by Matthew Hammond
A Portrait in Mezzotint
What is a state but a strange mezzotint? The form of a nation with its tax policies, rules-setting and law-making powers, emerges from a sequence of blacks, whites and greys. It is a classical form no doubt, and yet the paints that make it are themselves far from simple blocks of colour. On the contrary they clearly come in two basic types. On the one hand there is the black ink of capitalism big and small, capitalism which is the ink in the details of the state and traces large forms and small details. On the other hand there are the whites of communisms, which balance the ink, making it take shapes and forms, or mingling with it to form shades of grey. It is then across these blocks of behaving, this layered ink, that the very classical forms of nation states are drawn. Thence to understand this picture it is necessary to understand not only the paper’s and the ink’s nature, but also how the two combine to form a variety of shapes and forms; and how the state manifests itself across this variety.
To take the blocks of tones first. The first is clearly made of the paper itself – the backdrop of communisms upon which the whole splashes. Communisms themselves needs always to be understood as a way of sharing, as one participates within a world and dreams of that participation. As I enjoy what is around me, and include others in that enjoyment, I open myself up to a mind which is not quite mine. It is not an I that is here doing the stuff, so much as a we. We are together thinking or feeling this or that. Communisms are then the power of an outside world, in the name of that part of my mind which I share with others, to enter into my skull. Snippets of thoughts become not purely mine. They become rather a bit of information shared, and that others use in their own compositions. Thoughts travels across the word hoard or through the internet, and grow and develop in nature. This is then a world where nothing is quite owned or fixed, a world where thoughts are constantly enriching and shifting, a world where nothing quite needs to be planned. On the contrary in such a world, everything really merely emerges. It is created across the thousands of individual choices, made both in the minute and in the specific, but also with an eye what to might eventually emerge, save of course that everyone’s dream is different.
The homogeneity of the surface is composed of two elements. On the one hand, all the choices are genuinely held together in a fabric or tissue of consequence. No choice here and now, will then not be used or have an effect to other minds later on. On the other hand, this only works if every element within the tissue of paper, presses together and binds together, not behaving as if any of them were really the boss, and being open to influences from outside. The very amorphous nature of the white paper needs to become a power. Thoughts need to scurry into other minds without care or consequence of ownership. The result is then a communism of ‘shareware’, and open source ideas, which run this way and that picking up form and structure across a thousand different composer’s minds. - Ideas that developed in the telling, as a good story must, and for which there simply are no real authors or rights of ownership. A deep communism which as ever undermines and replaces the capitalist world that is drawn around it.
The ink of capitalism starts from rather a different position. Its starting point is not the press of ideas to be shared, so much as the contrast in the difference between this set of ideas and those. It sets then the rules of encroachment or perhaps micro imperialisms by which one world breaks into another. The aim of these rules (theoretically at least) is to allow the world without to look at the world within, and decide whether or not it wants what dreams that ‘world within’ is offering it. A common medium is then developed to allow this exchange to be effected, and a set of rights (copywriter on the one side, and consumer protection on the other) are established between the two differing worlds. It operates then in riveting down roles, and their ideas, and injecting the rights and duties of owning and marketing into these relations.
The world becomes then a matter for the copywriter. Capitalism must understand the minds of others, in terms of individuals to be impressed. It does not have the luxury of the sharing of the pooled thoughts of communisms, and must rather call upon the more urgent and individual forces of selfhood and mind. Minds become then things which lack concentration (well for products), and must be impressed with a sudden smash and grab of thought, and burned with a single impression upon a brain, a brand and then left. My mind becomes then your opportunity. The place in which your copyrighted ideas find their place, and function. The fact that we together are so many ideals or aspects in our thought, becomes then merely or largely a way to define products and gaps in a market.
Between these two, is not war, so much as the endless mingling of light. Greys emerge between the black and white of capitalism and communisms; these greys being very much of two forms. There are the greys, in which the units of black and white are visible, and others where all ability to tell them apart is long since lost. To take the second of these first: Most big companies have at their heart a sequence of communist worlds, or think tanks. These are where the creative ideas happen. Little huddles of humans who bandy about ideas and so attempt to develop new products and new ways in which to market these products. Little colleges for ideas, that the overall organisation then markets. Capitalism would never function without these little communist worlds. On a slightly wider front, there is a very real sense in which the ideals of science are the ideals of communisms. Ideas are then necessarily given over to a community of other thinkers who test their value and power across experiments of their own. These ideas are then taken up and developed by companies, who draw upon the knowledge and use it to develop their products. And here of course there is a real tension between the ideals of the communal worlds of thought, and the practical marketing of these ideas.
This tension then grows, as this profound grey spreads across the canvas. There is a sense in which capitalisms and communisms have always needed each other, to function at all. Capitalisms then need a buzz, an information exchange and feeling of ownership and desire to share, that communisms give. That is capitalism must sell products, and the way to do that is to become well known, and a part of the fabric of other’s thoughts. It is to become then, an idea which they share or want to share with colleagues, and to accept the fact that this sharing undermines copyright (and must do). Take the example of television licensing. On the one hand of course one needs one licence per television, and yet the very essence of television lies in the ubiquity of the set. Its triumph then lies in the fact that televisions crop up in every room, and do so in defiance of the laws. Capitalism and the communisms then merge, to advance each other even as they technically undermine one another.
