The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighth Lecture

[ 1 ] You will have seen from the various observations we have made recently regarding the social impulses of recent times, the present, and the near future, that in the manifold phenomena arising from these impulses, a certain underlying trend asserts itself—albeit one that initially characterizes the course of events in a very superficial way. We can say: Certainly, the most diverse phenomena arise, the most diverse demands are made; social and antisocial worldviews emerge. This or that is done on the basis of such social and antisocial worldviews. But if, from the perspective we have now gained, one wishes to summarize these various phenomena in the question: What actually underlies all this, what is striving to emerge to the surface of human destinies and human development? — then one will be able to characterize the matter, albeit initially in a superficial way, as follows: Human beings also seek a social order; they seek to give social coexistence a social structure within which they can become conscious—in a manner appropriate to our age of the conscious soul—of what they can know as human beings: their dignity, their significance, and their power. They seek to find themselves as human beings within this social order. Those impulses that were once instinctive—which guided human beings to do this or that, to think this or that, to feel this or that—are now seeking to transform themselves into conscious impulses. In the Age of the Conscious Soul—which began in the fifteenth century and will last into the fourth millennium—human beings will only be able to truly integrate these conscious impulses into their lives if, as this age progresses, they become increasingly aware of what they are as human beings and of what they are capable of as human beings, even within the social structure in which they live—whether in society, the state, or similar contexts.

[ 2 ] I have already hinted that what—in the spirit of this age of consciousness—can only be correctly and clearly understood through spiritual science is emerging here and there in a more or less tumultuous manner, both in people’s views and thoughts, as well as in the events in which people are living today. It is, for example, quite characteristic—I would say shockingly characteristic—what is expressed in a speech given by Trotsky. If you take what I have just said about the will to place the human being at the center of one’s worldview, you will hear words such as those spoken by Trotsky as something shocking. He says: “Communist doctrine—or socialist doctrine—has set itself the task, as one of its most important ones, of achieving a situation on our old, sinful earth in which people will stop shooting at one another. One of the tasks of socialism or communism is to create an order in which human beings will, for the first time, be worthy of their name. We are accustomed to saying that the word ‘human being’ sounds proud. Gorky wrote: “Human being—that sounds proud.” — But in reality, when one looks back on these three and three-quarters years of bloody slaughter, one is tempted to exclaim: “Human being—that sounds shameful!”

[ 3 ] In any case, you can see here that this question—How can a person become aware, as it were, of their humanity, their human worth, and their human strength?—is brought to the forefront of the discussion right at the beginning of a programmatic speech. And so, if you look more closely, you will encounter this same phenomenon in many people. One can only understand this phenomenon—I am referring now to the way in which what is more clearly understood through spiritual science still haunts people’s minds in an unclear manner—one can only understand this haunting, this phenomenon, if one also takes into account various aspects that we have considered even less, in relation to the social thinking of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. In fact, an immense amount has changed—and in a rather abrupt way—since the time when this fifth post-Atlantean epoch, in the fifteenth century A.D., succeeded the fourth, which was then coming to an end—the one that, as you know, began in the eighth century B.C. People simply do not realize how radically the spiritual constitution of civilized humanity changed, for example, during the transition from the thirteenth and fourteenth to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. I have, after all, cited for you manifold phenomena in the artistic realm, in the realm of thought, and in other areas, from which you can discern this change. Today we want to consider something else that is of particular significance for the forces at play in the present and the near future. In fact, one can say that public economic life—the life of the national economy as it is embedded in the social structure—has only been consciously observed since the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Before that, what people think about today had emerged more or less instinctively. Essentially, it was not until around the sixteenth century that people began to consciously raise the questions: What is the economic order? What is the best economic order? What laws underlie the economic order? — And from these considerations, the impulses of the socialist worldview have developed up to the present day. In the past, these matters had been organized more or less instinctively, from person to person, from association to association, from guild to guild, from corporation to corporation, or indeed from empire to empire. It was only with the emergence of the modern state—which, after all, dates back only to around the sixteenth century—that we see reflection on economic questions.

[ 4 ] Now, when you turn your attention to something like this, you must not overlook the following. You must be clear about this: As long as something acts instinctively, it acts with a certain degree of certainty. — Call it “divine order,” call it “natural order”—whatever you like—instincts are something that operate with a certain degree of certainty throughout human evolution, something that cannot be shaken by thought, or rather, something that is not shaken by thought. And uncertainty only begins when the very same areas in which the certainty of instincts previously operated are now penetrated by human reflection, by the human intellect. And only gradually does the human being—one might say, after having gone through the most diverse errors—consciously attain that certainty which he previously possessed through instinct in other circumstances.

