by Danica Swanson - 21 Dec 2024
I’ve noticed a lot of ambiguity surrounding the use of the word free that tends to obscure or minimize the struggles of many people who do “free” or low-paid labor — media projects, artists, writers, editors, open source contributors, etc.
From Wikipedia: “The English adjective free is commonly used in one of two meanings: "at no monetary cost" (gratis) and "with little or no restriction" (libre). This ambiguity of free can cause issues where the distinction is important...”
Creative work may be offered gratis (”supplied without need for payment, even though it may have value”), but the question I keep returning to is: what happens when gratis offerings are given at the expense of libre (”having freedom”)?
Discussions about funding in the arts often get derailed due to technicalities or hot-button reactions, which distracts attention from a point that needs to be discussed more openly:
People can only offer "free" (gratis) work if the cost of their labor is subsidized elsewhere.
The costs and risks of “free” creative labor are significant — even crushing, in some cases — but all too often, they’re hidden from public view. Housing, food, utility, and healthcare costs are always borne by someone, whether it's the government, relatives, bread-winning spouses, or other benefactors. If an artist pays reduced rent (or none) because they live with family or other parties, for example, then the resources of those people are subsidizing their work.
The point is not to shame or blame anyone in the “value chain” here, but to question the notion that creative work is ever truly "free,” even when it’s done voluntarily by artists who aren’t earning money for it. The source of the hidden subsidy is often omitted — consciously or not — from discussions about arts funding, because it’s structural and therefore more easily overlooked.
In the US there’s a pernicious hyper-individualistic narrative that says every able-bodied adult should "make it on their own" and not rely on others for financial support. This is patently ridiculous, because humans are interdependent. Nonetheless, it holds a firm grip on the cultural psyche — and all the more so in cases where it’s not even identified as ideology and therefore as something that could, conceivably, be changed.
This narrative contributes to a cultural climate that’s hostile or dismissive toward the arts. Creative people who don’t “earn a living” through “real jobs” are often portrayed as selfish, as sponging off of others, and so on. Meanwhile, millions of people enjoy art "for free" online every day without so much as a second thought about the “invisibilized” labor required behind the scenes to create that art.
These forces play an oft-overlooked part in pushing creative people even more deeply into reliance on hidden subsidies to meet their basic needs.
Artists also face considerable social and structural pressures to downplay the personal cost of their creative work, so that the collective benefit their work provides can continue without much scrutiny of what it requires of artists.
Rarely is this pattern framed the way I perceive it: as a failure of reciprocity that allows extractive value capture patterns to continue operating behind the scenes at the artists’ expense.
In other words: gratis at the expense of libre.
The general public does not seem to comprehend the collective toll of these long-standing patterns of non-reciprocity:
The more time brilliant artists must spend at their day jobs to “earn a living” because there are still no sustainable business models capable of supporting their creative work, the fewer masterpieces make it into the world for us all to enjoy.
(See: “The Next Hemingway is Flipping Burgers.”)