i do think it's a problem for a left-wing, socialistic politics of culture, that the competitive, individualistic, aggressive drives are so crucial to cultural ferment and individual achievement
is pop music intrinsically meshed with capitalist desire?
one place where that plays out is during postpunk with Scritti Politti where the band styles itself as a collective, to the point of having loads of non-musicians and hangers-on contributing to the discursive roil around the band, and sometimes onstage with the core trio, making a noise, improvising songs that are made up on the spot.... but gradually that all collapses and it's revealed that actually Green is the leader and always has been, the one who writes all the tunes and as far as i know all the lyrics - and that (for an avowed Communist) he's pretty damn competitive and determined to be a pop star. the other original members one by one drop out (replaced by a drum machine in one case) and what's left is Green, who forms a very capitalistic-Eighties style entity, a production company, with him as CEO.
you could say the dropping of the collectivist facade is a kind of hypocrisy, or the collapsing of that hypocrisy - an act that they were playing out because of the particular DIY culture and politics of postpunk - but i'd prefer to see it as a dynamic matrix of contradictions that shakes out interestingly, and also drives the evolution of the sound.