Music and the "Gift Economy" 6: Problems with Free Art

Previous posts in this series:
Music and the "Gift Economy" 1: An Introduction
Music and the "Gift Economy" 2: Examples
Music and the "Gift Economy" 3: Commons, Copyright, and Radical Politics
Music and the "Gift Economy" 4: Personal Versus Impersonal Transactions
Music and the "Gift Economy" 5: Supporting Artists

Lewis Hyde and others have suggested that art and other forms of creative expression (I'll include music here) should be given away. Justifications include:

1. It's ennobling for giver and receiver.
2. It's impossible to put a true price on creativity.
3. Creativity shouldn't be judged on financial value.
4. More people will be exposed to art if it is free.
5. If it is easily reproducible, why not?
6. The culture should have access to all art.

In my last post, I pointed out that many of the "gift economy" concepts don't address how to create a more equitable society. The system depends on the money makers to support the gift givers in some fashion, so there tends to be a built-in class structure. The rich support the poor.

Whether it's being done in honest ignorance, blind obedience, or cynical exploitation of the market, the result is the same: our ability to envision new solutions to the latest challenges is stunted by a dependence on market-driven and market-compatible answers. ...

Chris Anderson [author of Free] has analyzed where all this is going, and — rather than offering up a vision of a post-scarcity economy — advised companies to simply leverage the abundant to sell whatever they can keep scarce. ...

Higher sales reports and lecture fees serve as positive reinforcement for authors to incorporate the market's bias even more enthusiastically the next time out. Write books that business likes, and you do better business. The cycle is self-perpetuating. But just because it pays the mortgage doesn't make it true. "Economics Is Not Natural Science." Douglas Rushoff. Edge. 8/11/09.

There are people who propose to reduce dependence on market economies, even going so far as to suggest someday we can eliminate monetary transactions altogether. I will get into those ideas in the next post, but for now I want to bring up some of general snags in the free art concept. Consider it food for thought.

If it is free anyway, is it really a gift?
Free culture has gotten a big boost now that we can copy files and distribute them for little or no added expense. But the very fact that they don't cost money to reproduce and pass along may take them out of the gift realm. No sacrifice is involved. Similarly, freely giving away your music/writing/photos/design in order to gain exposure is not gift giving. (We do not, for example, consider broadcast TV a gift, even though viewers don't have to pay for it.)

... gifts are alienable; this means that when you give a gift, you give up ownership of it. Ownership of the gift is transferred to the person to whom you give it. "The Gift of Generalized Exchange." Ira Nayman.*spark-online.com. Version 17.0, February 2001.

A gift costs the giver something real. It might be cash (enough that we feel the pinch) but more likely it involves a sacrifice or a risk or an emotional exposure. A true gift is a heartfelt connection, something that changes both the giver and the recipient....

Free doesn't make something a gift. Free might be a marketing strategy, free might make a generous present, but free doesn't automatically make something a gift. "Gifts, misunderstood." Seth Godin. 6/19/10.

A Christian explanation to differentiate gifts from merely free would be: "Not equal gifts, but equal sacrifice." In other words, you actually have to be giving up something of value -- to you -- for it to be a true gift.

If you give it away, does it have any value?
We have become so conditioned to the idea that money determines how much something (which can be either tangible or intangible) is worth to people that when there isn't a price tag, we are left wondering if it has no value. This experiment, for example, shows that perceptions are affected by price tags.

Twenty people sampled five Cabernet Sauvignons that were distinguished solely by their retail price, with bottles ranging from $5 to $90. ... $90 Cabernet seemed to taste better than the $10 Cabernet, even though they were actually the same wine. How We Decide. Jonah Lehrer. 2009.

Here's another case where people perceive something tastes better when they pay for it than when they get the exact same product for free: "Why Does Bottled Water Taste Better?" ADDED 11/18/10.

Not accepting that money equals quality, some artists have made a statement by not charging for what they create.

The Free Biennial began in late January, 2002, with a call to artists offering a few simple parameters: the work should be nonmonetary, meaning that no money changes hands (no admission is charged, nothing is bought or sold), the work should take place in public space (very widely defined as anyplace a stranger can enter, including the broadcast airwaves, telephone system, and the internet), and it should be perceptible to someone in New York City during the month of April, 2002. Any artwork meeting these criteria could be in the Free Biennial. "Free Words to Free Manifesta: Some Experiments in Art as Gift." Sal Randolph. In Ethics & the Environment, August, 2003.

Another "free art" exhibit:

Known as the Artists for Social Justice, several members recently participated in a one-night performance entitled “Free Free Market” in Chinatown focusing on aesthetic exchange and participation as an alternative to the object-driven art market. ...

“Free Free Market” involved dozens of ASJ member projects that focused on gift economies, the exchange of aesthetic and social experiences, encouraging dialogue, and inhabiting spaces that are nontraditional for art (such as public space, strip malls, and classrooms). "Between Art and Anarchism." Sue Bell Yank. Journal of Aesthetics & Protest. Issue 7.

Yet another "free" art experiment is the Fine Art Adoption Network.

FAAN is an online network, which uses a gift economy to connect artists and potential collectors. All of the artworks on view are available for adoption. This means acquiring an artwork without purchasing it, through an arrangement between the artist and collector. Our goal is to help increase and diversify the population of art owners and to offer artists new means for engaging their audience.

