As the capitalist world becomes more volatile, the world of entertainment cannot escape the instability it produces. In fact, bosses use culture as a key arena for keeping workers distracted from the source of our problems. The November 5 pandemonium at hip hop artist Travis Scott’s Astroworld Music Festival killed 10 young people. This event gives workers yet another reason to see that only a society led by and for workers—where money does not exist—can prevent such needless tragedies from occurring in the future.
Profit-driven greed from the concert’s Live Nation promoters. Fascist “crowd control” tactics from Houston, Texas police. A megalomaniac mindset on the part of Travis Scott himself and the cult-of-personality worship on the part of concert participants. High levels of drug and alcohol-induced violence–in the midst of the pandemic. These factors all culminated in the literal crushing to death and murder of these young people and critical injuries to countless others.
Under communism, we too will hold large festivals and enjoy the culture of our youth, but we will not promote antisocial culture or risk the health and safety of our youth’s lives all for the sake of preserving a profit-based system of inequality.
“Live Nation” is a profit-hungry death trap
While everyone points fingers at other sources for who is to “blame,” it is the capitalist system itself which must be put on trial. The drive for maximizing profits at the expense of workers’ lives is, once again, at the core of this tragedy.  Live Nation, the official concert organizer for Astroworld, accumulated over $2 billion dollars from the week of festival events.  They sold more than 100,000 tickets within minutes even though the plan was for 50,000 ( They wanted the extra cash). Live Nation has had a long standing history of safety violations, including a previous Astroworld disaster in 2019 where three people were injured in a stampede; 200 deaths and 750 injuries have been connected to Live Nation since 2006. This is a disgusting example of capitalism prioritizing profit over the lives and well being of workers. Travis Scott himself reportedly made $65 million from the event (Yahoo, 11/10). While it is just speculation, some believe Scott to be making money off the back end in the wake of these deaths as well by promoting Betterhelp.com, an online therapy network that has been accused in the past of utilizing celebrities to promote a substandard mental health service for vulnerable youth (The Atlantic, 10/ 12/18).
Travis Scott: proof that cult-of-personality hurts our class
While the profit motive is a constant, bosses also need the political ideologies of individualism and cynical passivity put forward by musicians like Travis Scott, so this is another way in which the Astroworld concert proves that our youth deserve better.  Scott has had a history of inciting violence at his concerts.  In 2015, he was arrested at Lollapalooza for encouraging his fans to ‘rush the stage’.  In 2017, he encouraged a fan to jump off a stage. His 2018 song ‘STARGAZING’ contains the lyrics ‘It ain’t a mosh pit if it ain’t no injuries, I got them stagedivin’ out of nosebleeds.’
While hundreds of thousands of brave young people took to the streets during the pandemic to stand up against racist police brutality, Scott made disparaging remarks about Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown, calling Black workers who protested their deaths ‘fake activists’.  Bosses love and promote this kind of anti-working class cynicism, and Scott was rewarded generously for his beliefs, being allowed a mass concert even as Covid-19 rages for workers across the world.  Cited as ‘Corporate America’s Go-To-Pitchman’, Scott’s many endorsements include McDonald’s, Nike, and Sony, accumulating over 100 million dollars from these endeavors. This is how the ruling class tries to indoctrinate the youth into buying into the individualist, bourgeois lifestyle, instead of learning the power of class consciousness and organizing a strong working class.
Let’s rage against capitalism, not each other
During this Covid-19 pandemic, where millions have died, capitalists have shown that profits matter more than the well being of workers. The idea of ‘going back to normal’ despite being in year two  of the pandemic, where workers have died or have lost loved ones, faced unemployment and homelessness, has shown young people that capitalism will never place the importance of the workers first. Young people have experienced or witnessed the contradictions of capitalism during this pandemic and are embittered and disillusioned by a system that offers them no hope or solution.
Very few entertainers command the cross-section of racially and ethnically diverse fans of Travis Scott, but this multiracial would-be army of young people is aligned behind a cultural force that weakens rather than strengthens the fans themselves and their working class brothers and sisters. The rage of these young fans is produced by capitalist alienation, unemployment, inadequate education, overconsumption of drugs, and racist and sexist ideas. These fans for the most part have not been exposed to communist ideas that would allow them, like so many youth before them, to apply their anger toward the overthrow of capitalist exploitation.  That’s why a communist revolution is needed.
PLP fights for true youth power
Many of the fans broke away from the raging, toxic scene by taking action to save lives and stop the viciousness that was taking place that night. Several young people mounted the cameramen’s stands to redirect their attention to the tragedies only feet away, but the cameramen were paid to literally turn a “blind eye” from everything except Scott himself. Hundreds broke from Travis’s blind following and chanted “stop the show.”  Many others rescued people who were being crushed and suffocated by breaking the rules and throwing them over the gates into the so-called “VIP” section where $1,000 ticket holders were secured from much of the mayhem.   And this is just a minor reflection of how young people all over the world have sacrificed their lives in the fight to end capitalist oppression.
Every movement in the past 100 years to abolish racist inequality and capitalism in general has seen tremendous youth leadership.The Soweto uprisings in South Africa against racist aparatheid had the participation of over 20,000 young people, with over 170 killed in the monumental June 16 protest of 1976 that was a turning point in the fight against racism there.   In Cuba, the July 26 movement to overthrow the U.S.-based Batista fascist regime was not only led by the relatively young Castro brothers and Che Guevara, but there were also hundreds of young people–literacy teachers, party members, singers, militia members–who went on to make their deeply flawed but still significant effort toward communism come to life. During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, in spite of tremendous political errors, one of the greatest achievements was the decision of the Communist Party to place China’s working-class youth in charge of the schools, factories and many other sectors of the socialist society.
College students in Haiti have led workers in Haiti since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and in recent years they were the first to take to the streets time and again in the aftermath of the massive natural disasters since 2010 and incessant government destabilization that costs the lives of workers every day. Our Progressive Labor Party fights to keep alive the courage and selflessness of revolutionaries past, placing young and invigorating people at the front of our annual May Day marches down Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, every year. Young people have led our summer projects against racist police brutality.  Young people write for our newspaper. PLP strives to be the place for young people to grow up to be communist leaders.