On Greenberg and kitsch

Its not only difficult, it is impossible to separate Greenbergs ideas on art and kitsch and the avant garde from the politics of Marxism. But I think its more difficult in perspective to modern politics of society to accept than in the day it was produced. What is interesting here is that this article was written in 1939 before the realities of a Communist state, or rather the potential for the perversion of such, was realized. I wonder if the reality of a totalitarian pseudo-communist state not at all dissimilar from that of Mussollini or Hitler would have changed his perspectives. Korea and China certainly have no use for Greenbergs ideals of the avant garde though he is correct in his suppositions concerning the suppression of the avante garde. Nevertheless I found much of interest here in the evolution of kitsch as the aesthetic pabulum of the masses employed and supported by the Regime for the benefit of easy information manipulation. To put it succinctly, the proletariat simply has no time to learn about high art and culture what with all that slaving away for the bourgeois and so ingests the easy aesthetic of kitsch which bypasses all that bothersome 'thinking and learning'. Its all there for the viewer without the danger of misinterpretation. Here I find a problem with this sort of thinking in contrast to the post modernity in that the middle class, Greenberg and Marx's bourgeois, is blurred with the proletariat. Where does the middle class begin and the lower class end when a decidedly 'lower class' affectation like rap music can be elevated to a multi million dollar industry in under a decade? When presidents lack any sort of pedigree, or the possession of such pedigree would be an achilles heel? And I dont think anyone would be willing to call rap avante garde, but I could be wrong. Wocka Flocka Flame maybe, but I draw the line there.

This is the crux of the problem with this Greenbergian philosophy: whereas Marx still reads, and intellectually smells, like a rose, Greenbergs ham- handed separations and class snobbery seems out of step with the confused pluralism of modern day culture where a million dollar yacht is not necessarily decorated with Picasso, but may in fact sport a Kincade. Rather than the evenly layered granite of past decades we as a culture are looking more like marble to me, veined and milky, slender veins of gold amidst muddy rivers and grey expanse. Perhaps, if Greenberg is to be believed, it is not the bourgeois who has changed but rather the oligarchy has successfully, if veiled, infiltrated our culture to such an extent as to be indistinguishable from the proletariat, causing a yawning chasm between percepters of high and low culture clarified or rather endorsed merely by commerce.