The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] Among the many significant ideas that Johann Gottlieb Fichte articulated and expounded upon, he uttered a sentence that, in the broadest sense, should actually become a sacred word of life. The statement reads: “A person can do what he ought to do; and when he says, ‘I cannot,’ it is because he does not want to.” Well, I say: This statement should, in the broadest sense, become a sacred word of life, and indeed it is—and ought to be—the task of spiritual-scientific thought and spiritual-scientific feeling to bring this statement fully to life within themselves. For only out of that awareness of the personality—which can be sustained and strengthened by such an attitude: “A person can do what they ought to do; and when they say, ‘I cannot,’ it is because they do not want to”—only through such an attitude can the tasks that humanity faces from the present into the near future be solved to any degree.

[ 2 ] Now, what is peculiar—and this is certainly connected to the course of human development—is that it is precisely this statement that is completely contradicted by the prevailing mindset of the present, which is, after all, a result of the mindset of the past centuries and their development; that is, the prevailing mindset contradicts this statement, or rather the power and content of this statement. On the contrary, a state of self-doubt—one might almost say bordering on the absolute—has gradually taken hold in humanity. This self-doubt manifests itself through the most diverse intricacies of life. It manifests itself in such a way that people sometimes believe they have great confidence in themselves, but they are merely convincing themselves of this from all sorts of subconscious undercurrents, while they simply do not develop genuine, true, active self-confidence for the very reason that—as a result of the entire educational system of the nineteenth century—people have become infinitely complacent with regard to their spiritual life, to the uncovering and activation of their spiritual powers. And if only the awareness could take root, even just once, that for an infinite number of things people say they cannot do, what is truly lacking is simply the will—then an immense amount would already have been accomplished. For the most important thing—the very most important thing—that is to happen in the future will not come about through institutions, will not come about through all manner of organizations, no matter how much people today believe everywhere in institutions and organizations as if they were the sole source of salvation; rather, the most important thing for the future will come about through the competence of the individual human being. This competence of the individual human being, however, arises only from a genuine, true trust in an inexhaustible wellspring of divine power within the human soul. But humanity today is far, far removed from this belief in an inexhaustible wellspring within the human soul.

[ 3 ] That is why humanity today stands so helpless in the face of the great challenges that—I would say—life presents everywhere, so to speak, on the streets today. Humanity stands helpless in the face of these great challenges. And the catastrophic events of recent years have magnified these challenges to immeasurable proportions—so immensely that most people, who are essentially asleep today, have no idea how vast and far-reaching these challenges are; they do not even want to grapple with the scope and magnitude of these challenges, which, in essence, encompass everything around us today. And when, as is happening right now across vast parts of the world, circumstances call upon people to make decisions based on their judgment—in short, from the depths of their souls—these matters overwhelm them today, simply because people are not prepared to grasp the tasks on a grand scale; for these challenges cannot be tackled on a small scale today; they can only be tackled on a grand scale. And so we will see that what people do to replace the catastrophic conditions with what they consider to be order will, at first, remain fruitless for a long time, leading more toward chaos than toward any kind of order. This will happen simply because people lack that characteristic trust in themselves. It is, after all, more convenient to say, in the face of the challenges life presents, “I cannot master them”—than to seek the means and ways to truly draw the strength for these tasks from the life of the soul. And these forces are indeed found in the inner life, for human beings are permeated by infinitely vast divine forces. And if they do not seek these forces, they simply leave them untapped; they do not wish to develop them.

[ 4 ] You see, this is what people today must learn to do, in both the smallest and the largest matters: to connect everything in some way to the great perspectives of life, and to truly bring these great perspectives of life to life. Anyone who observes life can see, precisely in relation to such things, within the current of development that has brought about today’s catastrophe, the great signs of decadence in this very area. I want to tell a little story, because such little stories may teach us more than theoretical discussions.

[ 5 ] About eighteen or nineteen years ago, I met a man in Berlin who was already highly regarded at the time as an economist and organizer. I met him back then; I knew him, having run into him here and there on occasion, and I had also heard of his fame. Even back then in Berlin, people were saying that the man was so famous that, after a major newspaper had been founded, he had been hired by that newspaper at a high salary—not to write articles for it, but rather he was free to write one article a year whenever he chose. But the only thing he had to do in exchange for that high salary was to refrain from writing for any other newspapers. The man was so famous that one of Berlin’s largest newspaper publishers simply paid him a high salary to ensure he wouldn’t face competition from this man writing in other newspapers, while at the same time giving him the freedom to write for his own newspaper whenever he chose. This man was also increasingly preoccupied with the plan to establish, on a small scale and within a specific area, all sorts of social institutions—in a sense, small model social communities or model states, one might say. The way he had conceived these model social communities was considered immensely astute. And if he did not actually gain many more followers—and if the followers he did gain remained merely theoretical—it was not because people did not consider him very astute, but rather because people were too complacent to commit themselves to something they themselves regarded as very astute and very beneficial to humanity. Now he came up to me and said—I could already see him coming with a beaming face—“I’ve finally found the financier who will provide me with the funds I need to establish such a settlement cooperative. Now let’s found the community of the future.”—I said nothing but: “Go ahead and found it; it’ll fall apart before too long.” — Because, of course, such things are only founded in the present day so that they can fail.

