Artistic Anti-Capitalism

I've been thinking about how art deals with anti-capitalism themes.

Recently I watched the movie "Sorry to Bother You" (2018) made by the explicitly communist activist/rapper Boots Riley. The first I heard of this movie was a few years ago through an NYT feature largely heralding the movie as a dangerous challenge to the status quo, namely "capitalism". I'm mindful that the terminology of "capitalism" is rarely ever consistent, and one of my favorite Motte comments of all time catalogues all the different (often wildly divergent) definitions of the term.

My own biases are explicitly pro-capitalism, or rather pro-private property and pro-free markets. Either way, I try to maintain an open mind for media critical of my own position, so anti-capitalistic media doesn't get immediately dismissed by me. But over time my overall impression of anti-capitalistic media is very poor, and I see it often reliant on bizarre exaggerations or seriously deficient theory of mind. It's difficult not to conclude that its primary purpose isn't really changing minds, but rather just affirming appropriate signaling from the artists.

There are a number of examples I can cite. One of my favorite bands is Refused, lead by a Dennis Lyxzén who apparently writes lyrics in front of a painting of Karl Marx (seriously, check 8:40). But even though I thoroughly enjoy their music (and many other bands like them, such as Crass), it necessarily requires me to deliberately ignore their lyrics because I find them so damn facile. E.g.

I got a bone to pick with capitalism

And a few to break

Grab us by the throat

And shake the life away

Human life is not commodity, figures, statistics or make-believe

Lyxzén's follow-up project, The (International) Noise Conspiracy, was even worse on this front. Yes, their music is great, but just look at this music video where it's footage of them wearing stylish matching outfits interspersed with well-worn leftists platitudes flashing on screen.

But maybe I'm too hard on them, because it's just music after all. You can't really expect a dissertation-level thesis from a punk rock song with barely a paragraph of lyrics. But as a falsification, I note far more nuanced takes regarding cautionary tales of leftist revolutions from left-wing punk groups like Crass and Dead Kennedys.

Taking a detour to video games. Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising is a fantastic game from 2001 that combines 3rd person action with RTS elements. It's super fun and highly recommend, but just ignore the story even though it's written by the esteemed comic book writer Warren Ellis. The game's setting is the future, where basically communism has won [timestamped link] enabled by nano-technology which eliminated scarcity. The villains are literally called the Cabal and hang out in a smoke-filled room [timestamped link]. You'd be forgiven if you couldn't parse out their motivations, because it often devolves into incoherency in the form of "I can't believe that people are just giving gold away instead of trying to make a profit!". Add mustache twirling and you'd have something indistinguishable from your regular cartoon villain. According to Ellis' worldview, the only reason we don't have a post-scarcity communist society is because the people in power are not nice?

I noted a related take from an interactive fiction game called A Mind Forever Voyaging from 1985. The premise of the game is a sentient supercomputer called PRISM is tasked with simulating what a future would look like if certain policies (basically Ronald Reagan's) get implemented. The 30 and 40 year simulation showcase no problems, and it's not until 50 years in that some worrying signs in the simulation become apparent. Once the government finds out, Reagan's simulacrum steps in with soldiers and tries to shut down the whole 'predict the future' operation because it is actively jeopardizing his plans. The creator of the game, Steve Meretzky, was explicit in laying out his motivations for wanting to criticize Reagan's policies, and he even said he was upset that the political content of the game didn't generate more controversy or hate mail (His next game, Leather Goddesses of Phobos, had him deliberately trying to generate controversy by including "a little bit of sex"). There's of course, an obvious reason why a game whose premise is "Here is a fictionalized scenario where your favored political policies are proven harmful, given 50+ years to percolate" might not be particularly salient or gripping.

I'm not going to bother hiding the spoilers for Sorry to Bother You because I don't think they're worthwhile. The setting is an alternate reality Oakland, CA with Cassius Green (pronounced Cash is Green, get it??) the likable protagonist who lands a telemarketing job despite (and because of) getting caught by the manager interviewing him fabricating trophies and resume achievements. The first half is fairly tame and routine critique of dead-end jobs and the day-to-day grind that tends to accompany them, and how union organizing is supposedly our way out. But because of the surreal alternate reality setting, the thematic sharpness is dialed up a few notches with the inclusion of companies like "WorryFree" who promises steady housing and food (looking exactly like jail cells but with bright colors) in exchange for literally lifetime indentured servitude. The idea is that the grind people face elsewhere is a steady driver pushing more and more people on the margins to consider "WorryFree" as a viable rescue plan. And the battle lines are drawn up, because the primary method telemarketers are encouraged to keep grinding at their shitty job is that one day they might get promoted to the venerable position of "Power Caller" and finally use the gold elevator they are taunted with everyday in the lobby.

Cassius is one of those people. He starts using his "white voice" (voiced by David Cross, which is admittedly funny) to quickly become a rock star salesman and get promoted to a Power Caller. This puts him in opposition to his former lowly telemarketer colleagues, who had been agitating for a strike this whole time. Being a Power Caller brings with it an avalanche of easy money, but also involves literally selling slave labor in the form of convincing more corporate executives to buy up WorryFree's labor.

Thus far, this is a fairly rote Marxist critique of capitalism. The workers are exploited to enrich the capitalists, and petty bourgeoisie like Cassius are recruited into the ranks of enablers tasked with sustaining the systematic oppression. I'm guessing that perhaps Boots Riley realized he needed more of a "hook" to draw people in, because I have no other basis to explain what happens next.

Enter the half-horse half-man people. Complete with gigantic CGI cocks.

Within the universe, WorryFree secretly dovetails into genetic engineering to make their slave labor more efficient overall. So the "Equisapiens" horse-people are heralded as stronger, more versatile, and with far more stamina. So capitalism is bad because...horse people? I don't know. I'm definitely not the only person confused by what exactly Boots Riley was trying to say with this plot device.

(There's also something especially pernicious with having literal multi-millionaire actors lecture their audience about the evils of capitalism, but that's for another day)

I recognize it's silly of me to expect intellectual clarity from media intended to entertain. I recognize that art, music, movies, etc. are all made by individuals with severe leftist proclivities. But there are a number of counterfactuals I can point to in the other direction that I think work really well, even though they're rare. The Incredibles often gets heralded as a 'right-wing' piece of art that gets it right, at least from the standpoint of heralding the individual by embracing exceptionalism (even if it means also embracing inequality). Other People's Money (1991) is about a Wall Street corporate raider who buys up failing companies to take them apart, and somehow he's not shown as the villain! His speech finale is pitch-perfect and accurate defense of the function and benefits of hostile takeover, and the utility of price discovery and market efficiency. And it's well worn by now, but I have to give credit to Ayn Rand for grabbing the dilemma by the horns and embracing "actually not only is selfishness useful, it's moral" perspective of advocating for capitalism in Atlas Shrugged (which I found immensely enjoyable just as a piece of fiction, not afraid to admit).

So ultimately, the dearth of 'right-wing' art can be fairly explained by the demographics of the industries involved. So even though you have far fewer examples, from my limited perspective they seem to be of much higher quality and nuance. Obviously since I agree with the intended premises, I might be inclined to conclude that their higher quality stems from their inherent 'correctness', but that's awfully convenient for me. But besides that, I don't have a solid explanation for why art with anti-capitalist themes comes off as so dumb. I'm open to explanations, and also definitely open to having my selection screened for bias. If you have examples of really good anti-capitalist art, I'd like to hear about it.