Expertise and Art Market

In proportion as a community comes to substitute a qualitative for a quantitative standard of living, it escapes the limitations imposed by matter upon man. Art knows no restrictions of space or size, and in proportion as we attain the art of living we shall be likewise free.

The market, over time, is its own worst enemy. Indeed, the valiant and ultimately successful efforts of New Dealers to set American capitalism back on its feet were most vigorously opposed by many of their eventual beneficiaries. But although market failure may be catastrophic, market success is just as politically dangerous. The task of the state is not just to pick up the pieces when an under-regulated economy bursts. It is also to contain the effects of immoderate gains. After all, many Western industrial countries were doing extraordinarily well in the era of Edwardian social reform: in the aggregate, they were growing fast and wealth was multiplying. But the proceeds were ill-distributed and it was this more than anything which led to calls for reform and regulation.

Markets are interested in profits and profits only; service, quality, and general affluence are different functions altogether. The universal, democratic prosperity that Americans now look back to with such nostalgia was achieved only by a colossal reigning in of markets, by the gargantuan effort of mass, popular organizations like labor unions and of the people themselves, working through a series of democratically elected governments not daunted by the myths of the market.