The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. Anthroposophy and the Social Sciences

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! Even more so than in the other introductory remarks I have to make regarding today’s program, I will have to limit myself to general remarks today, since the essential points to be made will necessarily be covered in the following presentations on the specifics of economic life, particularly as they relate to the area under consideration today.

[ 2 ] It is probably impossible today to speak of the social sciences if one proceeds solely from a theoretical standpoint. Today—and by that I mean the immediate present, the present moment—one can speak of such issues only if one keeps in mind the bleak state of economic life in the contemporary civilized world. In a certain sense, this bleak situation also encompassed what I attempted to describe in my *Key Points of the Social Question* following the provisional end of the terrible catastrophe of World War I.

[ 3 ] At that time, I proceeded from that observation of socio-economic life which, at the present stage of world development, should actually be obvious to everyone. It is this: that contemporary economic life is intimately intertwined with everything that falls within the broader scope of the social question. Indeed, most people today would hardly imagine that the social question could be separated from the economic question. And yet my book *The Key Points of the Social Question* was specifically aimed at bringing clarity to the area under consideration here by pointing out how economic life must maintain its own independent position within the social organism—that independent position through which, within the social organism, facts and institutions take shape solely according to economic principles, economic perspectives, and economic impulses. In this respect, my book actually contains—and I say this quite bluntly here, because this point is of extraordinary importance—an internal contradiction. However, this book was not intended to be a theoretical work of social science. Above all, this book was intended to provide inspiration to those engaged in practical life; this book was intended to be written based on what could be gleaned from decades of observing European economic life. And in striving to be thoroughly realistic—to serve as a direct inspiration for practical action, and specifically for practical action in the here and now—this book was bound to contain a contradiction. This contradiction is none other than the one that pervades our entire social life, and which consists in the fact that, in the course of modern times, this social life has brought about in a disorderly, chaotic manner that which is viable only if it develops from its own conditions in each of its individual components.

[ 4 ] I had to speak of a threefold structure of the social organism that would lead to economic life organizing itself in a completely free manner, relatively separate from legal and political life and from spiritual life—so that this economic life would be shaped by those who are part of it, who can act out of its own impulses. But we are, after all, living in an age in which such a state of affairs does not exist, in which economic life is absolutely embedded within the rest of the social organism’s structure. We live in an age in which contradiction is a reality. Therefore, a text that sought to be written out of reality and to offer inspiration for reality could only, in turn, present something contradictory; it could only aim, out of this contradiction, to call first and foremost for clarity—for a clarification of the circumstances.

[ 5 ] I therefore find myself in a very special position today as I deliver this introduction, because what has been discovered on anthroposophical ground, using anthroposophical methods of thought—but discovered on the basis of thoroughly realistic, decades-long observation of European economic conditions—has, after all, been grossly misunderstood in the broadest circles. I can only say: I fully understand these misunderstandings that have been directed against the underlying intentions; these misunderstandings are, after all, also a phenomenon of our time. However, I must take the opposite view, namely that overcoming these misunderstandings is precisely what we must strive for first and foremost in the sociological and social spheres, and it is precisely on this point that I would like to offer some guiding remarks.

[ 6 ] When my book *The Key Points of the Social Question* was first published, it coincided with a period of Central European development that immediately followed the terrible catastrophe of the war. It was a time preceding the Treaty of Versailles; it was a time when the currency conditions of the Central and Eastern European states were still substantially different. The ideas set forth in my *Key Points* at that time were not conceived in some ivory tower, but were derived from the immediate global situation of that era in such a way that I had reason to believe: if a larger number of people were to come together who, building on these ideas, sought to go further, then they would — particularly from Central Europe — be able to inject an impulse into economic development that could lead to a kind of upward trend amid the decline in economic and social life in general, which was clearly discernible at the time and continues to this day. At the time, one could say to oneself, when reflecting on the highly complex circumstances of the global situation: Perhaps not a single stone will remain as it is built into the edifice of ideas in *The Key Points of the Social Question*—; yet these ideas were conceived everywhere out of what actually existed. But one could have challenged them, and perhaps something entirely different would have emerged than what could initially be set down in writing. For what mattered was not to present ideas in a utopian manner that sought to sketch out, say, a vision of a future social organism; rather, what mattered was to find people who understood: Here we have real problems that exist directly in life; we must address these problems based on our expertise and see whether, by addressing them, we can gain ever greater and greater understanding.

