The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] In the lecture Kurt Eisner recently gave to the Basel student body, there is a very curious sentence. It begins with a question that is truly curious in light of today’s external world: whether what we currently experience as the present state of humanity is a reality, or whether it might perhaps be merely a dream—whether what humanity is now experiencing is actually just a kind of dreamed reality. The sentence, as he stated it there, reads:

[ 2 ] “Am I not hearing this, or do I not clearly see that deep within our lives there dwells a longing that yearns for life—a longing that recognizes that our life, as we must live it today, is nothing more than the clear invention of some evil spirit? Imagine, ladies and gentlemen, a great thinker who knew nothing of our time, and who, having lived some 2,000 years ago, had dreamed of what the world might look like in, say, 2,000 years—even with the most vivid imagination, he could hardly have conceived of a world like the one in which we are condemned to live. In truth, the present reality is the only utopia in the world, and what we desire—what lives as a longing in our minds—is the deepest and ultimate reality; everything else is horrifying. We are merely confusing dreams with wakefulness. Our task is to shake off this old dream of our present social existence. A look at the war: is it possible to conceive of a human reason that could devise such a thing? If this war was not what is truly called a war, then perhaps we were dreaming and are now awake. We are a society in which, despite the railroad, steam, and electric sparks, people still see only a small part of this star on which we were born.”

[ 3 ] This is the sentiment that Kurt Eisner expressed shortly before his death in Basel. So reality today compels people to ask themselves: Are we dreaming or are we awake? Is this reality even a true reality? And it would actually be quite good if people today could ask themselves this or a similar question to a greater extent. For above all, what matters is that, in the face of what surrounds us in the external world, we are now able to see through to reality—true reality. We have, after all, had to emphasize on various occasions that what matters today is no longer to judge what the world needs—and above all, what our social life needs—according to the habits of thought into which we have fallen over the course of the last few centuries and up to the present day. For it is precisely these habits of thought—if one truly recognizes the connection—that have led to today’s catastrophe. Within these patterns of thought, people have often regarded themselves as true practitioners, as practitioners of life. And yet, they have taken as their starting point the most exasperating abstractions and have attempted to translate these abstractions into reality. But precisely because social conditions—the way people live together—have come to express what people have allowed to flow into this reality from their habits of thought, this reality has gradually become an unreal, unviable construct in which people today find themselves and which they regard as their reality, but which lacks the real forces necessary to be viable.

[ 4 ] These are the things that cannot be emphasized strongly enough today—things that anyone who looks at the facts with an unbiased eye should be able to state clearly and unambiguously. These facts, even though they initially unfold in the external, everyday world, speak a language that clearly indicates that the healing of these conditions can come only from an impulse from the spiritual world. For what has become estranged from the spiritual world over the past few centuries—what has, so to speak, operated without regard for this spiritual world—has now reached a dead end from which it will never find its way out. And it is sheer thoughtlessness to still believe today that we can continue to manage our affairs with the very same means that drove us into this catastrophe. What, after all, have we actually experienced? We have experienced that humanity believed it had brought about a state that could be described as one of the highest material civilization. — Let us think back to how comfortable our lives actually were before August 1914 began. Let us recall how easily we could travel from country to country, provided we were part of that current of humanity that could somehow secure the necessary means to do so. Let us think of how easy it was to communicate—even by telephone—across national borders to the most remote corners of the world via telegraph. Let us think of everything that humanity has come to call modern civilization. And let us think of what has become of this modern civilization for Europe since August 1914. Let us consider the conditions in which we live today. Yes, my dear friends, it truly does not take much to realize that one cannot exist without the other, that the way we lived—so “comfortable,” as “civilized” as it was until August 1914—that the current conditions were already embedded within it, so deeply embedded that I described it back then in the Vienna lecture given before the war as the workings of a social cancer, a carcinoma within human society. One must attach some significance to the fact that spiritual science compelled one—back then, when life was still so “comfortable,” when the world was still so “civilized,” when everything went according to the wishes of people who were able to develop such wishes in accordance with their social standing—when one saw through the facts, to say nothing other than: we do, in a sense, not live in a healthy society, but in a sick one. The anthroposophical way of thinking has long been offered to this sick society as a cure. And there will be no other way to achieve healing than to recognize that everything else—which refuses to embrace this way of thinking oriented toward the truly spiritual—is, to a greater or lesser extent, quackery. We must once again infuse reality into what humanity dreams of today. Where is it to come from? It is not to be found where those who focus on practical life draw their thoughts from. Reality exists only where the spirit is perceived. It is from there that the principles and impulses must be drawn that can flow into society. That is why this connection between things must always be pointed out.

