The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eleventh Lecture

[ 1 ] Socialism holds that what it calls the socialist economic order is a direct, necessary, and logical continuation of what has gradually emerged in the economic order over the course of the last few centuries as part of human development. In a sense, those who today adhere to the proletarian-socialist view of life believe that the capitalist economic system must gradually transition on its own into the socialist economic system, for the simple reason that the socialist economic system is, in a sense, already embedded within what has emerged over the past few centuries through capitalism. Some say, in order to characterize this line of thought precisely, as they believe: Every human order, every way of life, once it has, so to speak, reached the culmination, the pinnacle of its development, already contains the seed of what is to follow.

[ 2 ] Well, viewed from the outside—or, I might say, from a statistical perspective—and socialist scholars are, after all, particularly fond of statistics—what I have just described as a socialist order has a great deal going for it. Modern technology has, in certain areas—and we can briefly characterize the process as follows—transformed what used to be a manageable enterprise under the care of the individual into a large-scale enterprise. One need only look at the modern iron industry as a prime example, and one will find that this modern iron industry has had to bring together a vast number of operations, all of which ultimately culminate in the creation of certain products—products that, however, can only be created through the interplay of complex processes. In order to operate such giant enterprises as modern economic life has brought into being, vast amounts of capital are required—accumulations of capital that would have made the economic life of earlier times seem laughable by comparison. Yet it is precisely these accumulations of capital that provide the individual owner or a group of owners of such giant enterprises with the means to employ a large workforce. Because these enterprises have expanded to enormous proportions, a large workforce has been brought together within them. Furthermore, economic conditions have meant that such giant enterprises cannot operate in isolation, as they would not be able to withstand the competition; they have, in a sense, joined forces, thereby creating even larger entities comprising a cohesive social group of entrepreneurs and workers. Thus, modern socialist thought holds that economic life itself has, in a certain sense, led to socialization, and that the accompanying phenomena of this socialization must necessarily continue this entire process.

[ 3 ] The next step would be that it would no longer be the individual entrepreneur who brings together a large-scale cooperative, but rather that the public entities—the state, municipalities, and cooperatives—would become the entrepreneurs themselves, so that, in a sense, the process of socialization, which has already begun through modern technical and economic life, would simply continue in an orderly manner.

[ 4 ] Now, essentially, the idea I have just expressed exerts an immense suggestive power on the modern proletariat. Anyone who truly wishes to grasp the situation in its entirety must also consider this modern proletariat in terms of its state of mind. And there it becomes truly apparent that such ideas exert an extraordinarily strong suggestive power over the modern proletariat. This suggestive power is based on the fact that, in practice, the modern worker feels at the mercy of entrepreneurship, and that he believes he can escape this predicament only by taking on, for himself, the very tasks that the entrepreneur performs.

[ 5 ] It is in the nature of modern humanity—and this is brought about by a wide variety of reasons—to readily indulge in one-sided thinking. A remedy for many situations will come only by abandoning this tendency to indulge in one-sided thinking and by learning to view things from all angles. Thus, viewing the development of modern capitalist-technological economic life—with its culmination in socialization—means nothing other than applying modern, scientifically sound forms of thought to economic life. I explained this fact to you yesterday from a different perspective.

[ 6 ] However, if one considers the matter purely from a scientific perspective—as the scientific way of thinking has come to be in recent times—then certain impulses are necessarily left out of such an approach. Of course, when one examines such matters, one must say many things that, if misunderstood, are easily open to criticism. But you know which methods are necessary, particularly in the study of the humanities, and will therefore be convinced that what follows is merely an illumination from one perspective—but an illumination from a perspective that is needed.