[ 6 ] I am telling you this story because faith could easily take root in a mind that lacks vigor—a mind that refuses to engage with the great problems of life—and suggests that one should begin in the present with all sorts of small-scale foundations; with foundations that are not comprehensive, and that it is precisely through these small foundations that it must become apparent whether anything can prove itself on a larger scale. But that is a complete absurdity, for you are then establishing, within a sick social order, something that may indeed be exemplary—yet precisely because it is good and thereby stands in stark contrast to everything surrounding it, it is all the more certain to fail. Given the way things have developed—with the world demonstrating on a grand scale how it has led itself into the absurd—you cannot possibly even remotely consider achieving anything through small fragments or doing anything on a small scale. Only that which grasps the whole today, which can radiate its light—I would say, toward all that is human—can have any significance. It does no harm if such a grand conception fails, for it will remain an inspiration, and that is what matters. It is the impulse that matters.

[ 7 ] What is becoming increasingly necessary, however, is a deep-seated trust in the source of immeasurable divine powers that lies within human beings. Nothing in the course of world history has sinned so greatly against this faith in the immeasurable source of divine powers within human nature as the bourgeoisie of the nineteenth century and the dawning twentieth century. That is why this bourgeoisie has left a bitter legacy to the rising proletariat, and this rising proletariat will initially have to bear this bitter legacy. And if it cannot grasp that what matters above all is not trying to create something new with old ideas, but rather turning to new ideas, then nothing will come of any institutions—or rather: institutions will only become meaningful when they arise from truly new ideas, from the impulse and the power of new ideas.

[ 8 ] This is where we must begin to understand various things that we have started to examine, the examination of which is extraordinarily important and significant for the present and for an understanding of the reality of the present. I have spoken to you about how the rising proletariat is imbued, in its thoughts and feelings, with the impulse of the teachings of Karl Marx, and I have outlined for you some aspects of these teachings. These perspectives, which dominate the minds of millions upon millions of people today, can already reveal to you that this entire Marxism is, in fact, the legacy of the bourgeois worldview of the last century. For I have, so to speak, pointed out to you the currents from which Karl Marx himself drew his intellectual inspiration. I have told you: What constitutes the contemporary proletarian Marxist doctrine is a convergence of three sources—the dialectical thinking that Karl Marx derived from the Hegelian school, the socialist impetus, notably from Saint-Simon and Louis Blanc (that is, the French), and the utilitarianism of the English. It was from these three currents that Karl Marx synthesized what he so effectively imparted to the proletariat.

[ 9 ] Now that we have learned something about Karl Marx’s own perspectives, we can examine these three things in detail, one by one. German Hegelianism can be characterized from a wide variety of angles. To understand Karl Marx in particular, one must characterize it from the following perspective. Hegelianism is a devotion to thought within the human being itself. Perhaps no one has ever worked with such energy and such power in the realm of pure thought as Hegel himself. Hegel’s entire system—if I may use this petty-bourgeois expression—is intellectual labor; from beginning to end, it consists entirely of genuine thoughts. This also explains why Hegel is so difficult to understand; for since most people never have a single pure thought in their entire lives, a thinker whose entire system consists of nothing but pure thought is, of course, difficult—very, very difficult—to understand. But to understand Hegel, too, requires nothing more than overcoming the complacency of thought. Diligence is required—diligence. Where diligence exists, the following principle holds true: A person can do what he ought to do; and when he says, “I cannot,” it is because he does not want to. Hegel is therefore an energetic thinker, a thinker capable of exercising his power of thought to such an extent that he truly finds the thought within the individual phenomena of life.

[ 10 ] But there is a certain downside to this, which I ask you to bear in mind. One must make the greatest effort, but that is enough; diligence is enough. One must make the greatest possible effort if one truly wants to work one’s way into something like the Hegelian system. One must make an effort. But then, once one has made this effort, once one has truly worked through the Hegelian system from beginning to end—most philosophy professors stop very soon because they believe they have already understood Hegel in principle; which is why Hartmann—Eduard von Hartmann—was able to make the fully justified claim in the 1890s that, among all university professors in the world, there were only two people who were truly educated in Hegel, among all philosophy professors; since that time, one of the two has died and none have been added—now, if one has mastered Hegel in this way, has, so to speak, plowed through his system and made it one’s own, if one is such a normal person—I don’t want to say a philistine, but if one is just an ordinary person—don’t you think so?—then one would surely want to gain something from such an arduous course of study; one would want to have something tangible to show for it. But that is precisely not the case in the ordinary, common sense of the matter. In the sense that people want, you actually get nothing from Hegel—at least nothing you can write down in a notebook and confidently take home with you, nor anything you can summarize in a little compendium and take home as a nice excerpt of wisdom for life. You get none of that from Hegel. All one gets from Hegel is that one has strained one’s thinking and that, once one has overcome the challenge of plowing through Hegel, one is then able to think. But one can do nothing else with this thinking except: one can think. One can think, but with this thinking one stands outside of life as a whole. One can simply only think. One can think well, but with this thinking—which takes place within a pure conceptual organism and is thus dialectical—one stands outside of life.