[ 5 ] Of course, one must not object by saying: “So we should just go back to instinct.” Circumstances have changed, and under these new circumstances, instinct would no longer be the right approach. Moreover, humanity is evolving and, with regard to these matters, is moving from instinct to conscious life. The demand that we should return to our old instincts would be about as sensible as if a fifty-year-old were to suddenly decide to become twenty again. — Here we see how economic thought begins around the sixteenth century and during the sixteenth century itself. We turn our conscious gaze to phenomena that were previously experienced instinctively within the context of human existence.

[ 6 ] It is interesting to reflect on at least some of the ideas and conceptions that people have formed about the social order. For example, the so-called mercantilists were the first to emerge with certain ideas about economic and social life. Their ideas are actually entirely dependent on the legal concepts that had previously been formed in public life—whether in a legal or other context—and they use these concepts to try to understand the course and development of trade and the burgeoning industrial sector. These mercantilist ideas depend above all on the perspective taken on trade and industry. But they were also influenced by other factors; they were influenced by the fact that the modern, more absolutist monarchy, with its entourage—the bureaucratic state—had taken on its distinctive character at that time. These ideas were shaped by the fact that, following the discovery of America, large quantities of precious metals were imported into Europe, and that the monetary economy had replaced the old economy. Such factors influenced the ideas of the first teachers of economics, the mercantilists. According to the ideas they had formed, what mattered to these people was to conceive of the public economy—public social life—along the lines of the old private economy. And for the old private economy, one had, of course, the old Roman legal concepts. As I said, these concepts were carried forward; people simply sought to extend the laws of the private economy into public life.

[ 7 ] These ideas have produced a peculiar result, and it is not without interest to observe what people gradually come to focus on in their thinking. They have led the mercantilists to conclude: The essence of a national economy, of a national community, lies in having as much equivalent value as possible for the goods to be traded and produced by industry within a national economic territory. In other words, what mattered to them was devising a social structure through which as much money as possible would flow into the country they had set their sights on. They saw the prosperity of that country in the amount of money available. And how, they asked, could one increase the prosperity of this country—in which, they believed, the prosperity of the individual would also be the greatest conceivable? By establishing, as far as possible, an internal structure within the country that would ensure a great deal of money circulated within it, while minimizing the outflow of money to other countries, so that as much money as possible would be concentrated within the country.

[ 8 ] This view was then challenged by another, known as the physiocratic view. This view was based on the idea that the amount of money held within a country is not actually what matters in terms of prosperity; rather, what matters is how much is extracted from the soil through labor and how much is gained in goods through the utilization of natural forces. The circulation of goods in trade and the accumulation of money essentially achieve only something illusory. Prosperity is not truly increased.

[ 9 ] You can see here two very different perspectives emerging in two successive views on the national economy. I ask you to focus your attention on this. For it would be very easy to believe that, once you have learned it, it is extraordinarily simple to say what determines prosperity and which is the best form of national economy. When you see that people who think about these issues—who even make a career out of thinking about them—arrive at opposing views over time, you will no longer say that it is such an easy matter to reflect on these things.

[ 10 ] Because the Physiocrats placed the greatest value on the production of goods through the cultivation of the land—and of nature in general—they concluded that people should essentially be left to their own devices so that, through free competition, they would be driven to extract as much as possible from the natural foundations of existence. Whereas the mercantilists focused more on imposing tariffs and closing off countries from the outside world to prevent excessive outflows of money and to increase national prosperity by keeping money within the country, the Physiocrats arrived at the opposite view: that it is precisely when imports and exports flow freely from one country to another that the capacity to utilize the land is increased across the entire globe—and with it, the prosperity of each individual country. As you can see, even at the dawn of conscious thought on economic matters, opposing ideas emerged in a wide variety of directions.

[ 11 ] We can then trace how an influential school of thought in the field of economics took hold—one that has had an immensely profound impact not only on legislation but also on the ideas that economists have developed regarding these matters. This is the view of Adam Smith, who specifically posed the following question: How does one bring about a social structure that is capable of shaping the prosperity of the individual and the prosperity of society as a whole in the best possible way? — Adam Smith actually—and we would like to point out a characteristic aspect here—came to the view that the entirely individual organization of the economy was the very best. He assumed, after all, that goods and commodities—which ultimately constitute the substance of the national economy and which are bought and sold—are in fact the result of human labor. One could say his view was this: When one buys anything, it has come into being through the performance of human labor. Thus, in a sense, the good or commodity is crystallized human labor. And he believed that prosperity is best achieved—precisely because of this foundation of the economy—by not hindering people through legislation from producing freely. The individual will do what is best for the whole precisely when he does what is best for himself. Adam Smith holds, roughly speaking, the view that one also does what is best for all of humanity when one does what is best for oneself. One can best contribute to the common good and do what is best for humanity by doing what is best for oneself. It is best for the individual and for humanity to organize the economy on an individualistic basis, without imposing specific restrictions or the like through legislation.

