The struggle is real.
Proposition: Socialism permeates counter culture because the media glorifies wealth and affluence to the point of ridiculousness and caricature. This is why there are so few pro-market, libertarian rappers like Eric July and myself.Take hip hop, for example. Big record labels essentially have the resources to give anyone enough of a platform to become popular in the mainstream, but they always choose to give platforms to performers who rap about getting rich. There's nothing wrong with wanting to get rich, but the inanity of the presentation tends to annoy and stir resentment among performers in "the underground" who haven't experienced as much market success.
Haters gonna hate?
This annoyance and resentment is almost always redirected at the market itself, which is why it is fashionable among rappers in the underground to virtue signal their hatred of money, profit and markets. This isn't surprising given the state of the indoctrination camps which pass for schools. It's likewise not uncommon to see indie rappers bragging about how they "do it for the love" or making songs about how everything in the business world is corrupt. The indie record labels Fake Four and Anticon are perfect examples of this - almost every artist on each roster is (supposedly) a self-proclaimed socialist or anti-capitalist.
This puts underground rappers in the awkward position of having staked their reputation on being proud of not having market success. If they experience market success, they'll be faced with a crisis of conscience. They'll either have to recant their anti-market position and risk losing the customer base they've ironically established by ridiculing markets, or they have to downplay the scale and scope of their success, which involves misrepresenting themselves to their customers.
Market double standards.
Either move is inherently self-limiting and would carry with it significant risk, but most artists choose the latter. For example, El-P of Run the Jewels has reaped huge market success by making music containing messages of condemnation for the market. Despite this success, he seems to double down on his anti-market sentiments with every release. An example of his lyrics from "A Christmas Fucking Miracle":
Who are they to just take shit and hoard it?
Who am I that I don't get my portion?
The most impressionable minds get molested
And informed by manipulating forces
Don't fret little man, don't cry
They can never take the energy inside you were born with
Knowing that, understand you could never be poor
You already won the war, you were born rich
You can only take the energy you had
Going back to the realm or the home where your lord is
Whoever whatever that lord is couldn't
Give a fuck if you ever made fortunes
Do as he says and not as he does, I guess? Nevermind the fact that the equipment with which his music is recorded, produced, mixed and mastered would never have existed without the division of labor or the consensual exchange of property. Capitalism literally made his art possible. And yes, he gives his music away for free, but that doesn't seem to have hurt his merchandise or ticket sales.
Misdiagnosing the problem.
What most artists fail to realize is that large record labels wouldn't be dominating the market if not for what is euphemistically called "intellectual property protection". Intellectual property protection is a function of government; not the market. Using government to intervene in the market is a feature of socialist thought. In fact, the first "intellectual property laws" on the books were called "monopoly laws". Intellectual property isn't even property; it's a non-scarce resource, the use of which doesn't bar others from using it.
"Intellectual property" means "government protected monopoly", which means that big record labels use the force of government to bar their competitors from the market.
That's not the market's fault. Through the use of licensing and copyright protection which could never exist absent the initiation of physical force, record labels are able to stop competitors from providing the same product at a lower price. And as I've discussed elsewhere, copying isn't theft; fines and taxation are.
As an aside, isn't it bizarre that IP and anti-trust are enforced by the same people? Probably more bizarre still that these people have a monopoly on the "legitimate" use of force.
An ironic tragedy.
The tragedy in all of this is that the lesser known artists who resent big labels for their market dominance also attempt to make use of "monopoly laws", or intellectual property protection, which means the idea of using government force to bar people from the market is largely unopposed. This near-consensus among content creators regarding intellectual property protection serves to create even more demand for government intervention in markets, which enables the big labels to crowd most people out of the market, thereby reducing available market share for everyone else.
This is wholly ironic for a culture that was founded on the art of sampling, especially since rejecting markets while attempting to participate in them is a performative contradiction. So not only are lesser known artists erroneously attributing the ill-gotten market dominance of big labels to the market itself, they are simultaneously creating demand for the very thing that allows major labels to maintain this dominance: government force.
In other words, they are blaming a problem created by socialism on the market and prescribing more of what caused the problem in the first place.
About the Author
I'm Jared Howe! I'm a Voluntaryist hip hop artist and professional technical editor/writer with a passion for Austrian economics and universal ethics. You can catch my podcast every Friday on the Seeds of Liberty Podcast Network.
