Free-market champions conceded capitalism’s poor record on high culture

Evidence

Mises was quite willing, however, to acknowledge that the public sustained a distressingly limited market for the arts. “There is, in the structure of a capitalist society, little room left for the activities of the solitary phi los o pher, the detached poet and the lofty artist,” he observed. “The majority of the buying public has no use for their products. It is these facts with which we have to deal in studying the cultural effects of capitalism.” Mises believed that debates over the economic effi ciency of the capitalist system had been successfully concluded, but he acknowledged that critiques on the grounds of its cultural effects were very much alive. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 290

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the reader’s notes on Victorian gendering of silence/culture and broader cultural critiques of market society.