The Collective Creativity of Workers

From Unconscious Sleeping Giants to Conscious Builders of Barricades Part I

Orientation

One purpose of this article is to get you to think of creativity in a whole new way. Our notion of creative today is baked with the assumptions of a Romantic theory of art. These have their good points but they also limit us. In this article I want to argue that the most powerful forms of creativity are collective, not individual. One problem is that with the evolution of society into social classes the collective creativity of workers and peasants is buried in their alienated social-historical unconscious. Making this collective creativity conscious is inseparable from making a social revolution.

I proceed first by discussing individual creativity. I begin by describing the ways in which the artist is different from other workers. Then I connect this to the values and limitations of the romanticization of art.  Then I discuss what an artistic person is like. In the second part of my article I discuss the field of history. First, I talk about how all the arts were once integrated into magical activity in egalitarian hunting and gathering and horticultural societies.

There is the long shadow of alienation of collective creativity in caste and class societies. But then I show how even within capitalist societies there are instances during natural disasters, social movements and ultimately revolutionary times when workers express their collective creativity consciously in the construction of workers’ councils.

The Artist as a Visionary

The life of an artist provokes many, if not most, people. Whether dismissed as a good-for-nothing slacker, a vehicle through which the Muses may speak or just an eccentric personality, an artist in the 21st century West is not boring. One reason is that artistic activity flies in the face of that old sop, “you can’t mix business with pleasure”. In its highest moments, considered as a process (rather than a product), artistic activity approaches a synthesis of work and play as well as work and pleasure.

For most of my twenties I worked in various blue-collar jobs, unloading and loading trucks and driving a forklift in a warehouse. Wage-labor, especially the unskilled kind, is so mechanical and deadening it became associated with suffering. It was something I hated to do, a drudge to be gotten over with, a scourge to be wistfully contrasted to “the good life”. After years of this kind of work, it is difficult not to generalize from this particular job to work in general. Among workers not only is work avoided like the plague, as Marx says, but activity itself can come under suspicion. By activity I mean purposeful, non-frivolous deeds which require concentration and the exertion of will. When activity is done under alienated conditions, it is experienced as a dissipation. Rather than experiencing the outpouring of energy as producing more energy, the expenditure of energy is felt to be a loss.

One the other hand, if the hatred of work because synonymous with activity, then the good-life appears to be consuming sprees of mass media, sporting events and concerts, sensual, sexual pleasure, substance abuse and rest.  In the United States, even active play like table games, video games, dancing or travel far from home competes with TV, or internet surfing. Rather than an interlude, a moment of respite and fertilization for the more gratifying work to come, leisure becomes an end-in-itself. Bourgeois utopias are written about a time when leisure will be all there is.

However, we all need a rest from rest. Justifiably, there is a sense of uneasiness when idleness is posed as a way of life, and the discomfort is not limited to puritanical preachers. Many of us can sense this House of Death, jingling with the trappings of divine honors, as Nietzsche said, when we refuse to retire from jobs, even miserable ones, because we “wouldn’t know what to do with ourselves.” I wonder how many people unconsciously kill themselves before or soon after retirement, when we start to get a full dose of “leisure for leisure’s sake”. Contrary to superficial notions of pleasure, rest can be disturbing just as activity can be alienating.

The careful ascertainment of how we shall do so, and the art of guiding it with consequent authority – this sense of authority, is for the master builder, the treasure of treasures – renews in the modern alchemist something like the old dream of the secret of life (Creative Process, Brewster Ghiselin, pg. 150).

In this self-contained magical workshop, in this valley of fertility, the artist pushes and pulls, she hems and haws, and when the oils dry, when the clay is fired, when the curtain falls a baby begins to make its way through the world.

Every artist is at heart a magician. Just as the shaman ventures into the forest or the desert on his vision-quest, so the artist heads for her secluded place of work, fitfully muttering “good riddance” to daily distractions. Alone at last, she surrounds herself with her talismans – a hat with a feather, a ring of beads. Like the Greek chorus, they whisper to her of previous glorious ventures, revelation. “Yes” they tell me, “this time you too can make magic on paper”.

