Communications and Media

Under monopoly capitalism all mass culture is identical
Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno

Most of us today agree that when the word consumerism is mentioned, it generally means capitalism. It include all forms and systems inside its mechanism like, popular culture. As Horkheimer and Adorno discussed, the essential characteristic of the culture industry is repetition(1972). Adorno illustrates this by differentiating popular and serious music. In his essay On Jazz, Adorno had argued that an essential characteristic of popular music was its standardization. On Popular Music, written in 1941 with the assistance of George Simpson, repeats this point. The whole structure of popular music is standardized, even where the attempt is made to circumvent standardization. Standardization extends from the most general features to the most specific ones (Adorno 1994). Standardization implies the interchangeability, the substitutability of parts.

Popular Culture, because it represents profit, power, privilege, comprises one of those scarce resource. For this reason, the central question for Marxism is not how popular culture serves to stabilize the system, but on how popular culture is produced and reproduced to serve the interest of specific groups. To qoute Real(1975), who echoes Marx,  popular culture primarily serves the interest of relatively small political-economic power elite that sits at the top of the social pyramid.

Marxism in American Consumerism

Alienation in its modern sense, is revealed in this song  by Bueno, the song tries to show how alienated the people under capitalism. This relates to the concept of  ideological hegemony  (Gramsci, 1959), or the control over cultural objects and symbols. Stated formally,, those at the apex of power and property hierarchies not only pass their high status to their offspring, but because these people control the supertstructure mass media, their view of the world also becomes accepted truth.

Celebrate. Suck it up. Swallow it down.Every good consumer has a feeling they need it.Its our lasting liberty-the freedom to succumb,Its all fixed ideals, its our ramble on and on

Marxism is the dialectical negation of the highest developments in bourgeois thought, and through this of the reality from which that thought flows and of which it forms a necessary part. As a theory, it had first to penetrate beneath the day-to-day phenomenal form of capitalist society to the social relations of production. It demonstrated that production under capitalism continues, and society develops, not through any conscious plan, but through the drive to produce surplus value, consequent upon the reduction of labor power to a commodity, to units of abstract labor. This is the essence of the workers exploitation, rather than the fact, say, that he does not own the cars he produces. What he produces is essentially surplus value, the augmentation of that same capital which oppresses him.

Class and class inequalities are thus among the central concepts used by Bueno in their song

Realize these values are a debt we cant afford,when loss of life drives profits up and fuels a corporate war.The truth lay dead and buried under foot of industry,and the public is the product of a marketing campaign.This portrait prestigious soiled in blood,gives speechless mouths an anthem, gives our empty hearts a cause.See the masses cower, see the rest of you and me,In the shadow of America everyone concedes.

And properly so, considering the strong correlation between socioeconomic status and the access to and the use of media. But the issue for Marxist lies beyond these correlation it rests rather on the ways in which culture produces and reinforces class inequalities and, in the process, legitimizes the ideas of the dominant class. The lyrics, being a critique to a capitalist system, therefore, does not reflect the lives, needs and desires of the masses but of an elite who seek control peoples minds (Marcuse, 1964).

The song exposes, capitalist economy as an economy of deprivation, poverty and helplessness against ruling class. It is an economy that leads the masses to believe in the current system by using hegemonic ideologies found in every social institution of the society.

And the people are expendable commodities.They are a wage that fits their economy (a crippled economy), a sure profit stimuli.First world, HAHA Rich agenda Corporate cannon Human FodderAnd the model Americans a pawn moved by sentiment,Hes casually confident hes doing all he can.Buys the products that exploit him.Casts his vote to who excites him.When he wants an opinion he turns on the nightly news....

The public kept ignorant, boost profits for the private sect,who own our blood, who own our sweat, the class system is testament.And isnt it a miracle, everyone is expendable.

Monopoly Capital and Aesthetic of the Protest Song
The formation of mass-produced song, referred to here as pop songs like this song, can only be understood through an examination of the ideological machine that produced it. This ideological machine, which is determined by the flow of monopoly capital into the country, is the radio stations and music labels. This positioning of  the mass media, especially radio, as determined  by the growth of surplus capital, is relevant in order to counter the notion of technological determinism. One must remember that technological determinism is the conceptualization of technology as the base of societal  changes including literary change. It is admitted that technology, a part of the forces of production, indeed plays a role in the changes in the superstructure- consciousness, literary modes, or culture.

However, to argue that technology is the basis of all the changes in the is just not acceptable. The positioning of technology as a primary factor hides the importance of relations of production that sometimes hinder or push the change in the mode of production. What is proposed here is a historical analysis of technological development. It must be recalled that the rise of radio in the 20th century was practically connected to the military preparations of the imperial countries in the re-division of the world by capital. Historically, the development of radio is linked to the growing crisis of monopoly capital.