Now, some people might object, so I will address objections some may have
- "Collectivization destroys individuality!"
This completely misconstrues what collectivization of art is. Collectivization of art does not mean that all art will look the same/have the same message/etc. Collectivization of art does mean that the people as a collective have the right to use, redistribute, and derive art made by the people.
- "But isn't this stealing?"
Let me ask you something. If I had a "make a bicycle" button that magically creates a bicycle out of thin air, then would it be "stealing" for you to press the "make a bicycle" button and keep the bicycle for yourself? Stealing something involves an intent to deprive someone of something, and what are you depriving me of? Bicycles? It is utterly absurd to say that I am being deprived of bicycles when I can just press the "make a bicycle" button and have as many bicycles as I wish. But, say that I create a "make a bicycle" button and then Mike decides to tell everyone that only he can press the "make a bicycle" button. This action now deprives the people of bicycles, and is thus much closer to stealing than you pressing the "make a bicycle" button.
- "But how will you earn money?"
Do you really think the optimal way to earn money off of the art to produce is to sell it off piecemeal by creating artificial scarcity? A collectivized system of art would require a vastly different system of compensation compared to the current privatized art that exists today. The system of payment for collectivized art requires socialist planning. When an artist publishes a work of art, they will be given a government grant equivalent to the amount of labor that was put in in exchange for the art being able to be used and derived by the public. This is a much more equitable and fair system of production and distribution of art.
- "But what if someone takes credit for your art?"
Collectivization of art does not mean removing credit from the original author. Redistributing art in a collectivized system would still require the redistributor to credit the original creator. The person's art will still be protected by a trademark, not a copyright. This means that the art will always be linked to the original creator, and the original creator will still be able to take action against people who fail to credit them/intentionally take unauthorized credit.
- "But what about freedom? Should I not have the freedom to choose who can distribute my art?"
This idea, although it may seem like human nature to liberals, has only arisen when publishers, the real thieves of art, have created strict copyright laws to protect themselves, not the creators. Before the age of publishers, these ideas did not exist, as there was no material justification for these ideas to arise. Just as these ideas have arrived with privatized art, they will also leave with privatized art. This argument falls in the same category as the "communism goes against human nature" category, as they both use the justifications the current system creates for itself as "evidence" against alternative, and superior, systems.
If you have any counterpoints, please comment them below! ^^
I would think art will, to some extent, organically cease to be a commodity along with others things, provided we reach the stage of Fully Automated Gay Space Luxury Communism (TM). But dry humor about naming aside, this seems like something that you can't very well "force" while still transitioning to communism and that will mostly cease to be an issue with little interference once you have transitioned to communism.
I could see being reformist on copyright abuse, like putting most of the copyright power in the hands of small individuals instead of big conglomerates who can sit on stuff for decades. I could see government initiatives to support the arts and this is also going to be a somewhat expected extension of state power and influence, because of how propaganda (the normal kind everybody does, not the inherently ick connotation) is linked to the arts.
That said, I would argue there is a certain amount of cultural bias in this train of thought, that tends to think of art as an entity separate from everything else, that is primarily for entertainment. But art can be heavily tied to culture. For example, the Hawaiian hula is not just them trying to have cool vibes, but actually telling stories and preserving their culture through the dance. That's going to require a certain amount of agreement on what gestures mean, what they represent. It's not going to be just remixing what somebody else made for funsies, but super important to their way of life. So I would say less important than viewing art as something in need of copyright abolishment, is viewing art as something in need of re-linking separations between art and propaganda, art and culture, where necessary, in order to get past the capitalist mode of thinking that sees it purely as an isolated object to be exploited for profit. Sometimes I run into this mentality, and some of you have probably seen this in the extremes too, where people are like, "This video game / movie / etc. is pushing [buzzword for views I don't like]" or some other variation on viewing propaganda as a heavy weight around the neck of art. It's kind of strange because messaging is there, whether you want it to be or not. It's more a question of how obvious it is and to whom, or how consciously done it is on the part of its creator(s).
I guess what I'm trying to get at here is, any conception of collectivizing art needs to acknowledge the utility of art outside of abstract profit making and how that relates to what it means for a society to collectivize the processes of making it and sharing it. Art as profit cannot be properly countered by, for example, saying it's soul because then the realities of its ties to practical cultural maintenance and propaganda gets buried underneath viewing it as nothing more than vibes, feelings, things that can never be measured or quantified. But though art sometimes gets at things that are difficult to communicate through other means, it constructs that messaging through set frameworks. If you know the framework, you can understand the messaging. Sort of like a language, or ancillary to one. Something like that. I'm not married to the exact terminology here. But I think it's important we understand art within the context of a non-dictatorship-of-capital society, if we are to make it something different than what it is under a dictatorship of capital.