[ 5 ] I have also mentioned the name Fritz Mauthner to you several times in connection with the lectures here. By breaking down contemporary thought into a series of keywords arranged alphabetically, he has compiled two volumes that he calls a “Philosophical Dictionary,” but which in fact, in his own style and with his own criticism—which is at times caustic and corrosive—chronicle contemporary thought. Among other things, these works also discuss the state, the res publica. Based on his views, Fritz Mauthner has arrived at a kind of answer to the question: What, in fact, is the state? — And he arrives at no other definition than: The state is a necessary evil. — After all, people cannot deny its necessity. But some people have already realized that the very social structure we call the state today has ultimately led to the situation in which we now find ourselves. So they call it a necessary evil, because its evil nature in its present form is plain for everyone to see. The only question is, however, how one might arrive at a positive conception in contrast to this negative one.

[ 6 ] Isn’t it true that when someone denies something, they are actually pointing to its affirmation? Well, when someone says, “The state is a necessary evil,” they are actually pointing to the positive aspect. After all, the state is presented there as the very opposite of something. So what is this “something” of which the state is supposed to be the opposite? This raises something very curious in the context of the humanities. After all, one can only understand the state by seeing through the legal structure that pervades it—the structure that regulates property relations, labor relations, and so on—and asking: To what, exactly, can this legal structure be compared?

[ 7 ] Well, my dear friends, through various passages in my books and lectures, you have become acquainted with descriptions of the spiritual world and have learned about the relationships that take place in the spiritual world—that is, during the periods a person experiences between death and a new birth. And the question is: How do these relationships—in which human beings relate to one another between death and a new birth—compare to the legal relationships established within the state community on the physical plane? — As soon as one raises this question thoughtfully, one receives the answer: The structure of the state is the exact opposite; the structure of the state, with regard to the human relationships established through the state, is the exact opposite of what human relationships are in the spiritual world. — This, my dear friends, gives you a true understanding of the state. People who know nothing of the spiritual world cannot, in fact, form any conception of the state at all, because they have nothing but negative relationships between one person and another. The positive relationships are those that arise when soul relates to soul in the spiritual world. To understand the point being made here, read the chapter on the spiritual world in my *Theosophy*; there you will find that a certain regulation of soul-to-soul relationships takes place, which then continues even in what might be called the spirit realm, and you will see that these relationships are governed by certain forces that flow from soul to soul, and which can be expressed through the interplay of sympathy and antipathy. Read in this chapter of my *Theosophy* how sympathy and antipathy bring about a certain relationship between soul and soul in the spiritual world; there you will see that in the spiritual world everything is based on inner life—namely, on what acts from soul to soul through the forces of sympathy and antipathy. What operates from soul to soul through the forces of antipathy is veiled by the physical body in human beings on the physical plane; and because this is veiled—because the actual, essential relationship from soul to soul is veiled here on the physical plane—the most external aspect must take place precisely within the realm of the state here on the physical plane: the legal relationship. While what must be described regarding the true spiritual world is the unfolding of the soul’s innermost forces, what can exist within the state is solely the outermost aspect of the relationship between human beings. And the state is not healthy if it seeks to establish any relationship other than the outermost legal relationship. Therefore, everything in the state that is not based on the outermost legal relationship between human beings must be eliminated. And the spiritual realm—the administration of spiritual and cultural affairs—must stand opposite the proper domain of the state, and on the other side, pure economic activity—the third part of the social organism—must stand opposite it. While the state proper represents the very opposite of the spiritual world, spiritual life—as I have already hinted at here from another perspective—is a kind of continuation of what we experienced in the true spiritual world before we descended into earthly existence through birth. What we experience here in religion, in school, in education, in art, in science, and so on—along with other things we develop in this regard from person to person—is the earthly continuation, but only as a mere reflection, a mere mirror image of what true spiritual life is before birth. And what we have in economic life—what we have in this life commonly referred to as “material”—is the cause of many things that we will in turn have to experience once we have passed through the gate of death, that is, in the afterlife. But the state has no connection to spiritual life. It is the very opposite of spiritual life. This is what a person who wishes to understand the present, with all its horrifying realities, must learn to see through. People today must learn to understand how necessary it is to turn their gaze once more toward spiritual reality in order to arrive at an understanding of external reality. Antipathy and sympathy interact in the spiritual world. Whatever remains of our antipathies in the spiritual world when we descend into earthly existence through birth—that which must still be lived out because of the antipathies we have retained from the spiritual world—manifests itself here as spiritual culture. As human beings, we learn to understand one another through language and, in a sense, to forge a spiritual bond from person to person, because through this understanding of language we must overcome certain antipathies that have remained with us from the spiritual world. We learn to speak to one another through certain ideas, to share common thoughts in a shared art, in a shared religious creed, because in doing so we overcome certain antipathies we had toward one another in the spiritual world. And here, in economic life, we learn to depend on one another, to work for one another, and to exchange benefits for benefits with one another, because in this way we lay the foundation for certain affinities that are to develop in the afterlife between souls who are not already bound here by a bond of attraction through ordinary karma.

[ 8 ] We must therefore learn to connect this earthly world with the spiritual world. And finally, the most potent cause of our current catastrophic times is the fact that humanity has become completely disconnected from the true spiritual world, and that, to a large extent, the spiritual world has actually become a mere cliché for people. Over the course of the last four centuries, this spiritual world has increasingly become a mere cliché among the ruling classes. And more and more, the vast masses of the proletariat have developed, through dull instincts, subconscious and unconscious longings for something other than what the so-called education, science, art, religion, and so on offered by the ruling circles can provide.

[ 9 ] People find it so difficult to get used to this that, when it comes to spiritual life, we need to gradually come to understand an entirely new language. Deep down, people want the old languages to continue to be spoken. For they believe that things will work out just fine if we keep speaking in the old language. And so one hears unctuous prophets of our time expounding their views. I have already pointed out such a view to you here once before. For example, one person—who is actually held in high regard today—says: this world war has shown that people may have lived within a kind of external organization, but that they had not come close to one another inwardly. And so, within the course of this world war, there was, it is claimed, a relapse into the old barbarism. And then, as a means of salvation from this barbarism, only certain—one might say—clichéd sentiments are developed, which urge people to turn back to a kind of inner spiritual life. However, my dear friends, what matters today is not that people be exhorted to become good Christians again, to learn once more to love their fellow human beings, or to find an inner bond from person to person. What matters far more today is that a spiritual force be developed which is capable of truly mastering external circumstances and truly giving them structure, so that the social organism becomes viable. If one is completely honest, one cannot really say that people today suffer mainly and first and foremost from a lack of belief in the spirit. After all, there are still plenty of people today who believe in the spirit, and ultimately every little village still has its church, where, I imagine, much is said about the spirit. And even those who fight against the spirit have a certain respect for it. A certain way of speaking about the Spirit is still ingrained in people’s habits of thought. The Anzengruber-type person who says, “As surely as there is a God in heaven, I am an atheist,” is not at all a rarity, even if he does not always utter these exact words. What matters is not whether people speak of the Spirit, or even whether they believe in the Spirit, but rather that the Spirit become active in all material life today, that it be recognized that matter cannot exist anywhere without the Spirit.

[ 10 ] Today, however, we are further removed from this insight than we have ever been. One person acts all high and mighty, despises external, material life, regards it as a necessary evil, and turns to the inner life; perhaps even becomes a theosophist so that he can develop his inner life alongside his external one, for external life is spiritless, and one must devote oneself to the inner, contemplative life. Another does not exactly subscribe to this—as socialist thought would put it—most decadent bourgeois way of thinking, for it is the final outgrowth of the bourgeois way of thinking I have just characterized; yet he still holds the belief that, on the one hand, there is material reality, in which capital, human labor, credit, mortgage bonds, bonds, and money in general exist. That is the spiritless reality. On the other hand is that which one must strive for from the depths of one’s heart as the true spiritual reality.

