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Austrian Economics and CultureAn Interview With Paul Cantor

Spring 2001 — Volume 21, number 1

Copyright © 2001 by the Ludwig von Mises Institute518 West Magnolia Avenue, Auburn, Alabama 36832-4528

phone (334) 321-2100; fax (334) 321-2119email [email protected]; web www.mises.org

The Austrian Economics Newsletter is published quarterly by the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

THE AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS NEWSLETTER Spring 2001 — Volume 21, Number 1

An Interview With Paul Cantor

AUSTRIANECONOMICSAND CULTURE

AEN: Before we get to your work on popoular culture, let’sexamine your literary project.

CANTOR: The project of looking at literature with capitalisteyes began when I prepared a paper for a 1992 Mises Insti-tute conference, and won the prize for the best paper. But it’ssomething that I had been thinking about for years. I won-dered how I could put to use the training I had in Austrianeconomics within my own area of specialization.

AEN: The union of economics and literary criticism wasalready well established in your profession?

CANTOR: Yes, in fact there seems to be an automatic identification: if you talk about economics and literature, you have to be Marxist. By the mid-1980s, that point of viewdominated literary criticism.

By the late 1980s, however, Marxism had been discredited invirtually every other intellectual endeavor. The collapse ofreal socialism in Eastern Europe was the final blow to thetheoretical and practical case for socialism. But here were lit-erary critics who were Marxists and acting as if nothing hadhappened. It would be like writing on literature and astron-omy from a Ptolemaic perspective.

I set out to show that it is possible to talk about literatureand economics in ways that are not Marxist. For example, many Marxist critics were showing how literature often sup-ports capitalist ideology. In fact, it seemed to me that manyauthors were programmatically left-wing and were seeking todebunk the market economy. Shouldn’t we take notice of that

PAUL CANTOR

Dr. Cantor studied at Ludwig vonMises’s New York seminar before taking his B.A. and Ph.D. at Harvard.He is a professor of English at the University of Virginia, and the authorof Shakespeare’s Rome: Republicand Empire (Cornell University Press,1976), Creature and Creator: Myth-making and English Romanticism(Cambridge University Press, 1984),and, soon to be published, GilliganUnbound: Popular Culture in the Age of Globalization (Rowman and Littlefield, 2001).

He is also the author of articles on literary criticism and economic theory in the Review of Austrian Economics and the Journal of Libertarian Studies.

Dr. Cantor may be contacted viaemail at [email protected]. He wasinterviewed during the February 2001Mises Institute conference, “Libertyand Public Life.”

story, set in Germany at the timeof the great inflation, the entireculture and economy is turnedupside down because of the soar-ing price of absolutely everything.

The people’s time preferences, asMises called them, were soaringas well. In the inflationary envi-ronment, the young had the

authority and prestige, and theold were denigrated. Instead ofsaving, housewives struggled tospend as much money as possible.Hyperinflation led to a kind ofhyperreality in which nothing hasa fixed meaning. Society spun outof control.

This is all very canny on Mann’spart. He didn’t know Austrianeconomics or Mises’s theory, butas an artist, he had a feel for thecultural consequences of infla-tion. But critics who are unfamil-iar with the literature on inflationmight miss his point entirely.

By the way, Mann’s story alsoapplies today. Some of the samecultural consequences—the under-mining of traditional authority,the subsidizing of youth—are allpresent. How much of this is dueto expansive monetary policy isup to the economist to discover.

AEN: Presumably even the Leftshould recognize the destructivepower of inflation.

CANTOR: And yet it is some-times difficult to predict theirlikes and dislikes. Though literarycritics are mostly Marxists, theydo not even accept Marx’s viewthat the change from feudalism tocapitalism was a welcome eventdictated by the forces of history.They still tend to romanticize theMiddle Ages as some sort of glo-rious precapitalist utopia.

For example, the critics writeessays on Shakespeare that dis-cuss the breakdown of the feudalorder as if that is something we

should regret. This is a good indi-cation of how strong the anti-capitalist mentality is. These peo-ple will praise anything that isn’tcapitalism.

I wrote an essay dealing withPercy Shelley, published in theJournal of Libertarian Studies. Ishowed that as a progressive inthe early nineteenth century, hewas rejecting the old mercantilistsystem in Britain and arguing forthe gold standard. I argued thateven a real Marxist would have tosee him as a progressive becausehe was rejecting the remnants offeudalism.

