Hilarious!: ‘Too rich’ Brits lack desire, says Heseltine

'The fine art isn't always appreciated by those who can afford it, it is an investment.'

But so what? It is a free society and a person can choose to invest their money as they see fit. The great and the good and the socialist can't decide to take it off them just because they do not think that the person appreciates it sufficiently.

What about films, are they not art? Are they not a cultural form? What makes Lord of the rings different to Dolly dimple does Dallas (or whatever) ? it is something to be viewed and it elicits a response. The purpose of art is to elicit a response, porn does that but you are dismissing pornography. Why?

'Whilst the working man's art is a commodity and creates a profit that shows up on some other persons balance sheet.'

Just because something is popular and people want to buy it or own it, doesn't make it worth less. Its value is not diminished by filthy lucre. Profit is not a dirty word. The Beatles sold millions of records because they appealed to people and their art resonated with people. The money that was earned is immaterial.

Porn is not art.

There is nothing wrong with popular art. I think some of teh distiction between popular art and fine art is due to snobbishness and elitism. Elites always want to distinguish themselves from the masses and what is popular so that they can look down on the masses. We see the same philosophy in teenagers where as soon as a song is in the cahrts, that artist is no longer cool, becauae the unsophisticated majority like it.

I saw a report about a Scottish artist called Vettriano where he said something like the art establishment didn't like him too much even though one of his paintings is the highest selli ng print or something like that. The public likes his work, so many of teh critics who see themselves as superior to the masses, don't like him much.

This sort of elitism is similar to the stratification of our class society with different accents and different clothes in order to distinguish themselves from the majority.

Some of these people think that common people are vulgar and that the art that they like is vulgar too and that they are more spohisticated than them.

Having read capital and a great many other books about capitalism I know a bit. I know enough to say that capitalism shapes peoples desires through media.

I think you misunderstand the point I am making. Fine art is considered civilised, for the privileged few whilst mainstream art like advertising, pop music and fashion is the working man's art. But that art is actually the art of the capitalist, used to shape desire and spending patterns, used to make profits. The fine art isn't always appreciated by those who can afford it, it is an investment. It realises more money for them. Whilst the working man's art is a commodity and creates a profit that shows up on some other persons balance sheet.

Modern culture is not revered and treated in the same way because it is not produced in the same way and with the same purpose as fine art, not because people are too thick to appreciate ascetic beauty.

Porn, that's a great example of modern media art. Should that be revered and appreciated? or is it there to dumb people down and pick their pockets with little care of how they react to it?

Mini,

You do seem to be a more than a little prescriptive. Because you like art, other people must like art. Because you want socialism, it must be what the people reallly want - even if they are too stupid to know it yet. I am not sure what point your portraits of poverty in the US is trying to show. There will be winners and losers in any economic system - even the socialism that you espouse. The main difference being that there will be far more losers in a socialist system. Ask yourself why people have consistently risked their lives to leave places like Cuba and the Eastern bloc. None of the people shown in the portraits are close to starving to death precisely because the US has wealth created through capitalism. If they lived in a different part of the world, in a less successful economy, then you can be sure that some of them would be close to starvation.

You misunderstand capitalism. If there was a demand for fine art amongst the masses then that need would be identified and sated in some way by an entrepreneur or movement. Because the need for fine art amongst the masses does not exist at the moment does not mean that people must be educated. If you look hard enough you will find all sorts of art in popular culture - it is just not treated in the same revered way.

Yes the Jan van de Capelle is good.
There are poor people all over the world and in Cuba too.

Many poor people in America have done well with time. America is a more dynamic system with less of a class structure and more social mobility than we have here. That is why more people from around the world want to go there than want to come here.

It is about freedom. Many works of art and antique cars and antique furniture etc etc are not currently in state hands. Some have been owned by families for generations and people paid good money for them or their ancestors commissioned the works and paid for them at the time.

I don't believe in the government stripping people of their possessions of homes just because they are valuable and unique and objects of beauty.