Other greys do not lose their form. Little shades of black and white streak across the image. Sometimes communisms pitch up and organize themselves within a capitalism: what else is a family or a co-operative or a collective but a sharing of capitalisms within a small scale communism? This sharing though need not be all happy. It very quickly goes into actions deemed illegal – that is an illegal sharing of property real or virtual, a sharing which if universalized would undermine the entire system. Or again capitalisms often pitch up within communist models. This was important historically (when capitalism started as a small part of a wider communism). But also still is evidenced now, where little marketing opportunities surround big collective gatherings like conferences, festivals or internet chatrooms and social utilities.
Every now and then capitalisms and communisms meet, sometimes in conflict and other times in blending. The state then is conjured in this sharing. It itself forms both the rules of composition and fairness, and so defines what is black and what white, but also it is the overall picture, it is what the mezzotint creates. States then are both the regulator, the definer of who goes where, and the product, the overall effect. And yet there is of course rather a tension here between these two roles. The problem of course is that the dream that statesmen (or their buddies in whatever world) always have, is that they can impress their ideas about what the forms are, on the very system that creates them. They then seek to use the rules of fairness to mould a society according to a present dream. They do not then allow the mezzotint its composing power, but want to force it to behave as if it were a line drawing. A move that will warp the entire picture or at least change its lines. The problem here is that the rules of composition are very complex, and free flowing, far too complex to ever be formally fixed.
Take as an example the modern travails of the music industry. On the one hand, one can see why he media as a whole and the music industry hates the idea of file sharing and collective ownership of music, embodied in the internet. Who will pay, they cry, for these artworks? And yet this grey, which makes capitalist sense, ignores the deep communist roots of music. Music or tunes are like stories, in their very nature to be shared, and copied; It is music’s very power that it is collective. We all feel we own it, and a good tune is something which we all feel we have composed or have written. There is then a natural tension between a capitalist desire to own tunes, and their actual appreciation in the minds of humans. For a while this potential conflict has very greatly favoured capitalist production values. Recordings took a lot of technology to make and market; they could only be played on certain machines, and so could easily be regulated and controlled. Big money could be made. And yet this of course has all changed. Everyone can make, record and share music now, and the technology basis that had defined the industry is gone. Or perhaps rather, what is gone are the very big fortunes that can be made out of providing the ownership of music. Big artists then suffer, as they are simply not worth the fuss. We know they are not as good as the fees they are paid, and act accordingly (we resent paying them). However the smaller and medium producers of music do rather well out of the situation. They can get their music distributed and played, and make some kind of living out of it.
Hence that in a very deep level the exact composition of the picture here has slipped. It used to be about a big picture – a big capitalist industry. And yet now the rules of technology have changed, as new picture is emerging (one incidentally far closer to what music has been throughout most of human history). The problem here then, is always how the state reacts, and where it attempts to define fairness. Does it then defend that old picture and try, using the laws of copyright and landownership, to conjure the old system in the new circumstances? Or does it allow the old system to whither away and die, and a new set to emerge? The problem of course here is that the state, which is by definition a large organization, often favours the former strategy over the latter and so lacks confidence in the future.
There needs then to be developed a mezzotint rule kit, defining or at least redefining the uses and misuses of the whites, blacks and greys. As a rule of thumb it is very clear that the black of capitalisms is 'brilliant' (as a colour is brilliant) at drawing or defining the large scale picture. Communism simply cannot do this. The latter reverts to tyranny or rural idiocy if it tries. Capitalism then has a track record in defining the overall form of a global economy. It is no wonder then that modern states, which likewise draw upon forms, like the idea of capitalism (in principle). But it also goes without saying that this picture needs the white to be drawn upon. A block of black loses all its power to represent without one. Capitalism is then only able to draw, as it is defined within (and not allowed to blot out) its distinct lines. Hence the old Marxist principle that capitalisms cannot function unless non-capitalisms are also there, and also able to receive and be marketed to.
If the big picture often needs a form of capitalism, it is clear enough that communisms come into their own in defining the detail of that form. That is, the black by itself lacks texture. It is, when all is said and done, a black line. It is then the white of the paper that was already there, that invades that blackness, softening the edges, and making it always say something different. And here of course it is always the genius of the artist to allow the white’s background presence its power. Background in invading the foreground, creates light and also expression and feeling within otherwise absolutist lines.
The lesson of modernity is that society is not as simple as it might seem. We never have lived in a capitalist society, so much as an uneasy double take, a mezzotint, where capitalisms and communisms meet and conflict with one another. The problem is always then to measure and understand that conflict, and whether it is useful or not. Or at least that has been the game until now, and no doubt still is. But what is also clear is that both the current worry about global warming (and so having to work out a way to share a planet together, all of us), but also the internet (the open sourcing for thought) has greatly advanced communisms’ power to create collective minds, and hence capitalism is rather belatedly catching up with this sharing of ideals, a catch up which we might not seek or want. The effect is then, that we face a real problem now in the shading of our mezzotint. Do we want it to be whiter than it has ever been and more collective? Do we want capitalism’s black with darker shades punching at full power once again? A question that it is perhaps not for us in the rich West to ask, but rather for those whom our neat mezzotint has failed. That is the poor of the world, for whom the ideal of how we share resources, where we draw the lines of capitalisms and communisms is a pressing matter of life or death, and not merely a matter of taste as it is in the West.