Magical considerations of timing motivate the artist’s habits. Just as a magician studies the stars and arranges her correspondences, so too the artist becomes attuned to when and how she does her best work. What are the optimum conditions? What stage of the creative process is most appropriate based on her mood that day?  What non-artistic activities are most likely to stimulate further creativity? The artist becomes sensitive to knowing when persistence pays off and when it doesn’t.  In short, the artistic creative process is a secularization of a magical ritual:

In the minor occurrences of everyday life which passed unnoticed…the person disposed towards the creative life repeatedly finds clues, fragile portents which he seizes as the basis of some future identity at odds with the social pressures prevailing about. He lives like Schubert’s wanderer, in search of the land which speaks his language. (Dialectical Economics, L. Marcus, pg. 100)

Artists can be understood as the link between the old world and the one which may be born:

How can an individual within capitalist society base his identity on a non-capitalist set of identity and world-outlook? In the study of creative personalities. (Dialectical Economics, pg. 98)

Limitations of Romantic Theories of Art

The following bullets below are the beliefs and assumptions of Romantic theories of art. Let us take them one by one. The first two beliefs can be taken together. Like other animals, the human species has to adapt to its environment. Creativity is rooted in the capacity to solve problems that its environment presents. Since all human beings problem-solve, all human beings have some degree of creativity. The Romantic artist not only fails to see the creativity necessary for people to live in everyday life, he also images that the very involvement in the arts bestows upon him the mantle of creativity. By merely crossing the sacred portals of the arts each novice becomes initiated into the mysteries of creativity. It’s as if artists could never be accused of being mechanical or uncreative just because they are artists. But on the contrary, there can be instances of everyday problem solving that involve more creativity than an artistic product.

We can also combine tenets three and four. Romantic artists have a distrust of groups. Rooted in the individualist reaction to the mindless repetition of factory work of the industrial revolution, romantic artists think of groups only as a force for conformity or obedience to the authorities. The Romantic takes the alienation between the individual and society as given. He ignores the fact that extraordinary social circumstances, such as natural disasters and revolutions, can bring out the most of an individual’s creativity.

When the Romantic artist discounts planning and structure, he accepts that creativity is fundamentally unreasonable or irrational activity. On one side are the emotions, intuition and spontaneity and antithetical to that are reason, organization and constraints. It is hard to imagine how a Romantic artist who made their living from art could hold these beliefs. To sell a work to the public requires rationality, organization and deadlines. Only individuals who are supported by others or dabble in the arts as a form of therapy can imagine art as antithetical to organization, planning and setting priorities.

What is the place of shock in the arts? Surely one of the callings of the artist is to move a society beyond the comfortable, the taken-for-granted and the obvious. In the early part of the 20th century, Cubists, Dadaists and Surrealists did this as a reaction to the Renaissance and Baroque conventions. Before a society is crumbling this is a very important calling. However once social cracks appear and spread, too much shock from the arts is counter-revolutionary. The Romantic artist imagines that shocking people might propel masses of people into social action. This may be true. But too much shock can result in anesthetizing, not moving people. Past a certain point artists should be creating constructive visions of the future not tripping over themselves about how to outrage a public already frightened by social conditions.

The values and beliefs of Romantic theories of art include:

  • All creativity is artistic. All other activities are less creative.
  • There are creative individuals and then there are the rest of us.
  • Maximum creativity is achieved in isolation (groups hold creativity back).
  • Creative activity has nothing to do with everyday life. It is an escape from that life.
  • Creativity and planning are mutually exclusive.

(Disciplined, intellectual and structured activity holds creativity back)

  • What is creative is what is shocking and incomprehensible
  • What is creative is what makes us feel better. Art as therapy (Feedback from an audience matters little to the creative process).
  • What is creative is what appears to be absolutely new.
  • Art expresses more creativity than craft. Art is non-utilitarian (the more people use the art, the more debased it becomes). Art is about ornaments and decorations.
  • Art is in the eye of the beholder. Objective judgments about what is creative are impossible. Judgment of creativity is purely subjective.
  • Art is secular and has little do with sacred beliefs, mythology or rituals.
  • Art is all about the process and the product doesn’t matter.
  • Being an artist means you are eccentric, an outcast, unrealistic and a dreamer.
  • Art is the opposite of necessity. It is subjective and voluntary.
  • Art is fictional. It is an escape from reality.

Romantic artists turn art into therapy. However, while there are certainly therapeutic elements to the arts, the purpose of art is to move the public from more than it is to massage and prop up the emotional states of the artist. Romantics fancy themselves as undiscovered geniuses who are too sensitive to subject themselves to the barbaric tastes of the public. But without criticism from the world the artist loses a vital feedback loop that helps him to stay in touch with the socio-historic reality.

Is there anything that comes into the world that is absolutely new? Romantic artists imagine creativity in the Christian sense of God making the world out of nothing. In reality, the most creative work is always built upon the work of others in society, in the cross-currents between societies as well as the influence of those who have went before. There is no such thing as a genius creating something out of nothing.