But somehow the Marxist criticsmissed this point. When criticsdiscuss his essay, “A PhilosophicalView of Reform,” they are utterlypuzzled as to why he is arguingfor the gold standard. But it isclear that he saw paper money asa tool of the well-connected rich.Critics think of Shelley as a radi-cal whom they ought to like butthey have no conception of whatradicalism actually meant in thosedays. It didn’t mean socialism aswe know it now; it often meantlaissez-faire.

AEN: What do you say to criticswho accuse you of doing thesame thing to literature that theMarxists do, only with a differentpolitical agenda?

CANTOR: I hear that all thetime. That criticism just rollsoff my back. The problem witheconomic criticism of literatureis not that it takes account ofeconomics but that it uses bad

LUDWIG VON MISES INSTITUTE

AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS NEWSLETTER

fact? And what about those writ-ers who understand market eco-nomics? We should take notice oftheir insights too. Hence, Idecided to turn the tables on theLeft.

AEN: What was your first effort?

CANTOR: It was a reinterpreta-tion of Thomas Mann’s “Disor-der and Early Sorrow” in light ofMisesian monetary theory. Theresults were quite fruitful. In his

4

THIS IS A GOOD

INDICATION

OF HOW

STRONG THE

ANTICAPITALIST

MENTALITY IS.THESE PEOPLE

WILL PRAISE

ANYTHING

THAT ISN’TCAPITALISM.

economic theory. Generallyspeaking, it is a mistake to aban-don economic and social criticismto the Left, as the Right has done.A perfect example is the old “NewCriticism” that wanted to separatethe study of literature from any-thing in the real world. That’sultimately a sterile and self-defeating position.

The fact is this: Most people cometo literature because they are try-ing to learn something about theworld. They are interested inimportant questions of economicsand politics. To attempt to bracketthese subjects out and arrive atsome mythic purity is impoverish-ing. The answer isn’t to drain lit-erature of economics and politics,but to use the right kind of eco-nomics and politics to arrive at adeeper understanding of the worldthat literature presents us.

To offer students an alternatepolitical–economic perspective

works far better than to demandthat they give up political inter-pretation entirely. Do you fightfire with fire or with a vacuum?There is a real and justifiedimpulse to study literature in away that yields some greaterunderstanding of the way we live.We shouldn’t tell students: “No,don’t ask those questions!” Weshould say, “Those questions arelegitimate and here’s a perspec-tive you won’t get anywhere else.”

AEN: Are you suggesting that thepre-Marxist view is partially toblame for the rise of the Marxianview?

CANTOR: Quite right. There’s areason Marxist criticism sweptthe whole field. New Criticism’sattempt to talk about the “geneticfallacy,” “the heresy of para-phrase,” “a poem should notmean but be”—this is all anattempt to sever literature fromany question of meaning. This

On Wilde in particular and hisessay, “The Soul of Man UnderSocialism”: this piece is not oftentalked about because it is toorevealing. It was an attempt atsincerity by the most insincereman who ever lived. And it repre-sents a rare instance when a


VOLUME 21, NO. 1 — SPRING 2001

left a vacuum that had to befilled.

AEN: Yet, doesn’t it seem thatthere are intractable predisposi-tions toward socialism in the artsand humanities?

CANTOR: Yes, and I’ve writtenabout this. Under the influenceof Mises’s Anti-Capitalistic Men-tality, I have examined the social-ism of H.G. Wells and OscarWilde, among others, andattempted to show why it hasbeen in the interest of artists toendorse socialism.

5

THE FACT IS

THIS: MOST

PEOPLE COME

TO LITERATURE

BECAUSE THEY

ARE TRYING

TO LEARN

SOMETHING

ABOUT THE

WORLD.

ONE OF THE

GREAT LIES

OF SOCIALISM

IS THAT IT

IS SOMEHOW

INTERESTED

IN TRUE ART.

AEN: That might explain whyWilde isn’t usually listed amongthe great socialist writers.

CANTOR: And to his credit,Wilde didn’t even attempt tomake the economic argument.These days, hardly any leftistbothers to do so. In this Wildeessay, you see the core of whatremains. He is looking back nos -talgically to the age of patron -age. He does not like the laws of

supply and demand. He doesn’tlike the idea that a novel byAnthony Trollope should be suc-cessful because people like it.Why should common people beable to judge Wilde?

It is a very good essay to see justhow reactionary socialism is. Thereal key to understanding whyCastro is so popular with LatinAmerican authors—and whysocialism attracts so many writersand artists—is that these writersfeel underappreciated by the mar-ket. They are looking for theGreat Man, the dictator who willrecognize their genius and exalttheir talents above the pettybourgeoisie.

