As we all know, unfortunately most artists were and are anticapitalist. But there has been and there are exceptions of artists that supported capitalism (whatever it’s limited government, minarchism or anarchocapitalism), so I open this thread to list them. Such rara avis should be mentioned.
The only two I know are Clint Eastwood ( actor and director) and Mario Vargas Llosa (writer).
When I read artists I was thinking of painters. There’s plenty of libertarian minded movies and books (there’s a movies thread on here somewhere). Vonnegut, for example, wrote a lot of libertarian minded literature by considered himself a socialist. It’s sort of just up in the air, I don’t really pay attention to an artists politics, it’s not their field.
I agree, it is not their field, but the anticapitalist movement ha salways been massively widespread in the artistic ‘bohemian’ community. So I feel that it is worth it to mention those who are brave enough to breake that kind of status quo, stablishment or dogma they live in their field.
I don’t know if he was captialist, but he was surely anti-state… the great HL Mencken. While we’re at it, might as well throw in George Orwell (later) and, to an extent, Aldous Huxley.
I would argue that the Wachowski brothers must be at least extreme minarchists or possibly full anti-statists based on their movie productions.
Johnny Cash was pretty anti-Establishment (in the true sense), as was Pete Seeger. So was George Carlin, though he clearly had socialist tendencies.
I believe that art definitely plays an important role in critiquing the status quo. Not only is art a vehicle for subversion (bypassing censorship) but it also confronts the human condition in a uniquely holistic way. It is precisely because art is not analytical that it can speak to things in the human condition that no analytical theory could ever address.
Clayton -
Apocalypto portrays the state as a violent pyramid scheme/insane narcissistic, psychopathic cult. Does that make it libertarian? 
“Pro-capitalism” is a bit… I don’t know, historically specific. “Capitalism” isn’t a policy someone thought up, it’s just humans interacting freely with each other, trying to make their lives as bearable as possible. So any fiction that portrays people who do that to be the good guys, and people who try to screw with them because they think they know best as the bad guys is essentially libertarian and pro-capitalist.
I hardly know where to begin… The fact that I have to mention Ayn Rand this late in the thread is a bit unusual.
Yea man Apocalyptico is pretty damn intense, and wtf? Vonnegut is a socialist? What about Harrison Bergeron?
I always thought of Ayn Rand more like a philosopher than a writer. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying her workings are less valid because of that nor anything remotely similar.
From, A Man Without a Country:
“Like me, many American socialists were freshwater people…Another freshwater person and splendid speaker was the Socialist Party candidate Eugene Victor Debs, a former locomotive firemen who had been born to a middle class family in Terra Haute, Indiana. Hooray for our team!”
KV was most certainly a socialist. He even won the Carl Sandburg award.
Lots of socialist artists after the 20’s and 30’s tended towards a more moderate or more anti-state socialism than the USSR’s brand. During the 20’s and 30’s the USSR promoted “proletarian realism” as the only art form for working people, and dismissed modernism as representing the crisis of the bourgeoisie. Too bad for them, because realism ended up being boring as hell and the post-modernists ended up making all the recent advancements in philosophy, art, and politics on the left. For that reason, a lot of the socialist names on here simultaneously held anti-state positions. Although Orwell unwittingly became an informant on his death bed.
Anyway, as far as explicitly capitalist artists go, Stanely Kubrick perhaps?
How can you be socialist and anti-State at the same time? It seems highly contradictory to me.
About Cash and Kubrick… yes, I would consider both as libertarians or, at least, symphatetic towards libertarian ideals.
It’s a semantic debacle, depending on how much of your politics you load into language. It may interest you to know that the first explicitly anti-state thinkers and activists were socialists. Whether or not you, or I, or anyone else agrees with them is another story. But anyway…
Anglo-libertarian philosophy does not leave much room for artwork in that the abstract, the contradictory, and the ambiguous are shunned as irrational, illogical, and basically a waste of time. With a philosophy that relies so heavily on “what is” or that ultimately aims to discover it, it is incredibly hard to be creative-- to make what is not.
The same way someone can loathe and worship themselves simultaneously?
There’s a lot of crossover between anarchism and socialism, hard to believe as that might be. Most people who would call themselves “anarchists” without qualifying it with either “capitalism” or “libertarianism” are in fact socialists of a kind.
According to orthodox Marxism, state socialism is a transitory phase to be utilised by the dictatorship of the proletariat to enable and engender an eventual transition to stateless communism.
It’s a case of wanting your cake and eating it too. Wanting freedom, but not wanting it to get in the way of sound public policy. 
F. Paul Wilson is a successful American fiction writer who is an anarcho-capitalist , and has been that way for 30 + years.
In the introduction to the new edition of his science fiction novel “An Enemy of the State”, [about a revolution /plot on a distant planet to install a capitalist system without violence], he even talks about having read/absorbed Rothbard and Mises back in the 80’s. [just like me!].
However, his most famous books are the “Repairman Jack” series.
Repairman Jack is a character who lives in New York, entirely outside the system, and makes his living “fixing” situations for people. The series runs the gamut of science fiction, horror and revisionist history as Jack gets involved, against his will, in a battle to save humanity from two other- worldly forces , neither of which is overly concerned about the fate of the human race.
