Tag: art

“Commodity Intimacy: Ella Fleck’s Installation and the Limits of ‘Critical’ Art at Frieze”

~ freerein61 ~ Leave a comment

Frieze London, the annual meeting point of the global art market, is no neutral stage. Hedge-fund managers, oligarchs’ advisers, and celebrity collectors move through Regent’s Park, selecting luxury commodities for private vaults, freeports, and speculative portfolios. Organisers describe the fair as a meeting place for “global culture,” but in reality, it is one of the clearest expressions of art’s financialisation under late capitalism. Here, artistic labour is stripped of its social meaning and turned into an asset class, valued not for its insight or urgency but for the appetites of the ultra-rich. The fact that this year’s fair rewarded a work exposing the industrialised production of online intimacy is an irony so stark it borders on satire. Yet it also reveals what the contemporary art world is willing to acknowledge and what it refuses to confront.

The 2026 Camden Art Centre Emerging Artist Award has gone to London-based artist Ella Fleck for her installation training material (aria), presented with LA gallery Ehrlich Steinberg in the fair’s Focus section. Fleck’s project draws on her undercover training as a “chatter” for an OnlyFans “parasite company”, a third-party agency that impersonates female creators and holds scripted conversations with subscribers. Often run transnationally by men, these agencies operate as outsourced intimacy factories. Their workers, frequently based in the Global South, perform scripted flirtation and emotional labour designed to maximise revenue. The “girl” a subscriber thinks he is messaging at 2 a.m. is more often than not a poorly paid shift worker following a productivity dashboard. It is a world of impersonation, alienation and relentless monetisation, where human connection becomes a revenue stream and loneliness a commodity.

Fleck’s research is serious, and her installation is one of the few works at Frieze to engage with the realities of life under contemporary capitalism. Visitors stand on a raised server-floor platform, where modular tiles and exposed cabling evoke the digital economy’s hidden infrastructure. Male voices performing chatter scripts reverberate through the structure, transforming the floor into a resonant chamber. Three monitors show a custom-coded manager’s dashboard, adapted from interfaces Fleck encountered during training, exposing the metrics, quotas and supervisory systems that govern this labour. A pheromone-infused scent fills the booth, reminding visitors that the desire being sold is manufactured. The installation’s strongest gesture is its insistence that visitors stand directly on the machinery of commodified intimacy, feeling the scripted voices vibrate beneath their feet. It effectively exposes a workplace usually concealed behind the fantasy of personal connection.

But the response to the work, and how it is framed, reveals the art establishment’s ideological boundaries. The Camden Art Centre jury praised the installation for making visible “the hidden architectures and technologies of online desire and commerce,” and for addressing “money, control, labour, manipulation and the power of images.” These are safe, abstract formulations. They gesture toward critique while avoiding the specific social relations underlying the industry Fleck has investigated. Absent is any recognition of the workers themselves: who they are, what they are paid, and how their labour fits into the global chains of exploitation underpinning platform capitalism. The chatter economy is not merely a cultural phenomenon or a question of “desire”; it is a brutally efficient mechanism for extracting profit from both the poorly paid worker typing scripted flirtations and the isolated man paying for companionship he cannot find elsewhere. Fleck’s installation points to these realities, but the art world’s reception reveals how far it will go and where it draws the line.

Inside the machinery of commodified intimacy

The most compelling aspect of Fleck’s project is her immersion in what might be called the chatter economy: a hidden, industrialised sector of digital labour beneath the glossy marketing of “creator platforms.” Using a male alias, she trained as “Eliott,” learning the scripts, behavioural prompts and manipulative techniques used to extract money from isolated men seeking connection. The arrangement is brutally simple: men impersonate women, chat with other men and sell the illusion of intimacy. What is marketed as personal desire is actually a production line governed by metrics, quotas and managerial oversight. The chatter is not a romantic interlocutor but a worker performing emotional labour under conditions shaped entirely by profit.

This is the true subject of Fleck’s installation, and where the work is strongest. She does not present the chatter economy as a metaphor or cultural curiosity; she treats it as a workplace. The installation gives this system physical form, making visitors confront the infrastructure that enables such labour. Its raised server-floor platform with modular tiles, exposed cabling and vibration exciters evokes the hidden architecture of the digital economy. This is the kind of flooring found in data centres, call-centre facilities and server rooms: the literal ground on which contemporary exploitation rests. Standing on it, visitors feel male voices from scripted chatter reverberate through their feet. The fantasy of intimacy gives way to the physical sensation of labour.

Three monitors show a custom-coded manager’s dashboard, adapted from interfaces Fleck encountered during her training. It displays the metrics that shape the chatter’s day: response times, conversion rates, subscriber spending, and productivity targets. The dashboard isn’t an artistic invention; it reflects the real tools this industry uses to monitor and discipline workers. A pheromone-infused scent fills the booth, underscoring the manufactured nature of the desire being sold. Everything in the installation points to the same conclusion: intimacy has been industrialised, and the worker’s body reduced to scripts and metrics has been absorbed into a system designed to monetise loneliness.

The platform itself is the installation’s strongest element. It makes the internet’s usually hidden infrastructure tangible, revealing the labour beneath the fantasy. This is a workplace, not a boudoir call centre disguised as a love affair. Visitors stand not in a realm of desire, but amid the machinery of commodification. The voices vibrating through the floor are not whispers of seduction; they are echoes of wage labour. The installation’s power comes from this inversion: it collapses the distance between digital fantasy and the physical conditions that produce it.

Fleck’s decision to foreground the infrastructure is significant. Much contemporary art dealing with digital culture remains at the level of imagery, aesthetics or surface critique. Fleck instead directs attention to the material base: the servers, the scripts, the dashboards, the labour processes. She shows that the chatter economy is not a cultural phenomenon but a node in the global supply chain of platform capitalism. Workers performing these scripts are often based in the Global South, earning low wages, sometimes paid partly on commission. Their labour is outsourced emotional work, sold under the guise of intimacy, and governed by the same managerial logic that structures call centres, content moderation farms and other forms of digital piecework.

In this sense, Fleck’s installation is about more than deception or fantasy. It shows how human connection becomes a commodity and emotional labour is reduced to programmable tasks. It suggests that capitalism colonises even life’s most intimate aspects, turning affection, attention, and companionship into sources of revenue. The installation is most effective when it insists on this material reality and forces visitors to confront the machinery beneath the illusion.

What the jury praised and what it avoided

The Camden Art Centre jury praised Fleck’s installation for exposing “hidden architectures and technologies of online desire and commerce,” and for addressing “money, control, labour, manipulation and the power of images.” Such phrases are typical of contemporary curatorial discourse: safe, abstract and deliberately non-committal. They gesture toward critique without naming the social relations at stake. This allows the institution to appear engaged with labour and exploitation while avoiding confrontation with the actual conditions of the workers whose labour the piece makes visible. In this sense, the jury’s statement is not merely incomplete; it reflects the art world’s ideological limits.