This was the reason behind EzraPound’s fascination with Mus-solini, for example. But we knowabout the authors who areattracted to fascism, yet hearmuch less about those who arestill attracted to socialism. It allstems from the same impulse.

We are now in a situation inwhich the only argumentsremaining for socialism are aes-thetic. But one of the great lies ofsocialism is that it is somehowinterested in true art. Whatevermight be said about the taste ofthe masses, it is probably betterthan that of government bureau-crats who pick and choose artunder socialist dictatorship. Aspatrons of art, socialist dictatorshave a miserable record.

AEN: And yet Wilde writes in thatessay that the ideal government



socialist author admits that hisattachment to socialism is purelyaesthetic.

For example, Wilde says that hefinds poor people ugly, so there-fore he would like someone totake care of them, which almostmeans to get rid of them. Thispassage suggests why it is that somany artists have ended up beingsocialists. They would like some-one else to take care of the prob-lem of the un-beautiful.

ADDITIONALRESOURCES:

BOOKS:

Paul A. Cantor, Shakespeare:Hamlet (Cambridge UniversityPress, 1989).

Ludwig von Mises, The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality (LibertarianPress, 1972).

Michael Valdez Moses, The Noveland the Globalization of Culture(Oxford University Press, 1995).

ARTICLES BY PAUL CANTOR:

“Hyperinflation and Hyperreality:Thomas Mann in Light of AustrianEconomics,” Review of AustrianEconomics (1994).

“Oscar Wilde: The Man of SoulUnder Socialism,” in Beauty andthe Critic: Aesthetics in the Age ofCultural Studies, James Soderholm,ed. (University of Alabama Press,1997).

“The Poet As Economist: Shelley'sCritique of Paper Money and theBritish National Debt,” Journal ofLibertarian Studies (Summer1997).

“The Invisible Man and the Invisi-ble Hand: H.G. Wells’s Critique of Capitalism,” American Scholar(Summer 1999).

“Pro Wrestling and the End of History,” Weekly Standard , October 4, 1999.

“The Simpsons: Atomistic Politicsand the Nuclear Family,” PoliticalTheory (December 1999).

6

for an artist is no government atall.

CANTOR: Yes, he does. And inhis defense, socialism for himdoesn’t mean the Soviet Union.But this underscores the pointthat he was very confused: Social-ism for Wilde is just an artisticfantasy. What it really comesdown to is this: Socialism is notcapitalism. It is not the marketeconomy. The consumer is notking. That is why artists aredrawn to socialism. They hopethat socialism will liberate themfrom their greatest fear: beingjudged by the common man.

AEN: You use the term patronagewithout distinguishing privatefrom public.

CANTOR: There is a distinctionbetween government support ofthe arts and private support. Butthere’s also a distinction betweenaristocratic patronage and thecommercial marketplace. It is thelatter that mostly terrifies artists,though I think it can be shownthat the commercial marketplacehas actually been very good forart. Tyler Cowen makes this argu-ment.

But we need to be careful not tojudge a system of government bythe kind of art it delivers. Stalinhad pretty good taste in music.He died listening to Mozart’sTwenty-third Piano Concerto, arecording by Maria Yudina. Hehad heard it on the radio anddemanded that he own it. Unfortu-nately, it was a live performance hehad heard. So Stalin’s henchmen

had to roust Yudina and theorchestra out of bed to record it,and the record was delivered thenext morning. That was therecord on the player when theyfound Stalin dead.

The capitalist marketplace has atleast as good a record in encour-aging good art as aristocraticpatronage, and certainly far bet-ter than government bureaucracy.Of those three categories, aristo-cratic patronage did very well,especially during the Renais-sance. Yet Shakespeare wrote forthe market. J.S. Bach wrote for akind of marketplace, as did Han-del. The opera and the novel inthe nineteenth century werespurred by a middle-class market-place.

AEN: For that matter, Wildehimself wrote for the market-place.

CANTOR: He was very savvy atmarketing himself, and he wasintensely competitive. He was amaster of the media world of thetime. That’s one of the ironies.Mises is correct to observe thatsuccessful artists sometimes havethe most intense pro-socialistsympathies. They develop a badconscience about their successafter the public rewards them.They regret having defeated theircompetitors, and they are notreally sure that they are as tal-ented as their profits suggest.

