The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. Social Aspirations and Proletarian Demands

[ 1 ] Out of the catastrophe of the World War, a powerful movement is emerging, one driven by proletarian demands and one that speaks to people today through significant realities—realities that have already gripped a large part of Europe, realities that humanity will undoubtedly have to overcome through certain new social institutions. The question may arise, especially when one considers the initial course of these eloquent realities: Is there already, anywhere, a reasonably sufficient social will—a social will that springs from a deeper understanding of our current historical world situation? For it seems that such a social will is what really matters.

[ 2 ] That is why it gave me great satisfaction that, at the invitation of local students, I am able today to speak—from a certain perspective—about the relationship between proletarian demands and the necessary social will, expressing what I have set forth in my forthcoming work, “The Key Points of the Social Question in the Necessities of Life for the Present and the Future.”

[ 3 ] That we are dealing with a profoundly transformative, world-historical phenomenon in the movement mentioned above seems to be evident from the fact that what is happening today reveals something like the realization of that program which swept through the world seventy years ago and which is, of course, known as the Marxist Communist Manifesto. Whether one interprets what is expressed by these two defining moments of our recent historical development—the ideas set forth in the Communist Manifesto of 1848 and what is now sweeping across Europe—whether one views it one way or the other, depending on one’s circumstances or worldview, is of little consequence today. What matters is that we are faced with facts that speak for themselves—facts that absolutely demand a stance. And a stance will have to be taken by whatever may emerge in the coming years and decades precisely from that transformation of scientific and worldview thinking, which will become necessary—like so many other things—under the influence of this self-evident fact of the present.

[ 4 ] That is why I particularly enjoy discussing this question with students who want to be active participants in shaping what may emerge from our current scientific and philosophical thinking—into the thinking and understanding of the future.

[ 5 ] Just as what is commonly referred to today as the “social question” presents itself, one can say that it initially manifests itself in two significant demands. Both demands, as they appear, actually point to phenomena in our economic life. One could say: The first demand culminates in the rejection of that system of economic management in the civilized world which has developed in recent times through private capital. And secondly, one can observe that the proletariat is demanding a new attitude toward human labor in social life.

[ 6 ] Now, even if these two significant economic phenomena are, for the time being, the main channels through which social movement is currently manifesting itself, this does not mean that economic forces alone can provide what is necessary to resolve the social question today and in the near future. However, the way in which the life of civilized humanity has developed in recent times shows how human energies and all human endeavors have been primarily absorbed by the processes resulting from economic development. And that is why it is not surprising that the most significant thinker of the proletarian world—for that is what he remains even today—Karl Marx, focused his attention above all on economic life.

[ 7 ] To him, Karl Marx, let us devote a few minutes of our attention—not because I believe that modern proletarian demands have arisen from what the proletariat may have learned from Karl Marx, but because that which, in the innermost feelings and fundamental impulses of the modern proletariat’s spiritual life, has only slowly emerged over the course of the recent centuries, and then rapidly over the course of the 19th century—has found its most intense expression to this day in the views of Karl Marx, because he is the interpreter of what lives, more or less unconsciously or consciously, in millions of people today.

[ 8 ] Well, precisely because, over the past seventy years, the impulses that Karl Marx had already prophetically articulated in the first half of the 19th century—and later on—have matured more and more in the souls of these millions of people, it is precisely for this reason that his worldview seems so compelling to the leading figures of the proletarian masses. To him, Karl Marx, it seemed evident what must happen in modern times—a fact well known in the broadest circles due to the development that economic life has undergone in recent centuries, through the advancement of modern technology and industry, as well as through the management of these industrial and technical enterprises and activities by private capital. To him, the entire course of human development appeared such that, in the course of historical epochs, economic systems have always succeeded one another. Karl Marx envisioned that the economic system which has developed in modern times on the basis of capitalist ideas is driving itself toward its own dissolution; so that this economic order, which increasingly requires the proletarianization of vast masses of humanity, will provoke this proletariat against itself, because the forms of economic life that have emerged must be brought about by the productive forces that develop within these economic systems. The productive forces are constantly changing. The economic forms strive to remain conservative. Eventually, the moment comes when the productive forces are no longer able to fit into the old economic forms.

[ 9 ] Marx believes he sees such a moment approaching, having recognized how the proletariat, with its productive forces, will tear apart the economic order into which this proletariat itself has been bound.