It entirely fails to recognise the workers. The chatter economy is neither an aesthetic phenomenon nor a cultural metaphor; it is a workplace staffed by real people doing real labour under conditions of exploitation. Investigative reporting over the past several years has documented chatters in the Philippines and elsewhere in the global South working for low wages, sometimes with part of their pay tied to commission. Their work is outsourced call-centre labour presented as intimacy. They work night shifts, follow scripts, meet quotas, and are monitored by dashboards like those used in customer-service centres and content-moderation farms. Above them are agency owners, creators, and OnlyFans itself, whose billionaire owner takes a cut of every transaction. The chatter economy is not a cultural curiosity but a node in the global supply chain of platform capitalism.

At the bottom of this hierarchy are two exploited figures. First is the poorly paid chatter, typing scripted flirtations, whose work hides behind the illusion of personal connection. Second is the isolated man paying for companionship he cannot find elsewhere, whose loneliness the same system monetises. Each is exploited differently, but by the same system: the chatter’s labour is cheapened and concealed, while the subscriber’s emotional need is commodified and sold back to him. Both are victims of a social order that has turned human connection into a revenue stream.

The jury’s language dissolves these realities into a cloud of abstractions. “Labour” becomes a conceptual motif rather than a class relation. “Desire” becomes a cultural theme rather than a symptom of social breakdown. “Manipulation” becomes an aesthetic category rather than a description of how corporations profit from human vulnerability. This is no accident. The art world is comfortable with metaphors but allergic to material analysis. It can tolerate works that expose mechanisms, but not those that explain them. Explanation would require naming the class relations that structure the industry, and the art world, dependent on the fortunes of the wealthy, is unwilling to do so.

The chatter economy directly expresses the social crisis created by decades of neoliberal restructuring: insecure work, the collapse of public life, atomisation, and the erosion of community. The men who pay for scripted companionship are not simply indulging in “heterosexual male fantasy,” as the fair’s own description suggests. They are responding to lives shaped by austerity, precarity, and social isolation. Their loneliness is not a psychological quirk but a social fact. The chatter’s labour is not merely a cultural phenomenon; it is exploitation. Yet the art world frames both as matters of “desire,” “images,” and “online commerce,” as though the problem were representation rather than political economy.

This abstraction serves a purpose: it allows institutions like Frieze and Camden Art Centre to acknowledge exploitation without implicating themselves in the system that produces it. IMG, a global entertainment corporation, owns Frieze, and it sells luxury goods to the wealthy. It is structurally incapable of addressing the class relations underpinning the chatter economy, because those same relations underpin the art market itself. Speaking plainly about exploitation in one sector would invite questions about exploitation in another. Better, then, to speak in abstractions to praise works for revealing “hidden architectures” while leaving the owners of those architectures unnamed.

Fleck’s installation points to the realities the jury avoids. It reveals the machinery beneath the fantasy. But the art world’s response shows how far it will go and where it draws the line.

Gender as mask, not engine

Frieze’s own description presents Fleck’s installation as an investigation of “heterosexual male fantasies.” This is a familiar move: reducing a social phenomenon to psychology, then reducing psychology to gender. It is the standard reflex of contemporary cultural institutions faced with exploitation they cannot name. Gender becomes a convenient interpretive screen, safe, fashionable, and politically unthreatening. But gender is not the engine of this industry; it is the costume. The engine is the commodification of human need.

The chatter economy is not meaningfully driven by “fantasy.” Capital’s logic drives it: the imperative to extract profit from every human vulnerability, every emotional deficit, and every form of isolation produced by a society organised around competition and precarity. Fantasy is merely the interface; the machinery beneath it is economic.

Marx’s analysis of commodity fetishism feels almost too literal here. In the chatter economy, what appears to be a relationship between a subscriber and a woman who doesn’t exist is really a relationship between a customer and a wage worker, mediated by a corporation and concealed by software. The “girl” is a commodity, the “relationship” a transaction, and the “desire” a revenue stream. The human connection the subscriber believes he is buying is, in fact, a relation between things: a script, a dashboard, and a payment processor. Fleck’s installation brilliantly places the visitor directly on the infrastructure that makes this deception possible. But the work falters when it treats the problem as one of male fantasy rather than capitalist social relations.

The art world refuses to ask the question it must: why so many men, often young and precariously situated, spend money they do not have on scripted companionship. The answer is not some fixed quality of “heterosexual male fantasy.” It lies in the conditions of life under late capitalism: insecure work, the erosion of community life, atomisation, and loneliness on a mass scale. The chatter economy is no cultural aberration; it is a symptom of a society where millions live without stable relationships, public spaces, time, or security. Men who pay for companionship are not indulging a psychological quirk; they are responding to a social crisis.

An industry that profits from loneliness depends on a society that produces it. The chatter economy commercialises a condition shaped by decades of neoliberal restructuring: the destruction of social housing, the erosion of welfare, the casualisation of labour, and the collapse of collective institutions. Loneliness is not an individual failing, but a structural outcome, and the chatter economy monetises it.

Yet Frieze’s framing reduces all of this to “male fantasy,” as if the problem were representation rather than political economy. This reduction serves a clear ideological function: it shifts attention from the class relations structuring the industry to individual behaviour, turns exploitation into psychology, and recasts a social crisis as a cultural trope. It lets the institution appear critical while avoiding any confrontation with the system that produces both the chatter’s labour and the subscriber’s isolation.

This marks the ideological limit of contemporary art discourse. It can acknowledge desire, fantasy, and representation, but not class. It can discuss gender, but not exploitation. It can gesture toward “hidden architectures,” yet it cannot name their owners. Fleck’s installation points to the realities the fair’s framing avoids, revealing the machinery beneath the illusion. But the art world’s response shows how far it will go and where it draws the line.

The art fair as ideological filter

The setting matters. Frieze is not an innocent backdrop but an active ideological filter. IMG, a global entertainment and sports conglomerate, owns the fair, and its business model depends on circulating luxury goods to the wealthy. Its purpose is not cultural enrichment but capital accumulation. In this context, the presentation and celebration of a work exposing the commodification of intimacy becomes a kind of theatre: a momentary glimpse of exploitation staged inside an event devoted to commodifying artistic labour itself. The contradiction is glaring, yet the fair’s framing neutralises it with remarkable efficiency.

The Camden Art Centre jury notes, blandly, that Fleck’s installation is presented in the “particular context” of an international art fair. This phrase is a masterpiece of evasion. It acknowledges the setting only to deflate its significance immediately. The “particular context” is not particular at all; it is the structural condition of the work’s reception. But the jury cannot explore that context. Doing so would require acknowledging that the art world itself is part of the same system of extraction, speculation, and class power that produces the chatter economy Fleck has investigated. The chatter economy monetises loneliness; the art fair monetises culture. Both depend on the same class hierarchy, the same concentration of wealth, the same global circuits of capital.

This is the ideological limit of “critical” art under capitalism. It may expose mechanisms, but it must not explain them. Exposure is safe; explanation is dangerous. Exposure can be absorbed into the fair’s marketing language: “hidden architectures,” “online desire,” “the power of images.” Explanation would require naming the class relations that structure the industry: the billionaire owners, the speculative collectors, the corporate sponsors, the financial institutions that treat art as a hedge against inflation. It would require acknowledging that the fair’s own existence depends on the fortunes of the rich, and that the art world’s economic base is inseparable from the inequalities it occasionally gestures toward.