[ 7 ] Now, in essence, something quite different has happened. On the one hand, there have certainly been theorists who have engaged in all sorts of discussions about what is written in my book and who have attached all sorts of demands to what is stated there. There have also been theorists who, in a completely misguided manner, reinterpreted what was said in a utopian sense and kept asking: How will this turn out, how will that turn out?—which, of course, one really should have waited to see, It even turned out—a fact that was quite surprising to me—that it was precisely the economic practitioners, who were quite well versed in their routine in some area of economic life, who were familiar with this or that branch of business and would have refused to let anyone who was not well-versed in that particular branch of business talk them into anything —that these practitioners discussed the key points of the social question and, through the conclusions they drew, proved to be precisely the most abstract theorists. It became apparent that one could very well be a seasoned practitioner in economic life—in the old sense; under the new circumstances, they were no longer well-versed—but that these practitioners were absolutely incapable of discussing the issues at hand—including those pertaining to economic life—from any perspective other than that of the most abstract theories; so that one could easily become exasperated when faced with practitioners and engaged in a discussion with them, in which they did not address anything concrete at all, but merely repeated the utterly trivial generalities about the social question—and specifically about the economic aspect of the social question—whenever one tried to discuss the matter with them in any way.

[ 8 ] The other thing one might have encountered there was that, to begin with, those who are the very down-to-earth practitioners flatly refused to discuss the possible solutions to economic problems in this way. Furthermore, while some interest could be aroused, for example, in socialist circles, it was precisely there that one found that what was intended was least understood by that side, and that everything was judged solely on whether or not it fit into the old party templates. And so that period, from which these ideas originated, came to an end. Then came the whole terrible currency crisis, which, however, must actually be assessed in a completely different way than it is usually assessed today.

[ 9 ] When my “Appeal to the German People and the Cultural World” and then the “Key Points of the Social Question” were first published, it immediately became apparent how certain individuals—who, in their own way, were quite sincere in their desire to revitalize Central European economic life—said: “Yes, such proposals—they called them proposals—are all well and good, but first of all we need to figure out how to improve the foreign exchange situation.” This was said at a time when the foreign exchange crisis, compared to today’s conditions, was still pure paradise. Now, such demands reveal how people everywhere simply want to tinker with the external symptoms. There is little understanding that, in foreign exchange conditions, only the unhealthy economic conditions that surface are symptomatic; that treating merely the symptoms does not address the root of the problem at all, and that what is required is to delve much deeper and deeper into the current socio-economic conditions if one wishes in any way to discuss the problems realistically—problems for which the “Key Points of the Social Question” was intended to provide a starting point. And so it has come to pass that what I repeatedly called for at the end of lectures I gave following the “Key Points”—that we should reflect before it is too late—that this “too late!” has, to a great extent, come to pass today—that we are no longer in a position to address the matter in the original sense that runs through the “Key Points”; for in the meantime, such chaos has descended upon economic life that entirely different additions would now be necessary to what, in my conviction, was not merely meant to be said at the time, but had to be said. And one can hardly ignore a defining characteristic of our age in general if one wishes to discuss what is most harmful to economic life today.

[ 10 ] When I picked up a newspaper yesterday, I came across—and today, after all, the most important signs can be seen, in a sense, everywhere in the individual sentences uttered by our contemporaries—an article that read: “Lloyd George’s Resignation Postponed Until After the Genoa Conference.” This once again summed up the current situation, in that everything that characterizes the day today is “waiting.” “Let’s wait”—that is, in fact, the principle everywhere today; waiting until something happens, without knowing what it will actually be. No one knows what is supposed to happen, but people wait until it happens! That is what lies deep in people’s souls today, in every sphere of life. And now I would like to bring up something that seems—but only seems—quite abstract; yet this, too, is meant in a thoroughly realistic sense, for it points to the forces at work among us, through which we have actually, in the course of human development, gradually come to apply this promising principle of “we want to wait” everywhere.

