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New AP Taylor Swift episode, Marxist Theory + The Tortured Poets Department
It’s the day everyone was waiting for - we are revisiting Marxist Theory! Ok admittedly, it’s a heavier topic, but seeing as power dynamics are an incredibly core part of The Tortured Poets Department, it’s a great lens to dive deeper into this album. Join us as we get into songs such as “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys,” “Florida!!!,” and “I Hate It Here” to discuss how power, ownership, and social class play a role in creating meaning in these lyrics!
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🏫 This Week’s Extra Credit - Brought to you by Jenn
One of the fun things about doing summer school is revisiting topics we already discussed and researched over the last year. That means this is not the first Substack about Marxism, so if you are just so taken by this idea that you simply must learn more, feel free to check out what I wrote last November.
On the other hand, one of the challenging things about summer school is that now I have to find a whole new angle to take on this topic as I am writing about it for the second time 😅
Something I personally have struggled to unpack in these conversations is the contradictions inherent in discussing the ideas of Marxism in the context of a billionaire who has done incredibly radical things regarding art, ownership, etc. I am currently reading Marx for Cats by Leigh Clare La Berge (you can’t even begin to imagine how fun I am at parties), and La Berge gets into a concept called dialectics that I think can help me unpack that contradiction. So join me on this little journey as I write my way through the questions I have and see where we end up!
Dialectic Materialism
As always with these theories, don’t worry about remembering the specific phrases. If you want to dive into this phrase more, check out the book linked above or this shorter article with a pretty good summary. At a high level, this is a philosophical concept that looks at the contradictions that exist in science, society, and the world overall and uses the study of those contradictions to better understand how the world works. For example, in science, we understand that water is both a liquid and a gas depending on its temperature. It would seem contradictory that it could be two completely separate things, but through scientific inquiry into that contradiction, we understand more about how the world works.
For the sake of this short Substack, I’m oversimplifying a bit, but I really love this concept. While we may prefer simple and clean answers, we see more contradictions around us than anything else, and figuring out a way to work with that is important. The original concept of simple dialectics says that two people who completely disagree should have a conversation and together come to a new agreement. Dialectical Materialism looks more closely at some of the bigger issues and systems around us, but the core concept still remains: using contradiction to learn something new.
The Two Sides of Taylor (From a Marxist Point of View)
On one hand, we have Taylor the artist who is fighting hard for all artists to be able to own their work. One of Marx’s most enduring legacies is the idea of seizing the means of production, by which he meant that workers shouldn’t be separated from the things they create and consume. Taylor’s work to re-record her albums is an incredibly cool thing to witness, especially from a Marxist lens.
On the other hand, we have Taylor the billionaire who releases 50 variants of her albums and does all sorts of marketing plays to encourage fans to spend significant amounts of money to collect them all. From a Marxist lens, this particular practice encourages fans to work harder to make money, to then spend their money on this merch. By doing so, a Marxist would argue that she is contributing to the capitalistic wheel of work, and that level of work leads to alienation, which ultimately takes away from the human experience and only benefits the richest in society.
At this point, I would like to remind readers that playing with this theory doesn’t mean you have to agree with it 100%. So this isn’t me saying anything about how I personally feel about these sides to Taylor, but rather it’s always a challenge to discuss Marxist Theory and Taylor knowing that this contradiction is incredibly real. When we are focused simply on the text itself, I have no issue applying the theory to the lyrics, but when we back up and get into discussions about Taylor as a person and her relationship to her masters, her fans, etc. it gets a bit stickier. Obviously, she does what she does for her own reasons, so it would be insane for me to speculate, but what DOES interest me is what we learn about how the world works if we try to work through these contradictions.
Reconciling The Contradictions
Ok here is where my smooth flow of writing completely stopped. I don’t actually know how to reconcile these things. My first thought is that the only way it all makes sense together is if we see Taylor as someone who is only interested in herself. Owning her art and selling a lot of merch are two things that benefit her greatly. While in some ways I’m sure that’s true (not just about her - but aren’t we all pretty self-interested up to a certain point?), it doesn’t feel like an actual answer. We have too much evidence of her being incredibly generous with her money for it to be all about hoarding ownership and capital.
Perhaps the better answer is that some things are personal and some things are business. Owning her art mattered to her personally, so she invested the time and effort to ensure that happened. Running her business is, obviously, a business. As long as fans buy merch, the company is incentivized to sell it.
If we want to stay in the world of Marxism, I would argue then that the contradiction exists in being an artist who is creating art for consumption in a capitalistic society. What we learn from this is that capitalism isn’t created to support art for the sake of art. If you are asking me personally, maybe she just wants to see how big this can get and how much she can do, and the philosophical implications of her business strategy are maybe not top of mind. The naturally competitive side of me would honestly totally get that.
Ending on a Lighter Note
Ok, this wasn’t the lightest of our Substacks, but I appreciate you going through this journey as I work through it! On a lighter note, speaking about power dynamics, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed watching so many people (mostly men) just foam at the mouth over her success. In this week’s episode, we talked a bit about gender and Marxism, but regardless of whether Marx would like Taylor or not, I just love seeing a woman with this power and how upset some people get about it. A few weeks ago, I included a Simone de Beauvoir quote in my Substack on Paris, and I’ll just leave you with the same quote yet again. It feels like a nice way to end here.
“No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.”
Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex