The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Tenth Lecture

[ 1 ] One might say: A profound tragedy hangs over humanity today. This will become clear to you from the content of the various reflections we have been engaging in, especially in recent times. For the most part, these reflections have encompassed a wide range of perspectives relevant to the development of the social problem—the social enigma—of our time. And it is precisely in relation to this social enigma that we can say a certain grave tragedy hangs over humanity today. We can see, after all, how the social question—which has hitherto been regarded by many people, especially the so-called intelligentsia, more or less as a theoretical issue—is taking on a truly significant, practical form across vast swaths of the civilized world. And what is already tragic about this matter is that precisely where the social enigma comes to the surface of existence in practical life, people—one might say, of all professions and all social classes—are extraordinarily ill-prepared for the social situation of the present. When people now find themselves in a position where, in numerous places, they are compelled not only—as was previously the case—to give speeches on the social question, but also to pass judgment on this or that aspect of social organization—and it is easy to see from current circumstances that this must happen— yet people cannot find a way to establish a basis for such judgments. They cannot find a way to develop the proper way of thinking for such judgments, which have now become an urgent necessity. Let us consider that, over the course of the last few centuries, the leading figures of the bourgeoisie have in fact adopted, for their daily, weekly, and annual thinking, certain forms of thought which—even if this is not always apparent—stem from modern scientific thinking. So people who think at all today actually think—even when they are not thinking about scientific matters at all—in a scientific way; they think in the way that is appropriate in science, as it has taken shape today. And with this way of thinking, one simply does not make any real progress with regard to social matters either. But most people today are still unwilling to admit this to themselves. They all want to attribute the confusion that has arisen to all sorts of other things. They do not yet want to face the fact that they would actually have to say to themselves: With regard to a large part of the civilized world, we are facing social chaos; we must form a judgment, but we actually have no basis for this judgment in the habits of thought we have cultivated thus far.

[ 2 ] If one wishes to fully grasp the gravity and tragedy of the fact alluded to here, one must understand the following. One must take note of how, since the 16th and 17th centuries, the events that have now come to a head have been slowly brewing, and how, since the 16th and 17th centuries, the leading members of society, in essence, have done nothing to truly form a judgment about what is necessary. The economic systems that were shattered since the 16th and 17th centuries no longer exist today. In their place, one might say, a kind of economic chaos—or rather, economic anarchy—prevailed essentially until the middle of the 19th century. Since the mid-19th century, however, humanity has strived to organize social institutions in such a way as to emerge from this economic anarchy. But it has pursued this goal with inadequate means. Let us examine this situation just a little—but only a little—more closely.

[ 3 ] If we look back to the period before the 16th or 17th century, we see that, economically speaking, humanity was organized into more or less fixed professional associations, the inner workings of which are still largely unknown to people today, but which were structured and arranged in such a way that, in a certain sense, they were able to offer a kind of fulfillment for the lives of people at that time. It was above all within these professional organizations—which existed as guilds and the like—that the individual had the opportunity to be fully engaged with his or her professional organization. One might say that the individual was engaged with all his or her aspirations. Those who belonged to a professional organization as apprentices could hope to one day become journeymen, or even masters. They could hope to climb the social ladder. And in another respect as well—with regard to the regulation of production and consumption—these organizations were more or less useful under certain historical conditions in the course of human development.

[ 4 ] Now the modern era dawned. We know from our spiritual scientific observations what the inner nature of this modern era actually is. Human beings want to consciously place themselves at the pinnacle of their own personality. They want to unfold the soul of consciousness. This is, after all—even if it is masked by various circumstances—the inner impulse of that which is struggling and developing in the modern era. The old professional guilds, which had [arisen] out of entirely different human aspirations, were simply no longer suited to this striving for the development of the personal, the individual element in human beings. Thus we see how, from the 16th and 17th centuries onward, a certain individualism developed even in the realm of economic life, and how the old guilds, the old social communities, were shattered. We observe certain transitional phenomena during this process of disintegration; we see how, particularly in the 15th and 16th centuries, what might be called the monopolization of various branches of production temporarily took shape. But we then see how, precisely under the influence of economic individualism, a kind of anti-monopoly movement developed, which essentially lasted well into the mid-19th century and which then led to the newer capitalist mode of production. This newer capitalist mode of production takes individualism into account in a certain way. The old guilds were broken up; economic initiative passed to individuals—to the capitalists, who became entrepreneurs—and it depended on their willingness to take risks whether economic life flourished or not. Alongside this, modern technology developed, which completely transformed the entire economic landscape and, in fact, was what actually created the modern proletarian class. And the result was that, on the one hand, capitalism developed, and on the other, the proletariat; and that, due to a hand-to-mouth existence and the inattention and disinterest of the ruling class in economic life, a complete lack of understanding eventually arose between the ruling capitalists and their followers and the working proletarian population. The vast disparities that exist across the globe—particularly with regard to the social condition of humanity—which we have examined—are overlooked by a large portion of precisely those who today seek to tinker with the social problem in one way or another. One must bear in mind that the Western European states, along with their American allies, have in recent times turned wholeheartedly toward what might be called bourgeois democracy. This bourgeois democracy is based on certain ideals of freedom and equality, which it then applies to economic life as well. But this bourgeois democracy has, to a certain extent, remained backward—backward insofar as it applies the principles, the tenets, and, so to speak, the program points of the bourgeoisie as they emerged before the actual modern age of machinery. Thus we see that in the Western countries this bourgeois democracy is developing, taking on a corporate form and a certain social structure, but is gradually being permeated by what is a product of the modern machine age—it is being permeated by the proletariat. At present, these Western states do not yet deal with the proletarian population in a radical manner. We then see how, in Central Europe, the developments of recent times have shown in a frighteningly clear way where the path is actually leading. What, then, was the fundamental nature of these Central European states? Indeed, the fundamental nature of these Central European states was that their state structures were of ancient origin. The concepts according to which the state structures in Central Europe—and even as far as Russia—were formed were, at their core, time-honored traditions. They had been preserved—whether under a monarchy or not, which is of secondary importance here—in such a way that these entities were developed into so-called modern state structures. These modern state structures of Central Europe, extending all the way to Russia, are in fact nothing more than remnants of medieval ways of thinking and feeling. They are also structured in such a way that their framework corresponds to that of the Middle Ages. But life does not conform to such concepts. In the territories where such entities have developed, the economy—the economic body—arose out of a necessity far stronger than that which had been transplanted from the Middle Ages. And this economic body has its own laws; it demands its own laws.

[ 5 ] Now came the thoroughly pathological situation in which the demands of modern economic life were directed at the old state structures, and it was believed that this economic life could be integrated into those old state structures. In a certain sense, what was—or is—an entirely new element, namely economic life, was to be incorporated into the body of the state, which had grown out of entirely different conditions. That is when the modern catastrophe occurred—this terrible catastrophe of recent years. And within this catastrophe it became apparent—for what I am about to say is essential to understanding the course of this catastrophe—that it is impossible to reconcile modern economic life with the old concepts of the state. This has now become evident, as this catastrophe has taken on the character of a crisis in recent months, as evidenced by the fact that these Central European state structures have now been swept away. The state structures are gone, as is the social economic body, and as things progress—as any discerning person can already see today—there can no longer be any coupling of the new economic demands with the old state structures, for the reason that these old state structures, instead of modernizing themselves in the spirit of modern life, have allowed themselves to be swept away.

[ 6 ] We are faced with a peculiar situation. In the Western nations, the movement that is bound to sweep over all of modern humanity has been temporarily halted. It can only be held back as long as the old bourgeois-democratic impulses—which have not yet come to terms with modern economic life—remain strong enough to suppress proletarian life. The moment this proletarian life can no longer be suppressed in the Western states, the short-sighted people of those Western states will also come to realize that they are, in fact, gambling with life today. People simply never want to hear this told to them at the right time. For the Central and Eastern European states, however, the spark has already fallen into the powder keg. It is nothing but an anachronism when, out of sheer intellectual laziness, people still speak of concepts that no longer exist, that are no longer there. Instead of coming to the realization that we truly must turn to new concepts, certain circles still speak of Russia, of Germany, and even of Austria—a country that no longer exists even in a physical sense. Some people still speak this way, even though it is already abundantly clear in these regions that what has been handed down from time immemorial must simply be abandoned, even in our ways of thinking. People find this so difficult to grasp—not merely that they should refrain from passing arbitrary judgments on what immediately presents itself to them—for such judgments will never be accurate—but that they must relearn how to think. People today find this quite difficult to grasp.

