Commerce and Culture Mises Institute

"Sure, maybe capitalism produces more goods more affordably," the Marxists say, "but it corrupts our souls." In this 90-minute lecture, English professor Paul Cantor discusses how culture has become the "last frontier" of Marxism.

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.

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.

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.

Modernism was a reaction to mass culture and totalitarianism government support. Are artists better off being shielded from markets and commercial pressures? There are pluses and minuses to commercial systems.

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.