The Anti-Capitalist System Keeping Americans From Reading Books

There’s a reading crisis in our society — and it’s all because of capitalism.

Or so The Jacobin wants you to think.

“In 1939,” writes Ned Rust for Bhaskar Sunkara’s socialist magazine, “the 25¢ paperback made America a nation of readers, delivering thrillers, classics, and Pulitzer-winning books. So why did the Big Five publishers just kill the mass market paperback?”

Just last year, the Big Five publishing houses (Penguin Random House, Macmillan, HarperCollins, Hachette, and Simon & Schuster) collectively ended mass-market paperback distribution, a compact book format popularized in 1939 that dominated the literary market in the 20th century. At their peak, writes Rust, these books sold close to “one hundred thousand units each, with a population a little over a third the size of today’s United States.” Today, however, Rust continues, “corporate consolidation” has “enshittified the product to the point where it has abetted the decline in consumer demand.”

There is, admittedly, a lot to agree with in Rust’s article. I, for one, do not contest that the “product” (i.e., contemporary fiction) has become “enshittified” to the point of absurdity: in fact, as someone who frequently writes about the declining standards of contemporary literature and the homogenization of our fiction, I applaud Rust for his observations that “variety is an important part of attracting consumers” and that “our twenty-first century publishers have diminished the wider appeal of their product.”

It is true that by pushing out the same book over and over, publishing houses have begun to alienate most of their potential readers. What is more difficult to prove, however, is that the homogenization of our fiction and the decline of reading as a whole can be traced back to or attributed to capitalism. If anything, I would go so far as to argue that, by rejecting risk and innovation, publishing houses actively reject the tenets of capitalism; instead, by carefully curating the messages that make it past the censors and onto our shelves, they represent the kind of system we saw in the Soviet Union. Many publishing houses, in fact, openly hire so-called “sensitivity readers” to “make editorial suggestions regarding content that could be considered offensive, inaccurate or stereotypical.” In many cases, these decisions actively thwart the free, open exchange of ideas in our society — ideas that could bring in new readers and tap into unexplored markets.

The publishing industry’s biggest problem, therefore, isn’t its devotion to capitalism.

It’s the lack of it.

Back in the 1940s, British publisher Victor Gollancz famously refused to publish George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” on the grounds that it was too “anti-Soviet.” While Gollancz went out of his way to turn publishing into the ideological project we know it as today, Orwell found another publisher, and “Animal Farm” became one of the bestselling books of the 20th century. Gollancz, meanwhile, lost not only an enormous sum of cash but also the chance to represent one of the decade’s most accomplished writers.

To Gollancz, publishing aimed to promote a particular ideological message rather than drive book sales, and that is precisely the mentality of many publishing professionals today, who care more about promoting hyper-specific political agendas than bringing stories to a diverse array of readers. In this way, the publishing industry is staunchly anti-capitalist, rejecting the free market by imposing artificial constraints on the available market.

If Rust believes the mass-market paperback offers a solution to America’s reading crisis, he should consider the economic principles that made its existence possible in the first place. The paperback revolution of 1939 wasn’t orchestrated by a committee of socialist intellectuals on a mission to bring great literature to the masses; on the contrary, it was spearheaded by entrepreneurs who recognized that millions of Americans might read books if they were affordable and accessible.

And, indeed, capitalism has made books cheaper for everyone — not more expensive.

Even Rust admits that “today’s hardback novel has a cover price between $28 and $32. That’s 40 percent cheaper than it would have been back in the 1940s, and this is before a typical national retailer discount of more than 20 percent (and often up to 50 percent) for best-selling titles.”

Bingo. By enforcing competition, capitalism brings down the price of goods over time.

And while Rust laments the decline of the 25¢ paperback, which sounds too good to be true to our modern ears, 25¢ in 1939, adjusted for inflation, is a little over $6 today—the current price of “The Great Gatsby” on Amazon.

In other words, Ned, capitalism is not to blame for our culture’s illiteracy. But an aversion to it might be.

If we want readers to enjoy books again, then we must insist that the publishing industry embrace capitalism rather than turn its back on it. As readers, we have a duty to uphold the principles of competition, innovation, and risk-taking so we can keep producing great works of literature and become a nation of readers again.

***

Liza Libes is a writer and the founder of Pens and Poison. She holds degrees in English from Columbia University and writes about literature and culture at pensandpoison.org. Follow her on X @pensandpoison.

More from this network:
Domains for Sale · GOTPeople.org · TheDSAPlatform · The Truth About Socialism

Donate to GOTPeople.org