Several of my professors, who were otherwise quite anticommunist, had personal experience with the Soviet Union's subsidizing of the arts, and praised it quite highly. One, who grew up in socialist Hungary, said that during the 60s and 70s you could to a concert with world-class artists for the equivalent of just a few US dollars. And audiences (he said) tended to be quite musically literate, because recordings of Soviet and even some western artists were cheap and everywhere -- not luxury items in any sense.
Another professor fondly recalled being in Prague during the 70s, and how you could go into almost any church or concert hall and hear very fine performance of often quite obscure early music. He went back years later after "democracy" was "restored," and found that the concerts were still there -- but it was all hack performances of the same two or three pieces that tourists like to hear.
It took two hours of working minimum wage to buy an Elvis ticket ticket.
Elvis ticket cost in 2023 dollars: $31
But minimum wage is $7.25/hr, so $31 is more like four hou... oh wait.
I know! The point is that we're seeing the combined effect of ticket prices increasing relative to inflation and minimum wage falling relative to inflation, compounding the unaffordability.
I talk about the real cost of living all the time.
1960 minimum wage was $1.00/hour and the cost of the average house was $11,000.00. Cost of the average house today is over $300,000.00. Minimum wage should be $30.00/hour, right?
I bought 4 tickets to Taylor Swift for my girlfriend and her friends and paid $407.57 total after all of the bullshit Ticketmaster fees.
~$101 per ticket isn’t cheap, but $900+ per ticket is either scalper/resale prices day of the show, or for some fancy VIP tickets, or just a made up number.
Monopolies is what causes this. Capitalism is just the enabler. But don't kid yourself if you think the rich don't gatekeep certain things in "communist" countries.
There aren't any communist countries, only a handful of states run by communists, who don't even claim to have reached socialism yet.
The problem is the commodity form – goods and services made for their use value and their exchange value. This is a problem in the states run by communists. They don't claim otherwise. Neither does any Marxist.
The world is currently dominated by imperialists. According to Marxists, imperialism is the 'monopoly finance' stage of capitalism, which is what you identify.
In a society that doesn't make commodities or which protects certain goods and services from the logic of commodities, the 'gatekeeping' of art (or any other good or service) wouldn't need to happen.
Art under capitalism, like everything else – food, shelter, clothes, air, water, etc – is commodified. This has awful consequences, which affects every commodity-producing society.
The 'communist countries' have only started on the path to abolish the commodity form. It will take decades to complete, maybe a century or more, and is unlikely to be fully achieved before the world is communist.
Why is Taylor Swift so popular? She sings well but I don't get the hype.