[ 11 ] When we look back at earlier cultural developments, we find—precisely in these older cultures—that true scientific thinking, even in the sense in which it existed in ancient times—as you know from the lecture I recently gave here at the Philharmonie—cannot be called purely “scientific.” But if we consider what took the place of today’s scientific thinking, we can see that economic life did not initially emerge directly from that form of thinking. Economic life developed at first more or less independently of human thought, as if instinctively—not to say automatically—through the interactions of humanity. What people sought to accomplish in economic life simply evolved out of the practical realities of life. People acted instinctively; they certainly expanded the sphere of trade into this or that area, but everything happened more or less instinctively. One might now raise one objection or another against the economic conditions of earlier times from the standpoint of today’s conceptions of human freedom, human dignity, and so on; but one would do well to also look at the other side and see how quite remarkable phenomena in human development—which can still be instructive today—manifest themselves, for example, in the way employees and employers—if we were to apply these modern terms to ancient times—related to one another in ancient Greece, ancient Egypt, and even as far as Asia. Compared to today’s sensibilities, these things appear in such a way that they naturally invite the sharpest criticism; however, any such criticism is simply ahistorical, and one must say: These were simply the conditions that existed in the respective historical epochs, arising from the sensibilities of humanity at that time. That is the one thing one must bear in mind.

[ 12 ] The other factor is the fact connected with that turning point in human development—which I have had to point out on several occasions—that occurred around the 15th century and as a result of which the spiritual constitution of civilized humanity became entirely different. As I have already said, external history offers little indication of how the human soul’s overall outlook on life changed at that time. And when we then ask ourselves: How does this human development relate to economic life? — we receive the answer: The era of instinctive guidance of economic life, which was as I have just characterized it, extended right up to the epoch of this turning point. With this turning point, intellectualism—the urge to comprehend the world through pure rational logic—emerged in the spiritual constitution of humanity. This urge, which simply became a deep need within the human soul, proved itself so brilliantly precisely in the field of the natural sciences and in that field which emerged so brilliantly from the natural sciences: the field of technology, where it has celebrated the most extraordinary triumphs, which cannot be praised highly enough. But this intellectualism—as various debates, some of which have already taken place here during this course, will have shown—has proved completely incapable of grasping the phenomena of human life and the human being itself, including in a social context. With this intellectualism, with this intellectualistic orientation of the soul, one can magnificently trace external, sensory nature back to its laws. But one cannot, with this intellectualism, grasp the intertwined relationships of social life—relationships that organize themselves as they intertwine, express themselves emotionally as they organize, and permeate one another spiritually. I would like to say: The network of intellectualist ideas is simply too coarse-meshed for what exists in social life. But to think scientifically—that is what humanity has learned from this intellectualism. After all, everything has ultimately been subsumed into it, right down to theology. Even when we observe and experiment, intellectualism still dominates our entire scientific way of thinking, and we have ultimately come to regard anything that cannot be brought into the framework of intellectualism as simply unscientific.