[ 11 ] Well, one could cite many more variations on this peculiar view of the relationship between material life and spiritual life, as it prevails today, for people generally have the feeling that when one turns to the spirit, one must actually turn away from external material reality. After all, this is also connected to the fact that we have so many broken lives today—so many people who are dissatisfied with their external lives. My dear friends, I am truly not speaking in my own defense, for I have actually been shaped by my karma into precisely the person I am today. And if my karma had shaped me into something else, I would understand that as well. I am not speaking on my own behalf. But nevertheless, I may say: there is nothing uninteresting in life, provided there is a healthy social organism in which each person is placed in the right way, precisely in accordance with their karma. Fundamentally, no one in the world has any reason to regard any current in the world as inferior to another. But the healing of the social organism must be brought about, so that the lowliest worker is just as connected to a spiritual life as the one who, by chance, is able to engage in spiritual life. For this is the greatest harm in contemporary social life: that there are closed circles within which particular interests develop that are actually inaccessible to others. Just consider how, in recent times, this sense of exclusivity has become increasingly pronounced in religion, art, and everything else within bourgeois circles, and how, outside this exclusivity, stand the proletarian circles—for whom “public events” are organized, “community centers” are established, “folk art” is provided, and so on. But what is offered in this way has, after all, arisen from the sensibilities of the bourgeois class. If the proletarian is to receive it, he receives it through a lie about life; for only that which has emerged from a shared experience can truly be a shared spiritual life. It is not a shared experience when one person stands at the machine for eight hours a day—you see, I’m even assuming the eight-hour day has already been realized— spends eight hours at the machine, while the other has the opportunity to develop a social life within a certain class, and then, after the eight hours, throws at the one standing at the machine something like scraps—which, however, in its innermost structure and composition, can actually only be understood by those who belong to the classes that have been in power until now.

[ 12 ] Within leadership circles today, it is possible—based on certain educational and upbringing foundations—to speak to people about, say, the Sistine Madonna, to choose a concrete example. Yes, my dear friends, I have guided workers through art galleries, and I have seen what a lie it is to try to present to today’s proletarian anything that, let’s say, resembles the feelings that today’s bourgeois might have toward the Sistine Madonna. That is simply not possible. If one tries to do so, one is merely staging nothing but a lie about life, for there is, after all, no shared life between the classes. And where there is no shared life between the classes, one cannot speak in a language that both truly understand. The ruling circles of the past have had the good fortune, through the course of human development to date—including, for example, in art—to receive something that can take root in their sensibilities. Because of the way humanity has lived up to now, something like the Sistine Madonna has become a gift to the ruling circles. For those outside the ruling circles, it is initially incomprehensible. First, a language must be sought that can be shared by both; that is, the goal must be to find a truly universal human educational life. And our schools and universities are far removed from this universal human educational system.

[ 13 ] This will not be enough to achieve what is so often strived for: the universal elementary school. In a universal elementary school, one will have to teach in a completely different way—namely, in a way that can only stem from a free spiritual life that is separated from the healthy social organism. Teaching will have to be done in a completely different way than it is today. For deep down, the proletarian does not understand what is taught in elementary school today.

[ 14 ] Now you will find a contradiction in what I am saying. And you are quite right to do so. You might say: Yes, but in elementary school everyone is still equal—why should a working-class child understand less of what is taught than a middle-class child? — In reality, the middle-class child doesn’t understand anything either; for our entire elementary school system is so dysfunctional that, in fact, nothing that is taught in elementary school is actually understood. And only a few—namely, those belonging to the ruling circles who have the money to attend higher schools—it is for them that these higher schools cast a shadow back onto elementary school, and through this, one comes to understand something of what one learned earlier. And those who have no opportunity to cast a shadow back onto what they learned earlier simply have no way at all to absorb the school education that exists among us today as a dreamlike reality.

[ 15 ] This is what we should keep in mind as the gravity of the times, as the gravity of the situation. And isn’t it obvious that only a new spiritual life can remedy this? Just try, for once, to be honest in one area or another. Take, for example, what has unfolded over the past few decades in the realm of art and the understanding of art. Yes, just try to mentally picture how people have talked about art: what artists have said, how one must paint, how one must sculpt, and the like—and what critics have then asserted as their views regarding these painters and sculptors. Follow all of this, and try to explain it to the proletarian who stands at the machine for eight hours a day and is now supposed to listen to all of this as well. To him, it’s nonsense; it means absolutely nothing to him. The only reality for him is that he sees a life that the others lead among themselves—a life from which he is excluded in an antisocial manner, and of which he therefore cannot even conceive that it is part of a dignified existence; from which he can only conclude: that is all luxury.

