I do think that there is a very sound basis for interesting and potentially valuable discussion here, unless no prior agreement can be reached as to the subject under discussion - in other words, it can progress provided that Richard and like-minded people on the one hand and Baz and like-minded people on the other can first agree on a word to describe that subject. The reason I say so is, quite simply, that the discussion is not - or at least should not be - about what the word "politics" means but about how "ideas" (whether or not anyone describes them as "political") about the interaction of individual human beings with humanity as a whole may figure in the act of and motivation behind musical composition.
Here is the true state of affairs: a clear exposition together with definitions of the principal terms, which will we hope be helpful to Members discussing. The author was O.F.O'F.W. Wilde in 1891.
-oOo-
"Socialism itself will be of value simply because it will lead to
Individualism.
"Socialism, Communism, or whatever one chooses to call it, by converting private property into public wealth, and substituting co-operation for competition, will restore society to its proper condition of a thoroughly healthy organism, and insure the material well-being of each member of the community. It will, in fact, give Life its proper basis and its proper environment. But for the full development of Life to its highest mode of perfection, something more is needed.
What is needed is Individualism. If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are to have
Industrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first. At present, in consequence of the existence of private property, a great many people are enabled to develop a certain very limited amount of Individualism. They are either under no necessity to work for their living, or are enabled to choose the sphere of activity that is really congenial to them, and gives them pleasure. These are
the poets, the philosophers, the men of science, the men of culture--in a word,
the real men, the men who have realised themselves, and in whom all Humanity gains a partial realisation. Upon the other hand, there are a great many people who, having no private property of their own, and being always on the brink of sheer starvation, are compelled to do the work of beasts of burden, to do work that is quite uncongenial to them, and to which they are forced by the peremptory, unreasonable, degrading Tyranny of want. These are the poor, and amongst them there is no grace of manner, or charm of speech, or civilisation, or culture, or refinement in pleasures, or joy of life. From their collective force Humanity gains much in material prosperity. But it is only the material result that it gains, and the man who is poor is in himself absolutely of no importance. He is merely the infinitesimal atom of a force that, so far from regarding him, crushes him: indeed, prefers him crushed, as in that case he is far more obedient."
-oOo-
Please note in particular the situation of the "real men" - those above and beyond politics. It is they and they alone who are "our poets, philosophers, and men of culture." "What is needed is Individualism" - that is how he puts it. This sensible fact or rather ungainsayable axiom was widely known and appreciated in prelapsarian 1908 but is now no longer taught even and in danger indeed of being entirely forgotten.
One further observation of Wilde is relevant here: "It is only in art-criticism, and through it, that we can apprehend the Platonic theory of
Ideas, and can realise Hegel's system of
contraries.
A Truth in Art is that whose contradictory is also true." This is if anything more important than either Individualism or Artistic Freedom. No one can be a creative artist who does not take it to heart and produce accordingly!
Politics are material whereas
Art is spiritual. We have met grotesques who deny a difference!
