Wagner's revolutionary critique of the state and capitalism invalidates Marx's. Both Young Hegelians, their differences descend from the polar opposite directions in which they take Feuerbach. Marxist philosophers attempt to hide the superiority of Wagner's critique by branding him a "True Socialist", yet anyone who has read both Marx and Wagner cannot deny his evident superiority. Wagner roots himself in the eternal, Marx negates the eternal. Wagner is aristocratic, Marx is a plebeian. Opera and Drama is the manifesto for a new political movement, and the Ring is the light that shall guide our revolution.

From all my imaginary provisions for the entry of the Artwork into Public Life, it is evident that I pictured them as a summons to self-collection (Sammelung) from amid the distractions of a life which was to be conceived, at bottom, merely as a gladsome occupation (heitere Beschäftigung), and not as a fatiguing toil. Hence the political movements of that time did not attract my serious attention until they touched the purely social sphere, and thus appeared to offer prospects of the realisation of my ideal premises—prospects which, I admit, for some time occupied my earnest thought. The line my fancy followed was an organisation of public life in common, as also of domestic life, such as must lead of itself to a beauteous fashioning of the human race. The calculations of the newer Socialists therefore lost my sympathy from the moment they seemed to end in systems that took at first the repellent aspect of an organisation of Society for no other purpose but an equally-allotted toil. However, after sharing the horror which this aspect kindled in aesthetically-cultured minds, a deeper glance into the proposed condition of society made me believe I detected something very different from what had hovered before the fancy of those calculating Socialists themselves. I found to wit that, when equally divided among all, actual labour, with its crippling burthen and fatigue, would be downright done away with, leaving nothing in its stead but an occupation, which necessarily must assume an artistic character of itself. A clue to the character of this occupation, as substitute for actual labour, was offered me by Husbandry, among other things; this, when plied by every member of the commonalty [or "parish"—Gemeinde], I conceived as partly developed into more productive tillage of the Garden, partly into joint observances for times and seasons of the day and year, which, looked at closer, would take the character of strengthening exercises, ay, of recreations and festivities. Whilst trying to work out all the bearings of this transformation of one-sided labour, with its castes in town and country, into a more universal occupation lying at the door of every man, I became conscious on the other hand that I was meditating nothing so intensely new, but merely pursuing problems akin to those which so dearly had busied our greatest poets themselves, as we may see in "Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre." I, too, was therefore picturing to myself a world that I deemed possible, but the purer I imagined it, the more it parted company with the reality of the political tendencies-of-the-day around me; so that I could say to myself, my world will never make its entry until the very moment when the present world has ceased—in other words, where Socialists and Politicians came to end, should we commence.

I wish wagner could replace my memories of being catfished and sucked on the penis by a man