[ 7 ] The purely scientific approach, which views phenomena solely in terms of the law of cause and effect, is essentially applicable to both healthy and diseased organisms. You can view the healthy organism physiologically, and if you wish to focus on what modern natural science particularly favors, you will be able to observe the relationship between cause and effect everywhere. However, if you remain within this abstraction—the relationship between cause and effect—you can just as easily view the diseased organism pathologically. Even in the diseased organism, everything is interconnected through cause and effect. And if one takes as a basis—one-sidedly and abstractly—a sequence of events oriented solely toward cause and effect, then the impulse—which must be described as a healthy impulse on the one hand and a diseased impulse on the other—necessarily remains outside the scope of consideration. It falls outside the framework of this approach. This is not particularly problematic for the scientific approach with regard to the tasks that the natural sciences have primarily sought to address in recent times. However, it becomes problematic when one attempts to apply the same mode of thinking to social processes, for there the distinction between what is healthy and what is diseased cannot simply be excluded from the process of human development. That cannot be done. And this is what must be emphasized first and foremost: that, just as people today are confronted with social questions that have become so pressing due to reality, they are utterly lacking the ability to judge whether something is a healthy or unhealthy process, whether something needs to be fostered or healed. That is why, one might say, such a tragedy hangs over modern humanity—because precisely this distinction, which I have just roughly characterized, is lacking.

[ 8 ] When one considers the modern development of humanity over the past three or four centuries—and, in particular, traces how what is called capitalism has developed—one must also take into account a perspective other than that of the consolidation of businesses into large enterprises and the like. For example, one must ask the fundamental question: How does the capitalist mode of production actually fit into the overall social process of humanity? One can really only form a judgment on this by comparing the modern capitalist mode of production—from a certain perspective—with the mode of production of the artisan of the past. The artisan of old manufactured his products, delivered them to the consumer, and through the payment for his products was enabled to make a living. If one traces the life of such an artisan—or, indeed, the economic life of earlier centuries, specifically up to around the year 1300—one finds that people were paid or exchanged goods for what they produced. In exchange for what they produced, they obtained what was necessary for their livelihood. In a certain sense, this was a limited economy, but it was an economy that was closely tied to the individual. All production was also closely tied to personal skill, personal zeal, and the honor that one saw in making a product as good as possible, and so on. Significant moral impulses were linked to the economic order during the era of simple artisan life.

[ 9 ] All of this has changed over the course of the last three to four centuries. After a transitional period from the 15th century through roughly the 16th and 17th centuries, things have changed in the last three to four centuries. For it was during these last three to four centuries that what can truly be called the capitalist mode of production first began to develop in earnest. If one now examines what really underlies the social question—rather than relying on what people believe—the following characteristic must be taken into account: The essential goal for the capitalist—insofar as he is a member of the capitalist economic order—is not to secure his livelihood, as the artisan does, but to ensure that capital grows and multiplies. That by which capital grows is profit. Thus, it is not working to secure one’s livelihood, but working toward profit—that is the defining characteristic of the capitalist economic order. As a result, however, capital as such becomes highly autonomous. After all, if a certain mass of capital increases over the years through the production process—if it grows—and if that is precisely the purpose of capital accumulation, then what is actually the main element in the economic process becomes detached from all personal considerations. And this is the perspective that must be taken into account above all else in the proper assessment of the modern social question: this detachment of the economic process from the personal.

[ 10 ] Unfortunately, very few people in today’s educated classes are truly inclined to concern themselves with these matters; for if they were to do so, they would see how modern man is, in a sense, cut off from everything that actually constitutes the economic process. I ask you: To what extent, outside of very narrowly defined circles, is there joy today in the products one creates? What was pervasive in the economic order of earlier eras—that people, for example, took great joy in every key they produced and staked their honor on making it as well as possible—is a thing of the past. People are, so to speak, cut off from the economic process as such. At most, in the artistic realm and in fields related to it, we still find what used to permeate craftsmanship as a profound moral element. One cannot even say that, in intellectual life, the connection between people and their achievements has been maintained. Just look at all the professors working in various disciplines—are these people truly, on a human level, connected to what they produce?

[ 11 ] But in a broader sense, this is already connected to the fundamental nature of the capitalist economic system, which, after all, permeates everything. You can see this from yesterday’s concluding remarks. It follows from this fundamental character of the capitalist economic order that human beings are, in a sense, detached in their personal aspirations from the economic process, which is becoming increasingly objective. The consequence of this is far-reaching and colors the entire socialist conception of today. Namely, the belief arises that this unhealthy separation of human production from the individual himself and from what interests him must, in fact, be enshrined in a new economic order. Who today even thinks of seeking to reestablish a bond between the individual and his creations? On the contrary, the aim is to shift the economic process as far outward as possible, separating it from the individual. And the consequence of this would be that people would have to seek fulfillment in other areas for what is actually connected to their personality and to all the interests of their being. This is how this prejudice affects what are today called socialist ideals. Let us consider what the socialist ideal consists of for broad circles today.

