I've had this thought at times. I work a normal 9-5 in tech support, but ever since I was like 16 or so I thought of music as transceding from a hobby to an actual "I want to do this as a career", and it seems like in the past idk year or two I've really gotten serious to the point I pretty much have no other hobbies, where in the past I'd still play the occasional video game or watch series in my spare time etc.
Now even though I do love it, and don't really feel like it's even a chore to practice or work on writing a song, sometimes I wonder if it's what I'd do if I had true financial freedom. Like who knows if we lived in a socialist utopia where we could work like 15 hours a week etc I would be fine just going to work and then doing whatever, and just doing music purely as a hobby or enjoyment, but the idea of not having a choice, you either gotta work a 9-5 or somehow make your passions become a career makes it feel like maybe I've kind of "tricked" myself into viewing a passion as needing to have a career or money path in it. Anyone else feel similar?
Playing video games and watching series is the height of mind numbing capitalist entertainment. If that's all you sacrificed to spend more time on music, you're good. The rest of your thoughts are spot on, concerning not just capitalism but all other modes of production involving division of labor (so everything except communism). Marx wrote: "For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up till now."
Full passage here