The chatter economy and the art market are not parallel phenomena; they express the same social order. In both, labour is hidden, value is extracted, and human need is commodified. The chatter’s emotional labour is concealed behind the fantasy of intimacy; the artist’s intellectual labour is concealed behind the glamour of the fair. The subscriber pays for companionship he cannot find elsewhere; the collector pays for cultural capital he cannot produce. Corporations mediate both transactions and profit from individuals’ alienation in a society organised around competition and scarcity.

Yet the fair’s framing insists on treating Fleck’s work as a cultural commentary rather than a political one. It reduces exploitation to aesthetics, class relations to “themes,” and structural inequality to “context.” This is not simply a failure of analysis; it is a structural necessity. The art world cannot name the system that sustains it. It cannot acknowledge that the same forces driving workers in the Philippines to perform scripted intimacy for low wages also drive artists to produce market‑friendly work for speculative buyers. It cannot admit that the same social conditions that make art fairs the preserve of the ultra-rich also produce the loneliness monetised by OnlyFans.

Fleck’s installation, by exposing the machinery beneath the fantasy, points toward these realities. But the institution’s response reveals how far it will go and where it draws the line. The fair can tolerate critique, but only if it remains abstract. It can reward exposure, but only if it stops short of explanation. It can acknowledge exploitation, but only if it does not name the exploiters.

Where Fleck’s work points and where it stops

None of this is meant as a criticism of Fleck for exhibiting at Frieze. Artists have to work within existing institutions, not those they wish existed. The contemporary art world offers few places for serious engagement with the realities of exploitation, and fewer still where such work can be funded, shown, and discussed. Fleck’s willingness to enter a squalid corner of the digital economy, rather than theorising about it from a safe distance, is admirable. Much contemporary art is contentless: formal games, lifestyle branding, or gestures of political “concern” that vanish on contact with reality. Fleck’s work has a genuine subject, grounded in research and lived experience. It is rare to see an artist spend time inside the machinery of exploitation rather than merely depict its surface.

But the installation stops at exposure. It reveals the machinery beneath our feet without showing the system that built it. It lays bare the cabling and pipework, but not the ownership and exploitation that make them profitable. It gestures toward class, then retreats into gender. It identifies alienation without tracing its roots. The chatter economy is not an isolated phenomenon; it is a symptom of a broader social order that has commodified every human need and hollowed out every form of collective life. Exposing the mechanism without analysing the system leaves viewers with discomfort, but not understanding.

This limitation is not personal; it reflects the pressures on artists working within institutions whose economic base depends on the very class whose power they might otherwise critique. The art world can tolerate works that reveal exploitation, but only if they do not name the exploiters. It can reward exposure, but not explanation; acknowledge alienation, but not the social relations that produce it. Fleck’s installation pushes against these boundaries, but does not break them. It points beyond itself, toward questions the art world is structurally unwilling to confront.

The next stepone Fleck is well positioned to take in her upcoming solo exhibition at Camden Art Centreis to follow these threads further: from the infrastructure to the people who inhabit it; to the chatters in the global South, whose labour is hidden behind the fantasy of intimacy; to the agency owners who profit from their work; to the platform’s billionaire class, whose wealth is built on monetising loneliness; and to the social conditions that produce mass loneliness in the first place: precarious employment, collapsing public services, atomised communities, and decades of austerity that have stripped life of stability and connection.

Such an approach would not simply expose a mechanism; it would analyse a system. It would show that the chatter economy is not a cultural curiosity but a direct expression of the crisis of social reproduction under late capitalism. It would reveal that men paying for companionship are not indulging a psychological quirk but responding to life conditions shaped by insecurity and isolation. It would also show that the exploitation of chatters and the alienation of subscribers are two sides of the same social order.

This would be work worth seeing. It would move beyond the art world’s comfort zone of abstraction and metaphor to confront the class relations shaping both the digital economy and the cultural institutions that claim to critique it. Fleck has already shown she can uncover the hidden sites of contemporary exploitation. The challenge now is to follow those threads to their source: the system that produces them, and the possibility of a world where human connection is not a commodity.

Carnival, Claudia Jones, and the Machinery of the Surveillance State:

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A tradition that began as an act of defiance is now being absorbed by authority. Sixty years after the initial Notting Hill Carnival, which burst onto the streets of West London in rebellion, the event takes place under conditions the founders could never have imagined. This year, close to two million people participated, while 7,000 police officers, drones, and facial-recognition cameras monitored the crowds. A security operation costing up to £20 million surrounded the area. Over 330 individuals were banned from attending before the event started, and by the end of the first day, police had made 169 arrests. The difference between Carnival’s origins and its current state is not just stark; it is a matter of history. Carnival was born from a riot; today, it is managed as if it could be another riot.

To understand what has been done to Carnival, one must return to the figure who helped bring it into being: Claudia Jones. Her life, politics, and purpose illuminate precisely what is being erased and why.

Claudia Jones: A Revolutionary Life Against Empire

Claudia Jones wasn’t a “community organiser” in the modern, sanitised sense. She was a communist, a Black internationalist, and a leading anti-imperialist thinker of the mid-20th century. Born in Trinidad and raised in Harlem, she was radicalised by the racism of the Depression era. Jones joined the Communist Party USA and became a prominent writer on issues of race, gender, and class. Her 1949 essay “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman” is still a key text in Black Marxist feminism.

Her political activism led to state repression, with the U.S. repeatedly detaining, imprisoning, and finally deporting her in 1955 amid McCarthyism. Britain only permitted her entry because Trinidad was still a colony; she arrived in London as a political exile. There, Jones found a Black community facing problems eerily similar to those in her homeland: racist policing, housing discrimination, low wages, and rising violence from far-right street gangs. She founded the West Indian Gazette, Britain’s first major Black newspaper, not just as a cultural platform but as a means for political activism. It became a space for agitation, organisation, and awareness-raising.

In response to the 1958 Notting Hill race riots and the 1959 murder of Kelso Cochrane, Jones opted for action rather than appeals to authority. She organised an indoor Caribbean carnival at St Pancras Town Hall in January 1959 to directly address racist violence. The event celebrated Caribbean culture and made a political statement: Black people had the right to occupy public space, be seen, express joy, and remain unafraid. The roots of carnival in Caribbean masquerade traditions—created by enslaved and colonised people to mock the planter class highlighted its political significance. Carnival was never just entertainment; it was a cultural act through which the oppressed found a voice in a context where theirs was otherwise suppressed. Today, this history is hidden beneath barricades, drones, and biometric checkpoints.

The outdoor street Carnival that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s was influenced by the same challenges Jones faced: police harassment, racial violence, and the British state’s refusal to recognise Black Britons in public life fully. Carnival served as a form of resistance, asserting existence against erasure, collective identity against isolation, and joy against repression. It was never meant to be ‘managed’ but to be visible. In its early years, Carnival often confronted police, who viewed it as a threat instead of a cultural celebration. The way police respond to Carnival has always reflected the government’s attitude toward Black communities. What has evolved is not the suspicion itself but the mechanisms behind it.

