“The Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing!?” – What Cultural Capitalism Is and What It Cannot Be Accused of Being

Abstract

Abstract The present paper is a defense of the free-market economy/capitalism as a proper institutional setting for both producing and preserving cultural goods. We argue that culture is best served by a framework in which economic agents can evaluate their cultural consumption and production in a market order based on private property rights and monetary prices. In this vein, we first put, in contrast, two important lines of thought on the subject of value and capital in cultural matters. On the one hand, the mainstream approach upholds both that “cultural value” is intrinsic (and measurable) and that a fourth type of capital (namely “cultural capital”) can be introduced in the capital theory. On the other hand, by using a qualitative research methodology, based on deductive reasoning and historical analysis, we contrast the mainstream/neoclassic view with the praxeological approach of the Austrian School of economics. We conclude that neither “cultural value” is an objective fact, nor that the very concept of “cultural capital” can be integrated coherently in the economic theory. Yet, we claim that private management of cultural goods is superior to their public administration, due to (1) a genuine interest of private owners to rationally exploit cultural goods according to the subjective preferences of cultural consumers, (2) the inbuilt sustainability of the free-market economy as concerns the efficient exploitation of the cultural goods.