The Wagner question is part of a larger issue of the relationship art to political philosophy . The entire Renaissance was supported by a political ideology that is of dubious acceptability by current (20th century) standards, in at in some quarters. Despotism was a boon to Italian art. Napoleon III, the bourgeois emperor, model of the modern dictator, gave the Paris so admired by most of the world. Personally, I prefer pre-Hausmann Paris, but I am a minority as usual. The Baroque was the propaganda vehicle for the Jesuits in their counter-reformation campaign. Despotism was the god father to Italian Renaissance art. A case can be made to condemn the Italian Renaissance as a movement of courtly pretension and elitist taste prescribed by theme, content and form to the questionable needs of secular potentates and ecclesiastical mania. The noblest social art, one can argue, is that which the contribution of multitudes create for themselves a common gift of glory, such as the Gothic cathedrals and the temples of ancient Greece.
Critics almost universally denounce the low esthetic value of the Milan cathedral, began by Giangaleaszzo Visconti (1351-1402), a warlord with a vision of a united Italy, on a scale befitting that vision. After Gian's death due to the plague, Lodovic Sforza (1451-1508) called in Bramanti and Leonardo to design a cupola that the people of Milan, in their love for Gothic fidelity, rejected. The cathedral building went on for 3 centuries, halting whenever funds were exhausted. The final facade was finally completed only by the imperial command of Napoleon in 1809, three centuries after the project's commencement.
Leon Battista Alberti (1404-72), the model Renaissance man, was discovered by Cosimo de'Medici (1380-1464), merchant prince of Florence, betrayer of the Republic, head of Europe's first banking dynasty, champion of the middle class, who helped the Sforza clan to seize Milan. Cosimo also employed Brunnelleschi, Donatello, Gilberti, Lucca della Rubbia, Massaccio, Fra Angelico, Fra Filippo Lippi and most importantly, the Humanists. Alberti also worked for the Malatestas - Evil Heads of Rimimi, whose despotic rule was laced with incest and murder.
Tatlin's monument for the 3rd International was an attempt to unit artistic expression with the new socialist ideal. The Productivist Group maintained in their polemic that material and intellectual production were of the same order. Leftist artists devoted their energy to making propaganda for the new Soviet government by painting the surfaces of all means of transport with revolutionary images to be viewed in remote corners of the collapsing Czarist empire. Constructivism declared all out war on bourgeois art. Alas, the movement met its demise not from bourgeois resistance, but from internal doctrinal inquisition. Much of Constructivist esthetic creativity was subsequently co-opted by bourgeois society.
This brings us to the relationship between power, wealth and beauty. Since, as Daoists have insightfully understood, attitude toward money being often more indicative of a person's true worth than the mere possession of it, the same might be even more true for societies. This explains why modern societies, whose members would be obsessed with a single-minded quest for material wealth, would be constantly faced with recurring crises of value. The pursuit of maximization of wealth leads inevitably to the betrayal of human values that would otherwise forbid unconscionable exploitation of and impersonal disregard for others. Maximization breeds abuse. The Confucian doctrine of the Path of the Golden Mean (Zhongyong zhi Dao), a concept of avoiding extremes, is instructive on this point. More is not necessarily better; most is seldom best, and best is the mortal enemy of good, as Voltaire has insightfully pointed out. A society that celebrates only the best will waste the good. A rich man amid masses in poverty will not find himself a paradise on earth. The relentless pursuit of absolute beauty will result in ugliness, which explains why the art world is often infested with revolting characters, as evidenced in Wagner, Michelangelo, Picasso, Wright ..... The fact that the historical record of socialist politics is littered with betrayals of the humane ideals of theoretical socialism should not diminish the valor of those who have placed their hopes on the noble vision, just as the materialistic efficiency of unregulated capitalism is no testimony on the moral validity of greed. It is telling in the manner modern liberal economics treats the artificial trade-off between return on capital and compensation for labor: an increase in return on capital is viewed as economic efficiency while a rise in pay for workers is viewed as non-productive inflation. What moral rules enable the pampered corporate executive to receive a generous bonus for firing thousands of workers in a recession? Maximization of shareholder value through cost reduction is an euphemism for robbing the workers to enrich the owners. It is a very sick society that views as progress the depreciation of human workers in favor of the appreciation of material assets, and justifies it with pseudo-science. In a money economy, it is a basic truism that those who have money are the only ones who can pay the bills at the end. If the poor are to pay their share, ways must be found for them to earn sufficient money to constructively participate on a healthy financial level, without permanent subsidy from the economic order to which they have become burdensome wards. In a bountiful world, poverty is seldom caused by someone else's having more money than others purely for living purposes, if conspicuous consumption is not culturally promoted to sustain greed. This is particularly true in a society in which both greed and envy are constrained by moral precepts. One does not have to be the world's richest man in order to avoid feeling poor. Poverty is the result of systemic underdevelopment in relation to the production and consumption norms in a particular socio-economic order. It is only when some singular segment of society fails extensively to receive sufficient economic opportunity, or sufficient value for its labor to maintain its fair share of consumption, as normatively prescribed in the socio-economic order, that poverty is born. Social cohesion will be threatened when poverty is perceived as the result of institutionalized mal-distribution of wealth, reflecting unfairness in the sharing of the fruits of co-operative endeavor among different socio-economic groups. Poverty, however, cannot be defined by absolute income levels alone, because poverty is actually a social problem with an economic dimension. Only because it is most conveniently recognizable in a money-based economy by its financial aspect that poverty is often mistaken as a simple matter of income deficiency. Poverty is in reality a phenomenon of social despair. The unemployed, the unemployable, the underemployed and the working poor in developed countries have higher absolute incomes than the middle class in less developed countries, whose members nevertheless do not consider themselves poor because they have not lost hope in themselves or self-respect for their lot. Poverty is a symptom of economic inefficiency and social dislocation in society. Its existence in an economy hurts the rich as well as the poor, and its persuasiveness in society alienates its members from one another. In addition to being dehumanizing to those suffering from it, it is destructive to the society tolerating it. Poverty becomes a political issue when the poor is structurally excluded from contributing to the economic process at a level that enables its constituents to support a dignified life in a healthy environment consistent with the cultural tradition of their society. While there would always be those who enjoy higher income than others, there is no socio-economic necessity for the poor to exist. Life without growth will become a zero sum game in which winners will gain only from the losers. In such a game, eventually all would lose because the game is self terminating. Wealth redistribution without growth always leads to social conflicts, the final phase of which is generally settled with violence, the organized form of which is war and the unorganized form is revolution. It s not enough to merely increase the size of the pie, redistributive growth is necessary for progress. Also, growth cannot be defined simply in quantitative terms. Quality of life and an increased range of available options are often more revealing measures for advancing civilization. Unfortunately, poverty in the form of pathological social despair is too prevalent even in the developed world.
