After Reading the Menifesto of Communism and Wagner's Artwork of the Future, Judaism in Music and his music drama, Der Ring des Nibelungen.
Apart from the grandiose and polemical ideas of music drama as an artwork of the future, a question is haunting me: is Wagner a believer of Communism?
In “the Art-Work of the Future,” Wagner proposes that the future artwork’s “only origin is from the Folk” (Wagner,24). He commented on communists as “the unit all, the man God, the art-variety art” (Wagner,27). In other words, Wagner believes that artwork should root in people. This is consistent with the definition of Communism from Karl Marx, pointing out that “Communists … bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat” (Marx, 22). So artwork-wise, Wagner agrees with the general idea of communism which is for public good. Politic-wise, in specific, Wagner proposes the Folk should “recognize their individual want as a collective want” and he proposes “propertyless portion of the Commonwealth” (Wagner,15). Basically, Wagner is saying all the people should become one -- a single community with collective commonwealth and want. This is exactly the same as what Marx said about the essence of theory of Communists: “Abolition of private property” and “disappearance of class distinction” (Marx,22,27). Another aspect of consistency between Wagner and Communism is that they both hate capitalism and money. Communism’s immediate aim is to “overthrow bourgeois supremacy” and Marx puts on many imputations on capitalism: it exploits laborers, “reduces family relation to a mere money relation”, it killed all the older jobs and simplify the class antagonism, etc. Wagner also denounces those money relations. I think in his famous opera The Ring of the Nibelung, the ring symbolizes money and power and Wagner shows us the danger of it by arranging brothers willing to kill each other for the ring. In general, Wagner is a believer of Communism. But as I delve deeper, I find there are differences between his belief and Communism.
The most important difference is their aims of people are different. Marx aims to liberate proletarians against bourgeois while Wagner aims to liberate “Folks” against luxury, which by his own definition Folks are “men who feel a common and collective Want”(Wagner,15). Marx defines proletarians based on social, economic and political perspective while Wagner focuses on the spiritual level. Ironically, Wagner exclude certain groups of people out of any categories. One important example is Jewish. As he addresses in “Judaism in Music,” Jewish share no commonness with the Folk. This exclusion apparently is conflicted with the basic idea of Communism, that is to do public good. This difference of definition of aims on different people also leads to another difference which is the means to liberation. Marx believes to use physical, political revolution to annihilate bourgeois while Wagner believes to use artworks. He thinks that “mutual Art-work of the Future” will “teach the tortured spirits” to “grow up in communion to veritable men” (Wagner, 16). And I think, from the different approach, we can see the difference of purposes: I think Marx is creating a materialistic commonwealth while Wagner is proposing a spiritual shared commonwealth where artworks of the future fulfill folks and as he said, “for in this Art-work, we shall all be one,--blissful men” (Wagner, 16).
To sum up, I believe that Wagner is a believer of Communism in a broader sense, but also he interprets it mainly in the spiritual territory.
Works Cited:
Marx, Karl, and Frederick Engels. "Manifesto of the Communist Party." Marxists Internet Archive (n.d.): n. pag. Web.
Wagner, Richard. "The Art-Work of the Future." The Wagner Library (n.d.): n. pag. Web.