Richard Wagner: A “Communist” After All?

I have been spending days revising my review of Joachim Köhler’s book:

http://thinkclassical.blogspot.com/2012/04/book-review-joachim-kohler-wagners.html

The main insight is that despite the fact that his 1848 Fatherland Union Paper (upon which the warrant for his arrest for participating in the 1849 Dresden Uprising was issued) officially supports democratic socialism, while publicly disassociating himself with communism, I have dug up innumerable citations that show that in private Wagner was, and remained throughout his life, supportive of “communism”. Wagner never refers to Karl Marx or Ludwig Engels, so what this phrase actually means is a matter for debate. It should not be assumed automatically to have the same meaning as in a Marxist-Leninist interpretation, as that would be anachronistic, and, is more likely to be in the Proudhon-Feuerbach line of thought.

There are +40 hits to the word Kommunismus (communism) in the Digitale Bibliothek version of Wagner’s complete works. Virtually every single hit represents Wagner talking about communism favourably, except in the Father Union Paper (Wie verhalten sich republikanische Bestrebungen...)

In fact, Wagner uses the word “Kommunismus” more frequently in Das Künstlerthum der Zukunft (The Artwork of the Future) than Karl Marx does in the entirety of Das Kapital. No wonder period conservatives found Wagner’s Zukunftsmusik so threatening.

Most controversially, I have found evidence that this sympathy for communism penetrates deeply and profoundly into his Schopenhauerian period. Wagner, from the outset, thought that the Schopenhauerian vision of his Ring had always been there, well before he had discovered Schopenhauer, despite having completed the text to The Ring long before reading him.

There is a reason for all of this, and it links into Wagner’s earlier definition of “communism” as the “negation of egoism”, using the Hegelian term Aufhebung. The word egoism retains a particular philosophical meaning in Wagner, one that is retained throughout his career.

There are +50 hits to the word Egoismus in Wagner complete works, plus dozens more to the words Egoist and Egoisten

The Negation of the Will, and the Negation (Aufhebung) of Egoism become one and the same concept, thus seamlessly uniting the Feuerbachian and Schopenhauerian periods into one, akin to the two sides of one coin. Even the Knights of the Holy Grail end up as something like comrades in a primordial regenerationist communist party. Parsifal’s enlightenment is through a “negation of egoism” through an Aufhebung that elevates him from an egotistical brute to a selfless communist. Strange though that may seem, it is an unavoidable conclusion.

Read and be astonished.

Search for the terms “communism” and “Aufhebung” to skip to the revised parts of the essay. Numerous supportive primary source citations are included.