Art is the negation of labor, and that's why it's so important to us

What is art so important to us?

Art is supposed to be different from labor as such in that labor is done as means to an end only: the finished product, and as means to the end of payment. Art is done as an end in itself in two senses: the product produced has value in itself, because of its "meaning," which lies in its formal beauty and/or "true" content (thus the broad category of art also includes scientific and theoretical work). And the work done in making the product is normally 'autotelic' because it is enjoyable in itself. It may well be objected that this idea of art is the 'autonomous' character of art in 'bourgeois' society or under capitalism; in any case, what it is structurally and constitutively opposed to is labor under capitalist conditions. The distinction is between what is a means to an end and what is an end in itself. The origin of this distinction is in the teleological metaphysics of Aristotle. That the ability to produce and consume artworks is historically dependent on leisure and (in capitalist society) at least relative class privilege is also true, though as in other ways, this class privilege can be extended or mitigated, as it mostly is today in terms of consumption. It is widely desired as object of both consumption and productive activity. There does not exist at present any significant alternative to this model. Art is the work that is meaningful because it is not 'mere' labor. Of course, all creative work involves some objectified (if not 'alienated') labor, or means-ends activity, and so there is no work that is not partly labor (though it may aim to not be, which is also capital's dream, related to which is the idea of replacing workers with machines), though there is labor that is not creative work. The artist who wants to remain autonomous, as he must to create work that has meaning-value and not just exchange-value making possible profit, must observe these conditions. The anxiety pertaining to this structure applies potentially to everyone. We could wonder what art will become in a world in which life is no longer based on labor for most people. We do not know. We can only suppose that we will want to retain something of what art is today. It is a very interesting fact that this seems so important; doubtless that is largely because art is thought of as outside labor and participating in it a way to negate it. Wanting to overcome the distinction, as Marx thought history's 'realization' would do for a number of such dichotomy's, is surely not a bad idea.

That art has 'meaning-value' and that scientific and theoretical work are a form of it, is related to the fact that artworks seem to reveal something about the world of our involvements. This 'world' could be almost anything people participate in. To say that artworks reveal a world, or a part, aspect, or form, or an interpretation of, 'the' world as some sort of totality: this is also just a way of saying that art has meaning and its products are not just things of use. Use and meaning are surely the same thing from the standpoint of exchange- and surplus-value, because that means treating the artworks as commodities, which are produced because they are objects of use. A meaningful thing is just something we contemplate and find interesting, rather than just, for example, sit on, eat, or otherwise 'enjoy'. So the Heideggerian claim that artworks reveal or disclose 'worlds' does not change this basic argument, though it may help explain the 'need' or demand for things that are not just used (and then disposed of) and that are ends in themselves in the way that can involve or lead to contemplation (or the work of interpretation, making consumption into a form of work). The idea of an end that is not a means to another end is not a terminal point, but something wanted for its own sake. There is perhaps something very curious about this conceptually, but the teleological framework is not just directional but servile, since it involves uses. Aristotle's teleological metaphysics was a philosophy of a leisure class in a society where labor was done by slaves. Marxism is Aristotelian and teleological in this sense as well as in its understanding of time, history, and the 'messianic'. Industrial or capitalist society remains Aristotelian, and it remains a society dependent on servile labor. Derrida's idea of a metaphysics that cannot be 'overcome' because the concept of such overcoming is part of it is one way of fully recognizing this predicament. We can, of course, suppose that when labor is no longer the decisive and central human activity - when that as 'essence' is no longer historically determinative, as it still is - then perhaps 'art' as something we now separate out as something special will 'disappear' as such because if something is in everything, it ceases to be a meaningful concept picking anything out. It is certainly possible to think of a world where art is not needed and replaced only by everyday life and perhaps interesting conversation. But that may not be the only possibility, particularly if we still make and contemplate things that we find 'interesting' in some way.