More than just a dream (1983)

From the December 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

When one gives a description of socialism, that is, of a moneyless society where the means of production belong to everyone and where each person works on a voluntary basis to produce goods for the satisfaction of human needs and not for profit, one is often greeted with the objection “That’s just a dream. You’re nothing but dreamers, you socialists." This is a serious accusation because it implies that socialists are pursuing an impossible goal and that our activities are therefore a waste of time.

But there are in fact two kinds of dreams and two kinds of dreamers. Some dreams are no more than fleeting daydreams while others are so sharp and vivid in the mind of the dreamer as to prod them into action with a view to turning the dream into reality. This kind of dream has motivated humanity to some of its greatest achievements, with human labour and ingenuity doing the rest.

Try to imagine, in some far distant past, two human beings peacefully lying by the riverside and watching the birds fly overhead. One of them suddenly exclaims “Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to fly, like that, high up in the sky and sec the world from above?" The other replies, “What's the point in even thinking about it? The way you’re made, you’re not likely ever to fly, are you? Forget about it." But in the mind of the one with the stronger imagination the dream has already taken root and on his lips you can read these silent words: “How could it be done?" This dream, like so many others, will come to other minds and be passed on to other people, and even if, back in the 15th century, Leonardo da Vinci’s ingenious flying machines were no more than drawings, he was not for all that wasting his time because today human beings can fly higher, faster and further than any of the winged creatures. Although this does not seem to tie in with “human nature".

But “human nature" is not a constant. Human beings seem terribly limited by it, and yet their physical and intellectual work creates, at each moment in their history, new conditions which open the way to new ideas, which in turn lead to new possibilities and new dreams. Natural forces, once all powerful, now only play a secondary part in human destiny, replaced, particularly in the most developed countries, by social and economic forces. But these are created by human activity and should therefore be within human control.

If men and women today consider themselves competitive, aggressive, lazy, selfish and therefore incapable of living in a social system such as socialism, it is simply because the social system in which they are now living brings out these qualities in people: selfishness, in as much as the essence of capital is to add to itself; competition, because what goes to one owner of capital does not go to the other; aggression when rival capitalists, compelled to expand, come to clash with one another; laziness, since not having to work makes us, even if only momentarily, like one of the ruling class. What stands in the way of a radical transformation of the social system is not in fact our so-called human nature, but a realisation on the part of all workers, men and women alike, that their values and their lives are bound to be greatly influenced by the system they live in and that since they themselves, by their joint productive work, create that system, they can also change it if they so wish.

Why is it, then, that this realisation is not taking place massively, at least in all the developed countries of the world? Why don’t people choose to put an end to their material and psychological difficulties by creating conditions which will from then on have the interest and happiness of humanity as their aim? There is a simple explanation. The present system is of material benefit to a section of our society and this section, though very small (about ten per cent) has the power, thanks particularly to its control of the media and of the education system, to impose certain ideas and to stop the spread of others. And so it does its utmost to preserve the status quo. This can well be considered shortsighted because even for this minority of rich people, a social system which they cannot keep under control and which could lead, at any minute, to the extinction of the whole human race including themselves, is not without its drawbacks for them.

Once this is understood, it becomes clear that the people who insist on visualising the possibility of a different world and who try to capture the imagination of those who remain trapped in their everyday reality — these people who do not just cling to their dream, but work at it wholeheartedly, fighting against ideas forced on them and for the ones they believe in — these people are not just dreamers but active, determined members of society who are doing all they can to change their dream into reality.

The idea of socialism is, like the idea of flying, one of those dreams that seem as old as humanity itself and which has, perhaps, its roots in the social reality of long pre-history. The fact that this dream has not yet come true does not indicate that it is impossible but simply that men and women have not started seriously thinking about it and working to achieve it.

Christine Moss

Leonardo for sale (1980)

From the November 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

The British Empire, which not only killed but also strove most officiously to keep alive, has been dead for some time. No longer are there school room maps which, with Britain at their centre, colour one third of the world’s surface red. No longer do pith-helmeted Tommies form defiant squares against naked, capering savages. No longer do the grim, grey battleships of the Royal Navy steam through the Channel mists, keeping at bay those hordes of gesticulating, treacherous foreigners.