[ 12 ] Now you see, the entire line of thought among such economists is directed toward this question: How can the social structure best be organized? — But at this point, a question may occur to you that might seem to be the most important one—a question that, in its own way, is not fully grasped even by the Physiocrats. The economic systems I have discussed so far focus on how best to bring about the economic structure. Yet the very pursuit of these ideas that emerge here constantly reminds one that there is also another question: What does the economy as a whole actually want? — It cannot—or at least should not—merely seek to distribute what is already there; rather, it must also ensure that there is something there—that material goods are actually produced. After all, it also depends on extracting goods from the earth. What is the relationship between human beings and the goods extracted from the earth? It was actually Malthus who first formulated conscious thoughts on this subject, and his ideas followed a line of reasoning that, fundamentally speaking, can already give people cause for concern to a certain degree. What Malthus brought to light—both as a cardinal question and as a perspective on this cardinal question—is by no means entirely unfounded. He said: If one considers the growth of the Earth’s population—he held the view, shared by many people today, that the Earth’s population is constantly increasing—and if one considers the increase in food production, a certain relationship becomes apparent. And Malthus expresses this somewhat mathematically by saying: The increase in food proceeds in arithmetic progression, while the increase in the human population proceeds in geometric progression. — Perhaps I can illustrate this with a few numbers. Let’s assume the ratio of food production is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; then we would have the geometric ratio: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16. In other words, he means that the population is growing much faster than food supplies. He therefore believes that human development cannot avoid the danger of a struggle for existence, and that eventually there will be far too many people in relation to the growth in food supplies. Thus, he views the economic development of humanity from an entirely different perspective—that of the relationship between human beings and the conditions of the earth. He concludes—or at least his followers conclude—that it actually runs counter to progress to engage in extensive welfare for the poor and the like, for this merely fosters overpopulation, which is detrimental to human development. He even goes so far as to say: Let those who are weak in life be left without support, for it is essential that the unfit be weeded out of life. — He then attempts other measures, which I do not wish to discuss here; I can only hint at them. In particular, he seeks to recommend the two-child policy in order to curb the natural tendency toward overpopulation. He regards wars as something that must necessarily occur in human development, precisely because there is a natural tendency for population growth to far outpace the growth of food supplies.

[ 13 ] As you can see, a rather pessimistic view of humanity’s economic development has entered the historical narrative. It cannot be said that this question—How is humanity connected to the natural foundations of its economy?—has received much attention in recent times. People in modern times do not even possess a clear awareness that research should be conducted in this direction. Instead, attention has, so to speak, repeatedly been directed toward the social structure itself—toward the way in which people must distribute what is available in order to achieve the greatest possible prosperity; the question focused not on how to extract as much as possible from the earth, but rather on distribution.

[ 14 ] Well, in the course of these lines of thought, various points arise that are important to note, because they pave the way for contemporary social and socialist thinking—a way of thinking that has already led people to a great extent, and will lead them even further, into a kind of social chaos from which the correct way out must, quite necessarily, be sought. I have already hinted at one such point: for example, in Adam Smith’s work, the idea clearly emerges that what one buys as a good—the commodity—is stored labor. And, in a sense, the idea emerges—as if in accordance with a natural necessity—that one cannot view what appears as a commodity in any other way than as stored labor. This idea exerts such a hold on people that it is, in fact, one of the fundamental driving forces behind contemporary proletarian thought. It is so insofar as, based on the economic preconditions I have described to you, a keen awareness has taken root in the minds of the modern proletariat that, given the current economic order and social structure, the labor power of the worker—who, after all, is propertyless and can offer only the work of his hands on the market—is indeed a commodity. Just as one buys other things, so one buys labor power from the proletarian worker.

[ 15 ] Faced with the question: “What am I, really, as a human being?”—the modern proletarian feels that this is what weighs most heavily on him, and it is the source from which his demands instinctively spring. He does not want any part of himself to be sold; he feels, one might say, as if one could just as easily sell his two hands, his two arms, as one can buy and sell his labor. This seems uncomfortable to people, whatever form it takes—whether it be Marxist thought, revisionist thought, or whatever one wishes to call it; underlying it all is the feeling: Other people buy and sell commodities, but I must sell my labor power.

