Taylor Swift: Culture, Capital, and Critique Paperback – 30 Jun. 2025 by Hannah McCann (Editor), Eloise Faichney (Editor), Rebecca Trelease (Editor), Emma Whatman (Editor), Routledge

 "At the moment, it wouldn't be going too far to say [Swift] is one of the most powerful people in the world."

Georgia Carroll

How has Swift achieved such phenomenal success with albums like this? To some extent, her rise can be attributed to the persona she has cultivated, together with the music industry. In the interest of mass appeal, the singer offers something to everyone: a little bit acoustic and country, a little bit electric and urban, a soupçon of sexiness, a pinch of feminism, and a lot of spectacle. At the same time, Swift has taken pains not to offend anyone and to remain relatively “apolitical.” She won’t “corrupt the youth” or inspire critical thinking, which is music to the ears of the industry.

Eric Schreiber

 “If the time becomes slothful and heavy, he [the poet] knows how to arouse it . . . he can make every word he speaks draw blood. Whatever stagnates in the flat of custom or obedience or legislation, he never stagnates. Obedience does not master him; he masters it. …”

Walt Whitman

You've got a lotta nerve to say you are my friend
When I was down you just stood there grinnin'
You've got a lotta nerve to say you got a helping hand to lend
You just want to be on the side that's winnin'…

Positively 4th Street Song by Bob Dylan ‧ 1965

The essays in this book came about through a so-called Swiftposium held in Melbourne, Australia, before the start of Taylor Swift’s 2024 Eras world tour. The Symposium was the first of its kind. Its remit was an academic examination of the singer-songwriter Taylor Swift.

This, however, was not a regular academic conference. Despite the organisers going out of their way to say it was not a fan convention, it was pretty clear that the speakers and the audience had other ideas.

According to one report, “Fans were also desperate to take part, and on Sunday, hundreds of people—walking advertisements for rhinestones, cowboy boots, and Swift's signature red lip—flocked into Melbourne's iconic Capitol Theatre to hear lectures about the megastar. At a sold-out friendship bracelet-making workshop beforehand, 19-year-old Soumil says the event - run by RMIT University - is helping heal the wounds left by the ticketing bloodbath of last year, so much for academic impartiality.”

As this quote demonstrates, the degree of impartiality of these essay contributions leaves a lot to be desired . Swift fanatic Rachel Feder writes “ I was first introduced to Taylor Swift through my students, and then through my relationship with Tiffany, who grew up with the albums. She even has a picture of meeting Swift after a concert when she was 15. She's an OG Swiftie.

At the Grammys last year, when Swift announced her “Tortured Poets Department” album, Tiffany texted me, saying, “This is your album. This is your era,” because Romanticist tortured poets are my whole thing. I shot off a quick email to my editor that said, “Hey, sorry to email you at night about Taylor Swift, but do we want to do ‘A Swiftie’s Guide to Tortured Poets?’” The team had all these incredible insights on how to make it capacious, like a “Swifties’ Guide to Literature” slash “Literary Guide to Taylor Swift.” Then I brought Tiffany on board, and we wrote it so fast. We had seven weeks to do the first draft, and we got through every album before “Tortured Poets” dropped in April 2024. We experienced that album in real time, writing that chapter in two weeks, which was a nerdy, bookish Swiftie’s dream.”[1]

It does not need an academic to tell you that Swift is big business. With a fan base of over 500 million, she is the highest-earning pop star of all time and is now a billionaire and a member of the American oligarch club. Her billionaire status has largely come off the back of fairly routine and uninteresting songwriting. Swift admits that her favourite songs are the ones where she has to think.[2] If that is the case, then only two albums from her extensive catalogue, Folklore and Evermore, are worth listening to.

One thing is clear from the essays in this book and in general is that Swift is protected and defended by not only a group of fanatical academics, but she is a fully paid-up member of the #MeToo movement who defends her with vigour.