These are now historical jokes, material for trendy satirists or playwrights hoping to make their name by an exposure of the personal frailties of the Empire builders. But some of the other symptoms of British capitalism’s decline we are still encouraged to take seriously and to regret. Among these is the sale and the export of works of art by owners in this country to buyers abroad — which, we are told, threatens something called the British Heritage.

This threat has in fact been at work for about a century but it was not until 1952 that it was officially recognised and since then there has been a sort of system for checking, delaying and perhaps stopping the export of works of art. The system does not, need it be said, embrace such objects as the mahogany aspidistra stand which has languished in some working class home in Mafeking Street, Fulham, since grandma got it as a wedding present. Items come into the system only when, apart from anything else, they are worth over £8,000.

They are then investigated by various “experts” who may advise the Minister of Arts to use his powers to delay the export. If a British collection can then offer as much as the export price, the Minister may refuse an export licence and the work stays in this country. In practice comparatively few objects are scrutinised by the “experts” and as a result there is a steady flow of them from Britain which, while it may satisfy the sellers and the dealers who rake in their commission, is alarming to all those people who think that there is nothing more worth protecting than the British Heritage.

One of the latest in this line is Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Leicester, a portfolio of notes and drawings about water and cosmology. This manuscript is owned by the family of the Earl of Leicester of Holkham Hall, Norfolk and there promises to be some desperate agonising when it goes up for auction at Christies in December. For one thing, such is its rarity that even the art experts have no idea of its price; that is why it is going for auction, where it may fetch £4 million, or £8 million, or £10 million . . .

While the trade was getting its breath back. Arts Minister Norman St. John Stevas, already famous for his garish shirts and his giggling, stepped boldly forward to defend the British Heritage. “I would”, he exclaimed, “be very annoyed if this work of Leonardo’s left the country . . . I am determined to do all I can and use every means”. The Guardian warned of the work being in “grave danger” of being exported—as if once it left these shores it would disintegrate—and the Daily Telegraph reported criticisms of “greedy and inconsiderate” auctioneers operating on the accepted capitalist principle of making as much money as they can as fast as possible.

There need be no surprise that in all this excitement, overlayed as it was by a froth of frustrated patriotism, some important facts have been overlooked. Nobody seemed interested in asking whether this phrase the “British Heritage” had any meaning and, if it had, what relationship it could possibly have to the work of a mediaeval Italian. Nobody wondered whether any Italians had been as “annoyed” as Stevas, when the manuscript was originally exported from that country. Nobody particularly cared how, or why it came to belong to the Earl of Leicester. Although Holkham Hall is open to the public in the summer, the Codex was not on view but nobody asked whether it might be more widely seen if were sent abroad.

The Leonardo manuscript came into the possession of a former holder of the title of Earl of Leicester—whose family name was Coke in 1717. When the Earl died in 1759 the title became extinct and the estates at Holkham were inherited by his great nephew Thomas Wenman who, perhaps in gratitude, marked the event by changing his name to Coke. When he died in 1776 Holkham passed to his son Thomas who, after the customary schooling at Eton followed by a Grand Tour, returned to England on a breath of mannered scandal to inherit not only the estate but also the Parliamentary seat for Norfolk.

At that time the Holkham lands were unenclosed and poorly cultivated, growing rye and supporting inferior livestock. After enclosure Coke, in the agricultural boom of the Napoleonic Wars, invested a small fortune in their development from a sandy rabbit warren into a thriving agricultural workshop, visited by admirers from all over Europe. He raised the rent roll from £2,000 to £22,000 and won the support of his tenants by giving them security of tenure, although under some fairly rigid controls. Not that there were that many tenants left, after the enclosures: “I look around”, Coke told an Enquiry in 1808 “And can see no other house than mine. I am like the ogre in the tale, and have eaten up all my neighbours.”

Coke was a staunch opponent of George III and was what is called a sportsman, which means that he hunted enthusiastically and was able to slaughter an impressive quantity of game birds with his guns. At the age of 68 he married for the second time and of this marriage there were five sons and a daughter. He was raised to the peerage in 1837, reviving the old title and becoming another first Earl of Leicester. The present Earl lives in South Africa and Holkham is inhabited by his son. Lord Coke, who elaborates on the Palladian splendours of the place:

It has marvellous paintings by Rubens, Clause, Van Dyck and other masters; Greek and Roman sculpture; one of the finest private libraries in the country; and furniture designed by William Kent.