[ 16 ] This objection would be a mistake only if one were to say, for example: “Other people sell their labor, too.” — For that is simply not true. In our present-day social structure, it is truly only the proletarian worker who sells his labor. For the moment one is linked in any way to property relations, one ceases to sell one’s labor power. Thus, the bourgeois does not sell his labor power; he buys and sells commodities. He may sell the products of his labor; but that is something different from selling his labor. The modern proletarian, in particular, has a very clear understanding of these matters, and anyone familiar with the thinking of the modern proletariat knows that this principle—that proletarian labor means selling one’s labor power—acts as the actual driving force in contemporary proletarian thought, from the most moderate to the most radical forms. Anyone who cannot grasp this from the phenomena simply does not understand the present age, and it is sad that so many people do not understand the present age. As a result, we are sinking deeper and deeper into confusion, because people do not try to understand their own time. That is one thing.

[ 17 ] The other point is that—albeit modified by later, yet in a certain sense instinctive considerations—a concept such as the law of wages has developed in connection with what has been characterized. In the radical form in which this idea once existed, it certainly no longer exists in modern proletarian thought, but one must nevertheless be familiar with the form in which this idea still existed, for example, in Lassalle’s work; so that one can orient oneself toward what still exists, as it were, as a residue of this idea in the proletarian present. This idea of the so-called iron law of wages was clearly articulated by the economist Ricardo. But Lassalle still defended it with great vigor in the middle of the last century. It would go something like this: Just as the current social structure is shaped by the form of capital, so too can those who must work as proletarians never be paid more than a certain maximum for their labor. Wages must always remain within a certain range. They cannot rise above this level nor fall below it. Objective conditions themselves necessitate that a certain rate of remuneration for labor prevail. The worker’s wage level cannot rise above or fall below the maximum—or, for my part, the minimum wage—which is, after all, irrelevant in this case; at least not significantly; this is what Ricardo believes, and for the following reason. He says: Let us assume that, due to certain circumstances—for example, a strong economy or some other factor—a special increase in wages occurs at some point in time. What would happen? The proletariat would suddenly receive high wages; their standard of living would rise as a result, and they would attain a certain level of prosperity. Seeking proletarian labor would then be more attractive than it was at the previous wage level. There is a greater supply of proletarian labor, and furthermore, due to this prosperity, a greater increase in the number of workers, and so on; in short, there is a greater supply. The result will be that it becomes easier to find workers. Consequently, they are once again underpaid. Wages thus fall back to their previous level. It is precisely because wages rise that phenomena are brought about which cause them to fall again. Suppose wages now fall due to some factor; this leads to impoverishment, resulting in a reduced supply of labor. Workers die earlier and become ill, have fewer children—thus, there is a reduced supply of labor, and this in turn leads to a rise in wages. However, one can only go as far as the iron law allows.

[ 17 ] The other point is that—albeit modified by later, yet in a certain sense instinctive considerations—a concept such as the law of wages has developed in connection with what has been characterized. In the radical form in which this idea once existed, it certainly no longer exists in modern proletarian thought, but one must nevertheless be familiar with the form in which this idea still existed, for example, in Lassalle’s work; so that one can orient oneself toward what still exists, as it were, as a residue of this idea in the proletarian present. This idea of the so-called iron law of wages was clearly articulated by the economist Ricardo. But Lassalle still defended it with great vigor in the middle of the last century. It would go something like this: Just as the current social structure is shaped by the form of capital, so too can those who must work as proletarians never be paid more than a certain maximum for their labor. Wages must always remain within a certain range. They cannot rise above this level nor fall below it. Objective conditions themselves necessitate that a certain rate of remuneration for labor prevail. The worker’s wage level cannot rise above or fall below the maximum—or, for my part, the minimum wage—which is, after all, irrelevant in this case; at least not significantly; this is what Ricardo believes, and for the following reason. He says: Let us assume that, due to certain circumstances—for example, a strong economy or some other factor—a special increase in wages occurs at some point in time. What would happen? The proletariat would suddenly receive high wages; their standard of living would rise as a result, and they would attain a certain level of prosperity. Seeking proletarian labor would then be more attractive than it was at the previous wage level. There is a greater supply of proletarian labor, and furthermore, due to this prosperity, a greater increase in the number of workers, and so on; in short, there is a greater supply. The result will be that it becomes easier to find workers. Consequently, they are once again underpaid. Wages thus fall back to their previous level. It is precisely because wages rise that phenomena are brought about which cause them to fall again. Suppose wages now fall due to some factor; this leads to impoverishment, resulting in a reduced supply of labor. Workers die earlier and become ill, have fewer children—thus, there is a reduced supply of labor, and this in turn leads to a rise in wages. However, one can only go as far as the iron law allows.

