The standard recipe for economic criticism of literature is as follows: mix quasi-Marxism with vanguard Marxism, and add just a soupçon of fashionable French thought (structuralist or poststructuralist) to give it flavor. FULL ARTICLE by Paul Cantor
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/11515/the-poetics-of-spontaneous-order-austrian-economics-and-literary-criticism/
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Every human’s taste is always perfect.
Vanmind wrote:
“Every human’s taste is always perfect.”
I agree that art is just a matter of taste. But there are two kinds of taste; good and bad.
To get back on topic, I do wonder why we need any sort of economic criticism of literature or other art, whether Marxist or Austrian. I think this is one case where those who cry “economic imperialism” may be onto something. How about literature critics stick to criticizing *literature*, not the culture the author belonged to, or the culture represented in the literature?
Henry Hazlitt wrote about the importance of criticism.
I just got this book through the mail, and I am truly blown away.
Russ writes, “I do wonder why we need any sort of economic criticism of literature or other art, whether Marxist or Austrian.”
Cantor does address this question in his essay:
Chinese, Soviet or even Nazi propaganda depict this contradiction between “cause” and “quality” very well : their best art is a pure “product” of the State ideology. Its artistic quality is to be measured to the adequateness to that ideology. It’s perfectly irrelevant to mention one dislikes Nazi art because one dislikes concentration camps thus…
On the other hand, there’s bad allegorical art representing such universal value as “courage” for instance because the means that were used are not mastered. The fact that courage might subjectively be valued very much make a bias to judge the more objective quality of the artwork.
Hitler was not considered the best Nazi artist though he used to be a painter.
To judge the quality of art in a critique thus (if that’s necessary at all) it might still be important to know better to which “cause” the author eventually identifies himself.
In that sense I’m looking forward to read that book.
“…Marxist literary criticism shows no signs of going away, and it cannot effectively be countered by simply denying that economics has any application to literature. We need to put something in its place….”
Sure we need to put something in its place. How about actual literary critcism, that engages specifically with the text in question, and what the author was trying to accomplish in the text? In other words, why not put literary criticism in the place of social criticism?
“…Marxist literary critics deserve at least this much credit: they have made a plausible and even a persuasive case for the relevance of economics to literature and literary activity….”
I think this is giving the enemy way too much. Marxist literary theory is crap, not just because it’s based on bad economics, but also because it’s not even really *literary* criticism at all! It’s social criticism disguised as literary criticism. As long as you buy into the enemy’s basic premise, that all activity (including literature) is dictated by the inexorable historical force of economics, the enemy will win.
I’ve had the good fortune of associating with a professor of classical languages and philosophy, whose literary criticism, based on a deep understanding of logic and the history and development of philosophy, as astonishingly detailed (to me). Yet, in that analysis, the social and economic issues, namely the explication of human action, choices, and the costs and risks involved, the reward expected, are always present, unavoidably (for the actors and the author). Thus, an understanding of sound economics no doubt is an asset.
I read with great interest how serialization, through the process of spontaneous order, likely improved the quality of 19th century literature in Britain. While the Austrian and Marxian conceptions of literary production were well-described and differentiated by this piece, I would like to note that this contrast is sharpened further when the financial motivation of serialization to the author (and publisher) is considered.
In recognizing the influence of time on factor pricing the Austrian theory holds that the value component of labor is time discounted over the period of production by the pure rate of interest. The author and publisher gain from serialization, ceteris paribus, because the effective time interval over which the discounting operates is reduced. This is possible because the author and publisher can be paid at regular intervals over the production interval instead of a in single lump sum, to take the simplest case of non-serialized production, when the full production is complete.
As an example let us compare the discount factors for a novel that takes one year to write. If the natural interest rate is supposed to be 10% per year then the discount factor over a year simply 1.1. In other words, if the author’s work contributes $1000 to publication sales then he should derive a total of $909.09 for his effort. Now if the same income is spilt equally between each month over this year the effective discount factor becomes 1.055 and a total of $947.87 should be earned. So in this example monthly serialization provides the author (and publisher) a 4.27% increase in effective income.
Under strict Marxian theory time discounting is not admissible and so the author and publisher would have no financial incentive to serialize any publication.
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