Two such fanatics, Mary Fogarty & Gina Arnold, launched an attack on the songwriter Bob Dylan, writing “Swift may be replacing Dylan feels a bit like reparations. Dylan’s work influenced a generation of singer/songwriters, as well as those who wished to write about music, rather than make it, but unfortunately, he is responsible for, among other things, a swath of material which relegates women to objects and does worse. The women of his songs, as many have noted, are, as Katrina Forrester (2020), put it, ‘Unappealing. They were clawing, childish, neurotic, and demanding, women who wanted too much or took what he didn’t want to give. The feminist invocation of Dylan inhabited the uncomfortable terrain between critique and homage: could they use his words to transcend the relations of a world that he described so well yet also embodied? When Ellen Willis (2012) later revised her classic 1967 essay on Dylan, she wrote that he exemplified the ‘bohemian contempt for women’.[3]

It is hard to know where to start with this venomous essay. My point is that Dylan had far more insight into the nature of relationships between men and women than Swift will ever have. As David Walsh writes “A perusal of Bob Dylan––Lyrics: 1962-2001, at least its first half a dozen years or so, reveals a lively imagination at work, and sometimes deep feeling. Dylan can be witty, satirical, insightful and, as well, genuinely outraged at American society’s injustices. The lyrics are capable of conveying physical and psychic longing, both for “the beloved” and for recognition by society at large.[4]

As for swift her songs the Marxist writer Eric Schreiber claims they are indistinguishable, vapid and self-centred. Instead of poetry, her lyrics resemble teenage journal verse, including the inevitable pretentiousness.

Making a further point, he writes, “Swift is best understood not as an artist but as a creation of the music industry and a reflection of the present state of cultural decline. She was born in West Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1989. Her father is a former stockbroker for Merrill Lynch, and her mother worked as a mutual fund marketing executive. When she was growing up, Swift enjoyed the privileges of America’s financial elite. She spent summers at her family’s vacation home in Stone Harbour, New Jersey, where the median price of a house is $2.5 million.[5]

Her latest album, Life of a Showgirl, continues in the same vein as her previous work. As Alex Petridis writes in his Guardian review of Showgirl, “More startling still is the distinct lack of undeniable hooks and nailed-on melodies. The songs are well turned, but in terms of genuinely memorable moments, Showgirl evinces just one killer chorus (Elizabeth Taylor), some impressively unexpected key changes on Wi$h Li$t and the authentically heart-tugging Ruin the Friendship, which finds Swift returning to her home town for the funeral of a high school boy she regrets not dating. There’s a fantastic chord sequence on Actually Romantic, but, alas, 37 years ago, Frank Black wrote a very similar one for Where Is My Mind? by Pixies, a song you can literally sing along to Actually Romantic. The rest floats in one ear and out the other: not unpleasantly, but you might reasonably expect more given the amassed songwriting firepower behind it, and Swift’s claims of “keeping the bar really high”.[6]

Given what has happened in the world recently, you would have at least expected some form of comment to appear in her new album. Swift is an intelligent girl, but has chosen to stay silent. Again, like previous material, Life of a Showgirl deals with her feelings and past relationships. Her perspective has not matured appreciably since her early days.

Schreiber is correct when he writes, “Swift also arises out of the remarkable and ongoing monopolisation and narrowing at the top of the music industry. Record companies, artist management, broadcasting and concert ticketing and promotion, respectively, have come to be dominated by two or three corporate goliaths each. Of the 2 million artists on Spotify, less than 4 per cent account for over 95 per cent of streams. In 1982, the top 1 per cent of artists took in 26 per cent of total concert revenue; by 2017, the number was 60 per cent. In short, Swift’s great success is a symptom of the decay in popular music over the past several decades. It reflects an official culture unwilling or unable to look at itself critically and honestly.”[7]

Swift it would appear to be trapped in a prison largely of her own making. As Shakespeare writes in Hamlet  ‘This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.’As any great artist male or female this should be their starting point. Bob Dylan was a spokesman to a generation for a time and was true to himself. Swift has had plenty of chances to speak out against the injustices and inequality in the world but so far has chosen to stay silent. This will be the legacy of her work and she will not be able to shake this off.

