1. The Economic Basis of Culture

Mises Media · Nov 15, 2018

[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…