[ 7 ] Well, this refusal to understand the necessity of rethinking is based mainly on the fact that people are so firmly convinced that the way of thinking—as it has developed over the last few centuries and as it is so exceptionally well suited to the natural sciences—is absolutely unsuitable for solving social problems. People do not want to understand this. They do not want to acknowledge that they have developed a certain way of thinking, and that the outside world has developed a certain way of life that demands a way of thinking entirely different from the one they themselves have developed. This is what people find so difficult to accept, even though the facts at hand speak with extraordinary clarity.

[ 8 ] I would like to point out a fact that would be highly instructive in the truest sense of the word if it were properly taken into account. Those who took an unbiased interest in the development of modern life may have experienced, in a certain sense, a sort of—one might say—theoretical surprise in the early 1890s, when German social democracy—which had always been the most progressive wing of social democracy—had shifted from its earlier ideal to the ideal of the so-called “Erfurt Program” —drafted in the early 1890s at the Erfurt Party Congress. In these earlier ideals—if I may use the term simply for certain propagandistic purposes—there still lives, one might say, a remnant of non-scientific thinking. With the Erfurt Program, the modern labor movement has completely succumbed to a superstitious belief in scientific thinking. From that point on, the aim has been to resolve the entire social question within the proletariat exclusively through thinking grounded in the natural sciences. One could say: Everything that constituted the social-democratic ideals of the working class prior to the Erfurt Program converged in two program points, in two ideals. These two points were, first, the abolition of the system of wage labor, and second, the elimination of all sociopolitical inequality. Thus, underlying these two program points—I would say—was an even more general way of thinking, a way of thinking that stems from humanity’s judgments, that was emotional and instinctive and has become conscious over the last few centuries, and that, fundamentally, regards the human being as the center of social endeavor. So the aim is to abolish wage labor, the system of wage labor. This means that the goal is to provide human beings with a dignified existence—something that was always unclear in people’s minds, but which we are now clearly articulating through spiritual science—by no longer equating a person’s labor with a commodity sold on the market, and by no longer treating labor power as a commodity. The aim is to abolish the system of wage labor and to establish a different system that no longer compels people to sell their personal labor. This, then, is something that still takes into account what is universally human. The same applies to the elimination of social and political inequality.

[ 9 ] This fundamental idea of the socialist ideal of earlier times was abandoned at the beginning of the 1890s with the so-called Erfurt Program. And from then on, two other points became the central objectives. These two other points are, first, the transformation of capitalist private ownership of the means of production into social ownership—that is, the socialization of the means of production. Machinery, land, and so on are to be transferred from private ownership to social ownership. That was the first point. The second point was the transformation of commodity production into socialist production, carried out by and for the body of society. These two program points, in the mode of thought that prevails within them, are entirely adapted to the purely scientific thinking of modern times. There is no longer any talk of humans having to acquire or conquer anything. There is no talk of abolishing the system of wage labor. There is no mention of any elimination of social or political inequality; rather, there is talk of an external process entirely independent of human agency that is to take place—of something that is to unfold through the course of cause and effect, just as natural phenomena themselves, in their course, are governed by cause and effect. Regardless of whatever transformation human beings may undergo as a result, private ownership of the means of production is simply to be transformed into communal ownership of the means of production. And the economic order is no longer to be that of commodity production, but rather socialist production: the community itself is to produce, and what is produced is also to be available to the community. Commodity production—that is, production that the individual promotes through his own private initiative and which is then supplied to the market to be purchased there by others—differs from socialist production in that socialist production, so to speak, extends the principle of self-production—where the person who produces something also consumes it himself—to the entire community. Commodity production is based on the individual. One individual produces something and puts it on the market; another individual takes it off the market by purchasing it. Socialist production, in turn, returns to primitive production, where the individual produces what he consumes himself—at least people imagine that this once existed—but now it is not the individual who is to do this, but the community. The market ceases to exist; some community produces whatever needs to be produced. What is produced does not become a commodity, but is distributed among those who belong to the community; those who produce it are also the ones who consume it.

[ 10 ] The point here, then, is to apply purely scientific concepts to the social organism. People today are very reluctant to engage with such differences—such as the one evident between the socialist program before the Erfurt Party Congress and the socialist program after the Erfurt Party Congress—because people today do not like to think at all, even though they pride themselves so immensely on their thinking.

