New Left, Local Control, and Fascism

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by Webern, namely serial composition. As yet another outside of itself and its own alienation and thereby
manifestation of the prevailing hegemony of the so- include itself in a statement on alienation in general.
called scientific empiricism, this school of composition
bore certain resemblances to the contribution of another
duo, von Neumann and Morgenstern in the field of For the serialists, logical positivism was a very useful
economics, who tried to prove that the law of value was way for people who found themselves uncomfortably
to be located in the formal correspondence of the price forced to play a role of a composer rather than a
and utility of commodities. The headquarters for both stockbroker to ignore that "metaphysical" question
of these schools, as no doubt for their equivalents in that has haunted all great artists: how to reconcile the
other areas of knowledge as well, are to be found at formal aspects of composition with a statement on man.
Princeton University. In contrast to the Law of Value What neither mathematical economists nor serialism
developed by Marx in the "Feuerbach" section of the can take into account in their theory of knowledge is the
German Ideology, these mathematical economists be- crucial factor of reality, namely change. That this factor
lieved that a particular object could have an intrinsic is one of the prime concerns of the German Critical
value in itself which was translated into its price, Philosophers is not incidental to the empiricists' violent
instead of locating intrinsic value in the relationship rejection of this philosophy. What destroys mathebetween
the whole society and the entirety of the matical economics as a viable theory of reality is that
material conditions required to continue the existence disequilibrium is a fundamental feature of capitalism
of the entire society on an expanded scale. What was and not an '"infinitesimal" fact to be relegated to a
left out of consideration by the mathematical econ- footnote. What finishes serialism as either the basis for
omists was a consideration of the effect that subtracting an explanation of music in general or a theory for
or adding the particular part would have on the repro- producing new music is also the factor of disequiductive
power of the whole. This important aspect of librium. Great music, such as Beethoven, has always
human knowledge had been relegated by the scientific been a process-statement that reflected upon the
empiricists to the rubbish heap of "meaningless ques- nature of change and has been self-conscious to the
tions" identified by them as the realm of inquiry only of extent that it mirrors the flux of reality in such a way as
concern to "metaphysicians." Similarly the serialists to include the artist's changing consciousness of that
almost went so far as to make concern with some formal reality. Musical events occur, change in their surroundmusical
problem totally devoid of human relevance a ings and are themselves destroyed by the changes they
condition for acceptance as a professional composer, create, as I will demonstrate at a later point with
The premises in both systems was that truth was to be respect to the Diabelli Variations. The logical-posifound
"intrinsically" in the examination of a particular tivist composers, in ignoring this aspect of music,
to the exclusion of its relationship to the rest of society, have delivered the final death blow to any possibility of
Not surprisingly then, the mathematical economists musical creation, just as the formal mathematicians
turned economics into a non-human science, while the with their axiomatic viewpoint have destroyed the
serialists produced a non-human music, possibility of creativity in mathematics.
What both the serialists and the mathematical econ- In order, then, to lay the basis for a non-bourgeois
omists have in common is the assumption that reality art, it is necessary to replace the formal mathematical
can be reduced to a form of mechanical equilibrium of conceptions which have permeated the social activity of
the sort that explains the stability of a physical object producing music as well as all other aspects of social
where equal forces pull in opposite directions. From a life. It is necessary to attack the concepts imposed upon
demonstration of equilibrium of this particular "fact" the present social processes by the present bourgeois
the mathematical economist goes on to develop this forms of social organization and the ideology approprinotion
as the politically hegemonic explanation of capi- ate to the perpetuation of bourgeois social practice with
talist so-called stability in which the myth of "built-in concepts empowered by a different form of social
stabilizers" plays an important part, conveniently ig- consciousness. However, as Marx points out in his third
noting, of course, all empirical evidence to the con- thesis of Feuerbach, this must be done self-consciously,
trary, such as breakdown crises which history so sym- or in his words, "the educator himself must be
pathetically supplies. Similarly, in a period of obvious educated." He goes on to say that "the coincidence of
social crisis, the serialist composer is busily construct- the changing of circumstances and of human activity or
ing his version of the economist's pseudo-scientific self-changing can only be comprehended and rationally
"model." An example of such music is Milton Bab- understood as revolutionary practice." An artist who
bitt's composition for synthesizer, an electronically wishes to find an alternative to an art that is actually a
synthesized, but unfortunately not artistically synthe- subtle expression of bourgeois ideology must have a
sized composition by the leading spokesman of the profound understanding of the difference between
Princetonian school. Some might say that this is an art bourgeois and socialist consciousness and how to go
expressing the alienation of modern man. I would about producing the latter in a society thoroughly
suggest that it is an alienated art, and thus one which is premeated with the former. This demanding task is
incapable of making a self-conscious statement on urgently required of both the artist and the revolutionalienation.
It cannot do this becuase it cannot step ary leader.