Thank you for that wonderful response. Capitalism conquered the music scene, too. There was a brief period when the artists were actually in control of the process, but that ended and money began to rule. ‘Rock’ began a long, slow, almost universal decline. Now it’s virtually gone. The music lives on in short bursts in ‘country’ songs, but those songs have the most inane, vapid, pointless lyrics anyone can not imagine.

Europe and the U.S. are of course too different to identify one single source of those differences, but the fact that Marx’s criticism of capitalism was taken seriously on the continent had to have had an effect on the culture. I also think that the centuries of rule by the Catholic Church had an effect on people’s attitudes about work and money/wealth. Despite its many failings, the Church’s official doctrine has always put (its version of) spirituality above work/money/wealth.

I have been wondering if you ever looked at my essay about “Re-thinking Individualism.”