[ 10 ] The fundamental characteristic here is that Karl Marx sees economic development itself, in a sense, as the driving force that propels the proletariat forward to those points that will then bring about a new economic order—which, for him, means a new world order.

[ 11 ] Now, what Karl Marx envisions as the transformation of modern economic life is, of course, also linked to the transformation of everything that constitutes the scope of political life, and the transformation of everything that constitutes intellectual life. For Karl Marx conceives of the development of humanity entirely in the spirit of modern scientific thought. He has thoroughly departed from the view of earlier socialist thinkers, who believed at the time that the most important factor was human will, which intervenes in the fabric of human social life. Karl Marx believes that people must, in essence, will in the way that this will is determined by the necessities of the economic order. And from the economic order itself—from the way people produce and manage their affairs—state structures take shape, the law takes shape, morality takes shape, and so on; and, like a superstructure—like something that merely reflects economic life—that which is called spiritual culture also takes shape. And today, when one understands what is going on in the souls of proletarian people, one can say: This view is widespread in the broadest circles; human beings are bound up in economic life, and economic life—the way they earn their livelihood, the way they are able to lead the rest of their lives—determines how satisfied they are with the legal order, and what kind of legal order can even come into being. Economic life also determines how they think, how they feel, and what they produce in the arts and in science.

[ 12 ] This is how it has come to be for many people; particularly in the broadest leadership circles of the proletariat, what constitutes intellectual life is regarded as an ideology. One hears the word “ideology” time and again whenever the proletarian seeks to describe precisely what he regards as intellectual life. That is one side of the matter.

[ 13 ] On the other hand, the proletarian turns his attention to public life. In this public life, however, he finds most pronounced what he describes—again following the lead of Karl Marx—as the all-dominant class struggles. And finally, he turns his attention to economic life, which is closest to him because he is directly involved in it. And because this economic life completely absorbs his existence, he develops what he expresses with the words “Marxist conception of history.” He develops this from his conviction that, fundamentally, the entire historical course of humanity consists of economic struggles, is shaped by forms of economic life, and that everything else depends on this material life. And this, in turn, is connected to his perception of the culture of the ruling, leading circles—a culture into which he cannot penetrate with his soul, which, even in its scientific rigor, often strikes him as a kind of “luxury culture,” and which he perceives as an ideology.

[ 14 ] Today we find ourselves at a turning point in European culture where we must ask deeper questions than have been asked in socialist and non-socialist circles for the past seventy years; where we must ask more profoundly: What actually underlies this view of the proletariat—this view that all intellectual life is ideology, that all political life is a class struggle, and that everything that constitutes real history is merely a result of material development? - It was precisely that mode of thinking characteristic of modern humanity—into which Karl Marx, too, was led by his ideas and all his impulses—that was inclined toward materialism in its most diverse forms.

[ 15 ] One might ask: Why, of all things, has the line of thought of these significant, these influential thinkers been steered onto a course that regards economic life alone as the determining factor for all human development? What has caused the thinking of the modern proletarian himself to be pushed in the same direction?

[ 16 ] Anyone who studies modern history not according to conventional historical accounts, but rather based on what a deeper historical perspective might already offer today, will indeed encounter a very, very curious phenomenon that may bring them closer to solving the question just raised.

[ 17 ] Economic life in modern times has, one might say, taken a course that can be understood if one tries to grasp it in the same way one grasps scientific facts. One cannot say of this economic life that it has not been subject to a certain necessity—one that can be understood in terms of the natural sciences—in the way it has developed; nor can one even say, upon properly examining the facts, that this economic life as such could be any different. —But if one were to stop there, one would arrive at an extraordinarily pessimistic view of life.

[ 18 ] Other questions, however, arise. To a limited extent, I would say, people’s gaze and energy were fixated on economic life.

[ 19 ] Other areas of life have undergone a development that must today be viewed quite differently from mere economic development. It was part of the overall outlook of modern times to regard the economy, so to speak, as the foundation from which the other two main branches of human life—political life and intellectual life—arise.

[ 20 ] One might say that, based on scientific preconceptions, it became clear to Karl Marx and his followers that economic life contains the root causes. From these causes, the structure of political and legal life develops, as does intellectual life. But is that really the case? That is the big question. Today we are already at a turning point where it is necessary to recognize that this entire fundamental perspective is radically wrong—that it is impossible to understand the other two branches of human life as a whole from economic life, just as it is impossible to understand political and legal life from economic life, and just as it is impossible to understand spiritual life from economic life.

[ 21 ] This is precisely what is peculiar about modern times: that, in its worldview and outlook on life, modernity has lacked anything that would have enabled it to move beyond the prejudice that economic life underlies all other aspects of human life.

[ 22 ] Three aspects of a deeper reality, rooted more profoundly in human nature, manifest themselves as spiritual life, legal life, and economic life. They exist side by side. This is what we must begin to understand. We must put an end to—this will instill social will into the proletarian demands—we must put an end to the error arising solely from natural science and from natural-scientific prejudices, as if the economic order were the causal foundation for the other two spheres of life, for the legal sphere and the spiritual sphere.

[ 23 ] Anyone who wishes to understand this must focus their attention on one thing above all else. Look at the way in which modern thinking—the modern view of the world—has developed. This way of thinking, this view of the world, is more closely connected to scientific findings than one might suppose. If I were of the opinion that practical life—the outward practice of living—were in any way dependent on theories, views, concepts, and ideas, as might be inferred from a one-sided philosophy, then I would not make the remark I have just made at all. But that is not how I view the course of history. It seems to me that what expresses itself throughout the entire sphere of life—shaping this life, impelling this life—seems to me to find expression, more or less, only symptomatically in the way of thinking of a given era; so that I would never wish to derive practical life from the way of thinking, but I would like to assert that the way of thinking, the way of viewing things, is a clear, symptomatic expression of what is taking place in the depths of the human soul and ultimately shapes external life—including practical life and, ultimately, economic life.

[ 24 ] What has permeated this way of thinking in all spheres of life is what one might call scientific thinking. But to what, exactly, does scientific thinking refer? There are still many prejudices surrounding this question today, and I believe that those who currently live according to this way of thinking will be very surprised by the changes in today’s worldview into which they will grow. What is considered downright axiomatic today—downright absolutely valid—will most certainly be challenged; it will most certainly undergo significant, powerful transformations. How do rational natural scientists think today across a broad range of fields? How do they think in a specific field? They think: We do not yet truly understand life or the soul; fundamentally, we understand only that which is inanimate within the order of time—well, let’s say, that which is dead. But the ideal is seen as follows: that from our ever-deepening understanding of the dead, something like an understanding of the living will also develop.

[ 25 ] But one must recognize that the entire way of thinking—as we have developed it over the last three to four centuries, and which lies at the heart of scientific mental images—is suited only to comprehending the inanimate. It is precisely for this reason that natural science has become so great—because this way of thinking is suited to comprehending the lifeless, everything lifeless that is also embedded in plants, animals, humans, and all living things. Through natural science, we understand only the lifeless that is present in everything.

[ 26 ] This way of thinking, which has made the natural sciences so great, ruins and corrupts everything that constitutes social thought and that must form the basis of social will—for the simple reason that social will must be directed toward a viable social organism. But if we do not even comprehend the living aspect of external nature, how can this way of thinking possibly be capable of bringing about the viability of the social organism in any way? It is inherent in the innermost structure of modern thought that human beings must acknowledge their helplessness and awkwardness in the face of social life. Above all, a metamorphosis of the innermost human perception and the innermost human thought must take place so that human beings no longer face these matters with such helplessness and awkwardness.

[ 27 ] Anyone who today looks without prejudice at all that is asserting itself here and there as a social novelty actually has the feeling that what Goethe so beautifully and dramatically embodied as medieval superstition in the Homunculus scene of the second part of Faust is coming to life in a different realm. In the Middle Ages, it was believed that the human organism itself could be created by combining dead matter and dead forces, according to a human intellect that, in reality, exercises dominion only over the dead.

[ 28 ] People have moved away from this as if it were a superstition; but it is as if a human superstition were trying to transplant itself from one realm to another. And what is often asserted today as a social viewpoint, seems like a homunculus theory—as if one had no concept of what is to take shape as a living social organism, as if one merely wished to assemble this social organism in the same way that the medieval alchemist sought to assemble the homunculus from the very things with which one has become imbued—namely, the scientific way of thinking that is directed solely toward the inanimate. This, above all, is what must be overcome.

[ 29 ] Alongside humanity’s economic development stands the development of the state, which consists, among other things, primarily in the shaping of the law, and alongside this stands intellectual life. As I have said, economic development can be understood in terms of the natural sciences. Can the other two branches of human life as a whole be understood in the same way? Can legal life be understood this way? Can spiritual life be understood this way?—This question answers itself when one considers the forms these two branches of life have taken in recent times. When, three to four centuries ago, a new worldview emerged simultaneously with technological and capitalist development, the entire thinking of the leading circles was directed toward incorporating, on the one hand, intellectual life and, on the other, economic life, more and more into the life of the state.

[ 30 ] Spiritual life has, in essence, already become deeply integrated into public life. One can indeed see the very progress of recent human development in the fact that the branches of spiritual life—which were formerly more or less independent and had developed autonomously—have been incorporated into the state legal system. How proud people are, to mention just one example, that they have managed to force the entire school system into the state legal system.

[ 31 ] Economic life did not progress quite so quickly; but it was nevertheless regarded as a significant step forward that the major transportation agencies—the postal service, the telegraph, and the railroads—had been integrated into the state structure; and to the extent that the ruling and leading circles deemed it appropriate in their own interests, they forced more and more of economic life into the realm of the state.

[ 32 ] Because attention has been focused almost hypnotically on this economic life in recent times, and because the proletariat is primarily drawn into this economic life, an ideal has emerged for the proletariat: to appropriate the state for itself in the same way that the ruling classes once appropriated it for their own interests, and to use this state—as it has evolved from all manner of ancient forms—as a framework into which to force the entire economic life, like a vast cooperative, within this modern state.

[ 33 ] One can actually demonstrate how, under this economic hypnotism, even the modern proletarian question has developed more and more. One need only look back to the 1880s and 1870s! What was the prevailing view among the ranks of social democracy in Germany at that time, and what did social democracy itself hold as its ideal?

[ 34 ] Well, up until the 1890s, the two main points of this social democratic ideal were, first: the abolition of all social and political inequality; and second: the abolition of wage relations themselves—wage labor. These were two demands—I would say—arising from a general human consciousness. These two demands have not yet been fully permeated by the nuance that is oriented solely toward economic life. In the 1890s, these two ideals I have just mentioned were replaced by two fundamentally different ones: first, the transformation of all private ownership of the means of production into common ownership; second, the transformation of commodity production into a socialist system of production directed and managed by and for society. The social democratic demands have thus been completely reduced to a purely economic program.

[ 35 ] Thus, I would say, it is precisely in its current economic program that social democracy reveals itself as the ultimate executor of what has, in essence, been the bourgeois worldview as it has developed over the course of the last few centuries.

[ 36 ] Only those who realize that these demands are nothing other than the ultimate consequence of what the bourgeois world order and the bourgeois economic order have developed to this day can truly understand the demands that exist within today’s proletariat. But it went even further.

[ 37 ] What I have just described to you as the newer worldview—one that is thoroughly permeated by the impulses of the natural sciences—is, in fact, precisely what has repeatedly taken shape within bourgeois circles over the course of the last few centuries as the underlying worldview and philosophy of life. Where did the leading minds of the proletariat get what they think today—what they have incorporated into everything that constitutes their social will? They derived it from the legacy of the bourgeois scientific mode of thought.

[ 38 ] It is fair to say: Up to now, the adoption of the bourgeois scientific worldview has been the last great act of trust that proletarian circles have placed in this bourgeoisie—and, in essence, continue to place in it to this day. For they have adopted the bourgeois worldview. And with this bourgeois worldview, they were put to work at the machines, harnessed to the desolating life—the life of capitalism that is desolating for them—and torn away from all those professions that answer the question for human beings: What am I, actually, in this world? Standing beside the soulless machine and within the capitalist order, where one is merely a cog, the question “Who am I, actually, as a human being within the course of human development?” remains unanswered.

[ 39 ] Above all, this gave rise to the demand among the proletariat to find the answer to this question for themselves, based on science and a scientific orientation. For the proletariat, the images of the new worldview took on a completely different meaning than they did for bourgeois circles. The member of bourgeois circles still lives within an economic and social order that, at its core, embodies the traditions and customs of the past. No matter how convinced he may be of what has emerged in recent times under the sole influence of the scientific way of thinking, it does not fully capture his entire being; he draws religious, spiritual, artistic, or other impulses from elsewhere to complement this modern scientific orientation. For the proletarian, this modern scientific orientation is what is supposed to answer the question: What am I as a human being?

[ 40 ] Oh, if one has looked into the souls of many proletarians—those souls that have preserved their sense of humanity and their longing for human dignity—then one knows how they yearn to have this question answered, particularly from the perspective of modern scientific thought: What do I mean in the world as a human being? - Then what is already implied in the term “ideology” stands before these souls: a spiritual life that does not guarantee the human being a connection to the spiritual world, a spiritual life that is supposed to consist only of unreal ideas, only of an ideology; it cannot sustain these souls. The individual may not be aware of this, but its effect is felt in the soul! This is what desolates the souls: that the proletariat has adopted from the bourgeoisie and the ruling circles a way of thinking, a worldview, that cannot fulfill human beings; that the proletarian, who has been torn away from the old ways of life, cannot believe in, nor can he be connected to, the old traditions to which the others still cling, and that this scientific way of thinking—which is merely what the dead can comprehend—cannot provide him with an answer to the question of the highest things, for which he feels a more or less unconscious longing, namely, the life of his own soul within the order of the world. This lies deep within every proletarian soul; no matter how terrible the forms in which it manifests itself may be, it lies at the very core of the proletarian soul. And even what appears as excesses in today’s social movement becomes visible only because of that spiritual desolation that has arisen under the influence of what has just been described.

[ 41 ] Let us consider: How have the ways of life—to which humanity certainly owes something, alongside the scientific order that brought the proletarian what has just been described—how have these developed in recent times? Certainly, faith in the state—as it has emerged in recent times—is firmly rooted in many souls who have absolutely no desire to change their ways: faith in the state that would best take everything under its wing, whether it be economic life or intellectual life! Because this faith is so deeply rooted, so little is learned from the facts. Do not the last four and a half years speak all too clearly of what the states have achieved with their missions across a large part of the earth? The time will come when people will see that what they have experienced as the most terrible global catastrophe is a consequence of the structure of the entire organization of modern states. And if one examines what led the states, through their own actions, to be driven into this global catastrophe, one must ask: How have the states attempted to—and been able to—manage this interplay of the three spheres of life: the spiritual, the political or legal, and the economic? As states, they were driven into the world war! And anyone who observes, in particular, the origins of this world war will see strong arguments against the existence, the composition, and the internal structure of the states that have emerged over the last three to four centuries of human development.

[ 42 ] Another source, however, reveals how intellectual life actually developed precisely during the period when it was most heavily claimed by everything pertaining to the state—the period when people took such pride in extending the state’s power over all intellectual matters more and more.

[ 43 ] This is, in essence, a chapter in recent historical development that can only be depicted with strongly pessimistic strokes! Let us take a look at the intellectual life of the last three to four centuries: many songs of praise have been sung in its honor. But its characteristic features have, in fact, received little emphasis. The voices of our time will be compelled to say something different about this intellectual life of the last three to four centuries than what has been expressed in the songs of praise sung in its honor. Let me highlight one characteristic feature of this intellectual life.

[ 44 ] If we truly wish to view things impartially, do we not see how great and significant figures have emerged over the course of the last three to four centuries? Unless they were active in a field that was directly necessary for the life people were leading at the time, haven’t the most outstanding minds had some kind of profound impact? We should not delude ourselves about this.