[ 17 ] The other point is that—albeit modified by later, yet in a certain sense instinctive considerations—a concept such as the law of wages has developed in connection with what has been characterized. In the radical form in which this idea once existed, it certainly no longer exists in modern proletarian thought, but one must nevertheless be familiar with the form in which this idea still existed, for example, in Lassalle’s work; so that one can orient oneself toward what still exists, as it were, as a residue of this idea in the proletarian present. This idea of the so-called iron law of wages was clearly articulated by the economist Ricardo. But Lassalle still defended it with great vigor in the middle of the last century. It would go something like this: Just as the current social structure is shaped by the form of capital, so too can those who must work as proletarians never be paid more than a certain maximum for their labor. Wages must always remain within a certain range. They cannot rise above this level nor fall below it. Objective conditions themselves necessitate that a certain rate of remuneration for labor prevail. The worker’s wage level cannot rise above or fall below the maximum—or, for my part, the minimum wage—which is, after all, irrelevant in this case; at least not significantly; this is what Ricardo believes, and for the following reason. He says: Let us assume that, due to certain circumstances—for example, a strong economy or some other factor—a special increase in wages occurs at some point in time. What would happen? The proletariat would suddenly receive high wages; their standard of living would rise as a result, and they would attain a certain level of prosperity. Seeking proletarian labor would then be more attractive than it was at the previous wage level. There is a greater supply of proletarian labor, and furthermore, due to this prosperity, a greater increase in the number of workers, and so on; in short, there is a greater supply. The result will be that it becomes easier to find workers. Consequently, they are once again underpaid. Wages thus fall back to their previous level. It is precisely because wages rise that phenomena are brought about which cause them to fall again. Suppose wages now fall due to some factor; this leads to impoverishment, resulting in a reduced supply of labor. Workers die earlier and become ill, have fewer children—thus, there is a reduced supply of labor, and this in turn leads to a rise in wages. However, one can only go as far as the iron law allows.

[ 20 ] I would have to go into great detail if I were to cite everything that has come to light over time. Such economic concepts emerged in various parts of the world, throughout the civilized world. These ideas—the ones I have described to you, and many others—all essentially boiled down not only to reflecting on the question: What does the social structure look like in the world as it has developed up to now? —but they also addressed the question: How can we best manage this social structure so that people do not have to live in misery, so that people can enjoy prosperity, and so on? For many of its practitioners, economic theory did indeed have a tendency to improve economic life. Utopians and thinkers such as the French socialists Saint-Simon, Auguste Comte, Louis Blanc, and others had this tendency in mind. Their line of thought was roughly as follows: Up to now, because society was left to its own devices, it has developed in such a way that a great disparity has emerged between the poor and the rich, the prosperous and the destitute. This must be changed. — To this end, they have studied the laws of economics and have put forward a wide variety of ideas to change these conditions and bring about some improvements. Some, of course, started from the very idea that a kind of paradise, as I mentioned recently, could be established on earth.

[ 21 ] This way of thinking about social structure has, however, taken on a particular form precisely among the modern proletariat. And I have already discussed here the reasons why the proletariat, in particular, was predestined to develop such views. But I would like to add a few remarks regarding one particular aspect. Certainly, what Karl Marx expressed in his books and in those he co-authored with Friedrich Engels has been modified in many ways. But the modifications are far less significant than the fundamental impulses that actually underlie these ideas. And even though this statement applies only in a very modified sense, one can generally say: Across all the countries of the civilized world, from the far west all the way to Russia, the proletariat is governed—if not today by the explicit contours of Marxist thought, then by Marxist impulses. In a very peculiar way, thinking about social structure manifests itself in this modern Marxist proletarian thought.