The increase in policing at Carnival is a systemic issue, not just occasional. Arrests have steadily risen each year—209 in 2022, 308 in 2023, 355 in 2024, and 528 last year. The Met publicly celebrates the success of live facial recognition, which identified 98 individuals in 2023 and resulted in 61 arrests. This year’s operation was the largest so far. The stated reasons are always the same: ensuring public safety, addressing knife crime, sexual assault, and preventing a minority from ruining it for everyone. However, this framing is deeply connected to a historical pattern of viewing Black communities as suspicious. Carnival is uniquely labelled as a security threat among Britain’s major cultural events. The policing tactics resemble counter-insurgency measures more than crowd control.

Even senior police officials acknowledge the double standards involved. Former detective chief inspector Mike Neville has described Carnival as the country’s worst example of a two-tier policing system. The London Assembly’s Police and Crime Committee warns that repeatedly diverting officers to police Carnival disrupts neighbourhood policing throughout the capital. The operation expands each year, funded by millions from City Hall. Each year, politicians and media repeat the same pattern: celebrating “vibrant multiculturalism” while using surveillance and coercion tools against the communities being celebrated. Carnival is lauded as a symbol of diversity but also policed as a potential source of unrest.

Commodification Wears a Friendlier Face

If policing serves to neutralise Carnival’s radical roots, then commodification symbolises capitalism’s role. Each year, media coverage reduces Carnival to an economic event focusing on tourism income, transportation issues, and hospitality profits. The “Carnival Economics” project highlights how this reduction neglects the community-based infrastructures—steel bands, mas camps, cultural centres like the Yaa Centre that support Carnival year-round. This form of erasure is subtler; it doesn’t involve drones or facial recognition but instead redefines Carnival as merely a “cultural asset,” a tourist draw, or a contributor to GDP. The political messages the defiance, the assertion of presence, the Caribbean working-class history are erased. Carnival becomes a brand, and its creators fade into the background.

Securitisation and commodification are not opposing forces but are interconnected. They jointly symbolise how a working-class, anti-racist cultural legacy is absorbed into the administrative and economic systems of a state and market that did not originate it and are keen to neutralise its significance. Carnival emerged from Claudia Jones’s revolutionary activism, Caribbean anti-colonial traditions, and Black Britons’ refusal to be invisible. It served as a declaration of presence in defiance of a hostile system.

Today, that tradition has adapted to absorb dissent. It encloses Carnival with police, drones, and biometric tech. It markets Carnival as a tourist destination. It advocates multiculturalism while viewing Black presence as a security threat.

The steel bands continue to play. The crowds keep arriving. Yet, the political significance has been stripped away. An event created because Black Britons faced attacks for claiming public space now relies on thousands of officers and biometric systems to control who can occupy that space. This is not true stewardship. It’s the gradual replacement of a community’s self-organised resistance with the machinery of the very state it once challenged.

Carnival Pays Lip Service to the Memory of Grenfell

Every year, during Notting Hill Carnival, a moment is set aside to remember Grenfell. Green hearts decorate banners and sound systems, a silence is observed, and tributes spread among the crowd. Those who participate do so genuinely. However, on an institutional and political level, Carnival now only superficially acknowledges Grenfell. The act of remembrance has been stylized, losing its deeper significance, and has been absorbed into the official story that has ultimately neutralized the spirit of Carnival.

Grenfell was more than an isolated tragedy; it was the unavoidable outcome of a political system that considers working-class, racialised communities expendable. Policies such as deregulation, outsourcing, cost-cutting, disrespect for tenants, and the dismissal of warnings set the stage for the disaster. The government’s response, characterised by delays, confusion, and a lengthy inquiry that has yet to deliver justice, mirrored this same underlying attitude. Ultimately, Grenfell symbolises a form of social murder.

Carnival’s official remembrance is mainly symbolic, providing a platform to acknowledge grief without addressing responsibility. The green heart signifies acceptable mourning, enabling recognition of loss while avoiding the acknowledgment of the systemic issues behind it. The political statement of Grenfell that the system endangers residents at home and surveils them in public is intentionally left out. Carnival can grieve, but it cannot openly assign blame or accuse.

This is the pattern of managed memory. The entity that uses drones and facial recognition to police Carnival also oversees the unresolved aftermath of Grenfell. It allows commemoration because, when stripped of politics, it is harmless. However, what it cannot accept is the link between the two: that the same communities whose cultural practices are seen as security threats were the ones left to burn in a tower with flammable cladding.

Carnival recalls Grenfell. However, unless remembrance turns into blame—unless sorrow shifts into activism, the memory will stay a tradition rather than a true confrontation. The green heart may continue to beat, as long as it does not reflect on the systems that enabled Grenfell and now encircle Carnival.

The Bands Played On

This year, as the procession arrived at Ladbroke Grove fire station, firefighters in uniform paid their respects to Grenfell. They formed a solemn line, heads bowed and saluting the memory of the 72 victims of the tower fire wrapped in flammable cladding. It was a sincere display of dignity by workers who witnessed the tragedy firsthand, carried bodies from smoke-filled stairwells, and continue to live with the trauma. Meanwhile, around them, the bands played on.

This isn’t disrespect from Carnival’s participants but reflects the choreography imposed on Carnival itself: remembrance is allowed only if it doesn’t disrupt the spectacle. The music keeps playing because Carnival has been redesigned to absorb grief without making it political. Firefighters pause; the crowd pauses; the sound systems lower the volume briefly, then the rhythm continues, as if grief were just another programmed beat in the entertainment. Grenfell turns into a ritual rather than a true reckoning.

The firefighters’ tribute highlights a contradiction. While those who risked their lives see Grenfell as a social murder caused by deregulation, outsourcing, tenants’ contempt, and a political economy that disposes of working-class lives, Carnival’s official memorial remains only symbolic. Green hearts, brief silences, and respectful nods are permitted because they avoid naming the responsible parties.

The issue isn’t the bands performing; they’re merely a symptom. Carnival has become a commercialised event, stripped of its political roots Claudia Jones’s resistance, fighting racist violence, and highlighting Black working-class communities—now seen as mere historical background. Grenfell is recognized, but only as a sad event, not as a critique of the same system that now encircles Carnival with drones and facial recognition technology.

The firefighters attempted to show respect. They genuinely tried. However, the surrounding machinery made their tribute merely symbolic, not confrontational. The music restarted because Carnival can mourn, but it cannot accuse. Until accusations can disrupt the rhythm, Grenfell will stay a tolerated memory for the state—as long as the bands keep playing.

Jones recognized that culture is inherently contentious. It is a site of ongoing conflict. Carnival was never intended merely as a celebration of diversity; it was a political statement affirming that Black working-class life in Britain would not be marginalized, erased, or intimidated. The issue is not that Carnival has always been subject to policing—that was part of its history—but that this policing has become normalized, integrated into the frameworks of “public safety,” “crowd management,” and “economic impact.” This shift has obscured Carnival’s radical roots, which institutions once challenged it.