Performance art grew out of a desire to challenge the notion of "art."

From Allan Kaprow's first Happening in 1959 and the Fluxus performances in the 1960s to the body-based works by Carolee Scheemann, Marina Abramovic, Vito Acconci, Chris Burden, or Hermann Nitsch and the non-site performances by Dennis Oppenheim or Richard Long, performance was made plot-less and site-less and distanced from theater. The ephemeral was central to the concerns of these many artists who sought to challenge the assumptions and rules of art-making by second-guessing its materiality and permanence. To be here one second and gone the next, they implied, could make art – and our habits around consuming and appreciating it – free from the market and the museum and, ultimately, into something new. They were clear cases of "you shoulda been there." The Legacy of Performance Art Anthony Huberman. Saatchi.online.

Theoretically performance artists could charge for their shows like musicians do for theirs, but America's most famous performance artist, Marina Abramovic, sees her performance in service of a higher calling:

“The function of the artist in a disturbed society is to give awareness of the universe, to ask the right questions, and to elevate the mind.” ...

Ms Abramovic has never sold her performances. For years she scraped together a living through teaching and commissions. She didn’t acquire gallery representation until 1995, when she was signed to New York’s Sean Kelly Gallery. Nowadays, her income comes mainly from selling photographs, often in editions of seven, made in collaboration with Marco Anelli, a photographer. "Performance art: The artist was here," The Economist, 9/15/10.

Unlike business people who advocate giving away something for free as a way to increase demand for what is scarce, and then to profit from those who have the money to pay for that scarcity, the "free" artists generally are attempting to strip class structures out of art economics. Those with no money are as able to enjoy the art as those who are able to pay. Those who give away their art, but have no means of support for themselves, are essentially martyrs for the cause.

Will people take care of it if they didn't pay for it?
Sal Randolph, in his free art experiments, has uncovered another dynamic with free art.

Giving away something for free makes its value indeterminate — the individual recipient decides its value, rather than the market. ... Is this object precious? How careful should I be with it? The eventual fate of every object without resale value is the trash. The next level up is the thrift store, the junk store, the flea market. And in fact tons of amateur art circulates in those low markets and can be had for prices ranging from $0.50 to $100. I’ve seen free art treated both preciously and casually — framed carefully and preserved, but also thrown in boxes, stacked awkwardly, left in drawers when interest fades. "Beautiful Money (Art as Currency, Art as Experience)." Sal Randolph.

Randolph's observation has relevance to music and other digital art. If you got it for free and it is easily replaceable, does it have any value to you as a possession? Is it now disposable art? Lately there have been discussions of about how copyright is hampering archiving of old books, music, film, and photographs. However, it may turn out that it is the cheap/free items that aren't being saved, rather than the ones deemed valuable from the beginning:

Experimenting at Ebay, I've discovered an interesting law of economics. (Perhaps this is well-known, but I had never heard of it before). The less the intrinsic value of a mass-produced object, the more likely it will become valuable over time as a collectible. (Their lack of intrinsic value means that few people will save these objects, which means that they will become rare. And the fact that they were mass-produced will mean that they are imprinted on the consciousness of many, and thus subject to nostalgia by association, and hence will be in demand.)

As a result, I can get more money selling a fair-condition bottle cap than selling a 100-year-old book that's in fine condition. "The psychology of auctions and collectibles," eBay Guides, 9/10/09.

If it is true that we tend to abandon what we acquire for free or cheaply, and then value it more later on because society didn't bother to preserve any copies, then the destruction of popular culture is necessary to create its future monetary worth.

If we judge purely on the quality of the art, why does it matter who created it?
Another variation on how perceptions affect our appreciation of art:

Why is a set of photos worth millions if they were shot by Ansel Adams, and next to nothing if the photographer depressing the plunger was a nobody? After all, the images remain the same. To the extent that art is about appreciating aesthetic objects for their own sake, is it right to put so much stake in the question of who did the drawing or painting or snapping?

The basic market definition of value is perfectly reasonable: A work is worth what someone will give you for it—an amount usually determined by the intersection of desirability, scarcity and the expectation that there will be someone down the line willing to pay even more. But isn't art supposed to have value that transcends the market—something inherent in the object itself?

... what would happen if Vincent van Gogh had died an utter unknown, without any of his paintings ever having been seen or saved. A hundred years later "The Starry Night" turns up at a yard sale, a grimy orphan. Would it be recognized as a masterpiece?

The answer is, regrettably, probably no. "Ansel Adams, Caravaggio and Other Art Authentication Fights: Does a Famous Name Make Anything More Beautiful?" Wall Street Journal, 8/13/10.

An oft-cited story is this one where a talented classical violinist was ignored while playing for tips in the subway.

Three days before he appeared at the Metro station, Bell had filled the house at Boston's stately Symphony Hall, where merely pretty good seats went for $100. Two weeks later, at the Music Center at Strathmore, in North Bethesda, he would play to a standing-room-only audience so respectful of his artistry that they stifled their coughs until the silence between movements. But on that Friday in January, Joshua Bell was just another mendicant, competing for the attention of busy people on their way to work.

... In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run -- for a total of $32 and change. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look. "Pearls Before Breakfast," The Washington Post, 4/4/07.