[ 22 ] The ideas I have just outlined for you—which have also been emerging among bourgeois economists since the dawn of the Age of Consciousness—are being absorbed by socialist thought. However, they are reshaped by socialist thought in the way that the proletarian, from his proletarian class perspective, believes he must necessarily think. Here the peculiarity becomes apparent: this idea—that within the modern capitalist social structure, a person must sell his labor power as a proletarian—when developed further theoretically, becomes the driving force of proletarian thought, giving rise to the question: How can we prevent labor power from being brought to market and sold like a commodity? — Of course, this impulse is influenced by the view—clearly articulated by Adam Smith and others—that the commodity one purchases contains stored labor power. It is an incredibly plausible idea, one that then leads to the conclusion: Well, what can be done about it at all? — When I buy any skirt, the labor expended by the tailor—or by whoever was involved in making the skirt—is contained within the skirt: stored labor. Therefore, the question is not really considered in this light: Can labor be separated from the commodity? — but rather, it is regarded as something—I would say—axiomatic, as something self-evident, that labor is inseparably linked to the commodity. One thus seeks a social structure designed to make this irrefutable fact—that labor remains linked to the product of labor—as harmless as possible for the worker. It was under this influence that Marxism actually arose, along with the belief that only by transferring the means of production to the community—that is, by making the community, in a certain sense, the owner of the means of production, of all machinery, land, and means of transportation—can one, in a certain sense, bring about just remuneration. The question never even arose: Can the commodity be made independent of remuneration?—but rather: How can fair remuneration be achieved if one must assume, as an axiom and a matter of course, that labor flows into the commodity?—That is the question, and everything else is connected to it. Even the materialist conception of economics and the extreme materialist conception of history are connected to it. As I have already explained to you, these consist in the fact that the modern proletarian thinks: Everything that operates within human culture—every intellectual product, all thought, all politics, everything at all that is not based on economic processes—is merely a superstructure, an ideology erected upon the foundation of what is economically produced. The economy is the real. The way in which a person is situated within the economic structure—that is the reality of human life. Whatever thoughts a person then has arise from their economic context. Such people, who are staunch Marxists—such as Franz Mehring, for example—write about Lessing—this is just one example—by examining: What was economic life like in the second half of the eighteenth century? How did people manufacture goods back then, and how did they make purchases? What was the relationship between commerce and the rest of humanity? How did people think as a result? How did Lessing come into being? — This particular personality, Lessing, with all his achievements, is explained in terms of the economic life of the second half of the eighteenth century! Kautsky and others even attempt to explain the emergence of Christianity from this perspective. They examine the economic conditions at the beginning of our era and conclude: Such-and-such production relations prevailed. This necessitated that, in a certain way, what they call a kind of communist thinking developed at that time, which was then christened in the name of Jesus Christ. The reality at the beginning of our era is, in truth, the economic order. Christianity is an ideology, a superstructure, as it were, a reflection of our economic order. There is nothing other than the economic order. Everything else is something floating above it—a mirage, a reflection, nothing real—at most something that—as I have already characterized in earlier lectures—feeds back into the economic conditions, but only to a small extent and indirectly through human processes of a different kind.

[ 23 ] These two things work together. The outrage over the fact that people must allow a part of themselves—their labor power—to be treated like a commodity: this works in tandem with the materialistic notion, taken to its extreme, that economic life is the only thing that is real.

[ 24 ] Of course, not everyone has embraced this view, although millions of people—especially the proletariat—are more or less dominated by these ideas. But among other people, a different practice has become customary with regard to these matters. What is common among the proletariat is not common among other people. When the proletariat have worked their eight or ten or sometimes more hours, they gather in the evening to discuss this issue and have it presented to them; women’s meetings also take place there. Each and every one of them concerns themselves with the nature of the social structure and reflects on it in their own way; they hear the findings of those who reflect on these matters, and so on. They are well-informed—in their own way, of course—but they are well-informed. — In the class above them, which is called the bourgeoisie—you’ll have to admit this—that is not the case, and after “work is done”—we say this in quotation marks—they occupy themselves with other things. At most, one deals with the proletariat—and then one believes one has already done a great deal—by having it acted out on stage, staged by some philistine posing as a poet. But as for thoughts on the economic order, one leaves those to the professors at the universities. They’re employed for that, after all; they’ll take care of it. One isn’t exactly a believer in authority, of course, but one swears by whatever these university professors have come up with on such matters; that must, of course, be correct, because they’re paid by the state and are, after all, the people who are there for that very purpose. Yes, but you see, a peculiar school of economic thought has gradually emerged among these professors. When they write books today, they call it the “historical school.” They discuss the mercantilists, the physiocrats, Adam Smith, socialism, anarchism, and so on, and then their own perspective; that is the “historical school.” They ask themselves: How is one supposed to arrive at the idea of how to go about it? — Truly, these people are helpless in this regard. They cannot bring themselves to engage in the kind of active thinking that strives to formulate ideas about how to bring about any kind of social structure. Such narrow-minded bourgeois as, say, Lujo Brentano, or Schmoller, or Roscher—it never occurs to them to set their thinking in motion; instead, they believe one must study phenomena, just as a natural scientist does. Such a person lets the phenomena unfold and studies them. He simply studies the historical development of humanity, and perhaps also the historical development of people’s ideas about their economy. One describes what is there. At most, one does as Lujo Brentano did: if one does not wish to observe it in one’s own country, one travels to a country with a representative economy—such as England—conducts research there, and then describes the relationships between employees and employers and the like. One learns to recognize that there are rich people there, how credit is obtained, how capital works, that there is poverty, that there are people without property, that some have nothing to eat—more or less due to this or that circumstance. But then people say: Yes, the task of science is not to show how things should develop, but only to point out how they do develop. But what, after all, becomes of such a science—which is, after all, concerned with practical life—if it actually only observes how things develop? It’s just like if I wanted to train a painter and told him: “Above all, try to visit all kinds of painters and observe how one does it well, another does it poorly, and so on—but don’t do anything yourself!” — Isn’t it true that in such a field the whole thing immediately becomes paradoxical? But it really is comparable to the other situation. For it is truly enough to drive one out of one’s skin—pardon the expression—when one really begins to consider what is being done today—one cannot say “achieved,” but rather “messed up”—when the scientific method attempts to apply itself to such matters as economics or the like. Because nothing comes of it at all, since, fundamentally speaking, the very premises are the most foolish. At most, isn’t it true that the so-called armchair socialists emerge from this crowd, who, based on their observation of what exists, come to the conclusion: Something must be done. — And then laws are enacted that are supposed to remedy this or that.