Then it is also a matter of money. Governments have public money taken from people's taxes. I think it would be a waste of the public's money for some art committee of the great and the good to decide to use the public's money on buying up a Jan van de Cappelle (what the hell?) rather than investing that money in education and hospitals.

I think the public has different priorities to the great and the good and the Lords and the Dames.

'the poor will grow to appreciate art and music'

I think this is elitist and the philosophy of the great and the good. More people like the Rolling Stones than Jan van de Capelle, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Apparently the Bowie exhibition at the V&A is the most visited V&A exhibition. I wouldn't go to see it, but I believe in letting the public decide if they want to see Bowie or Jan.

Here is a great picture of american ingenuity, now compare that to the van de Cappelle.

lightbox.time.com/2011/11/17/below-the-line-portraits-of-american-poverty/#1

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cappelle,_Calm.jpg

Note the picture is of a little 3 year old boy of immigrant parents who moved to America in search of that elusive dream.

So poor people get no pleasure from looking at a Jan van de Cappelle. well I guess those elites would say the people are too stupid to enjoy something so simple as art appreciation, that should be reserved for privileged people, civilised people. Let the poor eat crap and take drugs, that's what they like.

Art can be appreciated and made without cluttering up landfill, there is more to life than producing widgets you can not afford to buy just so that you can afford some low grade craparolla fish fingers, if your lucky.

Education should be democratised fully and all privilege within education scrapped. That way you can live in your meritocracy claig and perhaps the poor will grow to appreciate art and music instead of being brain damaged by a diet of hamburgers and Brittany spears!

'Capitalism turned the United States into the wealthiest country in the world with the largest debt.'

Yes, but only the largest economy in the world can sustain that level of debt.
America has the ingenuity, the dynamism, the system and the people to turn that around. It all depends on the policies of the politicians.

'Capitalism has created the technology to feed the world and prevent disease and yet it lays humans to waste all over the globe in its relentless pursuit of that golden 3% growth.'

It is not capitalism that does that. It is people and often elites. There is a difference between them and capitalism.

It is certain green policies made by elites at global conferences that have set "targets" with their "target culture" that mean that certain crops that could be used to feed people are instead used to create "biofuels" in order to, so they say, "save the planet", which has resulted in food prices rising and has led to food riots in some countries. Capitalists didn't create the "target culture", it was people who have probably never run businesses who set those targets while saying that they only wanted to "save the planet".

When Microsoft or Google create their European HQ in a European country, it is major news and the Prime Minister of that country goes on TV to tell the people because it is a very good thing. It means that local people will be employed there and will improve their skills. It helps the whole country. That is the good that capitalism does.

And when Microsoft sets up subsidiaries in Bangalore that is a very good thing and hundreds of Indian highly-trained graduates benefit from that investment and can improve their skills and prospects by working for one of the world's top companies.

Companies don't spend their time plotting how to exploit their workers. Businesses are a force for good. Investment is a great thing.

I don't agree with you about art. I don't think that the government should have the monopoly on art. If someone bought a work of art, then it belongs to them. I don't believe a government should strip that from them. If the government wants it for the people then they should buy it in the market.

Capitalism turned the United States into the wealthiest country in the world with the largest debt.

Capitalism has created the technology to feed the world and prevent disease and yet it lays humans to waste all over the globe in its relentless pursuit of that golden 3% growth.

I am particularly interested in history, antiques and art. I feel very strongly that art should be available to all people not held in vaults for private collections. Poetry, art, great antiques, literature and medicine should be available to all, widgets won't feed the world and neither will art but our greatest human achievements are either private property, the pursuit of the rich or largely unobtainable. People can not meet their full human potential on empty bellies.

We live in a free society. Labour say they are socialist. If you don't think so, then you are free to set up or join other socialist parties and try to convince the electorate that you have the best policies. I believe in freedom and democracy. What I don't believe in is the "my way or the highway" philosophy of communist systems that stop other parties existing and standing for election.

Today I read a report that Dennis Healey said something like UKIP are bastards. There are millions of people who disagree with him and have the right to express that at an election.