What if people don't understand reciprocity?
One of the fundamentals of gift giving is the idea that people will return the favor, if not to you, then to someone else. But sharing or giving gifts is not something left to our innate sensibilities. First, as children we are taught about sharing, and then about giving gifts to friends and family. Then, as we grow older, we learn about tipping protocol. And perhaps when we are even older, we learn about hostess gifts and business gifts.

We live in social groups that have rules about gifts and gift giving. These rules and customs serve to assure that things will come out fairly — that when one gives away something, one will get something in return. While this may sound crass and may not be necessary in an affluent society, it is essential for survival in social groups where resources are scarce. "Gift-giving rules vary with the social subgroup." Vivian Friedman. Raising Children. Vol. 2.

If we hope to support artists involved in a gift economy, we need to establish that either we will give them gifts (and hopefully in some form that covers basic survival needs) or that some institution or patron will.

Gift giving is puzzling from an economic perspective because it is inefficient -- givers spend money on gifts differently from the way receivers would -- and it seems to be necessarily so. "Gifts as Economic Signals and Social Symbols." Colin Camerer. The American Journal of Sociology.Vol. 94, 1988.

In other words, by its very nature, gift giving isn't supposed to replace economic transactions, so for it to do so, we'd need to set up some new societal rules (just as we have to done to make sure tips augment a service person's income).

What if people don't want your gifts?
This probably the biggest problem with gift economies. Even if we want to encourage gift giving, and we will somehow support creative people who give away their art, we will still have to deal with an oversupply of gifts. Right now, for example, we have millions of artists/bands uploading their music. They freely give it away, but most of it will not be downloaded and saved.

... if an artist makes an object and no one wants it, I'm sorry to say, I don't know that you can call it (at that time) a bona fide "gift." Of course, if an artist creates something than none of his/her contemporaries value, that doesn't mean future generations won't. And so, whether an object is a "gift" to humanity or not is place/time-determined and subjective. Such views can and do change over history. "Sorting Through the Muddled Politics of the Gift," Edward_ Winkleman, 2/9/10.

Even the most hardened skeptic of the self-expression free-for-all has to admit that plenty of nonprofessional creators, ignoring the wants and needs of the market, have produced priceless gifts for the rest of us to enjoy. On the other hand, even the most ardent enthusiast of giveaway culture has to admit that a lot of what’s on offer is not only free but worthless.

... a product of the gift sphere may be pure, but even a sharing economy depends on somebody’s wanting what’s being offered — or at least not dismissing it ... "Valuing $0." Rob Walker. New York Times, 5/16/10.

For a good look at the problems in receiving gifts, check out this paper: The Shadow Side of Social Gift-Giving: Miscommunication and Failed Gifts

In my last post in this series, I'll cover some proposed ideas on alternative economies which may allow for more creative expression and the support of artists. Music and the "Gift Economy" 7: Alternative Economies

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

Music and the "Gift Economy" 5: Supporting Artists

Previous posts in this series:
Music and the "Gift Economy" 1: An Introduction
Music and the "Gift Economy" 2: Examples
Music and the "Gift Economy" 3: Commons, Copyright, and Radical Politics
Music and the "Gift Economy" 4: Personal Versus Impersonal Transactions

Lewis Hyde is the person most closely associated with arts and gift economies. His book, The Gift, is considered a classic by many.

"In a society that mostly talks about money,” says Margaret Atwood, who keeps a half-dozen copies of “The Gift” on hand at all times to distribute to artists she thinks will benefit from it, “Lewis carved out a little island where you can say, ‘Life doesn’t always work that way.’” "What Is Art For? - Lewis Hyde - Profile," New York Times, 11/16/08.

To quote Hyde directly:

... there are categories of human enterprise that are not well organized or supported by market forces. Family life, religious life, public service, pure science, and of course much artistic practice: none of these operates very well when framed simply in terms of exchange value. The second assumption follows: any community that values these things will find non-market ways to organize them. It will develop gift-exchange institutions dedicated to their support. "Reflections of Arts Funding since World War II." The afterword of The Gift, printed in The Kenyon Review, Winter 2008.

Others share this viewpoint. For example, writer/environmentalist Dave Pollard:

Our society puts a value on human activities only when they can be monetized – when a transaction involving an exchange of money occurs. We tend to equate our time with money: If the "market value" of an hour of our time exceeds the cost of hiring someone else to mow our lawn or make a present for a loved one or look after our children or our home, we conclude that it makes sense to buy those services and to work longer hours to pay for them. ...

By contrast, the Gift Economy does not value monetized activity more highly than un-monetized activity. It suggests, on the contrary, that our time is invaluable and that therefore we should "spend" it, as much as possible, doing things we love and things that are our personal responsibility, and only buy goods and services we cannot possibly provide for ourselves. In doing these things ourselves, we learn to do them better, more efficiently, more effectively and more economically, saving the cost of outsourcing them to a third party. "The Virtuous Cycles of the Gift Economy," How to Save the World. 12/6/06.