[ 25 ] But it is precisely this helplessness that has contributed to bringing about this situation. And it would be cowardly today not to point out that what today’s humanity—which, of course, does not worship authority—allows itself to be told in this area, and with which it declares itself satisfied, is in many ways to blame for the chaos into which we have fallen. These matters are so serious that we really must address them in their true form. This naturally raises the question: What is at work even more deeply in all these matters? Why has it all come to this? Why do such wavering ideas prevail in one of humanity’s most important fields, as I have explained to you?

[ 26 ] Let us consider such a notion—one that, while illusory, is extraordinarily effective—let us consider the Marxist notion, modified for my purposes, which is essentially the notion held by today’s professors: Only the economy is real; only the economic structure is real; everything else is ideological, a superstructure, a mirage that has developed around it. This is, in essence, something highly peculiar: the absolute disbelief in everything that human beings can produce as spiritual content from all the ideas that have developed since the dawn of the age of the conscious soul. What comes to the fore here is that people are increasingly driven toward what is outwardly known, what is outwardly tangible to the senses. They flee from the other, they avoid it. And out of this fleeing, out of this avoidance, not only social ideas but also social feelings and, ultimately, social events in our time have taken shape, and will continue to take shape unless the call for a truly spiritual-scientific understanding of this fact is heeded.

[ 27 ] What is the underlying reason for this? The underlying reason is that we have just entered the Age of the Consciousness Soul, that we have been in it since the fifteenth century, and that this development within the Age of the Conscious Soul—this drive within humanity following the awakening of the Conscious Soul—necessitates that human beings draw ever closer to a point in their development where they actually want to flee—out of “counter-instincts.” An essential aspect of this will be that modern human beings overcome this flight instinct; they want to flee from something into which they must nevertheless enter. I told you recently, when I last spoke here: Across the various national regions—the West, the central lands, and the East—the way in which a person approaches the Keeper of the Threshold when entering the spiritual world also varies. A moving toward the experience of such events as can be consciously undergone with the Keeper of the Threshold, but which must also be instinctively undergone to a greater or lesser extent by people, little by little, in the Age of the Conscious Soul — a being driven toward the experiences with the Keeper of the Threshold in a specific, albeit external, form—this is what acts upon modern human beings like an impulse, an instinct, or a drive, and what they flee from. They are afraid of arriving where they are actually meant to go.

[ 28 ] This is very much in keeping with the laws governing modern human development. Consider what I presented earlier as an external characteristic of modern striving. Human beings strive to recognize what they are as human beings, what they are worth as human beings, what power they possess, and what their dignity is as human beings. Human beings strive to look at themselves as human beings, to finally arrive at an image of their own being. One cannot arrive at an image of the human being if one wishes to remain within the sensory world, for the human being is not limited to the sensory world; the human being is not merely a sensory being. In the ages of instinctive development, when one does not inquire after an image of the human being, or after human dignity, or after human power, one can overlook the fact that, if one wishes to understand the human being, one must step out of the sensory world and look into the spiritual world; that in our age of consciousness, one must at least in some form become intellectually acquainted with the supersensory world. Yet then the very same force that the initiate must consciously overcome is at work unconsciously. This fear of the unknown—which must be confronted—still operates unconsciously, at least for the time being, in our contemporaries and in the people whose social ideas I have described to you. Fear, despondency, cowardice—these are the forces that dominate modern humanity. And when modern humanity says, “The economy is the tangible force that brings everything about”—this view has arisen precisely because people fear what is invisible, what is not tangible. They do not want to approach it; they want to avoid it; they distort it into an ideology, into a mirage. And people turn it into an ideology, into a mirage, precisely because they fear it. The modern social worldview is rooted in fear and anxiety with regard to the points I have described to you. No matter how courageous some people may appear outwardly in their pursuit of this modern social worldview, no matter how brave they may be on the one hand—they are afraid of the spiritual, which must confront them in whatever form they seek to come to know humanity; they cower in fear before it. A product of fear, a product of anxiety—that is what comes to light in modern socialist worldviews.