What I would not like is a band of socialists and committees determining the rights of the rest of the population who don't agree with them. I don't believe in elites from Oxbridge or think tanks telling the rest of the public what is good for them. If the people want socialism, then so be it, that is democracy.

All countries are engaged in realpolitik. The Soviet Union was an empire that ran other countries and imposed its will on them.

I don't think wealth inequality matters as long as people do not live in poverty. I don't care how much money Tony Blair or Tony Benn have. It is nothing to do with me.

There are people living in tents in our country too. It is not good. But I would still prefer to live here than in a communist country where ambition and progression are capped and limited and where there are "limits to growth" unless you join the party and are in with the right crowd.

I'm not in favour of large state socialism claig

Housing co-operatives, worker co-operatives, community organising, democratic process at every level. I am not in favour of a vanguard of "elite" thinkers taking control. What went before failed because people haven't willingly wanted socialism. You can't make socialism work it requires cooperation.

Did you watch that short history lesson I linked to? can't have done.

American/corporate imperialism has undermined the entire globe through a mixture of trade arrangements, under-cover terrorism, sanctions, military actions and bribes to dictators. It does this so that the bank/corporate nexus can continue to grow rich at the expense of both the American state itself and the vast numbers of poor and starving people in the west and also in underdeveloped countries.

There are families living in tents in major U.S cities and it has the greatest wealth inequality of any nation. How you can say that vast wealth side by side with people living in tents and lacking even basic health care and food can be good, I don't know.

Maria Sharapova has earned somewhere in the region of 200 million dollars. Much of that has been paid by capitalist advertisers and sponsors who used her image to sell their products. Everyone's a winner. Individuals couldn't receive those sorts of rewards in a communist system.

That is why most people, even though they will never earn those rewards, prefer to live in a society where that is possible than in one where their earnings are distributed communally.

The communist societies built walls to stop their people escaping and banned them from travelling abroad. People from the West weren't flocking to enter communist countries.

The communist experiment failed and has largely been disbanded.

Thousands of people from Latin America try to enter the United States each year in order to escape grinding poverty and work their way up in a capitalist society that offers individuals more rewards for hard works.

They don't head to the US to be exploited, they head there for a better living.

Capitalism turned the United States into the wealthiest country in the world - a country founded by poor immigrants from Europe only a few hundred years ago.

Capitalism is not flawed. It is communism and its control society planning mentality that is flawed, because it removes freedom and reduces individual creativity and incentive and makes them secondary to communal planning conducted by committee and think tank.

These arguments seem familiar to me. Oh yeah, I've listened but he overlooks the fact that capitalism itself is flawed. I also don't go in for greenies whether they be tree climbing or devil worshipping.

We have seen how they plan, regulate and run things with their "target culture". We have seen how this "target culture" led to the unnecessary death of thousands of people in our hospitals. They set targets for waste, and tell us we are wasting resources.

They look at numbers and resources and targets and value them more highly than people.

Put people at the forefront, relegate the planners' numbers second. Put growth, production and wealth creation at the forefront, relegate targets and controls second.

Free up business, give capital to business, turn the wheels of the economy that makes society rich.

Serve the people, not targets.

They tell us that we are wasting food and are wasting resources. They put propaganda on our TV screens with earnest young leftwingers preaching to us how we should scavenge in bins for sandwiches that supermarkets throw away because they have passed their sell by date. They tell us that that is wasteful and we are being profligate. They pretend they want a zero waste society. But there is no such thing. If a child leaves half their dinner, it is not a waste, it is because the child is full up. We don't have to stuff our selves silly in order to meet their "zero waste" targets by eating food that would go off anyway if passing its sell by date.

They want us to buyt less carrots and buy less widgets. But this means that the farmer and producer will sell less carrots and less widgets and hence make less profit. That is what they want. A reduction in the profitable productive capacity of the workforce.

They look at "production" figures but ignore the real purpose of production - the creation of wealth by the supply of goods for people's needs.

The farmer's field will produce more carrots every year because there is no threat to the planet, the earth replenishes itself. There is no need to cut back, cut population, cut wages, cut benefits, cut consumption in order to "save the planet" as their propaganda constantly tells us.