Sharon Bolton warns that depending too heavily on a market economy mentality will strip us of traditional community values:

The market becomes disembedded, autonomous, self regulating and entirely economic in nature, purpose and outcome. For the moral economists, in modernity the market takes on a life of its own which is represented by the commodification of whole areas of social life. A process that eats into and, in some cases, consumes and overrides the values and norms of the non economic realm. Rather than society being integrated via non economic institutions of family, church and community; the market becomes the integrative mechanism pervading all aspects of the non economic. In other words the process of embeddedness is reversed; with modern society becoming embedded in the market, rather than the pre modern market being embedded in society, and "refashioning its ethos and relations after its own image" (Booth, 1994: 656). The tentacles of the "market society" extend to such an extent that the economic becomes the sole vehicle of analysis and all aspects of social life are objectified, quantified and couched in terms of maximising behaviour and efficiency – the human becomes understood only as homo economicus (Booth, 1994; Polyani, 1977). "The Idea of the Moral Economy."

Perhaps not surprising, many creative people don't want to have to think about using their art to make a living. Unfortunately, after giving us an entire book on gift economies, Hyde doesn't offer any new ideas on how artists can survive financially. He says they can get day jobs, find patrons, or sell their art.

Getting a day job is pretty self-evident and I have covered it in other blog posts.

The second job frees his art from the burden of financial responsibility so that when he is creating the work he may turn from questions of market value and labor in the protected gift-sphere. He earns a wage in the marketplace and gives it to his art.

... The artist who takes a second job becomes, in a sense, his own patron: he decides his work is worthy of support, just as the patron does, but then he himself must go out and raise the cash. "Lewis Hyde on Being an Artist in a Commercially Driven World." Excerpt from The Gift. In Saachi Online, 12/12/06.

Here's just one real world example of this:

Artists pay a significant economic penalty to pursue their practice, and are, through real monetary contributions, replacing potential income-earning employment with what amounts to free labour. In 2007, the average artist worked 26 hours per week on their studio practice, 14.5 hours on art-related employment, and 7.6 hours on non-art-related employment. In addition, they volunteered just over 3 hours a week to art-related activities. Those artists who spent a majority of their employment time in the studio earned significantly less total income, a median of $15,000, versus $28,994 for artists who spent most of their time in art-related employment, and $21,793 for those who spent most of their time in non-art-related employment. "Waging Culture: the socio-economic status of Canadian visual artists," Out There, 4/1/09.

Hyde includes grants as a form of patronage. I'll go step further than Hyde and suggest there is a continuum of financial support that includes patronage at one end and charity at the other, with nonprofit/government funding in the middle. All involve having a person or institution with greater resources giving to a creative person with lesser resources.

(However, some of what passes for patronage doesn't involve the rich supporting the poor. For example, there are middle class "patrons" who commission works of art from affluent artists. In other words, the "patron" may actually have less money than the artist. But I'll treat these as market transactions because in return for financial support, a creation of comparable value is delivered. Similarly, there are financial prizes given out to artists in recognition of work they have done, with no regard to their financial need. I won't include those as examples of grants.)

To put that financial support continuum into perspective, let me start by citing a paper discussing 19th century English writers and their search for funding. (It's a long paper, but worth reading. Since the online copy is broken down into pages, I have included separate links to each page containing each quote.)

How to get money or resources into the hands of the poor (which can include artists) is at the heart of most economic, religious, political, and societal concepts, so understanding the process is fundamental to understanding how a given community/society conducts itself. In Dickensian England, outright charity was considered demeaning, so paupers sold items that actually had little value. No one needed what they were selling, but these transactions allowed the paupers to save face when accepting money. It was a "sale" rather than a "handout."

It was that same mentality that made giving handouts to writers unpalatable.

Like Mr. Dorrit and the little girls with their bouquets of violets, proponents of nonmarket forms of authorial support strive to dignify the transfers of cash they advocate by characterizing them as offers of tribute rather than alms, or as loans or payments of some sort rather than gifts. "Literary Paupers and Professional Authors: The Guild of Literature and Art." Daniel Hack. Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900. Autumn 1999.

Although gifts and charity were frowned upon, the marketplace wasn't doing a good job of supporting writers either.

The disjunction between intellectual pursuits, on the one hand, and commerce and the provision of daily wants, on the other, explains why men of letters require extramarket support. "Literary Paupers and Professional Authors: The Guild of Literature and Art."

So a debate was going on as to whether government subsidies would be appropriate. The pro-subsidy writers felt the market wouldn't provide enough money, but on the other hand, they didn't want government funding to be seen as any sort of charity, which would demean them and devalue their writing. Therefore they said that the government should pay writers because writers contribute so much to society.

Services done to the State by distinguished efforts in art, literature, and science, are as unequivocal, and at the least as important as services done by professors of arms, law, divinity, and diplomacy. The claims of literature and science are for a due recognition and recompense of such valuable service rendered to the State. ... the state is indebted to these men, and therefore that any payment it makes to them constitutes repayment of that debt. Pensions and the like are not charity, nor even supererogatory tokens of gratitude or esteem ... but simply "due ... recompense." "Literary Paupers and Professional Authors: The Guild of Literature and Art."

Hack points out that justifications for having the government pay writers covered all bases (sometimes in a contradictory fashion):

They deserved it.

They needed the money to subsidize their creativity.

Their craft would suffer or not advance if all they did was to focus on what they could sell rather than taking time to pursue worthy, but not necessarily salable works.

Their writings were a gift to society, so no monetary price could be put on the creations and therefore the government would never be able to pay them enough, but it should give them something anyway.