By the way, the world of the Vic-torian period was much closer toour times than we think. It was thefirst full-scale commercialization

It is a Romantic myth that artistsare not in it for the money. Manywere and are, and that is perfectlyokay. It’s how they hope to getmoney that is at issue. In Shake-speare’s case, he could writepoetry or write drama. He choseto write drama because that’swhere the money was. Thanks tothe marketplace, we have Hamletand King Lear.



of high art that we find. Com-mercial tie-ins were common, sothat Wilde’s American tour wasdesigned to prepare the way forthe opening of Gilbert and Sulli-van’s opera Patience. With everyDickens novel, there were actionfigures ready to sell. There weremany gimmicks of all sorts, suchas serialization in magazines, allof which were designed to pitchart to the masses in order to makemoney. It produced a lot of greatart.

7

MISES IS

CORRECT TO

OBSERVE THAT

SUCCESSFUL

ARTISTS

SOMETIMES

HAVE THE

MOST INTENSE

PRO-SOCIALIST

SYMPATHIES.

they were both fascinated by thecapitalist order beginning todevelop in their time.

The first literary treatment of thefree market to appear anywhere,so far as I can tell, is Ben Jonson’sBartholemew Fair. He essentiallyargues for spontaneous order. Infact, the play itself is an exampleof spontaneous order, where theorganization appears random butan underlying order begins toemerge as it develops.

AEN: Which particular artists inhistory are both brilliant and orig-inal and perfectly at peace withthe commercial marketplace?

CANTOR: A very difficult ques-tion. I can’t think of any. There isa certain tension between the aes-thetic and economic realms. Theneed of markets to apply stan-dards of utility and rationalityoften rubs artists the wrong way.At best, what you get are artistswho are not completely hostile tothe market. For example, JosephConrad in his book The SecretAgent, defends the classical-lib-eral order against extremes ofright and left. He shows what’swrong with socialism and autoc-racy. He finally defends theBritish liberal order, but not withgreat comfort.

What it comes down to is this:There is something aristocratic

about great art. And artists inmany ways have felt more com-fortable with aristocrats than withthe middle class. In the rare caseswhen they embrace the classical-liberal order, it is at best half-hearted.

Maybe one of the best literarydefenses of capitalism ever isElizabeth Gaskill’s North andSouth, which came out in 1855.She defends the modern industri-alists in the city of Manchester.Yet even here, there is a bit ofnostalgia for the Old World: themiddle-class capitalist protago-nist marries into an aristocraticfamily that takes some of the edgeoff him.

AEN: What is the effect of gov-ernment support for the arts?

CANTOR: The idea behind gov-ernment support for art is that



AEN: You liked the film Shake-speare in Love because it showedthe commercial side of the play-wright.

CANTOR: Yes, that was a virtueof that film, for all of its sillyanachronisms. Indeed, we see thefirst indication of the commercialmerging of art and the market-place in the Elizabethan theater. Ihave essays on both ChristopherMarlowe and Ben Jonson thatcover this topic, showing that

8

THE NEED

OF MARKETS

TO APPLY

STANDARDS OF

UTILITY AND

RATIONALITY

OFTEN RUBS

ARTISTS THE

WRONG WAY.

artists work best when they arecomfortable and secure in theirfinances. Historical evidence sug-gests the opposite. It is discom-fort and insecurity that lead togreat art. Government support,by shielding twentieth-centuryartists from the marketplace, hasmade art much worse. It has vir-tually destroyed classical music inour century.

Now, I’m not talking about serial-ism as such, the origin of whichwas driven by an inner imperativeof artistic development. But whydid an entire generation of com-posers attempt to mimic thistechnique and do such a bad job?That’s where the government,university, and foundation grantswere decisive. It’s one thing forSchoenberg to compose in the12-tone method; it’s somethingelse for armies of imitators tobelieve they could make a livingby impersonating him.

AEN: Yet it is considered uncouthto criticize any art these days,particularly that which the gov-ernment has subsidized.

CANTOR: True indeed. I thinkthis stems from the great myth ofthe first performance of IgorStravinsky’s Rite of Spring .According to legend, the philis-tine audience at the Théatre desChamps-Elysées in Paris rioted inshock and outrage at the innova-tive new sounds being producedby the orchestra. Yet today, weregard Stravinsky’s creation as amasterpiece. The lesson here issupposed to be that we should be

completely uncritical regardingart.

In fact, there were many aspectsof the first performance that werebad. The orchestra couldn’t playthe music. And, more thanStravinksy’s music, the audiencewas objecting to and laughing atVaslav Nijinsky’s choreographyand the costumes in particular,which were indeed laughable.There’s a movie called Nijinksythat featured some scenes thatmade me think, “What an awfulmovie. These costumes are sostupid!” Two weeks later, I was atthe New York Museum of Nat-ural History, which had a travel-ing exhibit of the original Rite ofSpring costumes, and, indeed, theNijinsky movie was completelyaccurate.