[ 11 ] That was, roughly speaking, what Marx could learn from Hegel: he could learn to think, to maneuver with true virtuosity in the realm of ideas—that he could learn. But he was seeking something else. He was searching for a philosophy of life for the proletariat, for the vast majority of the propertyless members of modern humanity. He could not doubt—if I may put it this way—the correctness of Hegel’s thought, but with regard to his task, he could simply not get started with this mere Hegelian thought alone. This, if I may put it that way, gave his karma the necessary momentum; it led him beyond mere Hegelianism—in which his thinking had been sharpened—to the French utopians, to Saint-Simon and Louis Blanc. When Marx asked himself, “How should the social order be shaped?”—Hegelianism offered him no answer, for Hegel himself, I would say, could offer every human being only this: to think deeply, penetratingly, and purely. But when Hegel was asked in his later years what the best social order was, he had actually forgotten the views of his youth. It is extraordinarily interesting. One of Hegel’s most significant youthful views regarding the social order is that the state destroys everything that is truly human; therefore, it must come to an end. This is a statement from Hegel’s youth: “The state must come to an end.” That magnificent thinking was still stirring within Hegel when he wrote down this sentence. Once he had developed it into a pure idea—one that could only serve as a starting point for further thought—he had, with regard to the best social order, only the answer that one might very well hold against him today if one wishes to judge everything one-sidedly; he had only the answer derived from his astute thinking: The best social institution is the Prussian state, and the center of the world—of all that is perfect—is Berlin. Berlin is the center of the world, and the University of Berlin is, in turn, the center of Berlin. So that we are here—as he said in an inaugural address—at the center of the center. Anyone who lacks a sense of grandeur—which can often be grotesque precisely because it is grand—will naturally raise all those objections, which are indeed valid, against such a statement. Yet the humanities might allow you to sense that, from the standpoint of reality, there lies something infinitely significant behind all these things. For Hegel, of course, did not say such things out of mere folly. And the judgment regarding the Great, the Unique—which has never otherwise existed in humanity: the self-movement in pure thought, which has never otherwise existed in the world except in Hegel—is not compromised by the fact that, under certain conditions, Hegel himself drew such a conclusion. But it will seem understandable that Karl Marx could not draw much from Hegel for the best social interests,

[ 12 ] Thus, his karma initially brought him into contact with the French utopians. I have already described some of their characteristics to you. For Saint-Simon, for example, the main concern was to replace the state he found with a different institution, and as he contemplated this different institution, what immediately came to mind was the most defining and far-reaching phenomenon of modern times: the industrialization of life. Consequently, he called for the administration of the various branches of production to replace all old political institutions, so that, in essence, he sought the salvation of the social order in the best possible administration of the social structure according to the order of a factory system. As is well known, Louis Blanc established a wide variety of national workshops in 1848, in which such Saint-Simonian ideas were to be put into practice. Well, they very soon failed, as is only to be expected when such things are attempted. As the fundamental impulse underlying all such administration of branches of production, Saint-Simon envisioned a kind of very, very simplified Christianity. It is not the old, dogmatic Christianity that should be abolished, he argued, but rather a practical Christianity that should consist essentially of a single sentence: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”—A very beautiful sentence, but when preached, it is just as ineffective as preaching to a stove that it should be warm without actually heating it.

[ 13 ] Well, that is how Karl Marx came to be lumped in with these utopians. With Hegel, he could say to himself: “Marvelous thinking, but it is not feasible if one is to enter into this real life.” One cannot grasp this real life. It remains at the level of purely dialectical thought—not abstract thought, but purely dialectical thought. — Here, among the utopians, he found, in a certain sense, a profound sense of feeling, for in both Saint-Simon and Louis Blanc, the social impetus sprang from feeling—a profound sense of feeling. But Karl Marx, thanks to his Hegelian training, was, first of all, too great a thinker not to have seen the bluntness—I mean no offense by this, but in relation to life, just as one has a blunt knife—the bluntness of this utopian doctrine and worldview in relation to life. And on the other hand, Karl Marx had to tell himself: To establish institutions such as those Saint-Simon called for as a remedy for humanity, one needs, within the bourgeoisie, good will and practical Christianity. But where is that to come from?—That, after all, becomes the main question for him: Where is this practical Christianity to come from?