[ 29 ] Things must be viewed from this perspective. For modern man must come to know three things, because he is naturally led to these three things—distinguished as West, Center, and East—just as I described to you last time. But he is naturally led, in one form or another, to these three things. Even if only the initiate sees what is present in these three points, every modern person must gradually feel, sense, and take in—if not with his eyes, then at least with his intellect—what is there if he wishes to penetrate the economic structure. First, modern human beings must gain a clear sense—or at least a clear intellectual conception—of the forces in the universe that are the forces of decline, the destructive forces. Among the forces that people tend to pursue—and they are mistaken because they pursue them solely with the sympathies of affection—are precisely the constructive forces. People always want to build, build, build. But in the world there is not only evolution or construction; there is also involution or decay. We ourselves carry decay within us. Our developed nervous system and brain are in a state of constant decay. Decay is present in the world. Human beings must become acquainted with these forces of decay. Without prejudice and with an open mind, they must say to themselves: It is precisely on the path unfolding in the age in which the consciousness soul is to awaken fully that the forces of decay are most effective. These forces of decay sometimes concentrate and consolidate, and then something like what has happened over the past four and a half years unfolds. There, in a concentrated state, something is revealed to humanity that is otherwise always present. But this need not remain unconscious and instinctive; it must become fully known, especially in this age. The destructive forces, the forces of death, the paralyzing forces—human beings readily turn their faces away from them; but in doing so, they blind themselves and fail to cooperate in evolution because they flee from the destructive forces.

[ 30 ] The second thing with which human beings must come to terms—and which they, in turn, flee from—is that in this age of intellectual development, that is, the age of the conscious soul, human beings must inevitably come to seek, as it were, a new center of gravity for their being. Instinctive development has given them a center of gravity, even in their thoughts. They believe they stand firm on their views and ideas, which have come to them through blood, ancestry, or some other means. From now on, human beings can no longer do this. Human beings must detach themselves from what they have relied on, from what has developed instinctively. Human beings must, so to speak, stand at the edge of the abyss; they must feel the emptiness, the abyss, beneath them, because they must find the center of their being within themselves. Human beings shrink from this; they fear it.

[ 31 ] And the third point is this: As human beings develop toward the future, they must come to fully understand the impulse of self-interest and egoism. Our age is well-suited to making it clear to human beings how, when they give in to their nature, they are selfish beings. One must first explore all the sources of selfishness in human nature in order to overcome it. Love only emerges as the counterpart to self-love. One must cross the abyss of self-love if one wishes to come to know that which, as social warmth, is to permeate the social structure of the present and the future—especially if one wishes to know it not merely in theory but in full practice. — To approach this feeling, which the initiate clearly perceives in the Keeper of the Threshold upon entering the supersensible world, fills people once again with fear, as they realize: There is no other way to enter the age that must necessarily bring forth a social structure than through love that is not self-love—love for another human being, interest in other human beings. People experience this as something burning, as something that consumes them, as something that robs them of their very being by taking away their self-love, their right to self-love. And just as they flee from the supersensible—which they fear because it is unknown to them—so they flee from love because it is a burning fire to them. And just as people in this age—in which we must prepare for spiritual impulses—blindfold themselves and plug their ears to the truth of the supernatural, for example by pointing out in Marxism and in today’s proletarian-influenced thinking that one must rely on the tangible, precisely to distract from the supersensible—just as they pursue the opposite of what lies in the true trend of human development in this realm—so they do the same in the realm of love. This is even reflected in the “buzzwords.” Ideals are put forward that are the opposite of what actually lies at the heart of human development and must be strived for.

[ 32 ] When the first and most significant expression of the modern proletarian worldview, the “Communist Manifesto,” was published in 1848, Karl Marx’s “Communist Manifesto” already contained the words that are now found as a motto on almost every socialist book and pamphlet: “Workers of the world, unite!”

[ 33 ] If one has even the slightest sense of reality, one must arrive at a precise yet strangely paradoxical conclusion regarding these words. What does it mean: “Workers of the world, unite!”? It means: Work together, work with one another, be brothers to one another, be comrades! — That is love! — Let love work among you! — The tendency emerges tumultuously, but how?: — Proletarians, become aware that you are set apart from humanity; hate the others who are not proletarians; let hatred be the driving force of your union! — In a strange way, love and hate are intertwined; unity is sought out of hate, the very opposite of unity! It simply goes unnoticed because people today are far removed from linking their thoughts to reality. But it is the fear of love—which, though it strikes a chord, is at the same time avoided because people recoil from it, shuddering as if before a consuming fire—that leads them to single out precisely such words and make them the motto of the social movement.

[ 34 ] Thus, only a spiritual-scientific understanding of what truly is can shed light on what is at work in the present—and this is what one must know in order to truly and consciously engage with the present. It is not so easy to trace what is pulsing within humanity today. Spiritual science is necessary for this tracing. This should not be overlooked. And only those who take these matters seriously enough are truly aligned with this spiritual scientific movement.