After his lecture on Montesquieu, a professor at Hillsdale College posed the belief of Montesuieu's that the aristocracy is a bastion of culture- and that with commercialism, the aristocracy disappears along with its "high culture." He pointed to modern entertainment, with television as an example, to show that a wealthy society always tends toward a culture of volgarity, profanity and general immorality. One brave soul pointed to the welfare state for aiding in the destruction of family, but the professor placed more blame on a lack of "aristocratic literature," and thus the progress of society.
So what is to blame for the vulgar culture we live in today- assuming it is vulgar? Is it wealth? Is it progress? Is it the welfare state? Or a combination of factors?
Whoever wants peace among nations must seek to limit the state and its influence most strictly. -Ludwig von Mises
I highly recommend the lecture series by Paul Cantor for insights into this subject: Commerce and Culture. IIRC he concludes that aristocratic patronage of the arts is preferable to state subsidies, but that free mass markets are best of all.
Truth and Liberty
"No army can stop an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo
I think the question you should ask is: "What's the problem with having a vulgar culture?" Is the professor's problem that not everybody shares his views on how a culture should look like? Because, that's what it seems like to me. He should go to Spain, and see how some professors speak there.
Economic Thought (Latest Post): Don't Be Fooled by GDP
see if anti-commercialism wont degrade your culture ..... (along with everything else)
Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid
Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring
No. Its quite the opposite, where there is commerce, culture flourishes. This is just some kind of western-capitalist guilt mumbo jumbo. I bet this guy would have no problem saying how awesome were the culture and commerce of X century Islam.
Great bands from the 60s and 70s:
UK: Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Beatles, Clash, The Who.
USSR:
Capitalism means the desires of the masses are catered to. This will mean a proliferation of works of an artistic nature that appeal to them. It does not imply the extirpation of 'aristocratic' works. Merely an increase in the ratio of noise to sound. Why this is an issue is beyond me.
To darkness I condemn you...
I was just thinking about this at the gym today, when they were blasting crappy music. I was thinking, "Why is most popular music so crappy?" The big record companies and their government-enforced intellectual property claims.
A monopoly on force encourages other monopolies, as big companies are incentivized to latch onto the State monopoly rather than compete by value enhancement. Think of all the ripple effects of the central monopoly. The effect tends to rigidify all the markets it touches, and I think this could be one of the results.
I also agree that music designed to appeal to the masses will tend to be watered down and generally kind of soul-destroying, because unfortunately that's where a large number of people are in life - perhaps largely because of Statism.
Think outside the monopoly paradigm. Net-based microsecession | Why anarchy hasn't worked
No doubt public schools help in keeping down the refinement of the masses to a minimum.
Rothbard answers this criticism quite nicely when he points out that as material wealth increases under capitalism the presumption should be that it's marginal utility falls and people become more interested in non material wealth.
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"
Bob Dylan
AJ: I was just thinking about this at the gym today, when they were blasting crappy music. I was thinking, "Why is most popular music so crappy?" The big record companies and their government-enforced intellectual property claims. A monopoly on force encourages other monopolies, as big companies are incentivized to latch onto the State monopoly rather than compete by value enhancement. Think of all the ripple effects of the central monopoly. The effect tends to rigidify all the markets it touches, and I think this could be one of the results. I also agree that music designed to appeal to the masses will tend to be watered down and generally kind of soul-destroying, because unfortunately that's where a large number of people are in life - perhaps largely because of Statism.
The people just suck. Their tastes, that is.
tmeyer: So what is to blame for the vulgar culture we live in today- assuming it is vulgar? Is it wealth? Is it progress? Is it the welfare state? Or a combination of factors?
First, I think our culture is not less or more vulgar than any other in the past. The complaints about vulgarity in contemporary culture are as old as culture as we know it. Plato did lament about the "bad influence" that theatre plays had on the soul of the people, making them dumb and increase violence -I heard that one even on LRC the other day where Karen De Coster moked about video games :-)
All classical art one day was popular culture, and I would not really be surprised if one day Bart Simpson became a calssical hero.
Second, capitalism raises the arts rather than lowers their impact in society. Maslov is the one to point to if you want to explain why aristocrats did support the arts, and why people living in capitalist societes have more time to do so as well, given art includes playing video games which I believe is the case.
In the begining there was nothing, and it exploded.