[ 14 ] You see, even from a purely practical standpoint, there is simply no way to believe that the typical bourgeois outlook and bourgeois mindset are capable of resolving what Karl Marx, Saint-Simon, and all the others referred to as the “social question.” For from the social perspectives from which the bourgeoisie operated, various things emerged—I would say, as values of life for the bourgeoisie—but that was sufficient only for a small minority, for a truly small minority. A small minority could live comfortably, could travel, could enjoy all kinds of art—I’ll mention only the finest things. But the vast majority had no access to any of that. And how could the bourgeoisie—which was, after all, only capable of providing for a small minority—how could it do anything out of mere pity or compassion for the entire proletarian masses? I mean, simple reasoning shows that nothing can be achieved in this way, apart from the idea that Karl Marx later put forward, and which I cited for you recently: that, precisely because of its social structure, the bourgeoisie is not in the least bit capable—even if it wanted to—of doing anything effective for the proletariat. Well, we pointed this out recently as one of Karl Marx’s views. Thus, Karl Marx found in German Hegelianism the thinking appropriate to the new era, and in Saint-Simon the feeling appropriate to the new era. But in his view, he could do nothing with either of them.

[ 15 ] Thus, his karma led him on to English utilitarianism, to that social structure within which modern industrial life—I would say—had reached its highest stage of development, even as Karl Marx was forming his worldview. Those who, within English thought itself, had already been driven toward socialism by the time of Karl Marx developed their socialism—I need only mention Robert Owen—primarily out of a sense of will. Karl Marx, however, was able to study how, even when driven by a certain will, if that will is restricted to a small area—you recall what I just said a moment ago—nothing can be achieved. It is well known that Robert Owen introduced model farms that were truly set up in a practical way. Yet in the modern world, small model farms can achieve nothing other than failure. Of course, Robert Owen’s experiments also essentially failed; that goes without saying. And so Karl Marx was guided through all of this, but was particularly drawn to the practical thinking that is purely absorbed in the mechanistic nature of industrialism, and from this he formed his proletarian worldview—this proletarian worldview that is not based on thinking, although it makes use of thinking; that is not based on feeling, although it makes use of feeling, nor is it based on volition, but is based on that which takes place externally—purely externally—in the sensible world, and specifically takes place under the hands of the proletarian in the industrial world, in the world of the modern mode of production. And there Karl Marx revealed himself—he who had so magnificently traversed modern thinking, feeling, and willing—that this distrust, which actually characterizes modern spiritual life, clung to him, and indeed now clung to him in the classical sense, I might say, with a certain grandeur. For from Hegel, for example, Karl Marx had learned that world history is the progress of humanity toward the consciousness of freedom; thus, something ideal lies at the root of human development as its driving force. It is an abstract proposition that is of little practical use. From Saint-Simon, he had learned that wherever practical Christianity prevails—and to the extent that practical Christianity prevails—human development was bound to advance. But it has not advanced; rather, it has led precisely to modern impoverishment, to the modern misery of the proletariat, and so on. That is when an idea took root in Karl Marx—an emotional impulse that was truly capable of finding understanding in the broadest proletarian circles, but not in bourgeois circles, simply because the bourgeoisie were apathetic and did not take such matters to heart, nor did they concern themselves with them. The thought took root in Karl Marx: Ultimately, it is completely irrelevant what people think, what they feel, or what they want, for what determines historical development depends solely on the economic process—on how the economy is managed. Whether one is an entrepreneur, whether one is a worker, whether one is involved in the economy in this or that way—this determines that one thinks in a certain way, that one feels in a certain way, that one has certain impulses of will. A child who grows up in a civil servant’s family considers different things to be right and different things to be wrong; simply by growing up within the economic order of a civil servant’s family, they feel and perceive things differently from a proletarian child who is left to their own devices while their father and mother go to the factory and so on. — And so Karl Marx arrived at his famous statement, which applies to the proletariat: The institutions that people establish are not determined by people’s consciousness, but rather people’s consciousness is determined by the institutions that arise of their own accord, arising out of a mere practical necessity. People believe that they think, feel, and will based on their inner impulses. Oh no, they do not think, feel, and will based on their inner impulses; rather, they feel, think, and will according to the class into which they were born, through no merit of their own and through no fault of their own.

[ 16 ] One can sense that, if this is the fundamental impulse behind a doctrine, that impulse was bound to lead to a receptive understanding within the proletarian class, for this doctrine stripped people of all self-confidence. There was no need to have any self-confidence, for it did not help one at all whether one thought energetically or not, whether one felt energetically or not, whether one willed energetically or not; all of that is, after all, merely the outflow, the superstructure arising from the foundation dictated by the social order and the economic position into which one was born. You can therefore—as a true Marxist might say—devise the most beautiful systems, imagine how people might establish the best social structures, how the best economic life might take shape, what one should do to ensure that people are happy, content, have enough to eat, and can lead a pleasant life, but think what you will—none of that has any value at all; nothing depends on it; it’s all just a reflection of economic life—how you think, feel, and desire—because economic life is what drives everything. — That is why Karl Marx abandoned all socialist theories as mere theories and said: What matters is simply that one understands economic life, that one knows how economic life unfolds. Then, at most, one can give the locomotive a nudge here or there to make it go faster, but it moves on its own; things develop on their own.