 

Notes

1.   “The Story of Us” (Taylor’s Version): Taylor Swift and Interconnections of Sociological Theory and the Music Industry- Reema Azzo

2.    Are You Ready for It? Re-Evaluating Taylor Swift- Mary Fogarty & Gina Arnold

3.   Left of #MeToo -Heather Berg -Feminist Studies, 2020, Vol. 46, No. 2 (2020), pp. 259-286

4.   Does Bob Dylan deserve to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature? David Walsh

5.   Ceasing to be the voice of a generation-Paul Bond

6.   Celebrity, Music, and Public Persona: A Case Study of Taylor Swift

7.   Elaina K.M. Junes Minnesota State University, Mankato

8.   Campaign Problems: How  Fans React to Taylor Swift’s

9.    Controversial Political Awakening- Simone Driessen

10.Miss Americana: Taylor Swift as a Battleground for Feminist Discourse

11.Juliet Eklund University of Denver

12.Who Needs to Calm Down? Taylor Swift and Rainbow Capitalism Eric Smiale

13.“Blue Swift”: Popular Culture Meets Politics∗ Orestis Troumpounis† Dimitrios Xefteris  November 2024

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[1] www.du.edu/news/du-professor-explores-bookish-brilliance-behind-taylor-swifts-eras

[2] observer.co.uk/contributor/roisin-lanigan

[3] Are You Ready for It? Re-Evaluating Taylor Swift- Mary Fogarty & Gina Arnold

[4] Does Bob Dylan deserve to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature? www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/10/21/nobe-o21.html

[5] The Tortured Poets Department and the Taylor Swift phenomenon-www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/05/21/wzwk-m21.html

[6] Taylor Swift: The Life of a Showgirl review – dull razzle-dazzle from a star who seems frazzled-www.theguardian.com/music/2025/oct/03/taylor-swift-the-life-of-a-showgirl-review

[7] The Tortured Poets Department and the Taylor Swift phenomenon-www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/05/21/wzwk-m21.html

A People's History of the Anti Nazi League: 1977-1981 by Geoff Brown Bookmarks Paperback – 25 Sept. 2025

Fascism] affects white and black people alike … The fight against fascism is a common fight for both of us; we approach it from two different directions and perspectives. We are the immediate victims. If they come for us in the morning, they will go for you that night. So be with us that morning, and we will be with you that night.

James Baldwin

The progress of a class toward class consciousness, that is, the building of a revolutionary party which leads the proletariat, is a complex and contradictory process. The class itself is not homogeneous. Its different sections arrive at class consciousness by different paths and at other times. The bourgeoisie participates actively in this process. Within the working class, it creates its own institutions or utilises those already existing to oppose certain strata of workers to others. Within the proletariat, several parties are active at the same time. Therefore, for the greater part of its historical journey, it has remained politically divided. The problem of the united front, which arises during specific periods most sharply, originates therein. The historical interests of the proletariat find their expression in the Communist Party when its policies are correct. The task of the Communist Party consists of winning over the majority of the proletariat, and only thus is the socialist revolution made possible. The Communist Party cannot fulfil its mission except by preserving, entirely and unconditionally, its political and organisational independence apart from all other parties and organisations within and without the working class.

Leon Trotsky-Bureaucratic Ultimatism (1932)

Socialist Workers Party member Geoff Brown is the author of the new book A People’s History of the Anti-Nazi League. The ANL was launched in November 1977 to counteract the growing threat from racists and fascists who were spurred on by sections of the ruling elite who saw the fascists as a battering ram against the increasing radicalisation of the working class.

