By Nico Rahim

It is well understood that the controlling interests in the US want the 21st century to be one of US hegemony.  This is one idea that is shared by the policy framers of both the Democratic and the Republican parties.  If John Kerry had been elected president over W he would have been nothing more than a shoddy velvet glove pulled over a momentarily unclenched iron first.
        
Ideologically the notion of the beneficent US spreading democracy throughout the world is one meant to have a positive resonance in those who hold democracy as the highest, most virtuous form of government.
        
Throughout the course of human history, a long held ideal that the one who dies by sacrificing their life for a cause greater than theirs is an act on the highest level of moral regard.  We see this when George W. Bush praises fallen soldiers for their selflessness in promoting a safer world.  We also see the same when a Jihadist takes his own life in order to take the lives of many more who were either against or ambivalent toward their cause.
        
Marx was right in his belief that history is determined by class struggle.  Culture is significant, but it is the cultural struggle that mirrors the material struggle.  Culture is trumped throughout the course of human history by the struggle between the elite entities of society.  In the elite power struggle the subordinate workers, soldiers, and their families carry the costs while only receiving the trickle down benefits.
        
The idealists, the artists, and the banal intelligencia who offer ideals of equality, empowerment of the common man, and sharp criticisms of the powerful elite, offer little to no social empowerment, they are simply pulled along in the current of human history.

Artists would like to think that they are the creators of culture, just as the philosopher and cultural theorist believe that their assessments of the past and present will create the culture of the future.  But new art created and new concepts conceived are only manifestations of the tide of history.   These manifestations are the summations and multiplications of the manifestations of yesterday.  Art and theory are not wholly impotent in affecting the flow of history, but to have an effect on history the themes and motifs of art and theory must be adapted by the powerful ruling elite or by those who become powerful and elite.  Workers and the common man have never acquired power without rescinding their identity as such.

Art history, while significant, does not define human history.  The same can be said for philosophical history, political history, religious history, and science.  All of these disciplines are woven into the fabric of history.  At different points in history the pattern of the weave may change showing others more dominant.