Because of the myth of that onenight in Paris, we are left with alegacy that an audience mustnever boo a piece of classicalmusic. Even worse, we are underthe assumption that if a piece ofmusic is booed, it must be good.In fact, a lot of us, if we could seethe Rite as it was originally per-formed, would probably hoot itoff the stage—if we still have thecritical intelligence left to makesuch judgments. And today, youwill notice that it is nearly alwaysperformed as a concert piece andnot as a ballet. That’s why audi-ences love it.

AEN: What about the argumentthat twentieth-century art and lit-erature is so disturbing because itwas such a blood-soaked era, and

the tyranny that governmentshave generated. Artists tend todraw their inspiration from dis-turbing events.

Many people think of Kafka as awriter of metaphysical fantasies,portraying a purely dreamlikeworld. But anyone who, likeMises, grew up with the Austro-Hungarian bureaucracy would



this fact is reflected in paintingand music?

CANTOR: I just completed anessay in which I was asked toname the five great books of thetwentieth century. I began it withthe sentence: “It was a dark andstormy century,” as a parody ofthat famous opening line. It istrue this point explains the storiesof Kafka and the novels of Orwelland Solzhenitsyn. They reflect

9

GOVERNMENT

SUPPORT, BY

SHIELDING

TWENTIETH-CENTURY

ARTISTS

FROM THE

MARKETPLACE,HAS MADE ART

MUCH WORSE.

I HAVE A RULE:BE POLITICALLY

CONSERVATIVE,BUT DON’T BE

INTELLECTUALLY

CONSERVATIVE.

example, to see how well he pre-dicted what we now call politicalcorrectness.

He understood how the state canpervert even the logic with whichwe think. When Orwell wrote“2+2=5,” it may have sounded overthe top, but that type of logic is alltoo prevalent on campuses today,especially if you look at the politi-cized attacks on the hard sciences.

The fact that Orwell began as asocialist makes his criticism ofleft-wing thinking even moresearing.

AEN: Your newest interest is pop-ular culture, the study of whichhas also been dominated by theLeft.

CANTOR: Here again, I don’twant to see the Left dominate.The Right is making a big mis-take by abandoning the field.Whatever one may think of pop-ular-culture studies, it is here tostay. One hundred years fromnow, if people are studying any-thing, it will be television andmovies from our time. Thingsthat today are dismissed as low-brow will later be studied with agreat deal of scholarly attention.

What’s more, this is how it’salways been. When I was in col-lege in the 1960s, talking aboutmovies in colleges was still sus-pect. Now it is perfectly ordinary,and now people realize that manyold Hollywood directors weregreat artists.

I have a rule: Be politically con-servative, but don’t be intellectu-ally conservative. The biggestproblem on the Right vis-à-viscultural criticism is this tendencytoward fuddyduddyism. We needto recognize that new thingscome along in art that are veryvaluable and worthy of study.Why leave the exciting stuff tothe Left? Students are interestedin popular culture, and they willgravitate toward people who talkabout it seriously.



know that Kafka was in manyrespects a realist. His work res-onates with so many todaybecause Kafka is the great chron-icler of the absurdities created bymodern government.

As for Orwell, I still think he isundervalued: 1984 is, in fact, oneof the great novels of the twenti-eth century. Its insights into thetotalitarian mentality did not justapply to Soviet tyranny, as manyon the Left would convenientlylike to think. It’s amazing, for

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AEN: What is the Left’s messageconcerning popular culture?

CANTOR: No surprise, they seetheir study of popular culture asmaking the case against capital-ism. Either they say that televi-sion shows are secretly dupingpeople into capitalist beliefs, orthey say that the supposed lack ofquality of these works is a testi-mony to the culturally impover-ishing aspect of capitalism—theaesthetic critique again. You havethis theory of “commodification”that says that capitalism debaseseverything into items that can bebought and sold.

People on the Right end up con-spiring with the Left when theydeliver assaults on popular cul-ture. Look: If popular culture is asdebased and monstrous as manyon the Right say it is, that’s a ter-rible indictment of capitalism. Itwould appear that free markets,left to themselves, debase culture.

And that’s just not true. And whenyou say it is true, that is a hugeconcession to the Left, which, as Iexplained earlier, is banking every-thing on an aesthetic critique ofthe market economy. What’smore, many aspects of popularculture are far more rooted in real-life experience, and a realisticappraisal of politics, than manythings you will experience inmany kinds of high culture.