As the 2010 statement by the Socialist Equality Party stated, “The global crisis plunged Britain into a period of intense class conflict, which brought it closer to revolution than at any time since the 1926 General Strike. As a major financial centre, it was especially vulnerable to the sweeping capital movements that occurred following the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system. The Wilson government was forced into a series of devaluations and major spending cuts. In 1969, it brought forward the White Paper, “In Place of Strife”, to enforce legal sanctions against strikes.

The orthodox Trotskyists in the Socialist Labour League (SLL) warned that the Labour left's refusal to lead a struggle against Wilson was paving the way for the return of a Conservative government and the imposition of even more savage measures against the working class. In 1968, Conservative MP Enoch Powell was sacked from the shadow cabinet after delivering his notorious “Rivers of Blood” speech, which sought to whip up anti-immigrant sentiments. But Powell’s remarks were only the initial expression of a right-wing shift by the Tories, who, by 1970, had adopted a radical, free-market agenda. Based on the monetarist economic policies of Milton Friedman, they advocated an end to the “bailout” of inefficient companies, the curtailing of social provisions, and a legal offensive against wildcat strikes.[1]

It must be said from the outset that the formation of the ANL had nothing to do with Trotskyism or Leon Trotsky’s advocacy of the United Front. According to the SWP, the “ Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky conceived the idea of the united front, which unites groups that are very different, such as reformists and revolutionaries.”

What Trotsky wrote on the United Front is opposed to what the SWP did. He wrote, 'In entering into agreements with other organisations, we naturally obligate ourselves to a certain discipline in action. But this discipline cannot be absolute in character. If the reformists begin to put the brakes on the struggle to the obvious detriment of the movement and act counter to the situation and the moods of the masses, we, as an independent organisation, always reserve the right to lead the struggle to its conclusion, and this without our temporary semi-allies. It is possible to see in this policy a rapprochement with the reformists only from the standpoint of a journalist who believes that he rids himself of reformism by ritualistically criticizing it without ever leaving his editorial office, but who is fearful of clashing with the reformists before the eyes of the working masses and allowing the latter to appraise the Communist and the reformist on the equal plane of the mass struggle. Behind this seemingly revolutionary fear of 'rapprochement' there really lurks a political passivity which seeks to perpetuate an order of things wherein the Communists and reformists each retain their own rigidly demarcated spheres of influence, their own audiences at meetings, their own press, and all this together creates an illusion of serious political struggle....

“On the question of the united front, we see the very same passive and irresolute tendency, but this time masked by verbal irreconcilability. At the very first glance, one is hit between the eyes by the following paradox: the rightist party elements with their centrist and pacifist tendencies, who … come simultaneously to the forefront as the most irreconcilable opponents of the united front. … In contrast, those elements who have … held in the most difficult hours the position of the Third International are today in favour of the tactic of the united front. As a matter of fact, the mask of pseudo-revolutionary intransigence is now being assumed by the partisans of the dilatory and passive tactic”[2]

The SWP said it had “no secret agendas. What we say is what we do. We were running it as a united front. We couldn’t do anything that would undermine the agreement; we had a basic agreement that we were focusing on the NF.” Alongside Stalinists and reformists, the SWP had the backing of other pseudo-left parties that broadly supported the ANL, with the political scoundrel Tariq Ali writing “Hats Off to the SWP”

However, the real purpose of the SWP’s ANL United Front was to develop a pseudo-reformist alliance, aimed at deflecting a revolutionary confrontation between the working class and the British ruling elite. While from the outside the ANL was seen as an adjunct to the SWP, it was, in reality, directed by the top leadership, with SWP’s party leader, Tony Cliff, pulling the strings. Cliff was the ideological founder of the SWP, and his organisation rejected every basic tenet of Trotskyism; however, this did not stop it from using elements of Trotsky’s perspective or analysis to suit its own political objectives. Throughout his life, Cliff sought to associate the SWP with Leon Trotsky as a historical figure. But in reality, it opposed Trotsky’s analysis of the Stalinist bureaucracy and denied the viability of the Fourth International that Trotsky founded in 1938. Trotskyism was “a cul-de-sac”, Cliff wrote, while “Trotskyists suffered from the psychological need to believe in miracles.”[3]