[ 17 ] You will, of course, sense that all sorts of contradictions are brewing here. We will come back to that later. But for now, let us present the matter as it is reflected in the minds of Marxist proletarians. As Karl Marx said, and as they say: The principal forms of economic life have developed separately over time. In earlier Oriental societies, human coexistence was steeped in barbarism. Then came that economic order which divided people into masters and slaves—a division that was even regarded in ancient Greece, by Aristotle himself, as a necessity: that people be divided into masters and slaves. Then came the more medieval order of serfdom and feudalism, where people were not slaves, but serfs, bound to the lord who held the fief, so that they belonged, as it were, to the fief, to the estate. Then came the modern era, the wage system, where, as I recently described to you, the worker sells his labor power as a commodity to the employer and receives the price for the commodity in the form of wages. Barbarism, slavery, serfdom, and the wage system are essentially the forms in which economic life has developed. People’s thinking must be different where slavery prevails, different where serfdom prevails, and different where the modern wage system exists. For everything that people think—with which they believe they can bring happiness to the world—is an ideological superstructure. What people think about this can become consolidated; and what has thus become consolidated—in the form of views, opinions, and thoughts—can in turn have a reciprocal effect, so that these very thoughts of people, in their ideological nature, actually feed back into the economic order. Yet they originally stem from the economic order itself. This modern wage system has, after all, developed most intensively precisely within modern economic life under the influence of modern industrialism, through the contrast between entrepreneurship and the working class. It has developed in such a way that, as I have already explained to you from another perspective, the entrepreneur is the owner of the means of production. Because he is the owner of the means of production, work can only be performed through him. The worker is forced to sell his labor power as a commodity to the entrepreneur and to be paid for it, which results in surplus value in the manner I have described to you.

[ 18 ] Karl Marx assumes that this modern economic life has a tendency to concentrate ownership of the means of production more and more. This economic life inherently necessitates that entrepreneurship must unite—from the individual entrepreneur to the corporation, to the trust, and so on. And as a result—as entrepreneurs unite—the sum of the means of production adds up to a larger sum. This, in turn, paves the way for the means of production to be socialized altogether. The entrepreneurs are already laying the groundwork, and once a certain point is reached, the means of production will be concentrated to such an extent that all that remains is a redistribution. Then the means of production—which have in any case already converged into corporations and trusts—are nationalized and socialized, and the process is merely reorganized: the workers, acting as society as a whole, take possession of the means of production, having acquired them through a necessary process. What is described here must happen. Entrepreneurs pave the way for socialization; by increasingly taking charge of socialization themselves, they bring it to a point where the proletariat can take it over. Hegel’s thought progressed from “thesis to antithesis to synthesis.” Karl Marx translates this into the reality of the economic process: the entrepreneurial order turns into its opposite; the proletariat seizes the means of production entirely of its own accord. The economic process unfolds on its own. One is merely the midwife of what happens of its own accord; do not believe that this ideological superstructure of thought, feeling, and will can make any difference. The economic process, says Karl Marx, is what does everything; what you think are merely the foam waves on the surface of the economic process. Depending on the nature of the economic order, it generates these or those thoughts in people’s minds. Those are the foam waves up there. The most important thing is the economic process, which, however, inevitably leads from thesis to antithesis. What the proletariat has produced was taken away from the actual owners—the proletarians—by the entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurs became the expropriators. But this process of expropriating the proprietor necessarily reverses itself into its opposite in the course of economic development. Just as cause and effect follow one another in nature, the expropriation of the expropriators ensues.

[ 19 ] There was no need whatsoever to have faith in the spiritual powers. One could work with this proletarian theory precisely by drawing on the worst legacy of modern bourgeois education: distrust of the spiritual powers of human beings. The proletarian saw himself as helplessly at the mercy of the capitalist class. He could relate to a theory that made no claim that he should help himself, because the expropriation of the expropriators would automatically bring about what the socialization of the means of production must result in. The modern mode of production necessarily turns into its opposite.