Crafts are about making things for everyday use such as baskets, hats, pots, and beads. Crafts are embedded in everyday life and can be used by others in the spirit of carrying on a tradition of their kin and the ancestors. The separation of art from crafts in the modern period came about as part of the class divisions within society. Artists were hired by the Church to support its spiritual ideology and among the upper classes to immortalize themselves. During the Romantic period, artists began to rebel against these influences and began to make statements about societies that were somewhat independent of the upper classes. Unlike craft, art in this sense was more abstract, self-reflective, intended for fewer people and involved innovation as part of an ideology of change. To say that art is more creative than craft says that creativity has less to do with everyday life, large groups of people and that which has continuity across time and space. It is a hard case to make. At its worst, the Romantic artist can be accused of being elitist.

The notion that art is merely a matter of subjective taste is a relatively recent phenomenon. Western art became increasingly psychological in the 20th century and with that, the inner experience of the artist became a subject of consideration. This change in part was a reaction to the objective standards of the academic painting. Cross-cultural research on aesthetics together with evolutionary psychology has shown, however that there is a set of objective standards that all cultures point to when making aesthetic judgments about beauty. Among them include bodies of water, places to hide, and available food.

The Romantic movement was not opposed to spirituality, but to organized religion. While many Romantics wanted to bring back myths and rituals, still for many of the Romantics spirituality was an individual experience so that art in the eyes of Romantics is separated from collective myths, rituals and religious practices. This stance ignores the fact that for most of human history, art was in the service of preparation and delivery of magical rituals and the making of costumes for acting out mythological stories.

While Romantic artists rightfully drew attention to and reflects on the creative process rather than just the product, there is a point at which process becomes everything and the product becomes incidental. Again, artists who make their living as artists must pay attention to the product and reactions of the public in order to continue to paint. It is only those who are supported by others or using art for therapeutic purposes who can afford to ignore the product.

“I will live on the fringes of society rather than compromise my art”. This imagine of an artist as being an outcast, an eccentric, unrealistic or a dreamer has not been typical of how artists have been seen throughout history. More times than not the artist was producing objects that supported the existing order. Many artists who lived during the Renaissance were well-off, conventional, realistic and by most standards, creative. Suffering based on feeling misunderstood is atypical in the history of art.

What does it mean to say that art is the opposite of necessity? By necessity I mean that there is some external crisis or constraint that the artist must respond to. In other words, making art is not a voluntary experience. This is offensive to the Romantic because art is imagined to be coming from within, a free choice uninhibited by external circumstances. But why can’t art begin in reaction to something that must be done for social or historical reasons? Art, like problem solving is often most creative when forced by circumstances out of their control. Conversely, without the force of external events artist can fall asleep, falling back on the usual subject matter, materials and treatment or means of creativity. They can become obsessed by personal problems and lose their perspective.

Lastly, the belief that art is fictional is based on the assumption that reality is unchangeable, and the best you can do is escape it into an imaginary world or a future world. On the contrary, revolutionary art can change social and historical reality by being used in the service of a social movement.

The Artist’s Life as a Work of Art

Though Gertrude Stein and Henry Miller were both significant artists in the traditional sense, each understood that artistic products and artistic processes are just moments of living life. How creative is the artist beyond the activity of making art? Certainly, it is possible to be creative as an artist and uncreative in how life is lived. Both Stein and Miller understood that creativity should be extended beyond art. The artistic products and processes are like streams, which, if followed long enough can converge into the river of how an individual lives their lives. Stein points out the shortsightedness of exclusively identifying creativity with being an artist:

“They become writers. They cease to be creative men and they find that they are novelists, or critics or poets or biographers. When a man says “I am a novelist” he is simply a literary shoemaker (The Creative Process, Ghiselin, pg. 162) – a very important thing – and I know because I have seen it kill so many writers – is not to make up your mind that you are any one thing…When one has discovered and evolved a new form, it is not the form, but the fact that you are the form that is important (Ghiselin, 167) ‘This book will make literary history’ and I told him, ‘it will make some part of literary history, perhaps, but only if you can go on making a new part every day and grow with the history you are making, until you become part of it yourself’.

Henry Miller continues the same line of argument:

“I don’t consider myself a writer in the ordinary sense of the word. I am a man telling the story of his life… I become more and more indifferent to my fate as a writer and more and more certain of my destiny as a man…My life itself becomes a work of art…Now I can easily not write as write, there is no longer any therapeutic aspect to it. (Ghiselin, 178-180)”

These are modern artists aware of their own psychology. However, there were artists before them like Leonardo or Goethe who clearly as artists, lived extraordinary lives and their lives were works of art.

Coming Attractions: Conscious and Unconscious Creativity in History

  • the return of conscious creativity in capitalist society which can be seen in natural disasters, social movements and revolutionary situations which are expressed in workers’ councils.
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