Commerce and Culture

The Economic Basis of Culture

[From the 2006 Commerce and Culture Seminar, presented by Paul Cantor.] Now that Marxists have lost the economic arguments, culture is now the last battleground between Marxism and free markets. Marxists say mass production of anything ruins it. But this is elitist thinking. In Marxist thinking, there is a bias against commercial culture. But, art and culture depends on a division of labor. Without attaining a certain sophisticated level of economic development, cannot have what we now think of as culture. Up until 1800, the world was too poor to care about art. The triumph of capitalism created a mass audience for art and books. Art is an example of spontaneous order. Art is like the market. Art and culture are messy and experimental. Academics would like art to be predictable, but it cannot be. Art improves from being part of a market. Lecture 1 of 10 from Paul Cantor's Commerce and Culture.

10. Conclusion: Culture as Pop Culture

We have such a bias against commercial art in our culture that Cantor tries to show that some of the great art of the past grew out of commercial activity. Cantor had never played a video game, so he had to work through those. He sees that this is where things are going. Ignoring the migration of media can lead to a lot of problems and make you pessimistic. It is commercial culture that develops the new media. The richness of video gaming is the richness of possibilities. Culture grows out of chaos.  Patronage and markets seem to be the best way to support art and culture. Bureaucratic organizations are the worst. Lecture 10 of 10 from Paul Cantor's Commerce and Culture.

8. The Rise of the Motion Picture

The motion picture is purely commercial art. Lack of taste can earn a producer a fortune. This is the perfect intersection of commerce and culture. Most movies are bad, but many are very good. The movie form is so recent, that its history is right there to see. It was just a novelty item at first. Hollywood is unpredictable, just as economics is unpredictable. The same things that produce a flop produce a blockbuster like The Godfather – Cantor’s favorite. There is an anti-commercial bias behind movie production, but many directors do their best work under hard commercial pressure. Many artists produce poorly when given great leeway. The structure of the movie industry is a mess. It’s everybody working against everybody else. Lecture 8 of 10 from Paul Cantor's Commerce and Culture.

9. When is a Network Not a Network?

Television is not better because you don’t want it to be. The relation of government and television and movies are certainly not free markets, just relatively free markets. TV has always been in a regulated environment. TV is licensed by the federal government. Movies were incredibly freer, allowing them to develop quickly in their first thirty years. Novels surged beyond poetry because no one was noticing. New media will be inventive, experimental and competitive. The history of TV is the history of deregulation because it began so regulated. TV was less creative. It is a good case for free market supported art rather than government supported art. Reality TV comes mainly from Europe. The Prisoner and The Avenger – both great TV -came out of private TV. Networks want the largest audiences and, thus, cater to the lowest common denominator. Three stations were not enough. Fox was the network that was not a network. Fox was not considered a network because of too few hours. This freed Fox from limitations by the SEC. Murdoch was a risk-taking entrepreneur. Cable and satellite changed the system. TV is powerful proof of the commercial culture. Lecture 9 of 10 from Paul Cantor's Commerce and Culture.

7. Totalitarianism and the Arts in the 20th Century

Art can flourish under any conditions. Many falsely imagine that commercialization is always a bad thing, but the commercial system has produced great art, too. Totalitarianism and modernism is the last thing anyone wants to say anything good about. A musicologist of Moscow said Russian composer Shostakovich was really valued, despite what had been said about his modernist music. He is considered the greatest composer of the 19th Century. He is one of the few who is regularly programmed. Control is the price each artist paid for working for the state’s support of their artistic endeavors. Nazi and Soviet-like central cultural planning literally put guns to heads and mandated art and music. Hitler and Stalin assured legitimating modernism by attacking it. Nazi and Soviet art was all about young vibrant bodies devoting themselves to the state. This fascist art matched the art produced by the New Deal in American. Everybody was turning toward the state. The modernists bought into this powerful national, war-oriented state. The state would give artists recognition that the market never did. Lecture 7 of 10 from Paul Cantor's Commerce and Culture.