The problem with giving writers money in recognition of something they had already written was that many of them were too poor to write without upfront funding to cover their living expenses while they wrote. In a nutshell, in Victorian England, like today, people were trying to decide whether or not to use government money to fund writers and if so, if it should come as an advance for future work, or as a reward for already completed work.

Another concept that was being promoted was a writers' guild.

In order to offer such tributes, the Guild proposes establishing an "Institute." This Institute, carefully designed in such a way as to distinguish its support from "the humiliating charity of an Asylum," will have a Warden, Members, and Associates, who are to receive "salaries" of £100 to £200 a year, some with housing on land donated by Bulwer Lytton. Individuals insured through the Guild, along with certain "exceptional cases," will be eligible to offer themselves as candidates for these positions, which are to be filled (again with certain exceptions) through a vote of the Guild's members. Institute Members will be elected for life from "Writers and Artists of established reputation, and generally of mature years (or, if young, in failing health), to whom the income attached to the appointment may be an object of honourable desire"; associates will be chosen either for life or a fixed term from among those who are "less known to the general public" and those "in earlier life, who give promise of future eminence, and to whom a temporary income of £100 a year may be of essential and permanent service". Applications are required for these positions, but there is no means testing; instead, "the application for the office should be held a sufficient presumption that the candidate does not disdain the modest salary attached to it". "Literary Paupers and Professional Authors: The Guild of Literature and Art."

But just as artists today run into problems trying to value what can't always be monetized, so too did this guild run into the same problems.

... to legitimize the Guild's supplementation of the marketplace, literary labor and its products must be shown to have a value the market does not always recognize or reward, but the best way to ensure this supplement's difference from charity is to represent it as a calculated, calibrated payment for goods and services. "Literary Paupers and Professional Authors: The Guild of Literature and Art."

Then there was the problem of how to raise funds for the guild. They didn't want to taint their image by hustling for money. Other options: Stage some plays and sell tickets? Sell annual subscriptions? (Not a whole lot different than ideas being tossed around today, is it?)

The guild organizers contacted a duke to sponsor a play to be attended by Queen Victoria and her court. But then they worried that the Duke might be offended by the play (a satire about a duke). (Sound familiar? Sponsors influencing art.) Luckily the Duke read the play, found it funny, and approved it.

... although the theatrical performances raise over £4000 by 1854, the Guild's Institute is variously derided as a "literary Soup-Kitchen" and "a system of outdoor relief," and the parliamentary bill incorporating the organization forbids it to fill its offices for seven years, after which time its structure proves largely unwieldy. "Literary Paupers and Professional Authors: The Guild of Literature and Art."

Fast forward to today. Not much has changed. People are still looking for funding models for artists, writers, and musicians. And even though there has been talk of gift economies, most of the proposed solutions still involve a world where a market economy is a necessity.

How, if art is essentially a gift, is the artist to survive in a society dominated by the market? Modern artists have resolved this dilemma in several different ways, each of which, it seems to me, has two essential features. First, the artist allows himself to step outside the gift economy that is the primary commerce of his art and make some peace with the market. ...

And then - the necessary second phase - if he is successful in the marketplace, he converts market wealth into gift wealth: he contributes his earnings to the support of his art.

To be more specific, there are three primary ways in which modern artists have resolved the problem of their livelihood: they have taken second jobs, they have found patrons to support them, or they have managed to place the work itself on the market and pay the rent with fees and royalties. The underlying structure that is common to all of these - a double economy and the conversion of market wealth to gift wealth ...

... When an artist takes a second job, a single person moves in both economies, but with patronage there is a division of labor - it is the patron who has entered the market and converted its wealth to gifts.

... Each of the paths I have described is most often a way of getting by, not a way of getting rich. No matter how the artist chooses, or is forced, to resolve the problem of his livelihood, he is likely to be poor. "Lewis Hyde on Being an Artist in a Commercially Driven World," Excerpt from The Gift. In Saachi Online, 12/12/06.

Even though Hyde says in the above piece that "our gifts are not fully ours until they have been given away," a profile of Hyde points out that:

Hyde is not a free-culture purist; he holds copyrights on his books, and those copyrights contribute to his income. "What Is Art For? - Lewis Hyde - Profile," New York Times, 11/16/08.

Artist/writer/curator Jon Ippolito also writes about art not being able to survive in a market economy, but at the same time needing help from it.

For property, intellectual or personal, is the enemy of art.

This essay offers neither a Marxist attack on personal property nor a rosy vision of George Bush writing artists a fat check every year. It is simply an acknowledgment of the fact that a gift culture dies if people stop giving. Making art into property helps plenty of folks--even a few artists. The problem is, it cripples artists more than it helps them, by covertly impeding their power to create, to get paid, even to give. ...

In principle, there is nothing wrong with wanting to make a living as an artist. What's wrong is the perception that our society's art market will ever make that possible for more than a token few.

... The plentiful supply of art in our culture is the product of the unrecompensed labor of countless artists working away in their studios.

... How would they pay the studio rent and DSL bill? The same way their parents' and grandparents' generation did, the same way the overwhelming majority of them do now: a day job. Day jobs suck, but they help reinforce the line between the choices artists make for commercial reasons and the choices they make for their art. ...

