Lukács tried to abolish the commodity character of art by state control

Evidence

As Deputy Commissar for Culture and Education, Lukács attempted to make artists independent of the sale or non-sale of their works, and so to overcome the commodity character of works of art. The control of art was put in the hands of artists. A music directorate was established, for example, which consisted of Béla Bartók, Zoltán Kodály and Ernst von Dohnányi. Provided that art could be freed from its commodity character, provided that the economy could be put in the service of culture, and provided that the military defence of the Hungarian Soviet Republic succeeded, thenthis may have been the thirty-four-year-old revolutionary’s hopean essential life would at last be possible again. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 317

Categorization

• XREF: This state-commissioning ideal prefigures the whole later debate on culture industry and state art — connects to Horkheimer/Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment and to Soviet socialist realism. — connects to: Lukács’s brief ministry placed art control in artists’ own hands — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 317
• ADDENDUM: Related to ‘On Sacrifice’ themes only weakly; stronger as a direct companion to institutional control of art in the Culture Industry tradition.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 317

Broader Connections

• Lukács’s brief ministry placed art control in artists’ own hands #contradicts (0.90) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 317