minimalism = the void of capitalism?

I'm home with a trashed ear. I've got every reason to huddle in my room with a book. I'm reading Fear of music by David Stubbs. It's a provocative book that challenges the reader. Why is it that "the intelligent everyman" has stopped sneering at contemporary, abstract art, while experimental music is still, for many, "just noise"? Stubb's book is entertaining if you, like me, want to know more about the history of avantgarde music (which I have an insanely limited knowledge of). For some reason, Stubbs nurses a grudge with minimalism. Here's one passage:

"[Minimalism] has become the great, ironic coneit of the rich - the pretence of a lack of possessions. Walk down any impoverished Third world street, by contrast, and you'll be struck by the maximalism of poverty .... These are people without the means suavely to conceal their dependence on the clutter of goods, utensils and transport which, in hteir case, barely sustains them. Minimalism has become the signifier, in music as well as in art of capitalism's pretension of spirituality, rather than its lack of it, some discretely enabled, airy form of super-being, in which 'space' rather than vulgar stuff is the thing."

Ouch!