Artists aren't the only ones whose illusions would be shattered by taking away the false promise of commercial success through selling art. ... Without the pretense of market compensation, the wealthy and powerful might be under a little more pressure to sponsor free health care, grants, and other mechanisms to sustain this invaluable cultural production. "Why art should be free." Rhizome.org, April 2002.

Here's yet another acknowledgement that in today's world, we don't have a gift economy that exists without a market economy.

The economy of the public domain in fact is a form of gift exchange, involving gifts from the past (our natural and social inheritance), in the present (unpaid and underpaid work), and to the future (including our children as a future workforce). The economy of the real world is in fact a synergy between a market economy and a gift economy. Prosperity arises from the interaction of these two sides of the economy, and not from just the market side or just the gift side. In the market economy we work for a private wage or for profit. In the gift economy, we work on a voluntary basis for the benefit of family, community or society, in the general expectation that others make the same sorts of unpaid contributions. Socially responsible businesses (and their employees) pay income taxes for their use of the outputs of the gift economy, while themselves contributing "external" benefits to the gift economy. "Revisiting the UBI." Keith Rankin. New Zealand Political Review, July 1998.

Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig, who has written extensively on copyright and founded Creative Commons, says something similar.

One of the most important conclusions that can be drawn from the work of Benkler, von Hippel, Weber ... and many others is that the Internet has reminded us that we live not just in one economy, but at least two. One economy is the traditional "commercial economy," an economy regulated by the quid pro quo: I'll do this (work, write, sing, etc.) in exchange for money. Another economy is (the names are many) the (a) amateur economy, (b) sharing economy, (c) social production economy, (d) noncommercial economy, or (e) p2p economy. This second economy (however you name it, I'm just going to call it the "second economy") is the economy of Wikipedia, most FLOSS development, the work of amateur astronomers, etc. It has a different, more complicated logic too it than the commercial economy. If you tried to translate all interactions in this second economy into the frame of the commercial economy, you'd kill it. "on the economies of culture," Lessig, 9/28/06.

And here is this from Michel Bauwens, the creator of the Foundation for P2P Alternatives, which advocates the peer-to-peer concept in as many aspects of life and economics as possible.

Participants cannot live from peer production, though they derive meaning and value from it, and though it may out-compete, in efficiency and productivity terms, the market-based for-profit alternatives. Thus peer production covers only a section of production, while the market provides for nearly all sections; peer producers are dependent on the income provided by the market. So far, peer production has been created through the interstices of the market. "The Political Economy of Peer Production," CTheory.net, 12/1/05.

Those who acknowledge that artists can't survive without either participating in or getting help from the market economy are at least being honest. In contrast, when it is suggested that artists, writers, and musicians should give away their works, but no provision has been made for them to receive life-sustaining gifts in return, this is inherently unfair.

We need to question naive campaigns that merely promote "free culture" without questioning the underlying parasitic economy and the "deprofessionalization" of cultural work. "The Digital Given–10 Web 2.0 Theses by Ippolita, Geert Lovink & Ned Rossiter," Network Cultures, 6/15/09.

Without an exchange of roughly equal value occurring, a marketplace becomes a cruel power game in which one party gets what he wants while offering nothing of equal value in return. Social damage is the inevitable long-term result. That freeloaders are generally unaware of this damage does not mean it is not real, that it is not in fact piling up even as we speak.

I find it interesting that those who take digital music for free that is not being offered for free are not generally attempting to make a grander statement about capitalist society. Few if any seem to be trying to undo marketplace protocol in general, although that would, at least, make some philosophical sense. No, it’s just the digital music they want for free (and okay, maybe movies too, as bandwidth increases). "Free is Not the End (a Fingertips Commentary)," Fingertips Music, 9/13/10.

...The Story of Stuff, seems to be a success. This is work that wants to be given away, distributed freely. We have the technology, a large and growing audience has access to it, but how can we arrive at schemes to fund the creation of this work? We need improved models of state support, new collective and entrepreneurial models and appropriate forms of sponsorship. "The value of didactic art and the gift economy—from object ownership to object affiliation." Adelheid Mers. Art21 Blog, 7/6/09.

So here we are. We still haven't found a way to support most writers, artists, and musicians other than the usual ways -- day jobs, grants/patrons, or selling the works -- all of which still depend on market economies to provide the money to buy the basic necessities of life. And it gets even more complicated when "free" changes people's perception of art and its value:
Music and the "Gift Economy" 6: Problems with Free Art

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

UPDATE 10/12/10
Erik Sherman writes about people who give their work away for free while companies profit from it:

I call it the New Feudalism. There is a dependent relationship uncomfortably reminiscent of the common political and social structures from just before the turn of the first century up until the dawn of the Renaissance. In theory, there was a hierarchy from royalty down to serfs, and people swapped military service to their immediate superiors for the use of land and their ability to make an agricultural living.

In the New Feudalism, workers are technically free, in that they aren’t property. If they receive money, it is a token amount. Instead of land, they receive “exposure” when their material is published. "Huffington Post Makes a Profit? All Hail the New Feudalism!" BNET 10/11/10.

