I am not a dissenter of capitalism, nor an advocate for Marxism or socialism, or any other system of government for that matter. I have not the knowledge nor the intelligence to confidently pledge my allegiance to anything more complicated or tangible than personal philosophy. What I can do, however, is observe. My experience has revealed one prevailing, unsurprising, truth about capitalism. Capital is law. It’s why Europeans work to live while United Statesians live to work. It’s why we’re fatter, dumber, more addicted, sicker and have higher crime rates. If there’s a problem in the United States, follow the money and you’ll find someone who’s withholding the information to solve it. Or worse, someone who’s creating it. What are the broader implications of this system? The consumer is exploited. Every product and service is rigorously, and sometimes scientifically, scrutinized to maximize profit and minimize expense, exclusively to your detriment. It was once believed, and still is by some non-observers, that a market controlled by capital would increase the quality of its production in response to competition catalyzed by consumer demand. Perhaps there was once a time where this was the case, but that time has passed.
If you don’t believe me, I ask only for you to use your brain. Automotive and tech industries are rife with planned obsolescence so that the consumer must keep buying, our food is filled with carcinogens and preservatives to maximize production and shelf-life, Airlines gouge its passengers because how else are you going to get across the ocean? And all of this is exacerbated by the same parent companies and shareholders who own and control large corporations in every corner of the private sector, creating pseudo-monopolies where there is no explicit ruling company, but a ruling group with one motto: Capital is God. Accrue it at all costs.
Then there’s art. One would think that art would be immune to the corrosive poison that is late-stage capitalism. Indeed, its subjective nature might deceive you into believing that mass production is virtually impossible. How do you decrease the quality of a product in which its only qualifying characteristic for existence is a quality which is so subjective that it can be infinitely stratified, while also maintaining sales? Leave it to greed to find a way. Appeal to the lowest common denominator. At the risk of sounding pretentious, most people have no standards for art. They’ll watch a film like Happy Gilmore 2, a film with a derivative plot, no tonal or internal consistency, poor jokes, poor slapstick comedy and a cast of stars wasted for cheap gags and think “that was fun”. Which is fine. I am not the arbiter of quality, and I am under no illusion that there is such a thing as an objectively good film. My point is that at least half of the population has no need for intent, passion or meaning in art. Or quality for that matter. Most consumers of art consume art superficially. They don’t engage with it in any way that could be described as intelligent or meaningful. Which, again, is fine. It is not written or codified that one must engage meaningfully with films, music or literature. Nor is there any ground on which to stand that says that I am better because I do. However, capital knows this. It is a god whose omniscience is informed by your purchases; and if your purchases tell it that it can create films void of meaning, good writing, intent, passion, consistency, continuity and acting, then what incentivizes it to put effort into its creation? So, capitalism creates art that is without value save for fundamental, tried and true, narratives. It generates the same slop with no innovation or ingenuity, constantly pushing the envelope on how low the quality can be before the majority loses interest. This is mainstream art. Music sounds the same, books read the same, movies look the same. Art has been reduced to an entertainment machine whose job it is to churn out what brings in the most money at the lowest cost; and it has been refined quite effectively. As impervious to as art might seem, slowly but surely, it too will fall to the whims of capital.
Psuedothought 