ok, let us do a little historical study…
I am at this very moment listening to Mozart… now to get his music played
he had to bring his music to someone else to get it played…
and the same exists for artist in other fields…
let us say, you have something of importance to say…
you must bring it to someone for them to publish it or
find a means to hold a concert or some other medium…
and this is important… the act of medium… be it a publisher
or a concert hall or the radio or movies… you cannot just create
something and then play it… it needs someone else to
either create the medium for which you can say your something…
the act of creation not only needs an medium in which the material is
distributed, but the act of saying something needs a medium like
playing music or writing a play or writing a book…
so you have two, two different aspects of medium…one is the actual
act of creation and the other is the distribution of that act of creation…
the artist has little or no control over the distribution of the material…
I wrote a book and I couldn’t find anyone to publish it… I couldn’t find
a agent who would act as a facilitator to publish the book… I was unable
to find a medium to publish the book…I finally published on a website…
I found a medium in which to say my thing… but I couldn’t write it and then
find some way to distribute it… I needed a middle man to make that work…
let us say, you make bread and you find out the same process applies to you…
you need to get your bread into a supermarket… which is a middleman between
the creator and the consuming public…now niche creations can often go and
find a means to take their work to the public directly… either online or direct sales
or in farmers markets for example…
so Mozart needed a middleman in which to publish his works, or
another middleman in which to put his music into the music halls…
what if the musician build his own music hall?
then the musician would become businessman…
in which he became the middleman… trying to get works to
play in his music hall… and then as a middleman, content becomes
important… think of TV… think of all those hours that must be filled…
or a website where you must fill the site with something… quality no
longer becomes the operative objective, no, quantity becomes the problem…
having enough material to fill up 24/7/365 worth of space/medium…
for a website is a medium, as it is a middleman between the artist/creators
and the public… so here we know understand why so much content is crap…
turn on your TV…if you are like me, you have 500 channels… and nothing to watch
because those 500 channels have quantity instead of quality…
could Mozart exists today? yes, but he has the same problem today he had back
then… finding a middleman that will distribute his material/creation to the public…
to make money which is the goal… one must somehow be able to distribute your
work to the public… but therein lies the problem… should the goal be to make
money…shouldn’t the goal be the act of creation… of finding a personal medium be it
writing or painting or sculpturing and creating… and creating should be about quality,
not quantity…it is common, very common for the biggest seller of the day, be it
Mozart’s day or be it our day, that the biggest seller of material, say, composer for example,
was not the best composer at the time… Mozart was clearly the greatest composer of
his time, but was he the biggest seller/draw of the music industry at the time…no…
it is rare indeed that the most creative/greatest creator of material at the time…
be it music or writing or the creation of art is also the biggest seller of the time…
the Beatles were the greatest creators of rock music of their time AND they
were the best sellers of their time… but that is rare…let us look at creators
in their time… Van Gough… he sold one painting in his lifetime… Nietzsche
sold very few books while alive…Hume first book, the one we know him by,
was certainly not a very big seller… the creators who created the art they
are famous for quite often had a hard finding a middleman to distribute their work…
and even if they found a middleman, the work in question quite often
sold badly or not at all…this leads us to asking if, if the artist should
write their works with the immediate public in mind to make money or
should they create the works they want and let the consequence be dammed…
this entire question is part of the individual’s role within society…
the artist… what are their role within society? what part or what role do they
play in society? and how different is their role from my role? or your role within
society? we are both producers… and this is important to note… the artist is a
producer… he creates something he hopes to sell to make money so he can afford to
produce more…like me, his production can be found in a corporate setting…
I sold my work, my production to a big corporation for 22 bucks an hour and
I spend my days scanning and weighing items for sale… and how is this
different then Mozart trying to sell his work? Mozart is the creator, I work
for the middleman, selling material to the public…we lie at different
points of the distribution circuit…now I have railed against the pursuit of
profits/money… let us apply it here… in the supermarket, we buy a product
from someone, the creator, and then we try to sell it for more then we bought it…
that creation of profit fuels the next round of buying things from creators…
so, let us say, I buy Mozart’s work… as a middleman, I now am tying to get
others to buy it from me, at a greater price then I paid for it, to make a profit,
so I can go out and buy another round of things from other creators like Mozart
and sell those thing and the process goes on and on and on… as long as their
are creators like Mozart, I can continue to buy his stuff and as long as there is
the public that will buy his stuff, I can continue this ongoing pattern of being
the middleman buying stuff from the creator, be it Mozart or be it bread…
and selling it to the public…at no point here does quality enter the
picture… selling on a mass market scale isn’t about quality but about
quantity… 500 channels on TV…how do you fill those hours?
so the modern world is really just a world filled with middlemen who
buy things from the creators be it Mozart or be it bread and then the
middlemen sell that merchandise to the public for more money
the middleman paid for it…and the process continues on as long
as there is creators and there is the public who can buy that stuff…
the creators be it Mozart or bread must find a middleman to sell their
products to the public… otherwise someone like Mozart would spend their
entire time engaged in the selling of the material and have no time for the act
of creation of that material…
so in a real sense, the act of the creation of the economic systems, be it
capitalism or communism is about the distribution of material goods between
the creators and the public…the act of the economic system is really an
act of the creation of the middlemen who are necessary to stand between
the creators and the public…you want to understand capitalism,
really understand capitalism, understand the role of the middleman in
capitalism…and that role of the middleman is another understanding
of the role between the individual and society…
Kropotkin