[ 16 ] Now take this in concrete terms, my dear friends! It’s not that I’m condemning these things; I merely want to describe them. And these things can all be understood. But consider what this good bourgeois social order—which had developed so comfortably up until 1914—has produced. I still remember the 1880s, when, for example, the young men of Vienna were all imitating what was then considered a new artistic movement originating in Paris. These young men wrote verse after verse, did everything they could to have the darkest possible circles under their eyes, wandered pensively through the streets, extolled the virtues of Decadence, and declared that they would sleep only in a room where the scent of tuberose permeated everything. And then, from these underground circles, they discussed how a verse should truly be crafted. I do not wish to condemn what was expressed there; it was simply one aspect of humanity coming to the fore—an extreme case. But in the end, they went so far that what emerged could only appear to a large part of modern humanity as nothing more than a luxurious intellectual contrivance; something that, in any case, could not appear to this part of humanity as a necessity for a dignified existence. And ultimately, everything in life depends on what pulsates within human souls, on the way human souls are able to move within life. It was indeed a social carcinoma that erupted in a terrible way.

[ 17 ] From these things, it must be seen that the facts have now progressed to such an extent that we simply cannot continue to speak in terms of the old concepts; we must learn a new language. And is it not obvious, my dear friends, that we must now strive for something universally human? It will not be immediately understood to what extent this is something universally human; but with our building, we were indeed striving for something universally human. There should be nothing in it that interests only the bourgeoisie or that the proletariat cannot understand. Even if the highest intellectual demands are made, what has been strived for is entirely universally human; certainly, much of it is imperfect, and bourgeois elements still seep in from various quarters; but on the whole, in essence—and of course I am not referring to the people themselves—what was sought in this endeavor is entirely universal to humanity; even though the forms are drawn from the spiritual realm, it is something that every human being can understand.

[ 18 ] It can be understood from the perspective of life. Certainly, even today we must speak to one person or another in different ways, because people come from different perspectives on life. But it is possible, even for the simplest, most primitive mind today, to convey what our architectural forms and other elements of our buildings are meant to express. And so, in every sphere of life, we must now truly make the effort to break away from the old and speak a new language—to recognize that it was precisely these old ways of thinking that led us into this catastrophe.

[ 19 ] You see, people say today: one should look at modern socialist aspirations—which, after all, strike fear into the hearts of many people today—and compare these socialist aspirations, for example, with the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount, where the weary and the burdened sought to bring about a new world order not through class struggle, but through love. I am not quoting made-up phrases, but only things that are preached today by very well-known moralists and that have been said countless times in recent weeks. These things are all taken from real life. You could have heard it just a few days ago in Bern, when someone said once again: “Let us return to the pure spirit of Christianity, to the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount; that spirit is not to be found in modern class struggle.” Unfortunately, it was said, the Christian spirit has so far been relevant only in private life; it must find its way into the life of nations. Life—external, public life—must be permeated by Christianity. Then people come along and say: “Now that’s speaking of the spirit; at last someone is saying what the path must be for modern humanity to break free from wretched materialism and turn back to the spirit of love.” — But, my dear friends, the fact is simply that people have been talking this way for nearly two thousand years and it hasn’t helped at all, and that they might finally realize that a different language is necessary today.

[ 20 ] Even today, however, people often do not even realize what the difference is between the two languages. People still do not realize that it is something radically different to advocate a spiritual life that seeks to intervene directly in the most material reality, because it is convinced that matter, taken merely as matter—that is, as something contemptible—is not reality at all, for spirit lives in all reality. And where only matter seems to exist, one simply does not see the spirit. Therefore, one must also be clear that there is an urgent need today to develop a spirit that masters reality, that can immerse itself in material life, that does not merely say: “Delve into your inner self; you will find God within; you will be able to develop the source of love within yourselves,” and you will then find the path from today’s social order to one in which people are inwardly close to one another!” No, what matters today is to find such a spirit, such a language, such Christians who do not merely speak of ethical and religious matters, but who are so strong in spirit that the spirit is capable of embracing even the most mundane things, so that from the spirit it can be said what must now be done to find the way out—the healing path—from the devastation of capitalism, from the oppression of the human workforce, and so on.

