Modern capitalist theory is traditionally traced to the 18th-century treatise An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Scottish political economist Adam Smith, and the origins of capitalism as an economic system can be placed in the 16th century.

There’s a perennial distrust amongst the arts community of business people, and the effect capitalism has on art. The idea is that caring about profit makes an artist and their work less noble, and destroys their creative integrity. Artists have to make money too, and doing so shouldn’t make them less of an artist!

Capitalist crisis does not begin within art, but art can reflect and amplify its effects, to positive and negative ends. They enable us to explore the mysterious — deep within us and all around us,’ adding that ‘diplomats have found art and culture to be invaluable tools.

Whether you like his work, or his capitalistic philosophy, he in a way made art accessible to everyone. And while this is making art accessible, such automatic production does not only turn art into a product, it can do it to the point where it loses its meaning.

Instead of starting with labor, we must start with the market. But for the work of art, the threat of its “real subsumption under capital” is posed via the mediation of the market: commodification means subsumption under the market; it means the erosion of the normative force of the artwork.

Historically, art and artists have existed both with and without a market. Much of art production today occurs in places without a market for art, or in countries where a capitalist market system is not the dominant form of social and cultural organization.

Commodification describes the process by which something without an economic value gains economic value that can replace other social values. The process changes relationships that were previously untainted by commerce into relationships that essentially become commercial in everyday use.

Updated Oct 25, 2018. The most important aspects of a capitalist system are private property, private control of the factors of production, accumulation of capital, and competition.

Capitalist realism is loosely defined as the dominant conception that capitalism is the only viable economic system and thus, there can be no imaginable alternative. Fisher likens capitalist realism to a “pervasive atmosphere” that affects areas of cultural production, political-economic activity, and general thought.

The culture of capitalism or capitalist culture is the set of social practices, social norms, values and patterns of behavior that are attributed to the capitalist economic system in a capitalist society. Capitalist culture promotes the accumulation of capital and the sale of commodities,…

cap·i·tal·ism. n. An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development occurs through the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market.