Henry C.K. Liu
Sam Pawlett wrote:
> "Henry C.K. Liu" wrote:
>
> > Enzo:
> >
> > Careful what you say about Wagner.
> > Richard Wagner was the greatest composer ever.
> > Der Ring des Nibelungen, began in 1848 when Wagner was 35, was not only
> > revolutionary musically and operatically.
> > George Bernard Shaw, Fabian socialist, born 1856, as music critic for the Star
> > in 1888, for he World in 1890, praise Des Ring as not only the greatest opera,
> > but also as a revolutionary work of art on the contemporary society, in
> > Helgelian.
> > dialectic and Marxist mode, a powerful allegorical statement of the corrupting
> > and destructive effect of greed and the lust for power which have renounced the
> > universal principle of love. He wrote on vegetarianism, alcoholism, vivisection
> > , humanism, Christianity, Buddhism, theosophy, nationalism, culture and of
> > course music.
> > In the first version of Der Ring, Wagner the socialist depicted capitalism,
> > represented by the Giants, oppress the workers. Wotan, the leader of the Gods,
> > portrays the pessimism of Schopenhauer. In his theoretical writings: Art of the
> > Future and Opera an Drama, Wagner the democrat gave elaborate expositions of his
> > ideals that only through popular art can a nation of diverse heritage be
> > completely integrated.
> > Despite all his contradictions, it was with Wagner that German musical
> > Romanticism was to be most fully realized. Schuman belonged to the bourgeois
> > school of Romantics and the sentimental school of Beidermeir poets which had its
> > root in the age of Napoleon.
> > The fact that Hitler liked Wagner's music does not make Wagner fascistic, any
> > more than weddings playing Wagner's Wedding March facist proceedings.
> > In 1848, Wagner became involved in the Saxon revolutionary movement and actually
> > manned barricades in an insurrection in Dresden. On the failure of the
> > revolution, he had to flee to Weimar and with the help of Liszt on to Zurich
> > where he began the Ring cycle.
> > The blemishes in Wagner's life were his alleged racism and anti-Semitism. Yet
> > well respected Jewish musicians have separated the genius of his music from his
> > misguided affliction. After all Wagner was merely a product of 19th century
> > Europe.
> >
> > Henry
> >
>
> The Wagner question. Wagner was friends and on the same side of the barricades as
> Bakunin in 1848.He was a socialist-a National Socialist. Hitler saw his invasions
> as the greatest of Wagnerian music dramas unfolding. Hitler also said "Anyone who
> wants to understand Nazi Germany must understand Wagner."
> " Now Wagner hated jews all his life with an insensate hatred.."
> Ernest Newman, Wagner as Man and Artist, p327.
>
> "there was also something messianic about the man himself, a degree of megalomania
> that approached actual lunacy--and that raised the concept of the artist-as-hero to
> an unprecedented degree. He was a short man about 5 feet 5 inches tall, but
> radiated power, belief in himself, ruthlessness, genius. As a human being, he was
> frightening. Amoral, hedonistic, selfish, virulently racist, arrogant, filled with
> gospels of the superman (the superman naturally being Wagner himself) and the
> superiority of the German race, he stands for all that is unpleasant in the human
> character."
> Harold Schonberg, Lives of the Great Composers Vol.2, p230.
>
> Separating Wagner's naziism from his music requires some fancy footwork.Have you
> ever read Wagner's essay "Jews and Their Place in Music."?Shaw's interpretation of
> the Ring is only one among many. Some commentators ( i think Deryck Cooke but am not
> sure) have argued that Wagner's operas were nazi through and through.
> Sam Pawlett.
>
> >
> > Enzo Michelangeli wrote:
> >
> > > But my point is that Malthus did not see a way either: still, _thanks_ to
> > > industrialization and intensive agriculture, the Earth can now support a
> > > much larger pupulation than during his times. Yes, the habitat for some
> > > species will shrink, and if we are concerned about the preservation we may
> > > always keep a few parks (or, in a few decades, map their genoma on DVDROM
> > > for future reconstruction should if we should really miss them). The really
> > > serious danger for the future of humanity is to listen to the enemies of
> > > development, and retreat in the nostalgic attitude that Marx rightly
> > > attributed to "reactionists". (A remarkable thing never to forget is that
> > > many exponents of the first historical reaction against Enlightenment,
> > > Romanticism, became the ideological precursors of modern fascism: Novalis,
> > > Schlegel, Fichte, down to Wagner).
> > >