[ 45 ] Let us turn our attention for a moment to a very, very significant figure of modern times: Goethe. Do people really know Goethe? On the contrary! We know virtually nothing about this Goethe! Has that which lives within Goethe—that gigantic, grand, and mighty spiritual life—found its way into people’s souls in any way? No, not at all! In Germany itself, after Goethe had been more or less a favorite of high society, a “Goethe Society” was founded in the 1880s. Is this “Goethe Society” a matter of national importance, as Goethe’s spiritual legacy would necessarily require? No, ladies and gentlemen! Someone who himself was active within this “Goethe Society” for a long time, but who was always in opposition precisely to the leading circles of this Goethe Society, is in a position to tell you: This “Goethe Society” is a pedantic, scholarly elaboration of something that has to do with Goethe outwardly, but not inwardly! The spiritual life of modern times—not only in Goethe but in all the other great figures—has not been integrated into general human life. It is a spiritual life that, in a sense, modern humanity has been unable to embrace. When it has embraced it, it has done so, at most, by treating this or that as a sensation, by informing itself about this or that, and by, in a sense, making this or that socially acceptable. For example, after the “Goethe Society” had experimented for a long time with its leadership, it finally resorted to appointing a former Prussian Minister of Finance—who had never had any inner connection to Goethe—as chairman of the “Goethe Society”! This is just one of the characteristic phenomena; it could be multiplied not just tenfold, but a hundredfold, a thousandfold, indeed a millionfold, if one were to delve into this modern intellectual life. This intellectual life is characterized precisely by the fact that the broadest circles of humanity have been unable to assimilate these significant achievements, so that these significant achievements have had to exist in the most tragic manner, like parasites on human development. In a deeper sense than is generally believed, this is part of the development of social consciousness and of social life as a whole in modern times. And if one is unwilling to recognize the significance of such phenomena of intellectual life for modern social development, one will never find the path to a genuine, substantive social will.

[ 46 ] In a certain sense, this newer spiritual life has become a sterile theory. Why? Anyone who knows what the conditions of a genuine spiritual life are knows that spiritual life must never be subjected to the authority of any external power if it is to flourish. Natural science, which is directed solely toward the inanimate, and all those branches of intellectual life that have drawn closer to natural science under the pressure of modern circumstances—these have been incorporated into the structures of the state. But those branches of spiritual life that are based on the most individual capacities of human beings—which were precisely meant to develop the driving force within the human being toward spiritual will—have been driven out of these state structures. That is why our modern spiritual life lacks the driving force that the old religious concepts possessed, because in the broadest circles, people are not in a position—are incapable—of absorbing what is flowing into the development of humanity and what, unfortunately, must live in a tragic manner, just like parasites.

[ 47 ] An explanation will be found for these phenomena. It lies in the fact that, in recent times, a particular advancement has been seen in the intertwining of spiritual life with political life. Until people realize that a radical reversal is necessary in this area, social recovery cannot come from this one direction. Intellectual life, school life, and all other branches of intellectual life must constitute a distinct, independent component of a healthy social organism; they must be separated from the structure of the state, which should be left solely to the task of upholding the rule of law and political life proper.

[ 48 ] One could point to various phenomena when discussing not only how the administration of science and the administration of intellectual life have become dependent on the state’s means of power and coercion, but also how the content of science itself has become dependent, and how the inner dynamics of scientific endeavor have become dependent. This shows just how ill-suited the very person who is truly a great scientist—if he is a natural scientist—is when it comes to social thought and social will. A characteristic example of this: Oscar Hertwig, a prominent natural scientist in the field of biology, could recently have been cited as an open-minded thinker who, in his excellent book The Development of Organisms—A Refutation of Darwin’s Theory of Chance, made an immeasurably significant contribution to the development of modern scientific thought. This same Oscar Hertwig made the ill-fated attempt to express his scientific way of thinking in a small booklet devoted to social, legal, and political life. One cannot imagine a more nonsensical, more unhealthy piece of work—when set alongside Oscar Hertwig’s great work in the field of natural science—than this childish little booklet on social and legal issues and other similar questions, the scientific questions of modern times! This is clear proof of how, under the nationalization of intellectual life, a way of thinking has developed that simply cannot penetrate the realm of social demands.

[ 49 ] This intellectual apparatus has, in a strange way, become dependent on something else; so that, in the end, scholars such as the historian Heinrich Friedjung are really no rarity at all. I truly speak not out of animosity toward Heinrich Friedjung; he was a dear friend of mine in my youth, but today the times are so grave that only objective interests can be taken into account. That Heinrich Friedjung, the historian, who, as they say, has written an epoch-making work on modern Austria, has applied the historical documentary method—the method of examining historical documents; he placed his historical work at the service of the Austrian Foreign Minister, Baron Ährenthal; he has, as he believes, proven—using strictly historical methods—that certain anti-Austrian machinations must have originated with seven conspirators. The matter has gone to trial. Heinrich Friedjung was able to point out that he is not a historian to be taken lightly, given that the University of Heidelberg had awarded him an honorary doctorate. Nevertheless, even though Friedjung had proven—using strict historical methods—that the documents with which Baron Ährenthal sought to condemn the Serbs were genuine, the court was forced to acknowledge that they were crude forgeries.