[ 21 ] The fact is that people perceive, through their intuition, what is inhibiting and what is harmful to the social organism, but they do not see down to the very foundations. That money causes a great deal of harm today is evident on both a small and a large scale. On a small scale, in their immediate surroundings, some people who don’t have money see it. The time has simply come when the old equanimity—which used to brush things aside a little with the saying, “One has the wallet, the other has the money”—has ceased; the time has come when people no longer want to accept such things as embodied in that saying. People are noticing that there are certain flaws in the monetary system, even though they rarely cross the border these days—isn’t that right? After all, a deep peace has set in, but people can cross the border less often now than they could during the war—they realize: out there, a mark is worth so much, but here it’s worth so little. The question of money is followed by the question of currency, the question of foreign exchange. So people realize, on both a small and a large scale, that something is amiss with money, something that is connected to the most ordinary human conditions. They reflect on how the problems that have arisen today might be remedied. But people do not realize that it has now become necessary to move beyond the ordinary external thoughts associated with the circumstances themselves and penetrate to the primordial thoughts.

[ 22 ] All human institutions are based on certain primordial ideas. And if human life leads to a situation in which these institutions can gradually drift away from these primordial ideas, then these primordial ideas retreat into the human psyche and become feelings, become instincts, which then manifest themselves in ways that do not immediately reveal the primordial ideas. What appears today as social demands is the reaction of these primordial ideas to contemporary human conditions. And those who form their thoughts solely on the basis of present-day conditions are the worst kind of herd mentality. For all proletarian demands are nothing other than disguised feelings rooted in these primordial ideas. And among such primordial thoughts is the separation of spiritual life, political life, and economic life, as has been argued here. This is what the instincts are actually striving for. And they will not rest until, at the very least, we once again turn toward these primordial thoughts in this time of severe crisis, now that we have strayed so far from them.

[ 23 ] Anything else would be quackery, even with regard to the most external, most material questions. For today, some people even ask—from the pulpit, no less—“What, exactly, is money?”—There is an enormous amount of debate surrounding this question: Is money a commodity, or is it merely a token of value? Some believe that money is simply a commodity among other commodities traded on the economic market; that it was merely chosen as a convenient commodity to help overcome certain other conflicts in today’s economic life. Just imagine, for a moment, that you are a carpenter. Suppose there were no money, and you were a carpenter. You have to eat; you need vegetables, cheese, and butter; but you’re a carpenter—you make tables and chairs. Now, if there were no money, you’d have to take your tables and chairs to the market somewhere and try to get rid of a chair, for example, so that someone would give you a necessary amount of food in exchange for it. You have to trade a table so that someone else will give you a suit. Just imagine what that would mean! — But actually, people do nothing other than this. It’s just masked by the fact that there is a universally accepted commodity—money—into which everything else can be exchanged, and that the other commodities can wait until people need them.

[ 24 ] Now, however, it seems as though money is merely an intermediate commodity. For this reason, some economists hold the view that money is a commodity. But when paper money exists, it is merely a substitute for the commodity. For the commodity that really matters is gold; and states have already been compelled to introduce the gold standard, since the leading economic power of the present day, England, has chosen gold as the sole measure of value and medium of exchange, and the other states have had to follow suit. The fact is that this medium of exchange exists, and the carpenter does not need to take his chairs to market, but instead sells them to whoever wants them at that moment, receives money in return, and can use that money to buy his vegetables and cheese.

[ 25 ] “Yes, but,” say the others, “that is not the essence of money at all, for it is entirely irrelevant—and practice has shown this to a certain extent—whether one actually possesses the piece of gold that is worth such-and-such an amount in comparison with other goods, or whether it is not there at all, but rather some substitute bearing a stamp indicating that it is worth such-and-such an amount.” Our modern paper money is, after all, something that bears such a stamp: it is worth so much. And there are certainly economists today who consider it highly unnecessary for banks to hold the corresponding gold value to back up paper money. As you may know, there are also individual countries that have purely paper currency and no gold reserves to back it. Under current conditions, they are still able to conduct economic activity to a certain extent.

