The Degradation of Culture
To most people, a fundamental critique of the modern economy
seems to be as insane as an attempt to go through the wall
instead of the door. Indeed, if viewed from a distance, this
economy seems to have all the characteristics of insanity, but
since the criteria of the capitalist machine have been generally
internalized, they are accepted as normal. For when the insane
are
a majority, then insanity becomes a citizen's duty. Under this
pressure, the critique of society retreats from the field of
economics and searches for an alternative. Especially the left
does not like it, when someone drills into the nerve of the
ruling economic conditions: It hurts, when one is reminded of
one's own unconditional surrender. That is why the theoretically
disarmed left prefers to denounce any serous critique of the
market, of money, and of the fetishism of commodities as an
old-fashioned and unfruitful "economism" that one
personally has long since left behind.
And with what does a critique of society occupy itself with, when
it really is no longer what it is? In the past, the major field
of evasion was politics. There was even the claim of regulating
the common affairs (and also even the economy) of the
commodity-producing system with a "discourse of reason"
by the members of society within the political institutions. Of
that, there remains almost nothing. Politics has long since been
degraded to a dependent, secondary functional sphere of the
totalitarian economy. Today the capitalist end in itself has
eaten away the earlier assumed "relative independence"
of politics. Because of this, the critique of society in the
postmodern era flees from politics into culture, just as it
previously fled from economics into politics. The postmodern left
has become "culturalistic" in every respect and in all
seriousness believes that it can somehow act
"subversively" in the area of art, mass culture, the
media, and the theory of media, whereas it has practically given
up the critique of capitalist economy and only listlessly
mentions it.
But no matter in what area of society the
now-silent-about-critical-economics left flees, the capitalist
economy is always there and scornfully grins at it. It is indeed
correct, "that this economy has divorced itself from
society," as the French social critic Viviane Forrester has
written in her book about "the terror of the economy."
However, capitalism has only forgotten society in a social sense,
but without having released it from its clutches. On the
contrary, the totalitarian economy jealously keeps watch so that
nothing on earth occurs which does not directly serve the
profit-maximizing end in itself. And at the present, that also
applies to culture.
The modern economy accordingly developed to the same extent as
the capitalist sphere of industrial production split off from the
rest of the areas of life. Culture in its broadest sense seemed
to be an "outer-economic" activity which was banned as
mere refuse of life into the so-called "leisure time."
That was the first degradation of culture in the modern era: To a
certain extent, it transformed itself into a nonserious activity
and a mere "residual time." But as soon as capitalism
completely ruled the material reproduction of society, its
insatiable appetite expanded to the immaterial elements of life
and it began to collect the split-off areas piece by piece and
subjugate them under its inherent business administrative
rationality as much as possible. That was the second degradation
of culture: it was industrialized itself.
What Marx said about the transformation of material production
was thereby repeated, for culture also experienced the transition
from the "formal" to the "real" subsumption
under capital: At first, the cultural assets were included only
formally, then afterwards as real objects of buying and selling
by the logic of money. So in the course of the 20th century their
creation increasingly became based a priori on capitalist
criteria. Capital did now no longer just want to be the agent for
the circulation of cultural assets, instead it wanted to control
the total process of reproduction. Art and mass culture, science
and sports, religion and erotica were increasingly produced like
automobiles, refrigerators, or washing powder. With that, the
producers of culture lost their "relative
independence." The production of songs and novels,
scientific discoveries and theoretical reflections, movies,
pictures and symphonies, and sports and spiritual events could
likewise take place only as a production of capital
(surplus-value). That was the third degradation of culture.
At any rate, in the era of prosperity after the Second World War
there existed a social buffer, which partially protected culture
in many countries from the total grip of the economy. That was
the mechanism of Keynesian redistribution. "Deficit
spending" did not only feed military armaments and the
welfare state, but also certain areas of culture. Of course, the
state subsidization placed strong limits on the independence of
culture. However, the control by the state was open to discussion
by the public and not complete: One can talk to officials and
politicians in the event of a conflict, but not with the
non-subjective "laws of the market." With the mediation
of "culture Keynesianism", a part of cultural
production was only indirectly dependent on the logic of money.
As long as radio and television, universities and galleries,
artistic and theoretical projects were state managed or
subsidized, they did not directly have to subjugate themselves
under business administrative criteria and there existed certain
margins for critical reflection, experiments, and minor
"unprofitable arts," without the threats of immediate
material sanctions.