Hats, hierarchy, and the reproduction of class power

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While Bernard Capp’s article “The Cultural, Social, and Ideological Role of the Hat in Early Modern England,” effectively captures the everyday experience of hat-honour, it also uncovers how early modern social hierarchy was maintained through intricate micro-rituals—tiny, habitual gestures so ingrained they appeared natural. The hat served not just as a symbol but as a daily tool for the ruling class to reinforce their authority. From a Marxist perspective, it was part of the ideological superstructure upholding property relations. Capp’s impressive evidence demonstrates that this superstructure operated not just through sermons or laws, but through the smallest bodily movements.

Doffing a hat was a simple act of submission that didn’t need literacy, catechism, or political knowledge. It embodied ideology physically—a reflex that signalled the legitimacy, visibility, and enforceability of social rank. The requirement to perform this gesture “indoors or out,” in every interaction, highlights its role: hierarchy had to be continuously demonstrated to maintain credibility. The hat served as a mobile display of class authority.

The refusal was so explosive because when the Quakers declined to remove their hats, it wasn’t just about etiquette; it challenged the very reproduction of hierarchy. They refused to partake in the ideological effort that kept the social order intact. In this way, refusing to wear hats is comparable to the Levellers’ push for political equality and the Diggers’ call for economic equality. All three challenged the ideological and material bases of inherited privilege.

Capp hints at a deeper connection but chooses not to delve into it. His analysis mainly revolves around surface-level cultural details—the gestures, anecdotes, and social reactions—rather than the underlying class conflicts that give these gestures their meaning. Nevertheless, the evidence he provides strongly indicates a structural interpretation. The anger exhibited by magistrates, fathers, and local gentry was not just personal insult; it signalled a panic among the ruling class as their routines, which reinforced their authority, started to unravel. Essentially, the hat was more than a trivial object; it was a small part of the larger system of class control that began to weaken in the 1640s.

Capp’s article reveals the core focus of Marxist historiography regarding the English Revolution, emphasising the intersection of ideology, property, and social practice. The hat was not merely a cultural object; it served as a micro-technology for the early modern ruling class to maintain power. His evidence aligns with the tradition established by Christopher Hill, expanded by E.P. Thompson, radicalised by Ellen Meiksins Wood, and explored through bodily gestures by Stallybrass & White.

Christopher Hill argued that ideology functions as a form of class struggle. He believed that the English Revolution centred on conflicts over the ideological basis of property and sovereignty—an insight missing from Capp’s analysis. Hat-honour was a daily ritual that upheld and naturalised hierarchy, embodying Hill’s concept of the “world of obedience.” In this universe, deference was instinctive and bodily. When Quakers refused to remove their hats, they were not merely breaking social etiquette; they were challenging the ideological reproduction of class power. Their refusal disrupted the routine performance of subordination that upheld the divine legitimacy of the property system.

Hill would have seen the hat as a marker of where the Revolution’s underlying conflicts became visible. The anger displayed by magistrates and fathers was not just about personal insults; it was a sign of a ruling class terrified by the decline of the ideological rituals that maintained their power.

E.P. Thompson: class as lived experience

Thompson emphasises that class is not a fixed category but a dynamic relationship constantly negotiated in daily life. Capp’s evidence exemplifies this idea. Hat-honour was a common custom used to uphold hierarchy, and refusing to doff one’s hat was a way to challenge it. The Worcestershire parish officer who refused to remove his hat in 1608 was not just being rude; he was engaging in what Thompson calls a “moral economy of defiance,” asserting through his actions that the ritual of deference was neither natural nor unavoidable. Similarly, the Quakers’ refusals can be seen as a form of class struggle expressed through gestures. Their act was a practical rejection of the bodily discipline that reinforced the ruling class’s authority. Thompson would interpret Ellwood’s father’s confiscation of hats not as eccentricity but as an effort to enforce bodily submission, which supported the social order.

Ellen Meiksins Wood: property relations and the logic of domination

Wood’s contribution deepens the understanding that the English Revolution was not just a monarchy crisis but also a challenge to the property system shaping English society. Hat-honour served as an ideological practice that reinforced the perceived naturalness of this regime. It functioned as a ritual embodying the idea that rank—and consequently property—granted legitimate authority over others.

The Quakers’ refusal was more than symbolic; it challenged the core ideas of agrarian capitalism. By insisting on spiritual equality, they also implied social equality, which in turn questioned the property relations underpinning English society. According to Wood, the hat-refusal exemplified a micro-political act reflecting the same reasoning behind the Levellers’ push for political equality and the Diggers’ call for economic equality.

Stallybrass & White: the politics of the body

If Hill, Thompson, and Wood offer the structural framework, Stallybrass & White contribute the detailed anatomy. Their exploration of the “politics and poetics of transgression” demonstrates how the body functions as a site for inscribing and challenging hierarchy. Hat-honour was a bodily ritual involving lowering the head, removing the covering, and physically enacting submission. It embodied ideology in a tangible form.

The Quakers’ refusal represented a physical act of rebellion, rejecting hierarchical control over even the smallest bodily actions. Stallybrass & White interpret Ellwood’s reluctance to go bareheaded “like a Mad-Man” as indicative of how deeply society had conditioned the body to conform to hierarchy — and how significant it was to break that conditioning. Their perspective helps explain why the hat was such a powerful symbol. In their view, clothing is more than just functional; it is a medium through which the body is disciplined, categorised, and made understandable. The hat served as a mobile sign of status, and removing it was a performative act of submission. By refusing the gesture, one was rejecting the imprinting of hierarchy onto the body itself.

Synthesis: the hat as a microcosm of the Revolution

Bringing these historians together offers a much more radical interpretation of Capp’s material than the article alone suggests: Hill argues that hat-honour was part of the ideological worldview broken by the Revolution. Thompson demonstrates that refusing to wear a hat was a tangible expression of class conflict. Wood explains that the gesture was closely linked to the property relations within agrarian capitalism. Stallybrass & White reveal that the hat served as a technology for disciplining the body and enforcing hierarchy.

Viewed from this perspective, Capp’s article extends beyond cultural history, serving as a case study on the extent of class domination in daily life and how revolutionary forces could challenge that control. The conflict over the hat symbolised a fight over whether hierarchy had any rightful claim to the body. When the body resisted, it triggered a ripple that threatened to destabilise the social order.

Material culture and the English Revolution: where Capp sits in the historiography

Capp’s article continues a long tradition in English social and cultural history that views everyday life as a battleground of ideas. Christopher Hill saw radicalism rooted in the beliefs of common people; Keith Thomas explored the cultural reasoning behind beliefs and actions; E.P. Thompson emphasised that class was experienced firsthand before being theorised. While Capp’s work fits well within this tradition, it also highlights some limitations of its empirical approach. Might Hill have questioned: What class dynamics made hat-honour essential? Could Thomas have asked: What mental frameworks gave it significance? Thompson would have inquired: What acts of resistance undermined it?

Capp provides the most comprehensive answer to the third question by illustrating how resistance arose, how it was perceived, and the consequences it faced. However, he largely leaves the first two questions unaddressed. Consequently, his article offers rich detail but lacks deep structural analysis—it reconstructs the ritual without fully exploring the underlying social relations that created it. This isn’t necessarily a weakness but an opportunity. Capp’s detailed evidence offers a valuable resource for historians to link the ideological framework with actual lived experiences of class. The hat serves as a crucial connection point between cultural history and political economy, revealing how property was established, naturalised, and challenged through everyday gestures.