[ 13 ] This era of intellectualism coincided with the transition from a purely instinctive economic life to one that was to be driven by human thought. We may say: In the time when people did not yet think about the world in intellectualistic terms, economic life was guided instinctively. But as the era dawned that increasingly tended toward a global economy and global trade, this very tendency toward global trade and a global economy impelled people to now infuse economic life with thought as well. These thoughts, however, were drawn solely from intellectualism. Consequently, in everything that emerged as economic thought—in mercantilism, in physiocracy, in the economic ideas of Adam Smith, as well as in everything that later came to the fore up to Karl Marx—it became evident that, on the one hand, economic life demanded that it no longer be managed merely instinctively but be grasped through thought; yet on the other hand, since these ideas could only be drawn from intellectualism, all economic views became thoroughly one-sided, with the result that nothing ever actually emerged from these economic views that could be seen to have a lasting effect in economic practice. On the one hand were the economic theorists who formulated axioms from intellectualist propositions—such as Ricardo, Adam Smith, or John Stuart Mill—and who built systems upon such axioms, thereby creating a mode of thinking that remained entirely self-contained; on the other hand, there was economic practice, which actually needed to be permeated by the spirit—which indeed demanded such permeation—but found no connection; it continued to operate according to old instincts and thus fell into complete chaos.

[ 14 ] Thus, in recent times, these two trends had become increasingly commonplace: on the one hand, the economic theorists—who had no influence on economic practice; on the other hand, the practitioners, who continued the old, routine practices and thereby plunged the economic life of the civilized world into chaos. — Of course, one must express such things in a somewhat radical manner, for only in this way can one truly point out what is, what is effective, and what must be recognized as a problem.

[ 15 ] If one now seeks—I would say—a kind of connection, a kind of synthesis between economic thought—which, however, has been gradually and completely eradicated by practice—and this economic practice, one finds this connection, at most, in one thing. In recent times, a kind of economic realism has emerged—a kind of economic-scientific realism—which asserts that it is not at all possible to arrive at general laws of economic life, but rather one must observe the facts of the economy as they unfold among individual nations or groups of people, and only by observing what has happened in this purely external way can one find some guidelines for economic action. What has emerged from these underlying currents is what has then appeared as so-called social-political legislation, or economic legislation. In other words, it was gradually believed that by observing actual economic conditions in connection with the social conditions permeating them, one could derive certain guidelines, which were then expressed in economic legislation; so, indirectly through the state, attempts were made to implement some of what had emerged from these observations; but in doing so, one actually admitted that no genuine scientific economic laws could possibly emerge from these observations. Indeed, we are essentially still in this situation today. And it is precisely when one is in a position to gain profound insights and, I would say, to evaluate fundamental social phenomena correctly that one sees how we are caught up in this situation.

[ 16 ] As you all know, Woodrow Wilson’s so-called “Fourteen Points” emerged at a certain point in the history of civilization as it was descending into such terrible chaos. What, then, were these Fourteen Points? They were, in essence, nothing more than the abstract principles of a man out of touch with reality—the abstract principles of a man who knew little of reality, as was later demonstrated at Versailles, where he could actually have played a prominent role. A man out of touch with reality wanted, from a position of intellectualism, to show the world how it should organize itself. One need only have witnessed the enthusiasm with which civilized humanity clung to these Fourteen Points—with the exception, however, of a large portion of the Central European population, for whom, unfortunately, there was also a period, albeit a brief one, during which they fell for these Fourteen Points.

[ 17 ] In 1917, by contrast, I attempted to show certain individuals in Central Europe—who were interested in the subject but were not being pursued; rather, they either approached me or were brought to me— just how abstract and how detached from reality is that which seeks to shape the social order of the world—how, so to speak, everything that prevails in modern civilization in the way of poor educational principles is condensed in the figure of this “world schoolmaster,” Woodrow Wilson, and how the abstract principles of this “world schoolmastering”—in the negative sense—were received by the people with enthusiasm. At that time, I attempted to show that a recovery of these conditions could only occur if, in the face of all such abstract attitudes, one took a stance that does not exclude thoughts, but rather brings them forth in such a way that they grow out of reality. But then one must not conjure up some utopian fantasy—I would say that Woodrow Wilson’s principles were utopianism in its most concentrated form, were utopianism to the third power, already—but rather, one must be clear that one must look within the real conditions of present-day humanity itself to find sources of inspiration. That is why, in what I had to discuss, I refrained from any utopian theory; I refrained from saying at all how, for example, capital, labor, and the like should take shape; at most, I gave a few examples of how one might conceive of them developing from present conditions into the near future. But all of that was said merely to illustrate what they should become; for just as I have spoken in my “Key Points” about the transformation of the forces of capital, so too could this transformation take place in a modified form. My aim was not to present an abstract vision of the future, but to explain the practical foundations from which one might now arrive—not at a theoretically contrived solution, but at a real solution to the so-called social question. It was not a matter of saying: This or that is the solution to the social question. I have had far too much experience to even attempt such a solution. As early as the 1880s, in cozy Vienna, I spent an hour almost every afternoon after two o’clock in the company of all sorts of intelligent people. In the course of that one hour, the social question was “solved” several times every afternoon! And anyone who looks at present-day conditions with sufficient objectivity knows full well that solutions—which today often appear in thick books—are not worth much more than those that were discussed back then in Vienna with a few pencil strokes and many fanatical words over a white tabletop. So that couldn’t have been the issue, and the worst misunderstanding directed at me was the assumption that it was about something like that.