[ 26 ] In any case, you can see from this—and in our field we must, after all, approach this matter from a purely human standpoint—that there are intelligent people today who regard money as a commodity; and other intelligent people who regard it as a mere stamp, a mere token. So what is it, really? — Under today’s conditions, it is both. The point is precisely this: one must recognize that under today’s conditions it is both; that today, on the one hand—particularly in international transactions—money in many ways has only the character of a commodity, for the rest is merely the transfer of credit balances. What truly serves as serious backing are, in fact, the exchanges of gold commodities conducted between states. And everything else is based solely on trust: if a certain amount of paper, bills of exchange, or the like is delivered from one state to another, then the party delivering these bills or this paper actually possesses the gold reserves; that is, the commodity—gold—is present and is then treated like any other commodity. Isn’t that right? You extend credit to a merchant, regardless of whether he has gold or fish or anything else, as long as he has some real asset to back it up. So, particularly in international trade, money is a commodity.

[ 27 ] But the state has interfered. The state has gradually turned money into something merely assessed, into something merely stamped. The two factors interact, and the damage that has occurred stems solely from this. The only possible remedy is to transfer the entire administration of money to what we have regarded as the third link in a healthy social organism: to transfer the entire administration of money to the economic organism, to detach all monetary administration from the state apparatus—then money will become a commodity and will have to have its commodity value on the commodity market. There would no longer be that curious dependency that exists today and which represents a strange relationship between currency and wages. What is peculiar today is that the value of the currency falls when wages rise, and the worker often has nothing at all, no matter how much wages he is paid, because he cannot buy anything more with those wages than he could buy before with his much lower wages. When wages rise and food prices rise at the same time—that is, when the currency becomes something entirely different—then all other circumstances are of no help. This can only be remedied if you separate the administration of this economic good—money—from the political state, and if the money, which exists precisely to facilitate comparisons between one thing and another, can also be administered by a third party—the economic component of a healthy social organism.

[ 28 ] Thus, with the fundamental solution of the threefold social order, the specific problems are truly resolved in a healthy way. That is why anyone who wishes to develop healthy ideas for the social organism must return today to the original ideas. Today, the administrators of states ask: What should we do about the currency that has fallen into chaos? — The only answer that must be given to them is this: For heaven’s sake, keep your hands off it, insofar as you are administrators of the political state, and hand over the administration of currency and money to the economic organism. Only there can the sound foundations for these matters be laid. One must truly be able to go back to what makes things sound today. Before the catastrophe of the war, we had the peculiar fact—because there existed a situation from state to state over which the political taxes applicable within each state had no influence—that relationships operated from state to state which necessarily arose, for example in economic life, through economic life itself. They operated from state to state—that is, internationally. They did not operate within individual states, because there the state extended its structure over economic life. This gave rise to conflicts that can only be resolved if we truly strive for the threefold social order. Then, at any time, the realities of one member of the social organization will correct the realities of another member, if corrections are needed. There is simply no other way but to return today to the original ideas—to this practical trinity: spiritual life, economic life, and political life. For only those people who are placed within such a social organization will be able to solve the problems that must be resolved today from one perspective or another. Only when economic activity takes place in one segment, justice is administered or established democratically in another, and all spiritual matters are ordered in the third—only then can a restoration of the social organism be brought about. But just as the three systems in the human organism—the nervous system, the cardiovascular system, and the metabolic system—interact, so too do the three systems naturally interact in a healthy social organism. One influences the other. Just as you feel a stomach ailment in your head simply because the head is not being properly nourished by the stomach—even though the three systems are separate—so too, in a fully healthy social organism, one component—let us say the economic component—influences the legal component and the spiritual component. They interact in the right way precisely when they are relatively independent of one another. But this proper interaction without disruption arises only when the three sections are independent and each is administered according to its own laws.