A more dialectical interpretation of Capp’s material would see hat-honor as: a ritual for ideological reinforcement—daily displays of hierarchy that make class power seem natural; a site of hidden conflict—a gesture that can be inverted, withheld, or refused, exposing the coercive core beneath politeness; a point of revolutionary rupture—in the 1640s, when monarchy and property legitimacy were openly challenged, the hat became a battleground for ideological disputes of the old order; a material expression of egalitarian theology—for Quakers, refusal was not just symbolic but a doctrinal practice, embodying spiritual equality that also implied social equality; and a microcosm of the Revolution’s broader logic—the fight over the hat symbolized a struggle over whether hierarchy had any legitimate claim on the body and, by extension, on society.

Viewed this way, Capp’s article transcends simple cultural history to become an insight into the mechanisms of class control and the resistance they provoke when challenged. Capp reveals — perhaps unintentionally — that revolutions are fought not only in big arenas like parliaments, pulpits, and battlegrounds but also through small everyday acts. The English Revolution wasn’t just a matter of sovereignty; it challenged the body’s submission to inherited social rank. The Quakers’ refusal to remove their hats was a minor gesture with profound meaning: a practical rejection of the ideological order supporting property rights. When examined alongside the radical movements of the 1640s and 1650s, Capp’s article illustrates how revolutionary pressure can deeply infiltrate society, showing that questioning hierarchy can turn even a hat’s brim into a battleground.

I am grateful to C Thompson for bringing this article to my attention

Sources and Bibliography

Primary Sources

  • Ellwood, Thomas. The History of the Life of Thomas Ellwood, Written by Himself. London, 1714. A crucial firsthand account of Quaker practice and persecution, including Ellwood’s recollection of hat‑refusal and domestic conflict.
  • Fox, George. Journal. Various editions. Foundational Quaker text articulating the theological basis for refusing hat‑honour and other gestures of deference.
  • Winstanley, Gerrard. The Law of Freedom (1652); The True Levellers Standard Advanced (1649). Essential for situating egalitarian gestures (including hat‑refusal) within broader revolutionary challenges to property and hierarchy.
  • Lilburne, John. The Legal Fundamental Liberties of the People of England (1649). A Leveller articulation of political equality that parallels the Quaker rejection of bodily deference.

Secondary Sources: Marxist and Radical Historiography

Christopher Hill and the ideological foundations of hierarchy

  • Hill, Christopher. The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution. London: Penguin, 1972. The classic account of ideological rupture; indispensable for framing hat‑refusal as part of a broader crisis of obedience.
  • Hill, Christopher. Society and Puritanism in Pre‑Revolutionary England. London: Secker & Warburg, 1964. Key for understanding the ideological world in which hat‑honour operated.
  • Hill, Christopher. The Experience of Defeat. London: Allen Lane, 1984. Useful for situating Quaker radicalism within the post‑Revolution settlement.

E.P. Thompson and class as lived experience

  • Thompson, E.P. Customs in Common. London: Merlin Press, 1991. Essential for theorising hat‑honour as a “custom” that encoded hierarchy and hat‑refusal as a lived form of class struggle.
  • Thompson, E.P. The Making of the English Working Class. London: Gollancz, 1963. Foundational for understanding class as a relationship expressed through everyday practices.

Ellen Meiksins Wood and the logic of property relations

  • Wood, Ellen Meiksins. The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View. London: Verso, 2002. Provides the structural framework for linking hat‑honour to agrarian property relations.
  • Wood, Ellen Meiksins. Liberty and Property: A Social History of Western Political Thought. London: Verso, 2012. Crucial for understanding how political and ideological practices (like doffing) naturalised property‑based hierarchy.

Stallybrass & White and the politics of the body

  • Stallybrass, White. The Politics and Poetics of Transgression. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986. The definitive study of how hierarchy is inscribed on the body; essential for theorising hat‑honour as bodily discipline.

Cultural and Social History of Early Modern England

  • Thomas, Keith. Religion and the Decline of Magic. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971. A model for integrating belief, gesture, and social order.
  • Capp, Bernard. England’s Culture Wars: Puritan Reformation and Its Enemies in the Interregnum, 1649–1660. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Contextualises Capp’s broader work on cultural conflict and everyday life.
  • Capp, Bernard. “The Cultural, Social, and Ideological Role of the Hat in Early Modern England.” The Historical Journal (2026), 1–19. The article under review.
  • Sharpe, J.A. Early Modern England: A Social History 1550–1760. London: Arnold, 1987. Useful for situating hat‑honour within broader social practices.
  • Underdown, David. Revel, Riot and Rebellion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. Classic study of how everyday gestures and rituals encoded political tensions.

Material Culture, Embodiment, and Ideology

  • Brewer, John, and Roy Porter (eds.). Consumption and the World of Goods. London: Routledge, 1993. For situating hats within the broader field of early modern material culture.
  • Cressy, David. Dangerous Talk: Scandalous, Seditious, and Treasonable Speech in Pre‑Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Complements Capp’s focus on gesture with a focus on speech as ideological performance.
  • Hunt, Margaret. The Middling Sort: Commerce, Gender, and the Family in England, 1680–1780. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Useful for understanding how clothing and gesture marked status among non‑elite groups.

Quaker Studies

  • Bauman, Richard. Let Your Words Be Few: Symbolism of Speaking and Silence Among Seventeenth‑Century Quakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. A key anthropological study of Quaker embodied practice.
  • Reay, Barry. The Quakers and the English Revolution. London: Temple Smith, 1985. Essential for situating Quaker radicalism within the revolutionary context.

Additional Works on Hierarchy, Gesture, and Authority

  • Goffman, Erving. Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face‑to‑Face Behaviour. New York: Pantheon, 1967. Classic sociological framework for understanding ritualised deference.
  • Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. For theorising habitus and embodied hierarchy.

Nothing to Hide: Katie Price and the Celebrity Industrial Complex under Late Capitalism

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Introduction: The Spectacle of Transparency

Sky’s recent documentary, Nothing to Hide, which focuses on Katie Price’s long-standing celebrity persona, aims to offer an intimate and revelatory look at a woman described as having “lived her life in public.” However, it functions more as a commodity spectacle produced by one of the world’s largest media conglomerates. Its goal isn’t to reveal social truths but to reinforce the voyeuristic culture and personal exposure prevalent in modern capitalist entertainment. “The very title is ideologically revealing. It suggests that total exposure of one’s private life is a form of authenticity or empowerment.”

This ideological framing is intentional. It reflects a societal structure in which privacy has been diminished, commercialised, and weaponised. The documentary does not oppose the system that produced Katie Price; instead, it persists within it.

The Ideology of “Nothing to Hide”

The title ‘Nothing to Hide’ captures the core deception of the celebrity-industrial complex: the idea that transparency equals freedom. The bourgeois media fosters the illusion that being completely open is empowering—that someone who “hides nothing” is perceived as more genuine, brave, and authentic. In reality, this reflects the commodification of personal identity—the turning of private life into content for sale.