Music and the "Gift Economy" 4: Personal Versus Impersonal Transactions

Previous posts in this series:
Music and the "Gift Economy" 1: An Introduction
Music and the "Gift Economy" 2: Examples
Music and the "Gift Economy" 3: Commons, Copyright, and Radical Politics

The relationship aspect of gift economies is, depending on whose viewpoint, either its strength or its weakness. Gift economies are either good because they encourage (or force) people into social relationships, or they are bad (or at least limiting) because they get bogged down by these relationships.

Before I explore the practicality of gift economies and the arts, let me highlight some of the discussions about market economies versus gift economies. There are trade-offs with each. Even if we use a hybrid system, which many people suggest is the only option, it still helps us to understand the strengths and limitations of each to know how to best utilize each.

... gift economies are fundamentally relational. A large part of the purpose of the gift is to establish and further relations between persons and groups. Part of what makes this possible, as Marcel Mauss points out in his wonderful Essai sur le Don (in English, The Gift), is that gifts demand reciprocation. ...

The relational nature of the gift economy is both its strength and its constraint. It both establishes relationship and requires relationship. On the other hand, the market economy works on the principle of even exchange. Every transaction is complete in itself, balanced, leaving the participants free of each other.

The gift economy is free in terms of money, of course, but constrained by the qualities and requirements of human social relationships. The market economy requires a constant flow of goods or money from the individual, a flow which may be difficult or impossible to produce, but it leaves the individual free to engage or not to engage. In this way, the two systems offer contrasting models of “free” and freedom. "Some Experiments in Art as Gift." Sal Randolph. March, 2003.

Gifts can establish a relationship that then switches to a market economy.

Mauss was interested in how we make society where it didn’t exist before. Hence we offer gifts on first dates or on diplomatic missions to foreign powers. How do we push the limits of society outwards? For him money and markets were intrinsic to this process. Hence giving personalized valuables could be considered to be an exchange of money objects if we operate with a broader definition than one based on impersonal currencies and focus rather on the function of their transfer, the extension of society beyond the local level. This helps to explain his claim that “the great economic revolutions are monetary in nature” (Fournier 2006: 212), meaning that they push us into unknown reaches of society and require new money forms and practices to bridge the gap. The combination of neoliberal globalization and the digital revolution has led to a rapid expansion of money, markets and telecommunications, all reinforcing each other in a process that has extended society beyond its national form, making it much more unequal and unstable in the process. "On commoditization: exchange in the human economy." Keith Hart. The Memory Bank. 8/10/08.

Freedom is often cited as a justification for market economies:

Classical liberals promoted markets as a means towards greater individual freedom as a corrective to the arbitrary social inequality of the Old Regime....

According to writers as varied as John Locke and Karl Marx, ours is an age of money, a transitional phase in the history of humanity. Seen in this light, capitalism’s historical mission is to bring cheap commodities to the masses and break down the insularity of traditional communities before being replaced by a more just society. "On commoditization: exchange in the human economy." Keith Hart. The Memory Bank. 8/10/08.

... I like many aspects of capitalism; I like the freedom, the dynamism, the creativity it unleashes. I would never, ever, want to do away with the market as the primary engine of productivity. "Capitalism, the Commons, and Divine Right." Peter Barnes speaking to the E. F. Schumacher Society, October 2003.

The values which shape exchanges in a commodity culture have to do with personal expression, freedom, social mobility, the escape from constraints and limitations, the enabling of new "possibilities". We sometimes refer to such fantasies as escapism or social experimentation; they are closely associated with the patterns of "transformation" and "plentitude" which Grant McCracken has documented. The fantasies which animate the exchange of gifts are often nostalgic, having to do with the reassertion of traditional values, the strengthening of social ties, the acceptance of mutual obligations, and the comfort of operating within familiar social patterns. "If It Doesn't Spread, It's Dead (Part Four): Thinking Through the Gift Economy." Henry Jenkins. Confessions of an Aca/Fan, 2/18/09.

According to the study's author, Jean-Sébastien Marcoux (HEC Montréal), many researchers romanticize gift-giving. "They praise it for humanizing market relationships, for making the market meaningful, and for providing an escape from the commodifying logic of capitalist exchanges," Marcoux writes. ...

"People use the market to free themselves from the straitjacket of social expectations—from the sense of indebtedness and emotional oppression—which constrains them in their reciprocity relations inside the gift economy," Marcoux concludes. "The Dark Side Of Gifts: Feeling Indebted May Drive People To The Marketplace," ScienceDaily, 6/17/09.

Gifts often come with a real or at least perceived sense of obligation and the need to reciprocate.

Thus in the tribal economy, when a clan or tribe (or the members of such) gives away its surplus, the recipient group or individual is forced to eventually give back, say the next year, at least as much, or they will loose relative prestige. What such a gift economy does however is create a community of obligations and reciprocity, unlike the market-based mechanisms, where ‘equal is traded with equal’, and every transaction stands alone. "The intersubjectivity of P2P: the The Gift Economy vs. Communal Shareholding," P2P Foundation, 7/28/10.

[According to Mauss] societies based on the exchange of the gift impose three positive obligations on members:

1. The obligation to give (you can’t not give)

2. The obligation to receive (you cannot refuse to receive)

3. The obligation to return (you must return that which is given)
"The Gift – Mauss, Bataille, Hyde, and Derrida." Erik W. Davis. Freeebay, 6/18/10.