[ 20 ] The fact that things take care of themselves—that was what was so incredibly compelling to the proletarian world. And if one wishes to gain an understanding of the psychology of this proletarian sensibility, one must take into account that it was precisely this absolute distrust of the powers of the soul that served as a significant driving force in the triumphant march of Marxist thought across the world. Marxism is by no means a dogma; rather, Marxism is a method for observing the world—and, for the proletarian, the only world accessible to him—the world of the economic order and economic development. I would like to say—and I believe this truly captures the essence of the matter—that the proletarian does not place his trust in any kind of intellectual power, even though Karl Marx says: “Philosophers have only ever interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it”—but in reality, the proletarian does not place his trust in ideas and their power, nor in the effectiveness of ideas for any kind of institution; rather, he trusts solely in the self-regulating process of the economic order. This was essentially what one encountered when becoming acquainted with the real life of the modern proletariat. One might say: One encountered the almost apocalyptic hope that the expropriation of the expropriators—the necessary socialization of the means of production—must come with a great crisis.

[ 21 ] The bourgeoisie mocked this, repeating time and again that the modern proletariat was waiting for the great upheaval. By this “great upheaval,” it was imagined—I might say—that the very vessel upon which entrepreneurship was founded would shatter, and that through self-regulation, entrepreneurship would give way to the collective management of the means of production by the proletariat. That was, in a sense, the apocalyptic hope. It was with firm faith in this hope that the modern proletariat itself worked. People were absolutely convinced that it could not be any other way—that this socialization was bound to occur.

[ 22 ] You see, in Marxism, any purely theoretical view is rejected. A purely theoretical view is ideology or the superstructure, which can indeed have a retroactive effect, but which, even when it does, originated in the purely economic order. And yet, the whole thing is still a theory. It cannot be denied that it is a theory. And as a theory, it has made a real impact; it has uplifted people, it has instilled a certain belief in them. And the remarkable thing was this: as the bourgeoisie’s faith—which was, after all, not a new one but merely a traditional, age-old one—became increasingly mired, dilapidated, and corrupted, a purely materialist faith—the faith in the apocalypse of the economic order—took root, rock-solid, within the proletariat. — If one looks only at the power of faith, merely at the impetus of faith, then one can say: It is quite certain that even within the early Christian communities, faith was never held more firmly, never believed in with greater power, than by the modern proletariat in the apocalypse of economic development: the expropriation of the expropriators. — One could already recognize the power of faith there, even if, in the opinion of people—people other than the proletariat—it was not directed toward anything particularly lofty; one could already learn what the power of a faith, of a confession, is; for that became a confession for the proletariat.

[ 23 ] Well, the curious thing is that Karl Marx and his friend Friedrich Engels derived this doctrine primarily from their observations of life in the British Empire; yet it took root—and indeed became orthodoxy—most deeply among the German working class. The most genuine Marxists were found among the German working class. And for anyone capable of studying such matters on the basis of reality, the situation is such that they come to realize that the Marxist doctrine could truly have arisen only within the British Empire, from the observation of British conditions. Only a man who had been shaped by Hegelian dialectical thought, imbued with the utopian sensibilities of the Saint-Simon school, and who had observed Owen’s and other socialist experiments—but who at the same time observed how, within English industrialism, the capitalist class and the proletariat relate to one another, how there is an absolute lack of understanding and a mere preparation for struggle— only such a person—who had gone through all of that, who had arrived through his observations at a point where, so to speak, the economic, the purely economic process stood before him in its purest form—could conceive of such a thing. When Marx conceived of this, for example, Germany was still far from being an industrial nation in which one could have conceived of what Karl Marx had conceived. German ideas rooted in Hegelian doctrine were needed to think through the industrial-economic system with such acuity. But Germany itself was still far too much of an agrarian country—and not at all an industrial one—at that time to be able to observe what was necessary to arrive at this Marxist method of observing economic life.

[ 24 ] There are, of course, older socialist doctrines within Germany, such as Weitling’s *The Gospel of a Poor Sinner* or Marlo’s socialist treatise. Marlo was a professor in Kassel; his real name is Winkelblech. Then there is Rodbertus; but Rodbertus relies primarily on agrarian conditions. All these things are really just small beginnings of social awareness compared to the forcefulness of the Marxist perspective. What Karl Marx accomplished could only have been achieved through observation of the subject matter—namely, in the British Empire, where industrialization had already advanced so far in the first half of the nineteenth century. But once it had been achieved, it was able to take deep root precisely in the burgeoning industrialization, taking deep root among the proletariat of that burgeoning industrialization within Germany.