[ 29 ] How, for example, does spiritual life permeate economic life through its influence? What aspect of the spirit is actually present in economic life in a truly economic sense? Do you know what it is? It is, in fact, capital. Capital is the spirit of economic life. And a large part of the problems of our time stems from the fact that the management of capital—the generation of returns on capital—has been severed from spiritual life. This is precisely the point: that the relationship, let’s say, between the manual laborer and the one who organizes with the help of capital can be treated in a healthy social organism as a simple relationship of trust based on mutual understanding—just like, for example, the choice of a free school. In a healthy social organism, that separation between the entrepreneur and the worker simply cannot continue to exist. Today, the worker stands at the machine and knows nothing beyond what is happening at the machine. Therefore, he naturally pursues his frivolities outside the factory. And the entrepreneur, in turn, has his own life—as I described to you earlier—which has developed to the point where young men walked around with dark circles under their eyes and had tuberoses by their beds when they slept. The entrepreneur leads this detached spiritual life—detached, that is, from others, not from himself. But a certain spiritual life must take hold that does not separate physical labor from mental labor—then capitalism is placed on a social foundation, though not as the fanciful minds of the present believe, but by the fact that a real possibility is now created for every individual worker to be in a spiritual connection with all those who organize his work and, in turn, channel the product of his labor into the social organism or even into the whole world.

[ 30 ] It must be regarded as essential that, just as work is carried out on the machine, business matters be discussed just as regularly during meetings between the employer and the worker, so that the worker always has a very clear overview of what is happening —that is what we must strive for in the future—and that the employer, in turn, is compelled at all times to be completely open with the worker and to discuss all details with him, so that a shared intellectual life permeates the factory and the enterprise. That is what matters. For only when that relationship emerges—on the basis of which the worker says to himself: “Yes, he is just as necessary as I am, for what purpose would my work serve in the social organism if he weren’t there? He puts my work in its proper place”—but the entrepreneur will also be compelled to truly place this work in its proper place and to give the worker his due, for everything will be transparent.

[ 31 ] There you see, my dear friends, how spiritual life must play a role in the workings of capitalism. And everything else today is mere rhetoric, mere fanciful idealism. A healthy relationship between labor and capital cannot be brought about in a socialist-bureaucratic manner, but only by means of a shared spiritual life—one in which those who possess the individual abilities to do so can truly produce in this sphere, that is, in a capitalist manner; can put their individual abilities to fruitful use for the healthy social organism; and will be met with free understanding by those who perform physical labor. Understanding will be able to arise for the initiative of individual abilities, which are socialized from the outset in a free intellectual life, but which appear antisocial today only because we are caught up in unnatural conditions. Socialization must be based on the free initiative of individual abilities and on the free understanding that meets the achievements of those individual abilities; there is no other way. Everything else is quackery. One could deduce the truth of what I have said simply from the symptoms manifesting themselves in the social organism.

[ 32 ] My dear friends, consider that there are two things in the world about whose value people can—and do—hold a wide variety of views in the most everyday of circumstances. One is a piece of bread; the other is the assertion of a worldview. Everyone will agree that a piece of bread truly meets a person’s needs when they are hungry; there is no debate about that—one simply wants the bread. But when it comes to a particular worldview, there is much debate today; one person finds it true, another false. And no matter how true it may be, it cannot assert itself. One can argue about the spirit; one cannot argue about the matters of economic life. On what does this rest? — It rests solely on the fact that the spirit has truly become an ideology, that it does not function as a reality, but only as an appendage to economic life and political life. If it is left to its own devices, it is thereby compelled to present its own reality to the world and to reveal itself; then reality will burst forth from it. However, it will then not merely enter into the idle chatter and platitudes of moralists, nor merely into the speeches of those who tell people they should be good Christians and so on, and who set forth all manner of virtues that nevertheless stop short of external material reality, because they regard as spirit only that which is free from material reality. A bridge must be built from this abstract form of the spirit to the spirit that is, in fact, truly spirit: the spirit that operates, for example, in capital, since capital organizes labor. But this organization must then actually stem from spiritual administration.

[ 33 ] So, on the one hand, you have the practical reality that the management of money must be left to economic life; on the other hand, the organization of labor by capital is subject to spiritual life. Here you see the interplay of things that outwardly appear to be one and the same; for, of course, capital in the factory is represented by money. But the relationship between worker and employer—this entire relationship of trust, and specifically the fact that an employer occupies a certain position—is organized from within the spiritual world. What a particular commodity is worth in relation to money, however, is organized by economic life; and these elements converge, just as the results of the three systems converge within the human organism to ensure its health.

[ 34 ] In this way, you can delve into the concrete details—the details of everyday life—and you will see that what is being highlighted here are truly fundamental ideas, but real fundamental ideas that must underlie the healing of the social organism.