We may, in time, come to see that the drop in standards in so-called 'popular' taste that took place in the twentieth century owed less to any intrinsic limitations in the audience, than to specific market distortions in many advanced economies. We may come to sec the age of sub-standard television, patronizing housing, unhealthy food and exploitative media as a historically limited one sandwiched between the collapse of the previous aristocratic value system and the emergence of more responsive, interactive and evolved methods of judgement. This dispiriting age was one when corporations were able to exploit a customer base that was passive, artificially constrained in its choices and unable to exchange knowledge of its experiences. In these monopolistic conditions, the goods and services that flourished were not necessarily those that answered properly to people's own enthusiasms; they were simply what certain businesses knew they could get away with.
However, as the world becomes more interconnected and consumers are able to exchange information and understand their tastes in a more accurate way, so the monolithic approach of the twentieth century corporation might make way for a far more varied and inventive business ecosystem. The process of raising taste that Herbert Read accomplished in art through lectures and books may now occur almost spontaneously, thanks to the vast and sharp-eyed citizen armies of the internet.
A highly successful capitalist enterprise.
103. Alberto Giacometii, The Forest {Composition with Seven Figures and a Head), 1950
Enlightened Investment
Built in pursuit of profit.
104. John Nash Cumberland. Tcrracc, 1826
105. Thomas Shepherd, The Quadrant and Lower Regent Street [demolished in the early twentieth ccmury). r.1850
Nasser David Khalili is one of the world's richest men. Iranian born and resident in London, he amassed a fortune (estimated to be in the many billions) building and selling shopping malls and other forms of commercial and residential property. His money safely accumulated, he has now begun to give away large chunks of it to philanthropic causes. His dominant interest is art, and the greatest share of his surplus wealth has been directed towards the acquisition and display of masterpieces in a variety of genres. He has sponsored exhibitions at the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg and the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris; he has given large sums to Oxford University and lent his art collection, revolving around Islamic masterpieces, to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
In its combination of money-making and art, Khalili's trajectory follows in the footsteps of great plutocrats such as Andrew Carnegie or Andrew Mellon. Like them, he has made money in so-called low' areas of the economy not associated with the pursuit of goodness, truth and beauty. However, once wealthy, he has wholeheartedly turned his attention to 'higher' causes, among which art looms especially large.
One might suggest a different path. Rather than ignoring the higher needs of mankind for many decades while pulling together an astonishing fortune, then rediscovering these higher needs later in life through acts of immense generosity towards some localized shrine of art (an opera house, a national museum), would it not be better and truer to the values underlying many works of art to strive across the whole of one's life, within the money-generating day job, to make truth, kindness and beauty more alive and accessible to the public at large? The difference between beauty and ugliness in most enterprises is a few percentage points of profit. Would it not be wiser if business people agreed to sacrifice a little of their surplus wealth in their main area of activity and in the most vigorous period of their lives, in order to render this activity more noble and humane, then focused a little less attention on dazzling displays of artistic philanthropy in their later decades? Would it not have been better for all of us if, rather than making money through selling Scotland's hideous Cameron Toll shopping centre and giving away a portion of the cash to the Hermitage Museum, Mr Khalili had simply made slightly less money, but done so by building beautiful shops and houses that could have enhanced the tenor of everyday life across the modern world? The plea here is for a form of enlightened investment in which the return sought on capital would, over long periods, be moderated by an interest in the good that was produced from the enterprise in hand.
Part of the problem lies in the bestowing of status. Honour and fame are given to those who make very public gestures of philanthropy towards the arts. You don't get much respect from limiting your wealth- making potential or from investing your funds in ways that make daily life slightly better in non-dramatic but still substantial ways. There is more status to be found in exploiting a mine, rainforest or a call centre for three decades, then funding an opera house from the proceeds, your animal energies having run dry. This strategy has a glamour and apparent logic greater than the more modest task of steadily building a more agreeable world for people at a 3% annual rate of return, which at the end of life leaves you little except the inherent satisfaction of having done something worthwhile with your years.
Enlightened capitalism will require a new kind of patron who is interested in making money but willing to sacrifice returns for the sake of higher goals. London's Regent's Park and Regent Street are both beautifully elegant and brilliantly commercial developments, and we might learn from the attitude of their backer, the Prince Regent, later George IV (104, 105). The Prince had more than one motive for the huge scheme. He wanted and needed a commercial return from leasing the new buildings, so there was a capitalist impetus for the project. He also wanted, however, to make a fine and permanent contribution to the beauty and grandeur of his capital city. He succeeded in both aims. His streets and terraces enticed people to live in areas that had hitherto been backwaters; they would not have gone there had it not been for the elegance and charm of the new buildings. In order to succeed commercially, it was crucial that the development be elegant, but the Prince could not afford to make his city more beautiful unless the development could also be commercially successful. The crucial point is that he brought to this project of urban development an ambition to attain the love, admiration and gratitude of future generations, and to create, with his great resources and with the help of commerce, the noblest of all human products: a majestic city.
Capitalism has not yet learnt to harness fully the longing for honour to generate good outcomes. It hasn't grasped the profound need to feel that one's life is directed towards fine and worthy goals, and the possibility this brings for people to be attracted to invest for the sake of other ends than the absolute maximization of private wealth. Money is the most basic kind of reward because in principle it can be converted into so many other things, but there are other kinds of rewards that the successful might seek, such as glory, dignity, the love of succeeding generations. These are noble goods. It has been unfortunate that the
The ultimate non- financial honour: the laurel wreath.
106. Ernst Fricdrich August Rictschci. The Gocthc-Schillcr Monument. Weimar. 1857
value system of capitalism has accelerated at a time when our collective hold on the meaning of such things has, for other reasons, weakened. It can now feel pompous or silly to talk of glory or an immortal name. It feels somehow old-fashioned or unsophisticated, especially when you could be talking of money instead. Such ideas, though, are important counterweights to purely financial standards of achievement. They have the potential to grip the soul and guide ambition. If it is to flourish, a society needs to motivate people to undertake goals that go beyond the economic. Many great human achievements could only have been undertaken by people who focused on other things alongside money. This isn't to advocate the pursuit of honour over money; rather, a more judicious balancing between the legitimate claims of both elements.