How Rage Against the Machine Used Capitalism To Sell Communism

This November, rock's most successful and pugnacious communists will be inducted, six years after they became eligible, to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Rage Against the Machine, a band that kicked the doors down on the 1990s with a then-novel mix of brutally heavy guitars and hip-hop vocals, also blended in unlikely tandem two other disparate traditions of American life.

The first, obviously, is rock music: the rhythmically buoyant and harmonically uncomplicated sound of post–World War II popular song that, however corny it might sound to 2023 ears, signaled...