[ 50 ] At that time, the historical method itself was condemned. Unfortunately, we live today in an age in which such things are not taken seriously enough—and above all, not deeply enough—since spiritual life, despite the seriousness with which it is pursued, runs parallel to the rest of life as a mere side current. For me, what has always been characteristic of this superficiality with which the deepest intellectual life can be treated today is what I would like to call “the count with the two pants pockets.” I met this count with the two pants pockets—a witty man—during one of my visits to the Nietzsche Archive. He was a familiar figure at the Nietzsche Archive. He had two pants pockets; from one of them, just as we were leaving the Nietzsche Archive, he pulled out a Bible—a complete Bible in pearl print—which he could slip into his pocket. He said, “You see, I always carry this with me.” “But I have another one,” he added; and from his other pants pocket he pulled out Thus Spoke Zarathustra, also published in pearl print, so that I could see it. Thus the count had carried with him—or at least intended to carry—the two books that were most significant to him! I would say that this is a purely symbolic expression of how modern people, in general, relate to spiritual matters. The count with the two pants pockets was entirely symbolic: one pocket was filled with the Bible, the other with Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Thus we see how modern intellectual life has become sterile and barren, despite all the praise it receives.

[ 51 ] Thus we see that political life, as it has developed in modern times up to the present, has, in a sense, reduced itself to absurdity through the global catastrophe. Does this not raise the question: Is it not precisely in the combination of the three most important spheres of life—the legal sphere, the spiritual sphere, and the economic sphere—that we find the very thing that has driven us into this global catastrophe, the very thing that prevents us from coming to terms with today’s social realities?

[ 52 ] Anyone who considers the way in which these three branches of human life have gradually become integrated into public life cannot help but recognize that the recovery of the social organism lies in the dissolution and separation of these three elements. One will only be able to think of the social organism in a living, vibrant way—and not merely in a homunculus-like manner—when one truly examines the conditions of spiritual life on the one hand, of legal or political life within the state on the other, and finally, the conditions of economic life. Then, however, one will also come to realize that these three branches of life have entirely different foundations, and that they develop best when each of these branches is strictly left to its own devices.

[ 53 ] In more recent times, people could not grasp this simply because, as if hypnotized, their gaze was fixed solely on economic life. And so, above all else, they saw people—especially if they were proletarians—as being harnessed to economic life through their labor. In this economic life, in the economic cycle, only goods or goods-like services were actually supposed to circulate. The modern proletarian feels this as well. This is expressed in his demands; even if he phrases it differently in his actual words, he feels that it is contrary to his human dignity to be harnessed to the economic process just like the commodity itself. Just as commodities have prices that are determined by each other, so too, within this price-formation process, human labor power has a price. On the one hand, this was the most striking aspect of Karl Marx’s theory: that he gave voice to the proletariat’s deepest feelings regarding labor power, that he made people aware of the fact that just as commodities are bought and sold on the commodity market according to supply and demand, so too is your labor power bought and sold on the labor market. In this regard, one must take an even more radical stance than Karl Marx himself if the social organism is to be restored to health. One must be clear that human labor power is something that simply cannot be compared to any commodity, and therefore cannot, in any respect, have a price like any commodity. This is what the person who must bring his labor power to the market feels; he feels that we have now reached that point in human development where the third must follow, in addition to the two other things that have fallen by the wayside in the course of human development. Within human life, the old institution of slavery—where the whole person could be bought and sold—has fallen; serfdom has fallen away, where less of the human being could be bought and sold; the third must also fall—that which the capitalist economic order has still preserved—the fact that human labor can be bought and sold on the labor market must fall. For when a person sells their labor power, they must go along with it. Since they must go along with it, they are, in a sense, still selling their entire self. This is what is being felt: we have reached the point in human development where nothing more of a human being may be bought or sold, where economic life must be limited to that which, separate from the human being, can have an objective value in and of itself. That is to say: in the future, economic life and the economic cycle must consist solely of the production, exchange, and consumption of commodities.

