Is Most Marxist Art (And “Artivism”) Actually Social Democratic? And if so, what should art (and design) universities do about it?

Abstract

“Artivists” often proclaim that their work is Marxist. The accent is not always on economic inequality, as they deal even more with feminist (/queer), post-colonialist and environmentalist goals, but Marxism is the classical political tag that haunts their projects. Marxism is a concept that is applied to a broad variety of approaches. In philosophy some of the most notorious critics of Marx are called Marxists. As political artists often desire to change moderately the society piece by piece with the help of their art, one could still ask the question: Does this not sound more like social democracy? The “revi-sionists,” i.e. the social democrats—Kautsky and Bernstein as the theoretical pioneers of the movement—thought that a new society could be built by negotiating and ameliorating piece by piece the existing society. If art universities should support artistic development, should social democracy be added to the curriculum?