This signifies the complete merging of individual identity into a commercialised form. The confessional style of reality TV is not about revealing the truth but about performing transparency to hide its true economic interests. The “nothing to hide” ideology aligns with modern capitalism’s surveillance practices, viewing privacy as suspicious and visibility as a virtue. This reversal—where revealing oneself is seen as empowering—helps normalise the invasion of private life and portrays the loss of personal boundaries as a choice rather than a necessity.

Katie Price as Prototype of the Professional Celebrity

Katie Price’s career illustrates how British media culture has evolved over the past 25 years. From her glamour modelling days as “Jordan” in the late 1990s to her many appearances on reality TV, tabloid scandals, and staged personal dramas, Price embodies the “bread and circuses” culture of modern capitalism that the WSWS has frequently examined.

It is notable that Price “is not a craftsperson but a celebrity: her fame is the main product, separate from any artistic or intellectual value.” This insight is significant. Price exemplifies a post-Fordist cultural worker, whose “work” is to remain constantly accessible for consumption. Her labour involves generating visibility, and her commodity is herself.

The rise of professional celebrities coincides with the decline of traditional artistic labour markets, deregulation in media industries, and the proliferation of affordable, union-free entertainment formats. Price emerges as a natural outcome of a media system that prioritises spectacle over substance, emotional displays over artistic craftsmanship, and personal crises over social critique.

The Corporate Machinery: Sky, Comcast, and the Reality TV Mode of Production

The documentary comes from Sky, now owned by Comcast, one of Europe’s largest media companies. As your document notes, “these programmes are produced because they are cheap, they bypass unionised writers and actors, and they generate profit by feeding an audience a steady diet of manufactured personal drama.” This forms the economic foundation of the reality TV industry: low production costs, high emotional impact, minimal reliance on skilled workers, infinite scalability, and endless content creation centred on personal crises.

Reality television functions not just as a genre but as a production mode that capitalises on personal trauma, manipulates relationships, and turns private lives into commodities. Celebrities serve as both workers and products, caught in a destructive cycle of exposure that fuels profit. The WSWS’s analysis of Caroline Flack’s suicide highlights the deadly outcomes of this system. The same media that elevates celebrities also tears them down for profit. Price’s documentary is part of this cycle, providing a platform to “tell her side” only because her humiliation has already been monetised.

The Cycle of Humiliation and Redemption

The ongoing cycle of exposure, humiliation, redemption, and re-exposure isn’t an error—it’s the essence of the business model. This reflects the dialectic of celebrity culture under capitalism: First, construction—media creates a persona. Second, destruction—the persona is torn down for profit. Third, rehabilitation—a “tell-all” documentary offers redemption. Finally, re-commodification—The persona, having been reclaimed, re-enters the entertainment industry. Katie Price’s “Nothing to Hide” exemplifies stage three of this cycle. It’s not a system challenge, but its continuation. The document, which claims to be authentic, becomes a spectacle; it promises insight but ultimately sustains mystification.

What a Serious Documentary Would Examine

A truly critical documentary would analyse the social and economic forces behind the Katie Price phenomenon. To develop this idea, a serious film should: examine how public and private boundaries have blurred under neoliberalism; investigate the decline of traditional artistic labor markets and the rise of “celebrity labor’; explore how media conglomerates distract the public with celebrity gossip while social inequality grows and wars continue; place Price within the larger context of femininity commodification, where women’s bodies and personal lives are turned into industrialized commodities; and reveal the psychological and social harm caused by constant exposure. However, “Nothing to Hide” cannot fulfil this role, as it is a product of the very industry it claims to critique, making it just another form of the same commodity.

The Working Class and the Need for Genuine Culture

In conclusion, the working class needs art and culture that sheds light on social realities, rather than celebrity confessions that conceal them. Celebrity culture isn’t just trivial; it serves a political purpose by diverting attention from issues like wage stagnation, collapsing public services, militarism, social atomization, and the erosion of democratic rights. Instead of meaningful content, the working class gets Katie Price over Ken Loach, Love Island over Brecht, and Nothing to Hide instead of documentaries on NHS privatisation. This isn’t accidental but part of a cultural strategy by a ruling class that fears an informed and politically aware population.

Katie Price’s “Nothing to Hide” is a personal narrative that also functions as a product shaped by late capitalism. It illustrates the commodification of private life, the erosion of artistic culture, the exploitation of personal crises, the ideological praise of surveillance, and the corporate emphasis on cheap, high-yield entertainment. Rather than a documentary, it is a commercial spectacle designed to hide, rather than reveal, social realities. The working class needs cultural content that exposes its true conditions, not confessional entertainment that masks them.

A Trumpet of Sedition : Booksmaxxing and the Cultural Bankruptcy of the Upper Middle Class

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The Guardian and similar liberal-bourgeois outlets celebrate “booksmaxxing,” but this isn’t a sign of a cultural revival. Instead, it reveals the deep decline of bourgeois culture under late capitalism. The term—borrowed from the pseudo-Darwinian language of online manosphere self-optimisation—highlights the social forces at play. As noted, it reduces reading to “another tool for building one’s personal brand… another aesthetic marker to be curated on BookTok, Instagram, or Goodreads.”

This is not a revival of reading. Instead, it represents the commercialisation of reading at its peak—transforming intellectual engagement into a social media spectacle. The book serves as a prop; the reader becomes a self-promoter; and culture morphs into a marketplace of carefully crafted identities.

The Guardian’s enthusiasm for this trend is predictable, reflecting a privileged class whose view of culture is shaped by consumerism and fears of maintaining social status. Their claim that reading is now “sexy” signals not cultural vitality but its decline, highlighting a lack of genuine engagement with art, history, or social issues.

The publishing industry has historically moved away from representing the experiences of the working class. James McDonald’s question—“Where is our Zola?”—is genuine, highlighting a structural truth: the industry is dominated by the upper-middle class, whose preferences and ideological interests shape what gets published, promoted, and celebrated.

The popular genres—romance, YA fantasy, mystery/thriller—are no coincidence. They reflect a social group focused inward, fixated on identity, self-expression, and escapism. In contrast, literary fiction that engages with social issues is considered the least important, as the document notes.

This creates a disturbing scenario in which the lives of hundreds of millions of workers—such as warehouse staff, nurses, delivery drivers, teachers, and cleaners—are rendered invisible within the cultural domain. The “booksmaxxing” bookshelf serves as a showcase of upper-middle-class narcissism, presenting a curated display of aestheticised consumption.

Cultural Decay and the Crisis of Bourgeois Society

Marxists maintain that the cultural crisis is fundamentally connected to the capitalist crisis. David Walsh highlights a core contradiction: despite the existence of conditions conducive to a vibrant global artistic culture, capitalism’s social relations hinder its growth. As Leon Trotsky notes, the decline of bourgeois society intensifies social contradictions, creating a pressing demand for liberating art. However, this demand is not fulfilled by today’s cultural institutions, which instead suppress it through layers of identity-based censorship, market-driven infantilization, and the ongoing commodification of all human activities.