[ 12 ] Here we have four points that allow us to summarize everything that, in a sense, constitutes the socialist ideal with regard to the structure of the human social organism. First, this socialist ideal strives for all means of production to become the property of the community—whether that community is the state, the municipality, or cooperatives—and, in other words, for all private ownership of the means of production to be abolished, so that the means of production become common property and all enterprises must therefore be managed by the community.

[ 13 ] The second aspect of the socialist ideal is that production should be regulated according to need—that is, that production should not be left to the free play of supply and demand; that when a particular item is in demand here or there, a new branch of production for that item should not simply be established, but rather that the state, or “local authorities or cooperatives,” should determine: ‘This is what people need,’ so the community establishes a production facility for that item, which is needed there. A third element is the democratic regulation of working conditions and wages, and a fourth is that all surplus value accrues to the community. With this, we have outlined the four main components of the socialist ideal. I repeat: All production facilities are to become the property of the community; production is to be regulated according to need; working and wage conditions are to be regulated democratically; and all surplus value—that is, all profit—is to be turned over to the community.

[ 14 ] These four points do, in fact, represent what millions and millions of people today aspire to. And in light of this, there is an absolute necessity to ask: How is it possible to make people understand that these four so-called ideals are absolutely impossible within a real human community?

[ 15 ] Isn’t it true that if people thirty years ago had shown as much zeal for social issues as individual people are now inevitably showing in those countries where the old governments have been overthrown—in the countries where the old governments have not been overthrown, no interest is yet being shown— one could even say that if people back then had shown even a fraction of the interest in social issues that they show today, things would have turned out well, and everything would have been different. But where people aren’t yet salivating over the prospect, it’s still not possible today to arouse a truly profound interest in social issues. What the leading, so-called intelligent bourgeoisie has failed to do in this regard over the past two to three decades is truly outrageous. And it is poised to continue failing to address these very issues, only in a different sphere. What is needed above all else today is for people to come to understand that just as the individual organism must be understood from a spiritual-scientific perspective, so too must the social organism be understood from a spiritual-scientific perspective. We must finally move beyond meaningless abstractions in this field. Here we can already draw upon deeper human interests and deeper human impulses that are currently influencing human development in this epoch of humanity.

[ 16 ] Humanity’s current lethargy is immense, and it is necessary for people to awaken and move in a certain direction. How often does one hear this strange judgment today, even in circles where spiritual science is taken into account at all: that spiritual science is not necessary for those who believe and are Christians in the good old sense; and, moreover, that faith is simple and spiritual science is complicated, and therefore it is hard to see why one should exchange the complicated for the simple. But this complacent clinging to the simple, this reckless mere belief, this complacent insistence—“We need not think about it, we need not search for truth; faith provides it for us”—is, in the deepest sense of the word, to blame for the catastrophic events in which we live. And it must be emphasized again and again that this is to blame. Woe betide us if there are not enough people in the world who have the heart and mind for a complete devotion to serious, intellectually demanding thinking and the search for truths! For the times are past when one merely had to believe in the spiritual world, when one could laze about here in physical existence and believe that one would be redeemed by powers one did not concern oneself with, and that these powers, for their part, would contribute their share to the corresponding redemption. What matters for the progress of humanity is not merely that a person believes in God and the gods, but that he allows God and the gods to be active within his own being, that he allows the forces of the spiritual world to flow into what he himself does—into his most everyday activities. What we do from morning to night must be done in such a way that divine-spiritual power is present in our actions. It will be present in our actions only if it is, first and foremost, present in our thinking. To take God into ourselves as an active presence—not merely as an object of faith—that is the task of modern humanity. Not merely to think about God, but to think in such a way that God lives within our thoughts—that is what matters. If one devotes oneself to such an ideal, one will naturally develop the necessary interest in all those things for which, unfortunately, the vast majority of modern humanity has shown no interest in recent decades.