[ 11 ] But now another problem arises. We can study this problem particularly well when we consider—I would say—one of the classical writers who engaged with the social enigma when it was still a more theoretical question, for example, Karl Kautsky. In one of his writings, Kautsky—in an attempt to demonstrate that the capitalist economic order must give way to the socialist one—states that during this transition, commodity production as such must cease and be replaced by self-consumption, so that the consumer is simultaneously the producer—that is, a community. But at the same time, he raises the question: What could this community be? And there he gives the answer: It can, of course, only be the modern state. — That is to say, he gives the answer that he certainly should not have given. He failed to realize—and people of his ilk still fail to realize to this day—that the state they call the modern state was by no means a modern entity. Those states that have been swept away in Central and Eastern Europe were not modern entities; rather, they had existed since time immemorial under conditions entirely different from those found in modern economic life, and there was simply no connection to be seen—in the way these people imagined it—between modern economic life and these state structures. That is why we see that these state structures have been swept away. What remains of them are, in fact, ghosts haunting people’s minds, and even that will eventually be swept away. Nothing will remain that is not a question in all areas of practical life; only questions will remain. And to answer these questions—which are not theoretical but are facts—we will need a thoroughly new way of thinking. This new way of thinking prevails—as I have shown you in our reflections over the past few weeks—this newer way of thinking prevails in the realization that one must study the fundamental laws of human organization in the same way that one studies, from a spiritual-scientific perspective, the fundamental laws of the individual human organism.

[ 12 ] When we study the fundamental laws of the individual human organism, as you know, we arrive at the triad of the sensory-nervous system, the rhythmic system, and the metabolic system. And only by understanding the interplay of these three systems within the organism can one understand what a human being is in time. This corresponds, in the realm of external life, to an understanding of the three members of the social organism, which must be divided into a spiritual system, an economic system, and—if we may put it that way—a legal system, which includes only the external legal system, the political legal system, but excludes private law and criminal law.

[ 13 ] Just as modern natural science wants nothing to do with this threefold division of the human being and treats everything within the human being as if it were all the same, so modern social thought wants nothing to do with this threefold division of the social body. And because it refuses to acknowledge this threefold structure of the social body, it stands so helpless—and will continue to stand helpless—as long as it refuses to acknowledge what must be done in the face of the great practical demands that every day actually brings. A regeneration of thought is simply necessary. It is necessary to realize that with modern scientific concepts—which render great service in certain fields—one cannot truly take a single step forward, particularly in the realm of social life.

[ 14 ] And so we see some very strange phenomena occurring. One could say that it is, in fact, no longer a strange phenomenon at all that people are beginning to think more or less socially, and it was not a strange phenomenon even before this terrible catastrophe of recent years—which, in part, reveals the social enigma in its primordial form—occurred. But we then notice—precisely when we examine the leading economists in their views and their central ideas—just how at a loss these people actually are in the face of these phenomena. For example, I would like to read you a definition given by an economist respected in certain circles—namely Jaffe—of what he conceives as the desirable ideal state of a social organism. Jaffe describes—in a manner that is entirely consistent with the concepts that modern humanity has developed in this field—what he feels compelled to describe, and then summarizes what he believes the social condition must be like in order to meet the demands of modern humanity, as well as the demands of modern industrial and other developments. Consider this—I would say—fundamentally sound definition, which truly is not one of the least significant products of modern economic thought. So I will read very slowly what Jaffe describes as the ideal state for the social organism that is to come. It is “that state of economic organization in which all members of the people are fused into an organic unity, each assigned to his or her place as a serving member of a community that ultimately serves the individual himself or herself—a community that not only ensures a dignified existence for the individual externally but also bestows ultimate dignity upon his or her work, because it does not pursue individual ends but is service to the common good.”