The SWP’s perversion of the United Front tactic was also reflected in its work within the trade unions. As Paul Holborow relates, “one of the most significant considerations regarding how the ANL was established so quickly and widely as a grassroots organisation is what the SWP or the International Socialists had done industrially, particularly since the first miners’ strike in 1972 and before. Crucially, we had 22 rank-and-file papers that were an essential part of our industrial strategy for developing a rank-and-file movement that could fight independently of the trade union bureaucracy.5 This enabled us to very quickly establish sizeable groups of manual and white collar workers in their places of work—firefighters, car workers, civil servants, bus workers, dockers, teachers, engineers, council workers and many others. Perhaps the most impressive example of this was when miners’ leader Arthur Scargill and I spoke at a 200-strong delegate conference, and the following Monday, 60,000 Yorkshire miners went to work with the yellow ANL sticker on their helmets.”[4]

The purpose of the Socialist Workers Party’s rank-and-file committees, then as now, while providing tame “left-wing” criticisms of the labour and trade union bureaucracy, was to work might and main to politically block any independent movement of the working class. One problem for the pseudo-left groups is that they themselves now make up a significant faction of the trade union leadership at national, regional, and branch levels. They have been responsible for numerous betrayals and are now calling on rank-and-file members to rebel against the same bureaucracy to which they belong.

The publication of Brown’s book this year coincides with the SWP’s resurrection of the United Front campaign. According to Holborow, “When John McDonnell said last summer that we need to build an ANL-type movement, I think he was entirely right in spirit, but the context today is so different from what it was 40 years ago. Then, there was a militant rank-and-file movement. Britain was in turmoil, and the opposition to the ruling class was much more extensive and articulate. We are building in a completely different time, in the era of neoliberalism and all the ravages that this has produced for the labour movement. This makes it in many ways more necessary than ever to have an ANL-type organisation, but also more complicated.”[5]  In August, McDonnell had declared, “It’s time for an Anti-Nazi League-type cultural and political campaign to resist” because “we can no longer ignore the rise of far-right politics in our society.”

This is the same McDonnell who, despite being expelled from the Labour Party by its right wing, grovelled before Starmer and begged for re-admittance to this right-wing party of big business. He wrote 11 op-eds in The Guardian, capitulating to Starmer and his right-wing allies. The SWP and its pseudo-left allies have offered him a means to resurrect his “left” reputation.

As Tony Robson and Chris Marsden point out, “There is, however, a significant difference between the 1970s and the present day. Whereas in 1977, the SWP acted with the benediction of the Labour and trade union lefts, today it speaks as the officially designated representative of the Trades Union Congress. The SWP has, over the decades, integrated itself into the highest echelons of the trade union bureaucracy, assuming leading positions in several unions to complement the niche it has established within academia. It speaks today not merely as the bureaucracy’s apologist, but as its officially recognised spokesman on the left.”[6]

 

 

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[1] The mass movement against the Heath government-https://www.wsws.org/en/special/library/foundations-uk/32.html

[2] Trotsky, The First Five Years of the Communist International, vol. 2, New York and London, 1953, pp. 91–96, 127–128].

[3] Tony Cliff-Trotskyism after Trotsky-www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1999/trotism/ch03.htm

[4] The Anti Nazi League and its lessons for today-https://isj.org.uk/the-anti-nazi-league/

[5] The Anti Nazi League and its lessons for today-https://isj.org.uk/the-anti-nazi-league/

[6] The significance of the British Socialist Workers Party’s call for a new “left alternative”