ed guest at the historic laws
and predestined end of our capitalistic-theocratic epoch, yet
Wagner, like Marx, was too inexperienced in technical government
and administration and too melodramatic in his hero-contra-villain
conception of the class struggle, to foresee the actual process by which
his generalization would work out, or the part to be played in it by the
classes involved?

Let us go back for a moment to the point at which the Niblung legend
first becomes irreconcilable with Wagner's allegory. Fafnir in the
allegory becomes a capitalist; but Fafnir in the legend is a mere
hoarder. His gold does not bring him in any revenue. It does not even
support him: he has to go out and forage for food and drink. In fact,
he is on the way to his drinking-pool when Siegfried kills him. And
Siegfried himself has no more use for gold than Fafnir: the only
difference between them in this respect is that Siegfried does not waste
his time in watching a barren treasure that is no use to him, whereas
Fafnir sacrifices his humanity and his life merely to prevent anybody
else getting it. This contrast is true to human nature; but it shunts
The Ring drama off the economic lines of the allegory. In real life,
Fafnir is not a miser: he seeks dividends, comfortable life, and
admission to the circles of Wotan and Loki. His only means of procuring
these is to restore the gold to Alberic in exchange for scrip in
Alberic's enterprises. Thus fortified with capital, Alberic exploits his
fellow dwarfs as before, and also exploits Fafnir's fellow giants who
have no capital. What is more, the toil, forethought and self-control
which the exploitation involves, and the self-respect and social esteem
which its success wins, effect an improvement in Alberic's own character
which neither Marx nor Wagner appear to have foreseen. He discovers that
to be a dull, greedy, narrow-minded money-grubber is not the way to make
money on a large scale; for though greed may suffice to turn tens
into hundreds and even hundreds into thousands, to turn thousands into
hundreds of thousands requires magnanimity and a will to power rather
than to pelf. And to turn thousands into millions, Alberic must make
himself an earthly providence for masses of workmen: he must create
towns and govern markets. In the meantime, Fafnir, wallowing in
dividends which he has done nothing to earn, may rot, intellectually
and morally, from mere disuse of his energies and lack of incent