[ 17 ] What matters is that we find a way to make people understand that a complete shift in our entire way of thinking is necessary. It is high time; for since the so-called intellectuals have failed to work toward this end, humanity’s most savage instincts are now awakening throughout almost the entire civilized world—or at least across a large part of it. Do you believe that once these instincts of humanity have reached a certain culmination, a certain peak, they will then be easy to quell? A long, long time will pass before they consume themselves again. Only up to a certain point do teaching and example serve to soothe and restrain the instincts of humanity. The animal in humanity strives toward the surface because the nobler aspects of human nature have been neglected. And here we have reached the point where we must discuss the moral aspect of the modern social question. I said: What I have called the final characteristic of the capitalist economic order—the accumulation of capital as such, the growth of capital that strives not for achievement but for profit—separates human beings from their products. And in this separation of human beings from their products lies an essential characteristic of the entire modern development. But in the world, it is the case that, as a rule, one phenomenon does not occur without the other; rather, phenomena are interconnected in the most diverse ways. You cannot walk across soft ground without leaving footprints in that ground at the same time. This is an example you can apply anywhere to see how, in the real world, one thing always belongs to another. What has driven the modern world—the accumulation of capital inherent in modern capitalism, the growth of capital—has, on the other hand—not in a one-sided logical sense, but in a logic grounded in reality—been linked, with the advent of capitalism, to the lack of interest that we find in modern humanity precisely in regard to the deepest impulses of the human soul. On the one hand, the extraction of the human personality from the economic process; on the other hand, the withering away of this personality—which has detached itself from the economic process—precisely in regard to the most intimate qualities of the human being’s spiritual and psychological nature. Both things belong together. Both have given rise to that terrible hustle and bustle of modern cities, where capitalism has established its strongholds—places where, on the one hand, capitalism is at work, and on the other, indifference prevails toward the most intimate questions of the human innermost being.

[ 18 ] These things are often concealed beneath the surface, and only upon closer examination do they become apparent. Of course, you might say: There are, after all, a large number of people who are not at all involved in the modern capitalist process. — Certainly, few are directly involved in it, but indirectly, all of modern humanity—and especially the educated modern public—is involved in the capitalist process. They are involved in that their very livelihoods depend on the capitalist economic order. Take an artist, for example: just as he once produced works for a prince or for the Pope, so today he produces for the capitalist. And if you trace the threads that wind their way from art today to capitalism across the most diverse areas of life, you will see how capitalism has spread its tentacles in all directions, especially over intellectual life. There is, of course, a great deal of the unconscious at work in these matters, which does not immediately reveal itself if one looks only at the surface of life.

[ 19 ] I will now have to describe an unconscious or subconscious process: This objectification of the production process, this detachment of the production process from human aspirations, as it takes place in modern capitalism, requires justification in a certain sense. After all, people always need a justification for what they do, and when they want to justify themselves, they are not concerned with seeking the truth, but only with saying something that justifies them. Take an obvious example. The Entente has won; the task is to justify this victory. That is why people say what is being said about the Entente today—not because it is the truth, but because the victory must be justified. The same is true in the life of each individual. What do most people care about truly fathom the truth! What matters to them is justifying what they do. That is what capitalism wants: above all, to justify its existence. It can only justify itself by observing the most extreme material process—the most material economic process—in its own reflection: the accumulation of capital. But then, if the capitalist economic order is to be justified in this physical world, everything pertaining to spiritual and emotional matters must be excluded. These must be relegated to a separate sphere. The pastor may speak from his pulpit about matters of faith as he pleases—I may believe it, another may believe it; I may choose not to believe it, another may choose not to believe it—but he is speaking of an entirely different world. In the world in which we must live, things cannot be as the pastor says from the pulpit—of course not; there, things must be run on a capitalist basis.

[ 20 ] Thus, extreme capitalism, on the one hand, has given rise to this terribly abstract moral and spiritual life, which seeks to sever itself entirely from all external realities of existence. Just as harmful in modern life as material capitalism on the one hand has been, on the other hand, the attitude that says: Oh, why should I care about Ahriman! Let Ahriman remain Ahriman; I devote myself to the impulses of the innermost part of my soul; I surrender myself to the spiritual world; I seek the spiritual world as I can find it within myself; the affairs of the soul are what interest me. What do I care about this Ahrimanic world of credit, money, wealth, and possessions! What do I care about the difference between annuity and interest, between gross income and net profit, and so on. I concern myself with the affairs of my soul! — But just as the human being is a unity of body, soul, and spirit, and just as body, soul, and spirit are bound together within him between birth and death, so too are the impulses we can find within the innermost structure of our soul and those impulses lying in the external economic order connected in our outer physical existence. And just as much to blame for the modern catastrophe as the materialistic capitalists are on the one hand—with their way of thinking and their mindset—are those on the other hand who wish only to be pious, only to be spiritual scientists, who in their own sense restrict this spiritual science to the abstract and do not engage in penetrating everyday reality with an active, intervening thought. This is what has moved me time and again to speak to you about the fact that you should certainly not take this anthroposophical spiritual movement as an opportunity listen to mere Sunday afternoon sermons that soothe the soul because they tell you that life is eternal and so on, but rather that you should take this anthroposophical movement as the path to truly and meaningfully address the modern challenges of existence that press so urgently upon us. And one of the first necessities is this: to understand where one must begin, and that nothing will help if people do not gain access to unbiased thinking.