[ 18 ] What I wanted to show was this: The solution to the social problem can only come about in a real way on its own; this solution cannot come about through discussions at all, but only through action. However, the conditions for this action must first be established, and I attempted to point to these conditions in my “Key Points” and in other discussions. I tried to show that, within our social organism, we first need institutions that enable a spiritual life to develop out of its own conditions—that is, where only the conditions of spiritual life itself are at work; that we then need a second sphere where only legal and state impulses are at work, and furthermore a third sphere where only those impulses are at work that arise from the production and consumption of goods—impulses which, when they develop from an associative economic system, must ultimately culminate in healthy price formation. This is not meant to bring the old estates back into existence. People should not be divided into an academic estate, a military estate, and a productive estate; rather, modern man has advanced to the stage of individuality, and he will not be integrated in an abstract sense into a specific estate. But the institutions that exist externally simply tend, out of the forces present in historical development, toward a situation where matters are dealt with separately according to their own conditions—where something is done for intellectual life, for legal or political life, and for economic life. Only then, when the conditions have been created so that, for example, the economist can shape—purely out of economic impulses—what is intended to modify current market conditions or current capital relations; only when such possibilities have been created will what can be called a real solution—albeit one that is in a state of constant becoming—to the social question develop among people.

[ 19 ] So my aim is not to solve the social question, because I had to conclude that such a solution can never be presented as something complete at any single moment; for once the social problem has arisen, it is in a state of constant flux. The social organism is something that grows young, grows old, and must constantly be infused with new impulses—yet one can never say of it: “This is its form.” If the social organism is not such that people sit together in a single parliament where all interests are mixed together—where those with economic interests decide on matters of intellectual life, state interests decide on economic matters, and so on—but rather if, in a healthy social organism, the individual spheres are considered on the basis of their own conditions, then political life will one day be able to be placed on a truly democratic foundation; then what needs to be said will not be spoken by a single person in such a unified parliament, but will emerge from the ongoing, continuous deliberations among the individual members of the social organism.

[ 20 ] In this sense, then, my book was a call to finally put an end to the fruitless talk about the social question and to take a stand from which one can take the solution to social problems into one’s own hands every day. It was a call to those who understood, urging them to truly translate what had always been merely abstract thought into well-considered action. In economic life, for example, associations were to serve this purpose. Such associations are fundamentally different from the forms of social organization that have emerged in recent times, and can be formed every day from the economic foundations. The point of these associations is that those people who are connected through the production, circulation, and consumption of goods—which includes every human being—should join together in associations, so that, above all, sound price formation results from this. It is a long road from what the people united in these associations will have to accomplish based on their practical and technical knowledge to what emerges—not through legislation, nor as the result of discussions, but as the result of experience—as sound price formation. Above all, however, people felt the need to discuss the basic outlines of what was intended at that time—and what I have now attempted to present to you in these introductory remarks—because the world had become so accustomed to abstract thinking that even this suggestion was viewed solely from the perspective of abstract thought, and that what I have offered merely as an illustration is used primarily as a pretext for hours of discussion, whereas the point should be to truly understand how the structuring of the social organism can be undertaken on a daily basis in the manner indicated in the “Key Points.”