[ 15 ] I believe that a large proportion of those who develop their thinking in a manner consistent with contemporary ways of thinking will find this definition extraordinarily apt and insightful, so much so that they will even say it is everything that could possibly be desirable. One should strive for a state of economic organization in which every individual is properly integrated, placed in his or her rightful place, and performs work that not only ensures a dignified existence but also serves the community by enabling the individual, through this work, to render the corresponding service to society. Having arrived at such a definition will give some who today believe they are capable of thinking correctly the impression: “My goodness, how clever I am, for I have finally figured out how it must be, how things actually ought to be!” — And yet: “Poverty stems from pauvrete!” That, too, is a definition of work, and those definitions do not differ in the least from the definition that poverty stems from pauvrete. For this definition is such that it actually fits just as well with the current social organization we have—or at least had until the war—or with the one that individual states, such as Germany, had during the war. But one could also say: Not a single state today fits this definition. Such a definition is the very epitome of the most abstract non-statement. And so we see today that people come up with clever ideas about systems that, in the end, do not even come close to reality, despite what they present as their clever definitions. Take, for example, this definition by Jaffe. He seeks to describe an ideal economic state of the future. This is supposed to be a state of economic organization in which all members of the people have grown together into an organic unity. This is, in fact, already the case as soon as any state—even the worst one—exists! All members of the people are, after all, somehow fused into an organic unity. If a person has spread leprosy throughout all his limbs, then all those limbs are also afflicted with leprosy—they are fused into an organic unity! You can apply exactly the same definition to a leprous body and a healthy body, provided you keep that definition sufficiently general. As long as you stick to theory, no one notices. But when the situation is as it is now—that the disease has broken out and must be cured—the concepts people hold and the judgment they exercise prove to be utterly unsuitable.

[ 16 ] He goes on to say, “...where everyone is assigned their place as a serving member of a community...” Well, within the German Empire, for example—with the exception of the very few people who wanted absolutely nothing to do with the state—that was actually the case for most people: everyone is some kind of serving member of the whole, isn’t it? At the very least, they cast a ballot. “A serving member of a community that ultimately serves him,” is also true—true even for the worst form of government. “Which not only secures his existence externally”—here something does come to the fore a little, but it remains a cliché, an afterthought, because it is said amidst the rest of the rhetoric. As for “but also bestows ultimate dignity upon his work,” it depends on what one understands by this dignity. “Because it does not pursue individual ends, but is service to the common good”—that can also be the case even in the worst state!

[ 17 ] A clever definition by a renowned professor of economics is nothing other than: Poverty stems from “pauvrete.” — A large part of humanity today suffers in practice from this quality of insubstantial abstractness. People are barely beginning to realize what reality lies behind the phenomena. Just consider how far people are from even practically conceiving of something like the threefold social order, which we present here as the fundamental essence! People today still imagine they could find some formula through which—let’s say, for example—they could be “socialized” (a term that has now become a buzzword). Yes, even if the comparison is a bit of a stretch, this is not much better than if someone were to discover a science through which digestion could be achieved. The human organism must digest in its real life. To do so, it must be tripartite in its real life; then, through the proper interaction of the three members, it will sustain its life functions in reality accordingly. If you truly structure the community according to the triad, then you will not need a formula for socialization; then that which wishes to be socialized will socialize itself.

[ 18 ] Just consider for a moment how infinitely complex the processes taking place within the human body are. Just imagine if you had to figure out everything that happens in the two hours after your lunch! You’ve eaten, and what you’ve eaten is being digested: that’s an incredibly complex process, broken down into countless details. Just imagine having to think all that through: of course, you could never possibly think it all through! And if everyone’s digestion depended on thinking it through, then you couldn’t live a single day; not a single day could you live. Today, committees here and there want to get together to find ways to organize society. But what constitutes humanity’s public life is also a thoroughly complex process that cannot be grasped in its details any more than, for example, the digestive process, the thought process itself, or the respiratory process can be grasped in their details. But when one has these threefold impulses and allows them to work together, then the right thing happens. Take an example. Today, one can hardly read a socialist or social writer without being amazed by their extraordinarily rich knowledge. Not so much the bourgeois writers, but especially the socialist writers have amassed a vast amount of all kinds of statistical and other historical material, right up to the present day, in order to study the necessary course of human development up to the present. From what has developed, they now seek to discern the necessities of, let’s say, how to socialize society. But this process, which takes place within human society, is a peculiar one. They grab hold of a phenomenon at one end, and it immediately slips away from them at the other end! If they then attempt to socialize things as they deem necessary—by grasping one end—the whole of history slips away from them on the other side.