[ 21 ] And here, at the conclusion of today’s reflections, I would like to express what we will then build upon tomorrow in a practical-social analysis. What I am about to say will seem very far removed from all socialist thinking or thinking about the social question, but tomorrow you will see how close that which seems distant actually is, and how, precisely through these reflections, we will be able to clarify the four points I have presented to you as the components of the socialist ideal. People so often say in life: Opinions differ, convictions differ; one person believes this, another believes that. — Doesn’t it seem as though, when we give ourselves over to our thinking, one person might have these thoughts and another those, and that both these and those thoughts might then be valid? It seems that way, and yet it is by no means so. Taking into account the fact that every characterization of a thing, in the higher sense, is always, in a sense, a photograph from one side—that is, that there are perspectives from the most diverse angles—provided, of course, that this is taken into account—all people share the same opinion about one and the same thing in their innermost being. There are not two people in the world who do not share the same opinion about one and the same thing—as I said, always under the aforementioned assumption. That simply does not exist. Why, then, do people speak of differing opinions? Because their emotions and their selfish prejudices interpose themselves between the truth and what a person perceives within themselves, distorting and caricaturing the matter for them. People are truly different only in terms of their emotions, not in terms of their concepts and ideas. Once one has gained access to a true concept, one cannot disagree about that concept with another person who has likewise gained access to it. And it is the greatest frivolity of the soul to believe that one has a certain right to subjective opinions. One does not have this right to subjective opinions; rather, as a human being, one has the obligation to transcend one’s subjectivity and reach the objective. To see the truth in this matter, however, it is absolutely necessary to take into account all the sources of error that arise from human emotions. A person believes they can be convinced of a certain thing. Often, the reason they believe they are convinced of a certain thing is none other than that they are too lazy to truly grapple with the concept. Indeed, one must point to this inner moral aspect of human nature if one wishes to highlight what is needed in today’s world.

[ 22 ] The present age is, above all, full of arrogance, full of emotions—even in what is called objective science—and not at all inclined to seek access to the judgment that lies in true ideas and true concepts. But where will we end up if the burning social puzzles now at our doorstep are solved based on people’s emotions? You know: there are imaginations, there are inspirations, there are intuitions. In truth, everything that must be explored in relation to economic, business, and economic-legal contexts lies in imaginations; everything that must be explored within the economic organism lies in imaginations. For most people, these imaginations may indeed only dawn from the unconscious as hunches. But these hunches are better than the studied concepts that are so prevalent among humanity today. Everything that lives within what we might call spiritual life—which we have characterized as a component of the future social order—all of that is based on inspiration: the spiritual organism. And everything that may truly exist independently of human beings—indeed, that must exist independently of human beings—that in which human beings must be equal, equal, as one says, before the law—can only be based on intuition. The political organism, so to speak, is thus based on this. Imagination: economic organism — Inspiration: spiritual organism — Intuition: political organism.

[ 23 ] In this way, inspiration, intuition, and imagination must truly work together in shaping the conditions of life. One need only consider for a moment that this is indeed the case. And then one will also come to realize that, fundamentally, it is only through spiritual scientific methods that the social issues—which today are not merely at our doorstep but are burning with urgency—can be steered toward their resolution. That is what matters: to cast aside all carelessness and complacency in thinking, and to truly set out toward that which connects the human soul with reality. Ultimately, this can only lead us to where we must go in the present. From this perspective, let us then characterize and critically discuss the four elements of the so-called socialist ideal tomorrow.