficult to detect. And according to Rieger, and the theorists he draws off, the imperialism of our own (globalized) time acts mostly via mecahanisms of soft power, and thus often goes unseen. Rieger writes:

One of the most distinctive problems of the postcolonial situation is that official colonialism and its more direct forms of domination and control over other people have been replaced by less visible forms of power. In the current situation, invisible forms of power have created a paradoxical situation: while relations of direct control have been reduced, relations that seem on the surface to be more egalitarian and equal nonetheless perpetuate the powers of empire...

The invisibility of economic power structures and their virtual universal reach is one of the key aspects of the postcolonial empire...At the same time, this new distribution of power in the postcolonial empire does not mean that other powers, including the political powers of the nation-state, are fading away. Nation-states do not disappear, but they function differently: no longer for the benefit of the nation but for an emerging global power structure. (p.274)

I can think of no better place to understand the dominant form of soft power in our times than by understanding the economic policy and historical practice of neoliberalism. In the Occupy Integral! comment thread a few people called for a greater understanding of neoliberalism, and I wholeheartedly agree. For some local resources in that direction here at Beams, I'd recommend both of Joe Corbett's articles- his first on The Unholy Alliance in America and his latest on Corporatized Electronic-Media and Collective Consciousness- as well as a piece of mine called What's the Most Important Book of Political Philosophy in the Last 20 Years? In both of Joe's articles you'll find a link to this series of lectures on neoliberalism by David Harvey, and I can't recommend them enough for a quick and accessible introduction.

So what the sam heck does all this have to do with Bruce Springsteen? Well, while I was reading Rieger's book Springsteen released his latest (and highly political) album Wrecking Ball, and in the lyrics to the song Death to My Hometown I discovered a great testament to this distinction between hard and soft power. Before I print the lyrics, it might be worth recalling that Springsteen wrote a hit song in the 1980s called My Hometown, which drew attention to the early effects of neoliberal policy as it was being implemented during the Reagan administration. In it Springsteen laments, "They're closing down the textile mill across the railroad tracks/ Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they aint coming back/ To your hometown". This was only the beginnings of the de-industrialization of America as capital began to take jobs oversees in search of cheaper labor markets and less regulations.

It's now 2012. And the financial crisis of 2008 has happened. And the deterioration of America has continued at paces and in ways that few would've predicted in the 80s. Here's Springsteen now:

Well, no cannonballs did fly, no rifles cut us down
No bombs fell from the sky, no blood soaked the ground
No powder flash blinded the eye, no deathly thunder sounded
But just as sure as the hand of God, they brought death to my hometown
They brought death to my hometown, boys

No shells ripped the evening sky, no cities burning down
No army stormed the shores for which we'd die, no dictators were crowned
I awoke from a quiet night, I never heard a sound
The marauders raided in the dark and brought death to my hometown, boys
Death to my hometown

They destroyed our families, factories, and they took our homes
They left our bodies on the plains, the vultures picked our bones

So listen up, my sonny boy, be ready for when they come
For they'll be returning sure as the rising sun
Now get yourself a song to sing and sing it 'til you're done
Yeah, sing it hard and sing it well
Send the robber barons straight to hell
The greedy thieves who came around
And ate the flesh of everything they found
Whose crimes have gone unpunished now
Who walk the streets as free men now

Ah, they brought death to our hometown, boys
Death to our hometown, boys
Death to our hometown, boys
Death to our hometown, whoa!

Here's Springsteen doing the song live during a recent special live performance at New York's Apollo Theater:

Among other things, I love the spirit that Springsteen brings to this song with its paradoxically joyous sound, the utter refusal to let go of the vision of the promised land during oppressive times. I drew attention to this dimension of Springsteen's recent work in another Jukebox called Bruce Springsteen and the Sounds of Social Resilience, and I still maintain we can draw a lot from Springsteen's example going forward. To finish this edition of the Saturday Night Jukebox, here's another cut from Bruce's new album called Shackled and Drawn, which also draws on the distinction between hard and soft power. Here's a sample of the lyrics:

gambling man rolls the dice, working man pays the bills
it's still fat and easy up on bankers hill
up on bankers hill the party's going strong
down here below we're shackled and drawn