[ Suggestion: if you read the series in sequence, the first novel is “The Tomb”. This was originally intended as a stand alone, one off novel. But fan demands forced Wilson to turn the novels hero, Repairman Jack, into a series character. However, “The Tomb” is a pretty weak book all in all , but don’t be discouraged!, the next one in the series ,“Legacies” is a vast improvement, and the series continues to improve from then on.]
Some of you might enjoy F.Paul Wilson’s books, I did, having gotten bored with endless discussion on Austrian economic theory, redundant “lifeboat” morality type arguments, and “what would Murray Rothbard do” etc. etc. Regards, onebornfree.
P.S. I’m not sure if he is an anarcho-capitalist, but J.Neal Schulman is another US science fiction writer who is generally considered to be " libertarian", at least.
Tolkien has a variety of characters that resemble different aspects or views. The dwarves in The Hobbit have a bit of libertarian leaning:
“You put your worst cause last and in the chief place,” Thorin answered. “To the treasure of my people no man has a claim, because Smaug who stole it from us also robbed him of life or home. The treasure was not his that his evil deeds should be amended with a share of it. The price of the goods and the assistance that we received of the Lake-men we will fairly pay - in due time. But nothing will we give, not even a loaf’s worth, under the threat of force. While an armed host lies before our doors, we look on you as foes and thieves.”
Anglo-libertarian philosophy does not leave much room for artwork in that the abstract, the contradictory, and the ambiguous are shunned as irrational, illogical, and basically a waste of time. With a philosophy that relies so heavily on “what is” or that ultimately aims to discover it, it is incredibly hard to be creative-- to make what is not.
Maybe, if you use the word “anglo”. I would say the best and most consistent of the German subjectivists would probably almost ground Anglo narratives better, in a way.
Still though, the way I think about it - when in the mode of phillosophy / science the end result is they are saying you are the unavoidable “what is”. Philosophy and science itself are merely handmaidens to you - describing the inevitable consequences of actions that can be discussed of the power you put forth as a self consuming “creative-destructive” entity and fact unto itself.
When discusiing “what is not” - all you can be is in a customary language of an arbitrary power structure. And even if you are doing that, it is only to hedge your comparative advantage, expectations, and calculations to the best of your desires as “you” (an ever creative destructive force) see fit at the moment - not for the sake of the custom - which doesn’t exist as a “thing” (that is actual force), it is just a way of calculating your “currency” and hedging your bets on actions which you see best fit; as proven, i.e shown by the fact that you are manifest at the moment - and the rest is “rendered unto ceaser”.
So in a sense you are always “what is” and a “creative” force.
If stand-up comedy counts as “art” then Doug Stanhope!
Oh, yeah. Bill Hicks, fo shizzy!
Only thing with Bill Hicks politically that wasn’t libertarian was his anti-gun stance.
Not sure if I get you, Vive. But I’d like to address this:
“When discusiing “what is not” - all you can be is in a customary language of an arbitrary power structure.”
That’s exactly the attitude I was talking about. First, I would say that art’s lack of reliance on conventional use of language, whether it be the language of speech, text, visuals, whatever, is exactly what makes it art. Second, even if you are simply relying on the “customary language of an arbitrary power structure,” I’m not sure the word arbitrary belongs in that phrase. It’s exactly the line of thought that separates the real from the unreal that dismisses the unreal as arbitrary. To dismiss the language of the discussion of “what is not” as arbitrary is to dismiss artistic affect altogether.
Hmm - because we are now firmly in aesthetics we are very much in danger of talking past each other.
Let me ask you a couple of questions to see if this can help you see where I am comming from:
Would you prefer an artist to look for and depict “what is real”? Is that not a phrase that is associated with the artistic mentality?
If an artist could just explain his reality / depiction / truth or whatever you want to call it in a scientific or philisophical thesis, why wouldn’t he just write an essay or be a scientist? The fact is, he is neither so the artist does neither as the artist is a poet, pianist, painter, dancer, etc not a philosopher,
That’s why I cringe when peope just focus on the words in poetry/ some music - and why I don’t think any good artist is going to be a “capitalist” artist - or “socialist” artist.
It seems as though we may have some opposing views.
“1) Would you prefer an artist to look for and depict “what is real”? Is that not a phrase that is associated with the artistic mentality?”
I would rather an artist made what is real, rather than simple representation. The “real” thing in art may not be concrete, observable, or measurable and could be made real by the very creation of the artistic piece.
"2) If an artist could just explain his reality / depiction / truth or whatever you want to call it in a scientific or philisophical thesis, why wouldn’t he just write an essay or be a scientist? The fact is, he is neither so the artist does neither as the artist is a poet, pianist, painter, dancer, etc not a philosopher,"
The artist’s job isn’t necessarily to represent truth, and that’s what I’m getting at. The positivism in much of anglo-libertarian philosophy (and I know not all, which is why I’m focusing on anglo-libertarian) does not lend itself well to things outside of representation. Even so, art described by a philosophy is more of an inspiration for or reading of the art than something actually contained within the work itself. When your philosophical influences are concerned with concrete things, then you tend not to be an artist. Instead you do write an essay or make a documentary.
And that seems to be the problem the OP alluded to (as well as another post a while back that I can’t find). That “capitalists” tend to do more non-fiction work with essays and the like than they do “art.”