[ 25 ] It is entirely understandable that it was able to take such deep root there. For when a man like Hegel lives in such a region, he has not fallen from the sky like a meteor; rather, he represents the concentrated force—precisely in relation to a characteristic such as Hegel’s—of the potential that is already present within the people. Karl Marx had, in a sense, learned his dialectical thinking in Germany and carried it over from Germany to England. That he found the deepest understanding in Germany once again through what he had developed there—that thinking was suited to this, having now shifted from the heights where one had merely learned to think, to comprehension, to the attempt to grasp the economic process—is, of course, understandable. If one has only Hegel—don’t you agree, I’ve described this to you—well, then you can think afterward, but you have nothing in your hands. But now Marx, under the influence of the British Empire—of the British Empire’s industrialism—has transformed thought in such a way that he told the proletariat: When the crisis comes, you will have everything that the people who exploit you have. You just need to think that way; that’s already enough. Just be understanding; the locomotive is moving—just give it a nudge now and then so it goes faster. That’s the only thing you can do. What you think is, of course, just an ideology, but what you think, in turn, has an effect. Your thoughts stem from economic life, and sound economic thinking cannot be attained through study, but only by being a proletarian, for economic thinking arises solely from this class. So you are a proletarian. Because you are a proletarian, you think correctly in the spirit of the modern age. That is where your ideology develops; with it, you can exert a counter-effect—you give the locomotive a nudge. — Now that’s useful! This is not merely Hegelianism, nor Saint-Simonism, nor Owenism, for Hegelianism offers ideas that do not intervene in reality, while Saint-Simonism offers social sentiments that are like saying: “Warm up, dear stove”—without putting any wood in it. Robert Owen and others failed with individual socialist ventures; but Karl Marx pointed to a process that all of humanity is undergoing—the proletariat across all countries throughout the entire world—which consists in the expropriation of expropriation, in the socialization of the means of production. There is thus already an intrinsic reason why, so to speak, what has been grasped by German thought has also taken root most intensely in Germany, so that the most orthodox Marxism has emerged there.

[ 26 ] The peculiar thing is this: Marx was able to concoct such a theory in England, but it does not apply to England itself, because people there do not accept it for the simple reason that the contrast between entrepreneurs and workers does not exist to the same extent there. I believe I have mentioned this. There, entrepreneurs and workers are closer to one another. I can also provide you with specific evidence of this. Let me give you one such example. All these points, which are presented from a humanities perspective, can in fact be thoroughly substantiated by empirical facts. You see, Marx worked with astute Hegelian thinking, which is primarily a German way of thinking. His Marxist system found a sympathetic reception precisely among the German proletariat. Eduard Bernstein, on the other hand, spent a longer period in England; he focused less on the industrial economic process than on the views held by the people—the proletarians—and on the social currents there. He was less schooled in Hegelian thought—Bernstein is, after all, still alive—so he did not apply Hegel’s astute dialectical thinking to English conditions, but rather adapted his thinking more to English proletarian thought itself; and when he returned to Germany, after having been exiled from Germany for a long time and having found asylum in London, his outlook evolved into what is known as socialist revisionism—that is, a watered-down, no longer Marxist way of thinking that has actually been little understood, and which then gained a following—not within the proletarian-socialist party, but within various trade union circles—because it is somewhat more accommodating toward the ruling powers than Marxism. You see, there you have the living proof: someone who adapted to English proletarian thought did not come to Marxism in the same way that the German proletariat immediately embraced Marxism, because although this Marxism could be manufactured in England, it had no foundation in England itself—no foundation in the people. It had its foundation above all in the German workers. From there, it then spread in a wide variety of directions, but with the same orthodox rigidity, steadfastness, and that immense power of conviction—it did not take root as easily anywhere else as it did within the German proletariat.

[ 27 ] It is very important to note this, because—especially at the present time, when the social question plays such a major role—it characterizes the German essence, the essence of the German proletariat, and defines its entire relationship to the world. And this must also be taken into account if one wishes to thoroughly understand the current world-historical significance of social issues, if one wishes to understand them in the context of the catastrophic political events of the present.

[ 28 ] You see, it is a theory, as I said earlier—even though all theory is dismissed as mere ideology—it is a theory that has penetrated hearts and souls and has given rise to an immense intensity of belief. But by becoming a fact as a theory, it has, in a sense, developed the rigidity of theories as a fact. This led to a situation where the modern proletariat—namely, the German proletariat—was, for the most part, thoroughly schooled in and deeply imbued with Marxism, yet had no real understanding of certain elementary matters when they did not align with Marxism as it had become a fact. Anyone who has discussed matters extensively with modern proletarians—as I was able to do during the time I was a teacher at a workers’ educational school and spoke with a wide variety of trade union and political organizations of the Social Democratic Party—and who was able to study the actual conditions there—I also conducted speech exercises, since the people were focused on practical matters, they wanted to participate in political life, wanted to learn to speak—anyone who has specifically led discussion exercises there, that is, who was immersed in the way people discussed things with one another, naturally knows what kinds of ideas people were open to. Isn’t it true that when you lead discussion exercises, you throw in something here and there—it’s simply a technical tool—to stimulate the discussion? Especially when you’re merely leading discussion exercises, you know—everyone knows—that what you throw in isn’t your own opinion, but is merely a trial suggestion. One could also put it this way: How would one respond, for example, if one wanted to say to a proletarian: “Yes, you see, you regard the strike as a very useful weapon in the modern proletarian class struggle; why don’t you go on strike against the cannon factories?” You’re committing the great contradiction of knowing full well that the cannons are your fiercest enemies, yet you manufacture them. You would achieve an infinite amount in terms of the real-world impact of your theory if you refused to manufacture cannons. — You see, no proletarian understood this very elementary objection, because they didn’t think that far ahead. For him, it was not a matter of intervening in any practical way, at least initially, in what was actually unfolding. He didn’t care at all what was being manufactured. He was concerned with only one point: the transfer of the means of production—regardless of what is produced—into the social order; the socialization of the means of production, regardless of what these means of production produce.