All these treasures come from, and are perpetuated by, the exploitation of socially inferior people. The first Earl of Leicester refined and intensified that process to the limits of the knowledge and the equipment available to him in his day. Not that the exploited have ever objected; Coke’s tenants collected the money to raise a monument to him, after his death and there is little reason to think that working class attitudes are significantly different today. We need not weep for the Leicesters; typical of their class, they enjoy the best things in life and are tossing out only one of the treasures they have amassed, if perhaps the most valuable.

This is part of an historic process. Art objects have commonly been bought, or plundered, by a dominant class as an investment, or as an act of conspicuous consumption or simply as an expression of their dominance. With the rise of British capitalism—in the days of Thomas Coke—Britain was the world leader in manufacture, trade and imperialist expansion. The great houses of the ruling class were enriched with priceless works of art from all over the world. With the decline, it is all draining away, often to the homes of some newly rising capitalist class abroad. “If we did not sell the Leonardo manuscript,” said Lord Coke, “other things would have to be sold.”

It is a curious process of reasoning, which encourages the class whose exploitation has yielded the wealth of people like the Leicesters to bemoan British capitalism’s decline and to wring their hands over the symptoms of that decline. There is a pronounced illogicality in the idea that one country should construct a “heritage” which includes works of art originating elsewhere. If the term “national heritage” means anything then the works of Rubens and Van Dyck should not be at Holkham Hall but somewhere in Belgium and those sculptures should be packed off back to Greece and Italy.

Except that there is a wider, more fundamental question. It is typical of the tensions of property society, that even inanimate objects should be given a nationality and that a work like the Codex Leicester, which scrutinises natural forces common to the entire human environment, should be considered a fit matter for an exclusive, private possession. It is typical, too, that the prospect of this work passing from one privacy to another should ferment such hysteria.

What would Leonardo have thought, to see his works being obscured by fat cheque books and frantic jingoism? Who now can argue that capitalism liberates human talents which would be stifled and distorted in a society of common ownership and free access? Tell that, if you can, to Leonardo . . .

Ivan

What about art? (2004)

From the August 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Among the perennial questions asked of socialists are some concerning the likely attitude to art in socialism. For example, how would Socialist society treat any artistic elite, and who would have access to famous works? Names like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci are likely to figure in such questions.

    

The appreciation of works of art today can be tempered by what they would fetch in the sale room, at which time they take the form of commodities. The identity of the artist is then of greater moment than the aesthetic appeal of a work. If a painting is reassigned by specialists as being the work of a studio assistant its value can be totally undermined. Museums house interesting and beautiful works (and some to hurry past), not all of them on display. Or we can see pictures and antique furnishings displayed in the grand surroundings of some stately home, all serving as a reminder that ownership of ‘great’ works of art has long been the prerogative of the rich and powerful. It was for example no accident that the wealthy city states of Northern Italy were also influential artistic centres, and the setting for the Renaissance. In fact in all the regions where there was financial prosperity through trade, and “wealthy entrepreneurs to purchase”, important artists were to be found.

Renaissance Italy

It was a time of expansion in trade and banking, including credit facilities. What Lisa Jardine refers to as the “dawning of a high culture of commodities” meant that those who prospered from their banking and trading activities, like the Medici family, were able to indulge in conspicuous consumption (Worldly Goods, p. 124). Art works were part of this display of wealth and position. Objects appear in paintings, including those with religious themes, which reflect the luxurious lifestyles of the patrons and their families. Both patrons and artists were inspired by the revival of interest in classical art and in science and learning.

    

Dignitaries from church and state commissioned buildings, sculpture and paintings from masters which were then designed in their workshops. Artists, painters and sculptors learned their trade in the workshops of an established master, often a goldsmith. Taken on as apprentices to provide cheap labour, or because they were paying for their tuition, they would begin with cleaning and preparation of materials and in due course progress to assisting with commissioned works. The master might leave his assistants to finish a work, or might finish a work that had been started by others. Artists could also attend at the workshops of other masters. It is likely that Leonardo da Vinci, as well as the workshop of Verrocchio, also attended at that of Antonio and Piero Pollaiuollo who “flayed cadavers to study the anatomy and function of the muscles” (Leonardo The Artist and the Man, Serge Bramly, p. 98). Piero was at the forefront in the use of sketching to capture aspects of the human figure. This peculiarly Florentine development in the use of drawing “was the basis for a new understanding of the human figure”.  Leonardo benefited from the development and carried it forward, “in his hands it became a major tool of exploration of the human figure . . . and many other subjects” (Man and the Renaissance, Andrew Martindale, p.47).