[ 21 ] Thus, the task today is not to seek theoretical solutions to the social question, but to identify the conditions under which people will live in a social way. And they will live in a social way when the social organism functions in accordance with its three parts, just as the natural organism, under the influence of its relative threefold structure, works toward unity.

[ 22 ] You see, today one must first explain what such things are meant to signify. And even when one articulates them, people still insist that the words—which one is compelled to use—be taken according to the intellectualist meaning attributed to them today. People immediately translate into their intellectualism that which is quite explicitly not steeped in intellectualism. That is why, in my book, capital, the natural foundations of production, and labor are discussed in such a way that the ideas are simply intended for real life. When we discuss things abstractly, we can spend a long time defining them—and that is, in fact, what has happened. One person says, with equal justification: Capital is crystallized labor, is labor that has been stored up—just as another says, with equal justification: Capital is saved labor. And one can do this with all economic concepts if one remains within the framework of intellectualism. But these are not merely theoretical matters; rather, they must be grasped vividly in their concrete form. And anyone who, like practitioners who pride themselves on their practical experience and routine, engages in abstract thinking about these matters can do the following, which I will illustrate with a comparison.

[ 23 ] I see Ernst Müller. He is short, has distinctly childlike features and childlike traits. I see this Ernst Müller again after twenty years and say: That’s not the Ernst Müller I know, because he is short, has childlike traits, and a completely different appearance. — Yes, if I formed my concept of Ernst Müller back then and now, twenty years later, try to reconcile it with what now confronts me as a real being, I am making a terrible mistake. Yet as hard as it may be for people to believe, this is exactly what happens when they think in economic terms today. They form ideas and concepts about capital and labor and so on, and they assume these concepts must always hold true. But you don’t need to wait twenty years; you just need to go from one employer to another, from one country to another, and you’ll discover that the concept you formed in one place no longer applies at all in another—unless it has transformed of its own accord—just like Ernst Müller. You cannot recognize what is actually there unless you have flexible concepts that are fully rooted in real life.

[ 24 ] This is what has made it possible for economic institutions to find expression precisely on anthroposophical ground in our present time of need—because anthroposophy, by its very nature, must deal with the dynamic spirit through dynamic ideas, because one can learn from it how to endow one’s ideas with the power of growth and inner dynamism, and then, with such ideas — however little today’s practitioners may believe it — one can also immerse oneself in the different kind of reality that unfolds as social life from person to person, from people to people, throughout the entire global economy, which has now become necessary yet is so artificially impaired. And so it may well be said: It is no mere coincidence that, precisely on anthroposophical ground, an attempt was made to arrive at—not social ideas, but social impulses. I still remember the time when these things were much discussed. I always had to say: “I mean social impulses!”—That annoyed people terribly. For, of course, I should have said “social ideas” or “social thoughts”; because people had only thoughts in their minds regarding such matters. The fact that I spoke of “impulses” annoyed them terribly; for they did not realize that I used the term “impulses” precisely because I meant realities and not abstract ideas. One must, of course, express oneself in abstract ideas.

[ 25 ] Today, we must once again recognize that a new understanding is needed of what is called the social problem. We live today under different circumstances than we did in 1919. The times are changing extraordinarily rapidly, especially in the economic sphere. It is necessary that even those ideas which were already considered flexible for their time be kept in a state of flux, and that one maintain a sense of the present moment in one’s observations. Anyone capable of realistically assessing the conditions of economic life knows that they have changed significantly since the “Key Points” were written, and that one cannot simply deduce things in the same way as back then. But there [in the “Key Points”] at least find an attempt to pursue this method of social thinking in a realistic way—perhaps precisely because this attempt sprang from a soil where realities were always sought, where one does not wish to fall into enthusiasm or false mysticism—because this attempt grew out of the soil of the anthroposophical worldview, which strives for precision.