Wednesday 17 June 2015

Furtwängler and the End of History.


"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
"Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes."
 (Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels, "The Communist Manifesto")
"[I]f the whole of modern society is not to perish, a revolution in the mode of production and distribution must take place, a revolution which will put an end to all class distinctions. (…) [O]n this fact, and not on the conceptions of justice and injustice held by any armchair philosopher, is modern socialism's confidence in victory founded." (Friedrich Engels, "Anti-Dühring")
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To me, there is something epically tragic in this recording. Wilhelm Furtwängler conduces Siegfried's Funeral March, Third Act, Götterdämmerung:



If we lose our fight, that could be the closing titles to human history.

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Your call.

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