AEN: This is a point hinted at byMises.

CANTOR: That’s correct. Anyman who grew up in the pre-World War I Austro-Hungarian

Empire, as he did, knew whathigh culture truly is. He may haveheard Mahler conduct, for all Iknow. So I would not expect himto have much of an appreciationof popular culture. But he did seethat the Left was working towardthis aesthetic critique of capital-ism, such that they would com-plain constantly about the popu-larity of bad fiction and theappearance on the market of sup-posedly shoddy cultural products. His answer was to point out thatcapitalism provides more ofeverything for everyone, and,hence, there are more silly novelsavailable. But there are also moregreat works of literature availableat lower and lower prices. Thereis more good and bad everythingavailable because so much moreculture is available.

AEN: Are you really dismissingthe critics who say that our artis-tic standards have dramaticallydeclined?

CANTOR: Here’s the trouble.One of the illusions we havetoday is that we tend to compareall of television with the best ofGreek drama or the best of Eliza-bethan drama. We come awaythinking: What the heck has hap-pened to the culture?

But this is just an error. Therewere about a thousand plays pro-duced in the golden age of Greektragedy, of which about fifty havesurvived. There is reason tobelieve that the better ones werethe ones that survived. But if wehad the whole range of Greektragedy, we would find some

with the exception of WilliamShakespeare. I don’t think there isanother century that producedtwenty dramas as great as the pastcentury’s twenty best movies.

Just think of all the capital that hasgone into the motion pictureindustry. No royal court, no princeof the church, has presented the



works to be as bad as Americantelevision.

The sheer quantity of television iswhat indicts it. One week of tele-vision puts on more productionsthan the Greek dramatists put onin one hundred years. But if youcull out the best of TV, the qual-ity is quite extraordinary. I wouldbe willing to take the twenty bestmovies of the twentieth centuryand match them against the artis-tic products of any other century,

11

ONE WEEK OF

TELEVISION

PUTS ON MORE

PRODUCTIONS

THAN THE

GREEK

DRAMATISTS

PUT ON IN

ONE HUNDRED

YEARS.

criticism. For example, I arguethat The Simpsons will go down asone of the great programs in TVhistory and that its satirical valueis highly significant. I think thatthe X-Files has produced some ofthe most powerful drama that hasever been on television, and that agood episode has all the produc-tion value of a movie.

AEN: And how does politics fit inhere?

CANTOR: Over the past tenyears, I’ve given lectures on thesetopics, and I began to notice apattern. It really helped that theMises Institute had that “End ofthe State” conference, because Isaw that the changes in popularculture reflect this end-of-the-state thesis.

It really began to fall into placewhen I saw what Gilligan’s Islandand Star Trek had in common.Here are two shows that seem verydifferent. But, in fact the themesare the same: Gilligan’s Island pro-motes the Americanization of theglobe, and Star Trek promotes theAmericanization of the galaxy.

In Star Trek, the crew had thisdirective that said that it couldn’tinterfere in the internal affairs ofother planets. But in fact, wher-ever they went, they encounteredplaces that didn’t conform to thepolitical ideals of 1960s America,which basically means theKennedy administration. There-fore the planets were remade.Their gods had to be killed. Theircomputers had to be destroyed.

Dr. Spock represented somethingof the brainy and rationalistic cen-tral planner, a sort of McGeorgeBundy with funny ears. Mean-while, Captain Kirk was the mili-tary man of action who imposedorder. People talk about it as if itis a prophetic show, but the kindof computers they were said tohave are laughable to us today. Andtoday’s technology was created,

not by a government, but by pri-vate entrepreneurs.

AEN: And Gilligan’s Island?

CANTOR: Here you have thiscomposite sampling of Americansociety dropped into an uncivi-lized place, and they miraculouslyrecreate America. Democraticideology is pervasive. For exam-ple, in the episode in which theydecide to elect a president, whowins? Not the professor, the skip-per, or the millionaire, but theeveryman—Gilligan himself.

The theme of the show is thatAmericans can be dropped any-where on the planet and not getlost. Fast forward to 1999, andyou have The Blair Witch Project,in which Americans get lost in athicket in Maryland, of all places.When the kids sitting around thecampfire hum the theme songfrom Gilligan’s Island, we arereminded how American sensibil-ities have changed since the1960s.

In both shows, the space race pro-vided the ideological–politicalbackdrop. Both shows factor outeconomics and highlight politics.Both promoted global democraticideology. Neither had a concep-tion of free markets. Technologyis a given. Wealth has no mean-ing.

