When The Bourgeoisie Was In Full Flower-In The Times Of Isabella Stewart Gardner And Her Museum 

 

By Sam Lowell

 

When I was much younger, after I had gotten out of the Army and was all raw from the experience, had had a close call with having to go to Vietnam and was “saved” only by some last minutes self-imposed graces I was all hopped up on changing the way this society did business, the way those in charge treated people from soldiers to workers to the dispossessed and homeless to the hobos, bums, and tramps who I ran with for a while. One of the way stations that I was attracted to for a while was the Marxist analysis of capitalist society. At that time I was thrilled by the analysis of how to overturn the system through some revolutionary purge of the old society and the creation of new forms of communal existence. Very appealing then and now although it does not look like I will see anything like those possibilities created this side of the grave.

 

All of the above a roundabout way of saying something that I found at the time very odd about the Marxist analysis but which makes more sense now. Marx and his followers were ready to concede that capitalism was not only a necessary stage of more effective and productive way gathering up the collective good of society as against earlier forms of production and distribution such as in feudal times. Was willing to say that at certain stage of history that capitalism was progressive in undertaking certain tasks. That hard fact was true in his own times as he projected forward. Capitalism then unlike in the 20^th and now 21^st century still had something progressive to offer despite its contradictions.    

 

Even in America, even in the late 18^th century in the age of the robber barons who grabbed everything not nailed down with every hand, there was still a spark of progressive thought and action. In short in time span of the life of Isabella Stewart Gardner, a woman born into wealth and who married wealth, from before the American Civil War until after the First World War such socially important tasks as creating a museum for everybody to see great works of art in accrued to those scions of the capitalist class. Now we will not inquire too closely into how she purchased some of her prized possessions, not will be inquire into how they got into the country, nor even about the fact that she could drive as hard a bargain against her fellow robber barons confederates but I for one am glad, glad as hell to live close enough to go see what she pirated away over there in the Back Bay. So if you need one, or can only think of one example of a time when the bourgeoisie was in full flower-think Mrs. Gardner.