Terry Pratchett (on the big bang theory)
AJ:I was just thinking about this at the gym today, when they were blasting crappy music. I was thinking, "Why is most popular music so crappy?"
Whether or not you see current music as "crappy" is quite besides the point, I'm no fan of the sort of music one hears on the radio (my tastes are somewhat varied) but I don't agree with the attempts made to square this with failure of the state. Perhaps you could make a case that without IP laws and public schools there'd be more competition and more cultured individuals respectively (and consequently better music), but I don't really think that's going to work to be honest.
The fact is that whether or not people here like it on some level pop music is appealing to the majority of people and the music industry, which is just that, will cater to this. The "artists" and producers have no real interest in producing good music for the most part but producing music that they is going to sell well and they'll do whatever they can to make sure the music will sell. Keep in mind, what the labels are selling usually has little to do with the music. This is why they'll put so much effort into maintaining the image, or whatever else, of the artist.
It's the same for places like Starbucks and McDonalds. A lot of people lament the rise of these places because the coffee isn't that good (I don't really think it is either) and the food is crap (same as before). But the point is that clearly both of them are supplying a good that people want and are doing it exceedingly well.
To be honest, I think it's a wonderful illustration of Adam Smith's point. None (few?) of the most successful artists are rich because they give a damn about how profound their lyrics are or because they want their music to be technically good ( some metal is, I suppose, "technically good" but the genre is God awful as far as I'm concerned) but because they want to make money and there are people who want catchy music with lyrics they think they can "relate to".
Vitor: Great bands from the 60s and 70s: UK: Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Beatles, Clash, The Who. USSR:
That's just stupid. The USSR produced a massive amount of phenomenal musicians. How many of the classical Soviet movies have you watched? They actually dedicatd classically trained composers to write music for them. And they did it well. There were also a bunch of very good piano and violin players, and various classic rock bands and jazz bands. Just because you're ignorant of a countries musical heritage doesn't mean it didn't exist.
Having said that, I don't think culture diminishes due to commercialism. This is a common argument in soviet block countries and especially Russia and the Ukraine. The older generation says that capitalism destroyed all the classical and folk musicians, but its actually not true. If you think back to the days of aristocracy in the Renaissance and up until the 19th century, the aristocracy was always a tiny minority. Most people never listened or had access to great classical music, and instead listened to folk music.
Well guess what, the proportions are probably the same today. I think there are just as many people listening to "good" music today as there ever were, it's just that pop music and what many see as "vulgar" culture has come more into view. It was always there, but now due to the spread of T.V. and the internet, "vulgar" culture is more difficult to hide from, and it appears to have obsucred the better music. But you just have to look harder. As an example, last winter I attended a Jazz club event in Minsk with exceptional performances and improvisations. They have events like this on every week in Belarus.
On Russian TV there is a dedicated culture channel that hosts great shows and every day they list all of the cultural events going on in Moscow. Trust me, there are no fewer of them today than there ever were in the Soviet Union. But of course if you flip to a popular music channel you're going to see half naked chicks without talent screaming stupid lyrics that don't make sense - It's called ratings.
If you try to trick the market, it will get its revenge.
Solreyus
Mironov, Nikitini, Boyarsky, Pugacheva, Sviridov, Shostakovich .....
Or what about Mashina Vremeni with Makarevich, the cult rock group? I'm not that much into rock-n-roll but I've heard lots of their songs.
These people had as much of a cultural impact on me as any of those you listed, and this is despite being born after the fall and raised in Western Europe. In fact, I've never even heard of Johnny B. Goode. And to say the state sponsored them all to show off is also false. That only applied to internationally competing musicians, of which I know almost none.
The point is there are great musicians in all countries, and musicians usually find a way to flourish either because, or in spite of state sponsorship or censorship.
This perception is probably a myth. It is much easier for the common person to have access to the high brow than it was a century ago. I would also wager there is a greater number of people per capita who appreciate higher browed things, I unfortunately know of no study to back that statement up though.
Lower culture will always be more dominate. When people market things that appeal to the "lowest common denominator" it will always outsell the better things that are there for the connoisseur whether that is music, food, clothes, art, or whatever. That is the nature of the connoisseur; it will always be like that there is no aristocracy needed for culture.
Let us look then and see, how they manage their concerns- they for whose cause we are to labor, devote ourselves, and grow enthusiastic
-Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own
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