In The Intellectuals and the Masses, citing Clive Bell’s Civilization, John Carey describes the “conditions favourable to the preservation of the gifted few.”

“Connoisseurs of pure form cannot be expected to earn their own living, for ‘almost all kinds of money-making are detrimental to the subtler and more intense states of mind’ required for artistic appreciation. Consequently, people of taste and discernment must be supported by public funds. They alone will be fully educated, and the state will make them regular and ample allowance throughout their lives.”

According to Carey, Bell was describing a world where the intellectual and artistic elite cannot be expected to take on the full responsibilities of adulthood, which, to many, would include paying your bills. Moving forward from the early 20th century when Bell was writing to the early 21st century we are fairly close to reaching Bell’s utopia.

Tacked onto the healthcare “reform” law is an enhanced Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. It is bad enough that some low level bureaucrats shouldn’t have to repay their debts after some number of years losing your paperwork. How much worse is it that artists should be placed above bourgeois marketplace tactics, freeing them from “almost all kinds of money-making” and debt-repaying? According to Andrew Taylor, Director of the Bolz Center for Arts Administration,

If you’re working in the nonprofit or public arts, or plan to be, and you’re carrying Federal student loans, it’s a good time to be sure your record-keeping is in order. As a tag-along to the recent health care reform legislation, the Federal government also enhanced its approach to student loans. As a result, there may be loan forgiveness in your (distant) future.

In order to gain this loan forgiveness, all one must do is spend time in servitude to the government or a government approved 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

In 1928, Clive Bell, as Carey notes, described this situation as many perceive it today.

[Clive] Bell admits that this arrangement entails a degree of inequality, but all civilizations, he argues, have been built on inequality. Civilization requires the existence of a leisured class, and a leisured class requires the existence of slaves. Besides, the leavening effect of the civilized elite will, or may percolate through to the slaves. The ‘barbarian’ in his ‘suburban slim’ may notice that the elite scorn gross pleasures (‘football, cinemas’), such as he wallows in, and this may entice him to sample refined artistic pleasure himself. A flaw in Bell’s scheme is that the barbarian, even if he develops artistic tastes, will not be able to indulge them, as he will remain deprived of the leisure obligatory for civilized life. This is not a complication Bell pursues, but he seems to anticipate some discontent on the part of the slaves, for he stipulates that his civilization will need an efficient police force.

Perhaps an additional 16,500 IRS Agents will work just as well. Or is that a distinction without a difference?