With the recent showing of the Martin Scorsese documentary No Direction Home on PBS and BBC and the release of this version of Bob Dylan's early years on DVD, the question of Dylan's politics is once again the topic of discussion among fans and foes alike. Like many others (albeit without any apparent malice), Scorsese's documentary seemed to take the approach shared by most critics that Dylan forsook politics completely when he released his album Bringing It All Back Home. No longer was the singer unleashing his poetic anger on the defenders of racism and the masters of war. No, according to this critical approach, Bob Dylan not only gave up politics when he took up the electric guitar, he did even worse by becoming a navel gazer. The variants on this theme run the gamut from those dismissing all of his work on this album and afterwards to those who still like the rest of his work (with the possible exception of his Christian period), but regret the fact that he stopped being “political”, In general, these have been the parameters of the discussion.

Then, along comes Mike Marqusee. His thesis goes beyond these parameters. Other Dylan critics/fans have certainly thought what Marqusee has, but he is the first to put these particular thoughts into a coherent, written statement. His first attempt was published in 2003 under the title Chimes of Freedom. Now, Seven Stories Press has released a revised and expanded edition of that book wherein the author expands and expounds on the idea that Dylan did not give up politics; he merely rearranged the definition of what politics is. It's not just the manipulations and machinations of the men (and in some places women) at the top of the money pile, nor is it only a gun in hand or a rebel army in the hills. Politics is the way men and women relate to each other. It's the way people of different skin tones, different religions, different incomes (just different) communicate in a world where the powerful try and keep them opposed.

It's more than “party platform ties/Social clubs in drag disguise,” and it means that yes, “Sometimes the president of the United States has to stand naked.” The political world that Dylan was telling us about was not always disjunctive, even though the cold war had made it seem that way. Sure there were bad guys and good guys, but the important thing was to get past the lives they wanted us to live and get on with our own. Mike Marqusee points this out and more in Wicked Messenger: Bob Dylan and the 1960s, his new text. Essentially Marcusian (as in Herbert Marcuse), Dylan's 1960s’ politics targeted US supracapitalism and the technocratic authoritarianism it spawned and used to further its hegemony as the enemy of humanity. The revolution that Marqusee sees Dylan agitating for is one that accurately targeted the power in Washington DC and on Wall Street as the enemy, yet wants nothing to do with replacing that with another form that will become a mirror of the system it replaced.

Merely because it was the most obvious change in the original manuscript, I jumped right to the completely new addition to Marqusee's book. That would be the last chapter, which is entitled “Corruptible Seed”. For those unfamiliar with all of Dylan's work, this title is taken from the Dylan blues masterpiece “Blind Willie McTell”. The tune borrows substantially from the melody of “St. James Infirmary” and tells the story of the honest to god real blues guitarist and singer Blind Willie McTell. The actual lyric goes:

Well, God is in heaven
And we all want what's his
But power and greed and corruptible seed
Seem to be all that there is

Dylan's quest is to let us know that this is the case and, furthermore, let us know it's up to us to do something about it. According to Marqusee, this was one reason why he changed his approach - because he realized the old politics would not work. Big changes were happening in the world and the left-right either/or had to be expanded.

This last declaration might be difficult to understand in today's world, where the ones in power are trying their damnedest to go back to the time before Bob Dylan began to sing. When people who looked and thought like the rulers were the good guys and everyone else was either bad or just didn't matter. This approach to the world is known as the millenarian impulse - to long for the good old days (that probably never were). But it's too late for that. After the jingle jangle morning, darkness has appeared at the break of noon and the politics of yesterday will no longer fix anything, not even the things that they have broken.

Anyhow, back to Marqusee's last chapter in this book and the things that they have broken. In a discussion of Bruce Springsteen and his leftish social patriotism he notes that “'America' is a dangerous construct.” Who knows, maybe even nations are the politics of yesterday? He then adds musician Steve Earle to the list of Dylan's successors and dissects Earle's album, Jerusalem, speaking directly to the reality of America's impermanence. Then the reader jumps into Marqusee's take on the 2003 film Masked and Anonymous, alternately blasting it for not answering any questions then acknowledging that Dylan doesn't answer questions, he just asks them. Simultaneously, in the movie Dylan continues to go after the manipulations of today's capitalist superstructure - taking the revolutionary longings of a people and turning them against those very longings. This is exactly how his politics changed. Without the certainty of good guys and bad guys, all there can be is what we make of ourselves. Marqusee understands this, but sometimes wishes that it weren't so and that Bob Dylan still had the answers he had so long ago. Perhaps the only certainty that Dylan has kept is revealed in the fact that he continues to perform two or three songs at almost every concert he gives. One of those songs is “Masters of War” - a song that makes no bones about who makes wars and why they do. Another is “All Along the Watchtower” - where the forces of evil and good are about to clash and there is no scorecard to tell us who is on what side. The third is his song about freedom in a world where few know the meaning of the word and those who do claim to know it are merely trying to sell us another product - “Like a Rolling Stone.”

Although Marqusee finds fault with what he considers to be Dylan's withdrawal from the political world, he also acknowledges that Dylan's past involvement still has plenty to contribute to today's climate. Furthermore, in the world that Dylan (and Marqusee) attempt to describe and even make sense of, the only thing that seems certain is that we are on our own with no direction home. Looking at this reality from another perspective, it means that we can make the world that we want to live in, by doing something or by doing nothing.

The Wicked Messenger was released on October 17, 2005 by Seven Stories Press.

Ron Jacobs is an anti-imperialist activist and writer. He is the author of The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground (Verso, 1997) and currently lives in Asheville, NC, USA.