Notes on Art, Capitalism, Imperialism and
Socialism
Or
Art about Art
When
texting the good editor of this publication yesterday, I was hoping to submit
an article on whether or not there can be a ‘good capitalism’ and discuss
further my recent blog,
where I argued that there cannot be a good capitalism if it has imperialism or
neo-colonialism as its highest stage.
But
I am afraid that now I must think up an article on art at just over 24 hours’
notice. :,[
So
instead I shall make some brief notes,
discussing the role of culture in an exploitative society, for example a
capitalist society such as ours, with neo-colonialism as its highest stage.
This
picture, which originated as a kind of doodle, says that in an exploitative
society, there are two cultures, that of the exploiters and that of the
exploited. These are represented
respectively by the inner maroon-coloured diamond and the outer maroon-coloured
frame. The coloured items in
between are less important, but the grey represents the fear and
mis-information directed at the exploited classes to make them feel ‘as well as
can be expected’: for many Rupert Murdoch’s Sun
(and now the ‘Sun on Sunday’) plays
that role within our own society.
The
culture of the exploited is all about survival, and that of the exploiting
classes is all about how you conform.
For the exploiting classes to survive, the exploited classes must also
survive, so the former are in fact dependent indirectly on the culture of the
latter.
Marxists,
such as Gramsci,
attach great importance to culture and the economic system: to my mind there is
a critical path of exploitation.
City workers and LSE professors are closer to that critical path,
whereas perhaps school teachers are less so. If you hold down a job in the City, and in some way you do
not conform, people will raise their eyebrows and ask if you are pulling your
weight in the survival of the exploitative class, though they wouldn’t put it
quite that way.
So
now homing in to the more specific, if by art we mean the ‘fine arts’, how do
we judge a picture? By what the
critics say about its technique (eg. ‘vertical symmetry’)? Its function (in my case a
picture about pictures)? Or
purely and simply, is any analysis of art relevant, except for how much can you auction it off for?
Additional
note... the blue on the picture stands for the greedy economic liberals and the
like making full [ab]use of their superior power and the pink the technology
and skills underpinning this... art and music alike celebrate both power and
technology ...
By
Martin Prior
Notes and links:
Own
blog:
Can there be a good
capitalism?
Gramsci (wiki)
