The Market for
Literary Products
by Ludwig von
Mises
However, this
freedom of the individual is limited. It is an outcome of the democracy of the
market and therefore depends on the appreciation of the individual's
achievements on the part of the sovereign consumers. What pays on the market is
not the good performance as such, but the performance recognized as good by a
sufficient number of customers. If the buying public is too dull to appreciate
duly the worth of a product, however excellent, all the trouble and expense
were spent in vain.
Capitalism is
essentially a system of mass production for the satisfaction of the needs of
the masses. It pours a horn of plenty upon the common man. It has raised the
average standard of living to a height never dreamed of in earlier ages. It has
made accessible to millions of people enjoyments which a few generations ago
were only within the reach of a small elite.
The outstanding
example is provided by the evolution of a broad market for all kinds of
literature. Literature — in the widest sense of the term — is today a commodity
asked for by millions. They read newspapers, magazines, and books, they listen
to the broadcasts and they fill the theaters. Authors, producers and actors who
gratify the public's wishes earn considerable revenues. Within the frame of the
social division of labor a new subdivision evolved, the species of the
literati, i.e., people making a living from writing. These authors sell their
services or the product of their effort on the market just as all other
specialists are selling their services or their products. They are in their
very capacity as writers firmly integrated into the cooperative body of the
market society.
In the pre-capitalistic
ages writing was an unremunerative art. Blacksmiths and shoemakers could make a
living, but authors could not. Writing was a liberal art, a hobby, but not a
profession. It was a noble pursuit of wealthy people, of kings, grandees, and
statesmen, of patricians and other gentlemen of independent means. It was
practiced in spare time by bishops and monks, university teachers and soldiers.
The penniless man whom an irresistible impulse prompted to write had first to
secure some source of revenue other than authorship. Spinoza ground lenses. The
two Mills, father and son, worked in the London offices of the East India
Company. But most of the poor authors lived from the openhandedness of wealthy friends
of the arts and sciences. Kings and princes vied with one another in
patronizing poets and writers. The courts were the asylum of literature.
It is a
historical fact that this system of patronage granted to the authors full
freedom of expression. The patrons did not venture to impose upon their
protégés their own philosophy and their own standards of taste and ethics. They
were often eager to protect them against the church authorities. At least it
was possible for an author whom one or several courts had banned to find refuge
with a rival court.
Nonetheless, the
vision of philosophers, historians and poets moving in the midst of courtiers
and depending on the good graces of a despot is not very edifying. The old
liberals hailed the evolution of a market for literary products as an essential
part of the process which emancipated men from the tutelage of kings and
aristocrats. Henceforth, they thought, the judgment of the educated classes
will be supreme. What a wonderful prospect! A new florescence seemed to be
dawning.
Success on the
Book Market
However, there
were some flaws in this picture.
Literature is
not conformism, but dissent. Those authors who merely repeat what everybody
approves and wants to hear are of no importance. What counts alone is the
innovator, the dissenter, the harbinger of things unheard of, the man who
rejects the traditional standards and aims at substituting new values and ideas
for old ones. He is by necessity antiauthoritarian and anti-governmental,
irreconcilably opposed to the immense majority of his contemporaries. He is
precisely the author whose books the greater part of the public does not buy.
Whatever one may
think about Marx and Nietzsche, nobody can deny that their posthumous success
has been overwhelming. Yet they both would have died from starvation if they
had not had other sources of income than their royalties. The dissenter and
innovator has little to expect from the sale of his books on the regular
market.
The tycoon of
the book market is the author of fiction for the masses. It would be wrong to
assume that these buyers always prefer bad books to good books. They lack
discrimination and are, therefore, ready to absorb sometimes even good books.
It is true that most of the novels and plays published today are mere trash.
Nothing else can be expected when thousands of volumes are written every year.
Our age could
still some day be called an age of the flowering of literature if only one out
of a thousand books published would prove to be equal to the great books of the
past.
Many critics
take pleasure in blaming capitalism for what they call the decay of literature.
Perhaps they should rather inculpate their own inability to sift the chaff from
the wheat. Are they keener than their predecessors were about a hundred years
ago? Today, for instance, all critics are full of praise for Stendhal. But when
Stendhal died in 1842, he was obscure and misunderstood.
Capitalism could
render the masses so prosperous that they buy books and magazines. But it could
not imbue them with the discernment of Maecenas or Can Grande della Scala. It
is not the fault of capitalism that the common man does not appreciate uncommon
books.