[ 19 ] Let’s take a closer look at this, for example. Let’s consider just this one fact: In 1910, an American factory that manufactured railroad tracks could produce as many tracks in two and a half days as had been produced in an entire week just ten years earlier. But the workers were, after all, employed for the entire week! Now, to gain some perspective on the relationship between the entrepreneur and the worker, one might say: These workers produce twice as much in a week as was produced in 1900. Of course, every worker produces twice as much for the market! This is evident in various aspects of the workers’ situation. What the worker accomplishes is, of course, reflected in the proletarian question. The worker, of course, knows full well that the entrepreneur earns twice as much—more than twice as much—and this gives rise to factors that lead the worker to demand twice as much from the entrepreneur. But if one now theorizes and says: Well, the worker could be paid more—even if perhaps not twice as much—because the entrepreneur naturally earns so much more—then one has only grasped one end of the matter. At the other end, it slips out of one’s grasp again, because the rails are becoming so much cheaper. And this decrease in the cost of the rails, in turn, manifests itself in other aspects of social life and corrects what appears, on the one hand, to be a proletarian issue. One might say: The relationships within the social organism are so complex that, the moment one tackles any issue from a single perspective, other perspectives immediately paralyze what one has to say.

[ 20 ] Take another example. Take the German economy. As I have explained to you in earlier discussions, machines, in a sense, relieve people of the need to perform manual labor. One can say specifically of the German economy that in recent decades—during which it has experienced a tremendous upswing—even if one disregards the output of locomotives, machines have produced as much as seventy or eighty million people, that is, more than the population of Germany. Of Germany’s population, in turn, only a portion are workers, from which it follows that in Germany’s modern economy in the years leading up to the war, one worker produced what four to five workers had produced before the introduction of machinery. Just imagine what a transformation this represents for everyday life! But what is happening here occurs in so many areas of life that, if you try to implement social reforms from one perspective, you end up causing the worst possible consequences from other perspectives. For social life is just as complex as the life of any organic being. And the task cannot be to reduce things to some formula dictating how they must happen, but rather to give the social organism the structure through which it functions on its own and puts things in order, just as the human organism regulates its own functions. That is the only way forward.

[ 21 ] So you see, the matter must be approached from an entirely different angle. It must be approached in a way that truly penetrates the real nature of the social organism. That is what is more important than all the talk of community and community-building. It will be an exceptionally good lesson for the countries of Central and Eastern Europe when they soon realize that they can no longer speak of the nationalization of the means of production in the conventional sense. For the time being, people are still talking about these things according to old ways of thinking and do not consider that the states are no longer there, that they are gone, and that something entirely new—which does not yet exist—must be created in their place. At first, people will elect those who still have the old concepts in their minds. They will do something based on these old concepts, but it will be as far from being human as the homunculus in Wagner’s retort. Then people will see that this won’t work and will have to learn through practical experience that all the confused concepts that have come to the surface in recent decades are indeed impossible in the face of the practical situations humanity faces today.

[ 22 ] This will make you realize that, above all, the task is first to examine reality in such a way as to determine, based on that reality: what form can these social demands actually take in the present? There is one point I have emphasized here time and again. No matter what the proletarians may say today, what a person says today is, for the most part, irrelevant, because what they say exists in their conscious mind, whereas what they demand—what truly matters to them—is contained in their subconscious. Today, one hardly gets to know people at all through what they say. One gets to know them much better through what dawns from their subconscious—through the way people speak—than through the content of what they say. For the content of what they say is, for the most part, merely the perpetuated content of a dying or already dead era. What lies in the depths of people’s souls—that is what is new.

[ 23 ] And so we see that the proletarian population is scattering categorical terms everywhere—words that have been drummed into them by Marxism or other sources. And in truth, among these impulses—what is not included among these impulses!—the foremost is the impulse to ensure that human labor power is no longer a commodity. If one asks the modern proletarian today, “What do you actually want?”—he answers, “I want the nationalization or socialization of the means of production; I want socialization, and so on.” — If, among the various points—all of which can, of course, be understood in their true form—he were to place particular emphasis on the point: “I want my labor power to cease being a commodity and to become something entirely different”—then he would be speaking the truth.

[ 24 ] Thus, in this modern way of thinking, the very, very oldest elements are intermingled with what is unconsciously contained in the human soul as the newest, the most modern demand. And people, in turn, are not aware of this. That is why we see a demand emerging that has, in fact, already become irrelevant for a large part of the educated world: the demand to replace private entrepreneurs with the old communities. It is actually grotesque for those states that have disappeared that the state should now become the entrepreneur in place of private entrepreneurs. Something that no longer exists at all is supposed to become the entrepreneur! Yet people continue to dither over this issue. This clearly shows just how this modern way of thinking and feeling has led to a dead end. And it is precisely this question—to what extent the state or any existing community can or cannot directly take the place of private enterprise—that we will discuss in greater detail tomorrow.