Booksmaxxing isn’t a departure from this process; instead, it represents its outcome. It substitutes authentic intellectual engagement for a shallow show, trading real comprehension for the mere act of reading. 

Self-Optimisation Ideology and the Policing of Culture

The “-maxxing” suffix is more than a meme; it represents the mindset of hustle culture, integrating market principles into personal beliefs. Reading is viewed as a way to build cultural capital, providing a competitive edge in pursuing career and social achievements.

This ideology explains the emergence of “sensitivity readers,” who are more accurately described as “DEI inquisitors.” Their role isn’t to safeguard readers but to oversee cultural matters in favour of the upper-middle class, enforcing the principles of identity politics and limiting literature to narrow notions of personal authenticity and “lived experience.”

The result is a restrictive atmosphere where artists are told to “stay in their lane,” and attempting to depict social realities beyond their identity group is considered morally wrong. This approach does not signify progress; rather, it results in the fragmentation and depoliticisation of culture, turning art into a series of identity-centred performances.

The Working Class and the Necessity of Cultural Renewal

In this context, the working class requires authentic culture instead of the commercialized copies provided by the upper-middle class. They desire art that directly addresses social issues, pays tribute to ordinary people’s lives, and includes—quoting Trotsky—“an element of protest against intolerable conditions.”

This culture cannot emerge from TikTok trends, marketing campaigns, or the self-made rituals of the professional-managerial class. Instead, it can only be cultivated by revitalizing the socialist movement and re-establishing the connection between artistic creation and workers’ struggles. The great realist tradition—embodied by Zola, Dickens, Tolstoy, Dreiser, Steinbeck—did not develop spontaneously. It was driven by the growth of the international workers’ movement and the belief that society is understandable and subject to change. Rebuilding this movement is crucial for a genuine cultural revival.

Conclusion

Booksmaxxing does not signify a cultural awakening but instead indicates cultural exhaustion. It exposes the narcissism, insecurity, and ideological emptiness of the upper-middle class, whose dominance over cultural institutions has led to a landscape characterized by triviality, censorship, and self-branding.

The working class holds the duty of cultural renewal, not influencers, publishers, or liberal newspapers. Humanity can develop a new, sincere, and freeing culture solely through the creation of a revolutionary socialist movement.

Audi’s Appropriation of Bob Dylan: The Commodification of Rebellion in the Age of Corporate Fraud

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Audi’s new RS 5 advertisement, drawing inspiration from Bob Dylan’s electrified 1965 Newport performance, exemplifies the commodification of cultural rebellion in late capitalism. What once represented a radical artistic act is now simply a marketing tool for a luxury hybrid car made by a company involved in mass layoffs, emissions scandals, and undercutting wages worldwide. The ad does not celebrate rebellion; instead, it signifies its end.

A Masterclass in Late‑Capitalist Cultural Theft

Audi’s RS 5 advertisement is more than just cynical; it serves as a prime example. It precisely illustrates how capitalist marketing consumes cultural history, removing its rebellious edge, and turns it into a luxury lifestyle statement for the wealthy. “The systematic plundering of every genuinely rebellious cultural moment and its repackaging as a sales pitch for luxury commodities.”

The agency’s choice to base the commercial on Bob Dylan’s 1965 electric performance at Newport isn’t just a creative move; it’s a confession. It exposes how much the advertising industry relies on the symbolic remnants of past rebellions to give life to products that lack any genuine social significance.

What Dylan’s Electric Turn Actually Represented

When Dylan took the stage in Newport wielding a Fender Stratocaster, he was not just changing instruments. He was boldly rejecting the stifling moralism of the folk community, which wanted to keep him as a mere “protest singer”—a symbol of their own complacent radicalism. “Dylan was breaking with the suffocating constraints of a folk establishment… It was, in its own way, a genuine act of artistic self-emancipation.”

The booing that ensued was not directed at electricity itself but at the idea of autonomy. Dylan rejected being owned by a movement that had become a rigid cultural bureaucracy. His act was a break—an assertion of artistic freedom against institutional limitations. Audi’s use of this moment is especially offensive because the company embodies the opposite idea: subordinating human creativity, work, and culture to the profit motives of global capital.

The Auto Industry’s Record: Fraud, Layoffs, and the Assault on Workers

Audi is not a neutral cultural entity. As a subsidiary of Volkswagen Group, it was involved in an emissions-cheating scandal that was one of the most widespread corporate frauds of the 21st century. The company has repeatedly cut jobs to stay profitable amid growing global competition. “The 9,500 jobs Audi eliminated in Germany in 2019, along with another 7,500 planned for 2025, reflect the harsh reality behind the polished image of ‘breaking tradition.’

The “tradition” being challenged is not about artistic conformity but the social contract with the working class. The hybrid RS 5 is made by workers facing ongoing attacks on their wages and conditions, even as the company promotes the vehicle as a symbol of personal freedom.

The Mechanics of Co‑optation: How Capitalism Consumes Rebellion

The ad illustrates a key principle of capitalist cultural production: it cannot create genuine rebellion, only turn it into a commodity. Each oppositional movement—such as the 1960s counterculture, punk, and hip-hop—goes through the same process of neutralization. “Every authentic artistic rebellion… is eventually stripped of its social significance, sanitized, and repackaged for consumers as a lifestyle accessory.”

Audi isn’t just selling a car; it’s offering a feeling—the thrill of breaking rules without facing social consequences. The buyer is encouraged to see themselves as Dylan at Newport—yet stay embedded in luxury culture. This represents rebellion without danger, dissent without repercussions, and history without effort.

The Fraudulent “Evolution” of the Hybrid RS 5

The ad’s theme of “embracing evolution” with a hybrid powertrain cleverly reverses expectations. The move to hybrid and electric vehicles in luxury isn’t a daring step toward the future but rather a reluctant response to regulations and market forces. “It’s the auto industry being pushed, reluctantly and noisily, to make only the minimal changes needed to keep selling cars.”

The RS 5 hybrid continues to be what every RS Audi has historically been: a high-performance vehicle aimed at the wealthy. Its eco-friendly image is primarily a marketing strategy, not an indication of social change.

Dylan’s Own Trajectory: From Rebellion to Corporate Asset

Dylan himself embodies the final irony of the advertisement. The artist who once penned “Masters of War” sold his entire songwriting catalogue to Universal Music Group in 2020 for approximately $300 million. As one observes his journey from Newport ’65 to this major deal, it exemplifies how capitalism often absorbs and neutralizes acts of artistic rebellion. Dylan’s past work, originally a tool against the establishment, now functions as an asset for the world’s largest music corporation. The Audi advertisement represents the ultimate stage of this transformation: turning rebellion into a commercial commodity.

The Socialist Alternative: What Real Evolution Would Look Like

The working class does not require a luxury hybrid that relies on the superficial allure of a long-gone rebellion. Instead, it needs control over the means of production, including the auto industry. This involves a socialist transformation of society—producing goods based on social needs rather than private profit.

Genuine evolution involves workers democratically controlling auto plants, reorganizing production based on human needs, and freeing culture from a profit-driven system that stifles it. Audi’s ad does not celebrate rebellion but instead commodifies it. Our current challenge is not to buy into the illusion of freedom but to strive for actual freedom.