The 1960s were the heyday ofnational television, with threenetworks dominating. In the1950s, the networks were justbrokers of airtime for coalitionsof producers and advertisers. But



arts with as much capital as thefree market has placed in thehands of the producers, directors,actors, and composers who workto make movies today. It’sextraordinary and wonderful.

AEN: So the substance of yourbook will be to correct both Rightand Left.

CANTOR: Yes, it begins theundertaking of doing pro-capital-ist, non-leftist, popular-culture

12

OVER THE

PAST TEN

YEARS, I BEGAN

TO NOTICE A

PATTERN. THE CHANGES

IN POPULAR

CULTURE

REFLECT THIS

END-OF-THE-STATE THESIS.

then the FCC made a decision tosever advertising from the deci-sions about which shows were puton the air. The FCC ended upvastly increasing the power ofnetworks, and their decisionsbegan to reflect the power andpriorities of the State. It wasn’tnationalization, but it had manyof the same effects.

AEN: And today, the message isdifferent?

CANTOR: In The Simpsons, wealthis associated with new ideas.Marge becomes an entrepreneur.Homer is always taking odd jobs.Apu Nahasapeemapetilon is for-ever hawking his Kwik-E-Martwares. Ned Flanders opens a shopfor left-handed people. Many ofthese enterprises fail, but at leastthe emphasis is on individualachievement.

The government is represented bythe IRS and the FBI. Krusty theClown gets busted by the IRSand no one really likes the State.

Public-school teacher Edna Krab-appel does the minimum necessaryto comply with the requirementsof the board of education. Thereis this overriding sense that whatthe government really wants is totake your money away. It is dis-tant and uncaring.

I recall that Bill Bennett blastedThe Simpsons as an example of thetrash that is out there, but later,he admitted that he had neverseen it. In many ways, The Simp-sons is a postmodern defense offamily values. Most of the coreaction takes place within the fam-ily in a small town. There is evenan episode when evil governmentsocial workers try to take the chil-dren away.

Yes, the Simpsons are dysfunc-tional. But the message is that nomatter how bad a particular fam-ily is, it is better than no family,and it is better than the govern-ment. Whatever you want to sayabout Homer, he is always therefor the kids—and this is a big

toward the State in this showwould have been inconceivable inthe early 1960s, when faith ingovernment was very highindeed. The X-Files shows howmuch more realistic we havebecome.



improvement over the shows thatfor twenty years have down-graded fatherhood. I also lovethe fact that this family is oftenpolitically incorrect. Left-liberalmyths are attacked at every turn.No one on the Right should objectto the portrayal here.

AEN: And the X-Files?

CANTOR: In the X-Files, theportrayal of the State is even bet-ter. The show treats governmentas an integral part of the grandconspiracy. The level of cynicism

13

THE MESSAGE

IS THAT

NO MATTER

HOW BAD A

PARTICULAR

FAMILY IS, IT IS

BETTER THAN

NO FAMILY, AND

IT IS BETTER

THAN THE

GOVERNMENT.

AEN: Do you have any commentson the debate over the politics ofStar Wars?

CANTOR: Well, I am not a hugefan of the most recent movie inthe series, but the one thing I likeabout the whole series is itsappreciation of economics. Forexample, it demonstrates the capi-talist truth about technology, that

it is not all replaced at once. Itunderstood that in the future, wewill still use old technology. Youknow, one of the failings of sciencefiction is that it sees any given eraas a single temporal slice, as ifeverything is produced in a singlemoment. In Star Wars, peopledon’t have the capital to buy newtechnology so they fix up the oldstuff. This is a great insight.

AEN: Do you have any commentson the controversies over thecanon? In looking at popular cul-ture, are we neglecting the classics?

CANTOR: I think there’s somekind of judicious combinationthat can be made between the oldschool and the new one. The Leftis correct that the canon hasalways changed. Oxford wasn’tteaching Plato until the late1840s, for example. No universitytaught Dickens in 1900; it wasconsidered way too vulgar.

There are about five authors whomust be part of the canon. Butwhen you start to move awayfrom Shakespeare and Dante andthe like, many questions becomemurky. To me, it is not so muchwhat is taught but how it istaught. I would rather hear agood analysis of the X-Files than aboring analysis of Trollope. But Ialso have a rule: When you talkabout popular culture, tie it backinto high culture.

AEN: How did you come to studyunder Mises?

