The Writing World Needs a Free-Market Mindset

Marxists have a zero-sum game mentality. So do… writers.

I’ve heard a lot of bizarre takes on both my work and my persona since deciding to put myself out on the Internet. I received my first hate email last week from a doddering old man who claimed that I was an idiot for criticizing the left because only right-wing ideology has ever been responsible for human suffering (can’t think of any places where that might not be true). I have been called a “female J.D. Vance” for claiming that Judith Butler is a clown (she is) and a nepobaby for receiving an Ivy League education (more on why that’s not true here). Yet the facet of my existence that seems most likely to rub people the wrong way is not my heritage or my belief system—it is that I have figured out how to make money as an English major.

It’s well-known that hatred stems from jealousy, so, of course, you might expect success to be a pain-point for losers on the Internet who have nothing better to do than to put other people down (you can predict with almost 100% accuracy that anyone who goes out of their way to put someone else down is a loser because they are too busy indulging their grievances to be working on themselves). But the bizarre hatred I’ve received for being entrepreneurial and figuring out how to attain unconventional success through founding my own company speaks to a broader cultural problem that is most prevalent in the writer community—a mentality borrowed from Marxist ideology.

A core facet of Marxism is the belief in the idea of a zero-sum game. I am a writer and a scholar of literature, so I will not pretend to be an expert in game theory, but put simply, a zero-sum game is a scenario in which one person’s gain results in another person’s loss. The Marxist idea of the bourgeois oppressor buys into the zero-sum game mentality, arguing that the only way that a so-called “bourgeois” player on the economic field can possibly get ahead is at the expense of other people. The criticism of my company likely arises from this very belief: the only way I could possibly be successful is by putting other people down. On the other hand, proponents of Western free-market capitalism know that in a free-market system, one person’s success is only an invitation for another person to succeed as well, for capitalism more efficiently allocates resources and fosters innovation that allows everyone to thrive. Enlightened people who follow this philosophy know that by running a company, I am making the world a better place.

We know that capitalism drives prosperity and that Marxism leads to starvation¹ and destitution. We know, in short, that Marxism does not work. Yet at universities across America, students of English literature are being fed Marx for breakfast and, after several years of indoctrination, come out of the higher education system believing that one person’s success must necessarily lead to another person’s failure.

This mindset is most apparent in the writing and publishing world, whose key players thrive on selective gatekeeping, opacity, and elitism (ironic given that they are also all Marxists).² In my Journey to Publication series, I strive to make the publishing world more transparent, open, and accessible to anyone who wishes to break in—both because there are virtually no resources for writers out there looking to make their debut in publishing and because I understand how capitalism works: the success of another person’s book does not mean the failure of my own. In fact, part of the reason that I want to break into publishing so desperately is so that I can figure out what the hell goes on behind doors and how the hell to make this process more transparent for everyone.

Yet few writers I’ve met have this sort of mentality, viewing any sort of competition as an encroachment on their own success, and I would bet that it’s because the people that they are around on a day-to-day basis exhibit the zero-sum game mentality of the Marxist thinker, whether implicitly or explicitly. In no other industry in the world are people so averse to lending a helping hand. In the quantitative trading world, perhaps the most lucrative career path in the world and the toughest to break into, new professionals and executives alike are more than willing to hop on a phone call, offer advice, and put in a referral for you at their company. My boyfriend, who works in quant trading, is always on phone calls with college students looking for jobs and has successfully placed several traders at his firm. Trading is an extremely competitive industry—arguably harder to break into than publishing—but the result is that everybody wins: the firm makes more money with better talent, and everybody’s salaries go up. In a free-market economy, the same holds true for publishing: your good book will inspire someone to seek out someone else’s good book, and vice versa. The more good books there are in the world, the more likely it is that someone will pick up your book as well. The fewer good books there are, the more likely it is that someone will abandon reading entirely and never get to your own book. The reason that I do not read fiction published within the last ten years is because I have never read anything in this category that has satisfied me—but if I were to find a good recent book, I would be more likely to pick up another recently-published book as well.

Yet writers have this mysterious help-averse mentality that tells them that the success of someone else’s book will drive their own sales down. They are, therefore, some of the nastiest and self-centered people I have ever met in my life. A well-known writer who was a long-time subscriber of Pens and Poison unsubscribed after I asked her whether she would be willing to put in a referral for me at her agency. Another writer I met at a conference snubbed me when I asked her what her advice is to new writers. A former subscriber to Pens and Poison and published author, likely driven by jealousy and a desire to protect his own success, went out of his way to tell me that I would never make it in the publishing world. I have zero close friends who are writers because the people in the writing and publishing world don’t seem to understand what it’s like to offer support: on the flip side, many people close to me work in finance or tech because these people understand that uplifting someone else will only make their own lives better.

They say that reading fosters empathy, but some of the most empathetic people I’ve met are not readers: they are people who understand how the world works and what it’s like to care for someone else. Writers, unfortunately, having been spoon-fed Fanon by their colleagues and professors, only care about their own success.

But what would happen if we created a world where writers helped other writers? The publishing industry would likely flourish, and people might come back to reading because more sane, intelligent people would gravitate towards the writing profession and we would have more remarkable books worth reading. Instead, writers see other writers as a threat to their own work because the educational and professional spaces they inhabit teach them to think this way.

So let’s retire this silly zero-sum game mentality. When one writer makes it, everyone benefits, and the literary world thrives.

1. Holodomor was the direct result of Marxist policies.

2. My University Writing professor at Columbia, a staunch Marxist who spoon-fed the words of Frantz Fanon to 20 Columbia freshmen every morning, is now offering “tenure coaching consulting” for $10,000. These people are not exactly known for their ability to practice what they preach.