This situation has completely changed since the beginning of the
new world crisis and the therefore concurrent neo-liberal
campaign. The end of socialism and Keynesianism had to hit
culture the hardest, for of course the funds were first cut here.
The states have not disarmed militarily, but culturally. For a
small part of the cultural spectrum, private sponsoring has taken
the place of government support. There are no longer any social
and cultural civil rights, but only the charitable capriciousness
of the capitalist winners. The producers of culture are subjected
to the personal moods of the moguls of capital and mandarins of
management, for whose bored wives they serve as hobbies and
pastimes. Like the court-jesters and servants of the Middle Ages,
they have to wear the logos and emblems of their masters in order
to be useful for marketing.
For the vast majority of the arts, sciences, and cultural
activities of all sorts, not even the humiliating and arbitrary
sponsoring is no longer possible. They are presently subjected
directly and unfiltered to the mechanisms of the market to such
an extent as never before. Scientific institutes and sports clubs
must go to the stock market, universities and theaters must make
profits, and literature and philosophy must bear the criteria of
mass production. Only that, which is useful as an offer for the
recreational activities of helots of the market, reaches the
large channels of distribution. Accordingly grotesque distortions
occur in the gratuities for cultural achievements: While soccer
and tennis players receive earnings in the millions, the
producers of critique, reflection, portrayal and interpretation
of the world sink down to the status of toilet cleaners. By means
of capitalist rationalization of the media, low wages,
"outsourcing," and business administrative slave
driving are applied to the cultural sphere.
The result can only be the destruction of the qualitative
contents of culture. Poorly paid, socially degraded and hounded
culture and media workers logically produce miserable products;
that applies to this area as well as any other. In addition, the
brutal reduction towards the shortened time horizon and the mass
distribution of the market reliably eliminates anything that
wants to be more that a one-way product. Soon we will find in
bookstores only pitiful soft pornos, cookbooks, and esoteric
works for the depraved middle class. The unleashed logic of money
also leaves behind a trail of destruction in the sciences.
Because they can in their nature not be market conform, the human
and social sciences are being rooted out of the academic services
like weeds. Above all, the institutes of history are subjected to
the "mobbing" and withholding of means because the
ahistoric market no longer needs a past. Total natural science
takes the place of philosophy and social theory once and for all;
but also within the natural sciences, pure research is being
devalued and strangulated in favor of the commissioned research
of capital.
These tendencies also necessarily lead to the collapse of
cultural subjectivity in the bourgeois society, just as they have
already devalued political and religious subjectivity without
having put anything new in its place. Today, not even a
conservative "is" conservative any longer; he or she is
just somebody that sells conservatism like others sell tomato
paste or shoestrings. Particularly the current orthodox pope
turns out to be a marketing specialist for religious events; soon
the churches and sects will go to the stock market and market
religions according to the principles of shareholder value.
Artists and scientists are now experiencing the same desecration
of their personality. If they hurry ahead in obedience by
thinking and producing a priori in the categories of
saleableness, then they have already lost their cause and can
only ratify their self-abandonment, like the successful artist
Baselitz did in a moment of truth when he turned his paintings
toward the wall.
The "economism" is not a faulty and one-sided thinking
of incorrigible Marxists; it is instead the real tendency of the
ruling order of society toward economic totalitarianism, which is
perhaps having its largest and last thrust. However, capitalism
cannot exist on its own footing. Just as the pharmaceutical
industry loses its last source of knowledge and material when the
rain forests are finally destroyed, so must the culture industry
desiccate when it cannot tap any more creative subcultures
because the commercial independence of the masses has finally
died out. A society, which only consists of panting, obtrusive
salespersons and cannot reflect upon itself, has also become
socially and economically intolerable.
For the producers of culture, art, and reflexive thinking, there
is no more reason to place themselves at the disposal of the
miserably paying and high-handed capitalism and to fish for
compliments in the postmodern desert of the market. If they still
possess a remainder of self-respect, they have to emigrate
inwardly and at least secretly declare their irreconcilable
hostility to the criteria of the market. This intention must not
be passive; it must become active. Perhaps the cultural producers
should form themselves into anticapitalistic groups,
cooperatives, guilds, clubs, and associations that do not want to
sell anything, but instead save cultural resources from the
barbarism of the market. By uniting with the injured and
insulted, and giving social misery a cultural expression instead
of chiming in with the happy positivism of the postmodern
optimists, this intention will especially distinguish itself from
culture conservatism, which is always conform to power.
Translation by R.T.