    

Individual artists made ‘extraordinary imaginative leaps’, but genius did not just drop from the sky. Michelangelo may have had sudden inspiration about how to fulfil the commission in the Sistine Chapel, but as a youth he had served a three-year apprenticeship in the workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio before turning to the study of the great masters of the past, including Greek and Roman sculptors. His drawings reflect his considerable ability as a sculptor, as well as his study of human anatomy which, like that of Leonardo da Vinci, included the dissection of bodies. Once a breakthrough had been made, such as the working out of linear perspective or in the way materials could be used, it would be emulated by other artists and pupils. A clarification of some of the sources for the discoveries and inventions credited to Leonardo showed that he had “precursors and masters whose thoughts he pursued or revived” (Serge Bramly, Introduction, p.11)

    

If the Renaissance was a time of a flowering in the arts, what might we expect of the period following the establishment of common ownership and democratic control of the earth and its resources?

Socialism 

We do not claim perfection for a socialist world, only that it will be possible to first clear up the mess left by capitalism, and then to deal with new challenges as they arise by the unfettered application of human knowledge, imagination and ingenuity. Socialism is not just about providing for material needs, it is a whole life proposition. Consider the situation where all production is solely for use, with leisure and entertainment no longer industries, but simply activities necessary to human well-being; work and recreation not as now separate parts of life but viewed as an integrated whole. The need to be creative, to expend mental and physical energies, which is part of our identity as human beings, could be fulfilled by different aspects of work and leisure according to individual choice. People living in free association will be able to choose the kind of contribution they wish to make to the common good, undertaking study and training as necessary.

    

Clearly it would not do if too many chose to make an artistic contribution to the exclusion of the more practical occupations. But it is likely that relatively few would choose to undertake artistic work only. Socialism can only happen if the majority of the working class make the conscious decision to implement it; implicit in this decision is a willingness to co-operate in order to fulfil the totality of needs.

    

The idea of an elite in artistic achievement is in line with the ethos of capitalism that the inequality in society is there because human beings are unequal. We would not expect everyone to have identical aptitudes, tastes and skills, but where the social aim is human happiness individuals will be able to discover just what their abilities are and to realise their full potential as human beings. The way will be open for a far greater involvement in art, and for the blossoming of all kinds of talent, with the achievement of excellence perhaps being considered as normal. The idea of an elite could be turned on its head.

    

Still there will be some whose work in art and architecture, as in other fields, earn the extra esteem of the community. It is worth remembering that artists did not always attach great importance to individual recognition. Artists have not always put signatures on their work. The names of the masters responsible for the sculptures of Chartres, Strasbourg and Naumburg are not known. “No doubt they were appreciated in their time, but they gave the honour to the cathedral in which they worked” (The Story of Art, E. H. Grombrich, p. 205).

    

In former times it was the fashionable young men who made the Grand Tour, perhaps accompanied by a water colour artist, now many with more modest means are able to travel and see architectural wonders and gaze upon the vault in the Sistine Chapel, though it is probably from books and television programmes that many ‘great’ art works have become more familiar. Recognising that most people would see his Pearblossom Hwy (1986) in the form of a poster – the work is 10ft across – David Hockney printed 5,000 copies for an exhibition, taking great care with the production of the poster (That’s the way I see it, David Hockney, 1993, p. 115).

    

A world of common ownership will not make it more difficult to enjoy works of art. Museums could still have a useful role in this, and computer-generated copies could be made available. There will be no special kudos attached to the ‘possession’ of items. The idea of what constitutes great art can change through time, though some works continue to have an appeal long after the age which produced them. Those who live in a time when the sole purpose of art is to enrich life will be able to judge the art works produced in previous eras from an enhanced perspective.

    

The story of art, which is as old as Homo sapiens, will continue to unfold, and will no doubt include achievements which equal and even surpass those of the great artists of the past.  Developments in the choice of materials, in styles of building, and in the choice of subject matter for sculpture and painting are for that future to discover. If problems concerning attitudes to art should arise they will be of a kind that a society of equals will be very capable of resolving.

Pat Deutz