[ 29 ] If you take this into account, you will see that it actually led to a specific goal. Of course, if—like the modern proletarian—one is not entirely warlike at heart—the proletarian is naturally not warlike, because he expects no benefit from war— then one can only hope to contribute to the end of war by manufacturing cannons just as well as anything else—provided one comes to power oneself—because then, once the old powers have been overthrown and one has come to power, one can, of course, abolish the manufacture of cannons! And that was roughly—or is roughly—the line of thinking. It is a matter of seizing power.

[ 30 ] You have identified the point at which Marxism, so to speak, takes a turn, where it enters into a kind of contradiction, where the dialectical process, I would say, takes its revenge on it. For it assumes that economic life is, so to speak, self-regulating—that is, that what is meant to happen happens of its own accord; one need only give the locomotive a nudge here and there. And yet it must strive to overthrow the old ruling powers and take their place, that is, to strive for the power that emanates from human beings. It wants to bring about what is supposed to happen. So, in fact, it appeals once again to human beings, counting on them to come out on top and then hold power, whereas previously others held power.

[ 31 ] This was, in a sense, already inherent in the theory. In practice, I would say that this modern, terrible catastrophe of war—which now suddenly plays power more or less into the hands of the proletariat across vast areas of the earth—seems, as it were, like dialectics taking its revenge on Marxism; it does not play power into the hands of the proletariat from within the economic order at all, but rather from a completely different order—or rather, disorder. This is a strange process, extraordinarily strange. And it becomes even stranger when one sees this process in its full scope, when one now sees it, so to speak, spreading across the conditions of the entire world. For as I told you recently: The truth has only emerged over the course of the years from this so-called war. The idea that the Central Powers and the Entente were pitted against one another was, after all, a falsehood; in reality, what emerged was this terrible economic struggle that is now beginning. — That is the truth that emerged from that falsehood, behind which lay masked what actually underlies world history. And in fact, the two camps are already beginning to stand out from one another a little today. Economically, the two camps are beginning to stand apart, as it becomes increasingly clear that the English-speaking population—in geographical and world-historical terms—represents a form of entrepreneurship as the dominant element, which, in one way or another, is defeating the other world—Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and, to a greater or lesser extent, the proletariat—as the dominant world. Just as entrepreneurs and workers stand opposed to one another in the modern factory, so too do the entrepreneurship of the old Entente and America stand opposed to the proletariat in the defeated powers. This is what is magnificent, oppressive, and tragically magnificent. One cannot study what is happening today in any other way than by understanding it in the context of the entire proletarian-socialist question.

[ 32 ] But on the world-historical stage, it will not merely be what I have just hinted at that will unfold; rather, another element will disturbingly intermingle with what is actually nothing more than an economic struggle—a massive economic struggle. The economic struggle arises within humanity, and it will be an economic struggle that is fought out in a terrible manner between one half of the earth and the other half. The economic struggle within humanity is based on the development of the senses and the nervous system. And in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, the Age of the Consciousness Soul, the English-speaking world is particularly organized around the sensory-nervous system, because in this epoch the nervous system develops only utilitarian, materialistic thoughts, tending to turn the world into one giant department store. But the world of blood—the other pole in human life—is having a disturbing effect on this world of the sensory-nervous system. The world of blood will send its wave into what the sensory-nervous life stirs up on one side as a purely economic struggle; this world of blood is initially represented by the united Slavic outposts: Czechs, Slovenes, Poles, Slovaks, and so on, until the other wave—with purified blood, with spiritualized blood—from Eastern Europe, the Russian-Slavic wave, then comes into play. While from the West, Eastern and Central Europe are to be turned into nothing more than a vast consumer market for the productive world of the West, it is not only the rebellion of the consuming proletariat from the East against the West that will radiate outward, but above all the restless wave of blood. One could also call “blood and nerves” that which enters the world and demands to be understood, that which must be mastered through understanding. It has already played a role in this war-torn catastrophe. Study the effects of German shipbuilding and the German fleet—the naval fleet—and the German system of colonization; study what the far-sighted but self-serving Chamberlain negotiated with the naive German government at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and what ultimately did not come to pass—then you will have some of the building blocks but some of the many factors contributing to the great economic process that played a role in this so-called war. And study the so-called Eastern Question with its final phase, the ill-fated Balkan War, and you will have the other aspect—that which, as a wave of blood, counteracts the economic war. This, too, plays a role in the current catastrophe. These things must be understood.