... there is a tendency to romanticize the idea of the gift. It’s easy to imagine that a world based on an exchange of gifts would be better, more humanistic, more intimate, even more beautiful. This notion is not entirely false, but it leaves out the problematics of the gift. Think of receiving a gift that you don’t want. Or the sense of obligation that an excessive gift can engender. Think of wanting or needing something but having to wait to find out if or when it might be given to you. There’s a dependency, and a loss of control inherent in the gift situation. If your relationship with those around you is going well, you may receive everything you need, materially and emotionally—but what if it doesn’t go well? What about the coercion inherent in the need to please others to receive what you need for your survival? "Some Experiments in Art as Gift." Sal Randolph, March 2003.

I don’t mean to demonize "gift economies" by inverting their moral valuation, but I do want to emphasize that people who grew up in gift economies don’t mind getting out of them all that much. It can actually be tremendously rewarding to buy a honkin’ big piece of meat from someone who you will never meet again, take it back to your hotel room, and eat the entire thing by yourself, completely alone. "Gift economies suck (except ours)," Savage Minds, 8/10/10.

Because the exchange of goods within a gift economy brings with it social expectations, not all gifts can be accepted. In that sense, there are goods and services which literally can not be given away, because even in the absence of an explicit value proposition, consumers are wary of hidden obligations, unstated motives, or hidden interests which come smuggled inside the gift, much like the classic myth of the Trojan Horse. "If It Doesn't Spread, It's Dead (Part Four): Thinking Through the Gift Economy." Henry Jenkins. Confessions of an Aca/Fan, 2/18/09.

Lewis Hyde, known for his book The Gift, written in 1983, now acknowledges some shortcomings with the concept.

There is a hidden problem in the gift book: much gift exchange takes place is communities with a strong sense of in-group and out-group. Gift giving may be a wonderful thing, but what if you happen to be in the out-group? What if all the scientists are men and they don’t share their data with the women? "Lewis Hyde, author of Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership," Creative Commons, 8/27/10.

Andrew Swenson, Director of Marketing at Concordia University, offers this solution to the primary problem of the gift economy:

I’m suggesting that in order to have a true “give-win” situation that demands no reciprocation, we must remove all economic considerations from collaboration.

This would mean that after a gift has occurred in a collaborative partnership, both parties must forget the transaction occurred entirely. It must be as if the donee has inherited something: the donor has died and the beneficiaries are free to act as they wish with their new resources.

This is the only way that a gift can escape the moral confines of the gift economy. "The Economy of Collaboration 3.0," wordpost.org, 1/14/10.

Even as they facilitate quicker transactions, market economies are not totally without a human component.

The moral economy describes the set of social norms and mutual understandings which make it possible for two parties to do business with each other. In some cases, the moral economy holds in check the aggressive pursuit of short term self interest in favor of decisions which preserve long term social relations between participants. In a small scale economy, for example, a local dealer is unlikely to "cheat" a customer because they need to count on continued trade with this person over an extended period of time and thus need to build up their reputation within this community.

The measure of a moral economy is the degree to which participants trust each other to hold up their end of these implicit agreements. When there is a sudden and dramatic shift in the economic or technological infrastructure, as has occured with the introduction of digital media, it can create a crisis in the "moral economy," diminishing the level of trust within participating parties, and perhaps even wearing away the mechanisms which insure the legitimacy of economic exchanges. At such times, we can see all involved making bids for legitimation, that is proposing new models or frameworks through which parties may reach a understanding of what should provide the basis for fair and meaningful interactions. "If It Doesn't Spread, It's Dead (Part Three): The Gift Economy and Commodity Culture." Henry Jenkins. Confessions of an Aca/Fan,2/16/09.

In these times of change, we may be looking for alternative economies, but we understand the concept of the market economy and have reasons to continue using it.

It’s hard not to be a consumer. It’s what we are most of the time. There’s work, where we earn the money, and there’s non-work, where we spend the money. Most of our time is spent either servicing others as consumers or being serviced as consumers. In its vectoralist form, commodity culture has evolved a sophisticated way of treating us as its consumers. It’s all about crafting an image and a brand for a commodity that makes it appear as something more than a mere thing. The thing—be it a T-shirt or a carton of orange juice—is the support for an experience, mediated by a brand and an image that makes us feel special, that makes us feel unique. "Copyright, Copyleft, Copygift." McKenzie Wark in Meanland, 7/28/10. First published in Meanjin Vol 69:1 2010.

Market economies also work well when there are distances or complex exchanges to deal with. Money, credit cards, and the like allow you to negotiate with strangers and to individualize your purchases, thus giving you unlimited flexibility. (Some people feel the Internet has erased distance and complexity barriers by setting up networks and commons among people who have never met and live thousands of miles from each other. Therefore, they foresee a time when gift economies can function globally. I will address this in another blog post in this series.) The big problem (which leads to my next blog post) is that the market economy doesn't know what to do with activities that aren't monetizable.

Money is the blood of our economic system; it shouldn’t be the soul. Humans have needs and desires that can’t be met by exchanging dollars. These needs include connection to family and community, closeness to nature, and meaning in life. A twenty-first-century economic system must address these needs, too. Capitalism 3.0 Peter Barnes. 2006.

This brings me to the next blog post, the heart of this series: Music and the "Gift Economy" 5: Supporting Artists.

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter