Olive setting up her end of year exhibition at college
Art can be subjective, objective, important and boring all at the same time. When I started making art as a revolutionary socialist, I wanted to make art that advanced the class struggle.
I realised that I was one of millions who’ve tried to do this—but I also understood that the art world is truly a capitalistic institution. There is more to what drives artists than just creativity.
Art has been a constant feature of society throughout human history.
Long before markets, money or states, humans were creating images and objects that carried meaning beyond material necessity.
The impulse to create appears to be as old as humanity itself. Capitalism encourages us to think that people are fundamentally motivated by money and self-interest. But the existence of art suggests otherwise.
We are not driven by profit because it is somehow encoded in our nature, we are driven by it because we live in a system where money is necessary for survival.
Art often operates according to a different logic. For most artists, making art does not lead to wealth. Yet people continue to paint, write, sculpt, photograph, perform and create.
So, if art is not economically necessary, why does it exist?
It is because art reveals something profound about human nature. It serves different purposes. It reveals something fundamental and is part of how we understand ourselves and the world.
Art is part of our capacity to imagine, communicate, preserve memories and express ideas. Humans do not simply want to survive, we want to find meaning, pleasure and beauty in what we do.
So why did I think I could be the one to change the art world?
As Marxists, we know that ideas do not appear out of nowhere. The belief that an individual artist can transform society through their work is a historical product.
Modern understandings of art emerged during the Renaissance in Europe between the 15th and 17th centuries. It emphasised humans, observation, science, and the material world. And it became associated with individual creativity, skill and the human experience.
The Renaissance established the modern conception of the artist as an individual genius. As capitalism developed, this figure became separated from the artisan or craft worker. Artistic production became more closely aligned to markets.
Despite this celebration of individuality, capitalism has a profoundly limiting effect on artistic expression. Art is often treated as unproductive, meaning artistic activities are not rewarded in the same way as traditional wage labour.
Capitalism is driven by endless accumulation. We sell our labour in exchange for a wage. And our labour is valued according to what it produces and how efficiently this is done.
What allows different commodities to be exchanged is the labour embodied within them.
Under capitalism, workers are paid for their labour power, but the value they create typically exceeds the wages they’re paid. This difference is what Karl Marx called surplus value, the source of profit.
Art occupies an uneasy position. Its value cannot be measured as easily as other forms of labour. As a result art is frequently sidelined, underfunded and dismissed.
The art world and capitalism rely on precarity to devalue creative labour whilst profiting from it.
Marx viewed labour as the fundamental way humans interact with nature. Under capitalism, he argued labour is turned into a commodity, leading to exploitation and the separation of workers from what they produce.
Art is not exempt from this. Creativity is viewed as its own reward, meaning artists are expected to accept conditions that others would reject. Requests to work for exposure and poorly paid or unpaid creative jobs are commonplace.
Artists are encouraged to believe that economic compensation isn’t important. The result is that many artists struggle to identify themselves as workers with collective interests. One of the biggest arguments in the Marxist understanding of art is whether or not artistic labour is alienated.
For Marx, alienated labour is labour in which workers lose control over what they produce, how they produce it and their relationships with themselves and others.
Understanding this provides a way of thinking about the relationship between work, power and identity. Marx’s concept is a critique of social conditions that separate people from control over their lives.
Under capitalism the artist is a worker, because, unless they inherited a trust fund, they have to feed themselves like the rest of us.
Artistic trends and movements do not emerge in a vacuum. Art has always reflected the inequalities that shape the rest of society. Wealthy collectors, institutions and investors have a disproportionate ability to shape tastes and determine which art is rewarded.
This does not mean artists are puppets of the ruling class. Artists frequently challenge dominant ideas and resist commodification. However, they do so within a system where visibility, funding and success are tied to the preferences of those who possess economic power.
The result is a contradiction—art is celebrated as a sphere of freedom and creativity, yet artistic production remains constrained by the demands of the market.
From a Marxist perspective, artistic labour becomes alienated when it is transformed from an end in itself into a means of producing commodities.
During the Renaissance, as artistic production became increasingly independent from religious and aristocratic patronage, many artists turned towards experimentation and opposition.
Many of those we now celebrate as visionary artists were not received so warmly b contemporaries. What appears radical in one moment can later become accepted, institutionalised and commodified.
Capitalism is a remarkably dynamic system. Its ability to absorb and commodify almost everything it encounters extends to resistance itself.
Rather than suppressing opposition, capitalism often transforms it into something that can be bought, sold and consumed.
Political resistance becomes an aesthetic. It is detached from the social movements that produced it.
This extends into the art world. It is now normal to see anti-capitalist, anti‑colonial, feminist, queer or environmental art critiques.
This reveals capitalism’s capacity to accommodate criticism at one level without altering the social relations that the criticism targets.
Artists cannot by themselves take down capitalism or replace working class organisation. But that does not mean they are not important.
We are creative beings. We tell stories and imagine futures. Art’s power lies not in replacing collective struggle but in contributing to it.
Ultimately, the struggle for a society beyond capitalism is not simply a struggle over wages, ownership, or the organisation of production. It is a struggle over what it means to live fully human lives.
Creativity is not an optional extra. It is part of what makes us human.