CANTOR: My brother was at theNew York University law school

and studying with Sylvester Petro.Through him I was introdcued tothe thought of Mises. I was inhigh school, age fifteen, and Iread Human Action. One Sundaynight a friend of mine and I weresitting around, and we had thenutty idea to call up Ludwig vonMises. I got out the Manhattanphone book and my friend calledhim up at home. I think I remem-ber that number, MOnument 2-7077.

Yes, we had some nerve. I wouldnever do it today. But he was asnice as can be. He invited us up tohis office and then to his seminar,which I attended in 1961 through1962. Rothbard was there, Hazlittwas there, Hayek showed up. Itwas dazzling.

Mises was the greatest teacher Iever had. Even at age eighty, hewas looking for new students.There was that glint and gleam inhis eye. I would sometimes sitnext to him. He would lecture fortwo hours with one note card. Hisenergy was extraordinary. It’sbeen my idea of an ideal seminarever since.

AEN: What’s your next project?

CANTOR: I’m going to keep try-ing to apply Austrian economicsto literature in a way that I hopewould have pleased Mises. I wantto write about the turn to socialistideology in late Victorian Eng-land, for example. There’s lots ofwork to do, even among us non-economists.



In The Simpsons, the decline of thenation–state is represented by thetriumph of enterprise and themixed social composition ofSpringfield. In the X-Files, glob-alization brings disorientation. Iuse the term globalization in thesame sense that the Left does: theincreasing integration of theworld economy. The impact ofglobalization is strongly consid-ered in today’s popular culturebut is absent in shows from thehalcyon days of the nation–state. Ido think that this is somethingfree marketeers should celebrate.

14

I’M GOING TO

KEEP TRYING TO

APPLY AUSTRIAN

ECONOMICS TO

LITERATURE IN

A WAY THAT I

HOPE WOULD

HAVE PLEASED

MISES.

AEN

About the Austrian Economics Newsletter

The Austrian Economics Newsletter began publishing in the Fall of 1977, under the auspices ofthe Center for Libertarian Studies, which was then located in New York City. The writers and edi-tors were part of a small but growing contingent of graduate students in economics who had beeninfluenced by Ludwig von Mises’s New York seminar and the writings and personal example ofMises’s students Murray N. Rothbard and Israel M. Kirzner, as well as Ludwig Lachmann. Theirgoal was to reinvigorate Austrian theory in a new generation as a means of combating mainstreamtrends in economic thought.

But for the Nobel Prize given to F.A. Hayek in 1974, academia then considered Austrian eco-nomics to be a closed chapter in the history of thought, supplanted by Keynesianism and the neo-classical synthesis. The purpose of the AEN was to provide a forum for Austrian students and serveas a communication tool for the new movement. Among its most effective offerings was the inter-view, which provided students an inside look into the thinking, drawn out in an informal setting,of the best Austrian theorists.

At the request of the Center for Libertarian Studies, the Mises Institute assumed responsibil-ity for the publication in 1984 and nurtured it to become the most closely read periodical in theworld pertaining exclusively to the Austrian School. Two years later, Murray N. Rothbard foundedthe Review of Austrian Economics (later succeeded by the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics) to pro-vide an outlet for scholarly articles, thereby relieving the AEN of this responsibility. The AEN beganto emphasize reviews, topical pieces, and, most of all, the extended interview as an effective means ofhighlighting the newest contributions of Austrians to the literature. Today, interview subjects are nowchosen from a variety of disciplines to reflect the full influence of the Austrian tradition.

Over the years, the AEN has interviewed a variety of scholars, including the following:

Dominick T. ArmentanoWalter BlockJames BuchananThomas J. DiLorenzoGene EpsteinRoger W. GarrisonJames GrantBettina Bien GreavesGottfried von HaberlerHenry HazlittRandall G. HolcombeHans-Hermann HoppeJeffrey M. HerbenerJesús Huerta de SotoGeorge Koether

Complete archives of these interviews are available at http://www.mises.org/journals.asp.

With the expansion and redesign of the AEN that begins with Volume 21, the AEN seeks to puton display the energy, creativity, and productivity of today’s Austrian thinkers, who work in manyfields to bring the insights of the tradition to bear on new issues of the day. It is a sign of the healthand vigor of the Austrian movement that the list of thinkers slated for interview in the future growsever longer.

Israel M. KirznerPeter G. KleinLudwig M. LachmannFritz MachlupRoberta ModugnoHiroyuki OkonMichael ProwseMurray N. RothbardJoseph T. SalernoG.L.S. ShackleKarl SocherLeland B. YeagerPascal SalinFrank ShostakRichard K. Vedder


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