[ 54 ] What was once part of economic life—and what is still, in part, part of it today—namely, human labor, must be separated from it. It cannot be liberated from economic life except by being independently administered within a healthy social organism—that is, when labor becomes a matter of law rather than a matter of economics; in other words, when the constitutional state, the political state, develops alongside the economic organism. Economic life will be governed by brotherhood—that brotherhood which is, in a sense, brotherhood on a grand scale, where associative life arises from professional communities, from the regulation of production according to consumption, and so on. In the political state—which, in turn, will develop entirely independently, like a sovereign state alongside another state, alongside economic life—democratic equality among all people will prevail. All institutions must be structured in such a way that the principle that all people are equal to one another is upheld and expressed in matters that concern all people. Above all, it will be necessary to establish the provisions relating to labor law, among many other things. But labor law is the primary concern for the social movement at the present time. Quite independently of the economic sphere, equality will prevail among people in the independent constitutional state, whether they perform mental or physical labor; labor law will be regulated there.

[ 55 ] What will result from this? It will result in economic life—as a self-contained sphere—bordering on the natural order on one side and on the legal sphere on the other. Economic life is dependent on the natural order. Whether the fields are fertile in a given year or not, and what forces are at work beneath the earth—much in economic life depends on these factors. One can use technical means to alter the natural conditions of soil fertility or influence them through other conditions of economic life, but a limit is set by what is determined by these natural conditions. This is reflected in the pricing mechanisms of economic life and in all its institutions. It would never occur to anyone to try to make nature dependent in any way on the institutions of economic life. Just as independent as nature itself—just as the seeds of grain sprout from the ground, independent of economic life—so too must the labor rights regulated within the legal system be independent. The worker enters the economic cycle with rights that are established outside this economic cycle, just as the forces of nature lie outside the economic cycle. All price formation—everything that develops in economic life—then develops on the basis of labor law that has arisen outside of economic life. Labor law shapes prices, but the price of human labor is not determined by the economic cycle.

[ 56 ] Only this will be able to establish a healthy relationship between the manual laborer and the intellectual leader. Then the laborer will no longer need to enter into today’s illusory contract regarding his labor power; instead, he will be able to enter into the only possible contract—one that relates to the appropriate division of what is produced jointly by the manual laborer and the intellectual leader. There is no other way to achieve what is necessary in this area than through the strict separation of political life from economic life.

[ 57 ] On the other hand, however, an independent, free intellectual life is just as necessary. What can develop within the state is only a healthy development if the state regulates only those matters that apply equally to all people. Intellectual life is simply stifled if it is to be formed on the same basis as the law and political life. Intellectual life must emerge from the self-sufficient cultivation and management of people’s individual abilities. This will then be an intellectual life emancipated from state life—one that will truly be capable of sustaining the human soul once again. This will not be an ideology; it will not be a spiritual life that merely provides abstract concepts; it will be a spiritual life that fully and completely proves its own reality, that sustains human beings with their souls, and that restores them to a spiritual order. This is precisely what today’s proletarian still rejects. In the depths of his soul, he yearns for such a spiritual life, because he feels that otherwise the soul will wither away.

[ 58 ] This call for a free shaping of intellectual life is a terribly serious matter. The reason the matter is so serious is that all human instincts—everything that has developed according to the prevailing views of modern times and according to established patterns of thought—runs counter to this restoration of the social organism. That is also why one would like to speak specifically about this demand for a free spiritual life—a spiritual life grounded in itself—to those who represent the youth of today. If science and worldview, indeed spiritual life as a whole, are to be carried into the future, then we need a spiritual life that is something other than what can be placed on the foundation of the state. They should feel that things will be different when the teacher at the lowest level knows that what he has to do is administered by those who merely administer within a spiritual organism that stands on its own, when a teacher knows he is not dependent on any measures imposed by the state. When, to a large extent, the state no longer exerts an educational influence, when those who wish to become theologians, lawyers, doctors, and so on, are no longer dependent on the state, and it is also felt that what is needed—precisely when spiritual life develops out of the needs of spiritual life itself—is exactly what the spirit requires for humanity, then a spiritual life will develop that can have a reciprocal effect on the other branches of human life as a whole.

[ 59 ] Having just discussed what form the proletarian demands for the abolition of the wage relationship must actually take, we can now point out what the true nature of the capital question is.

[ 60 ] Many people today speak of the spirit—that spirit which, in the course of the past few centuries, has become a shadow, an ideology. Nothing that sustains the soul can be drawn from this spirit. This spirit, this spiritual life, has for the most part also become something that lacks the power to penetrate into immediate practical life. That is why Karl Marx found nothing other than economic life that still guaranteed him any kind of reality. He said: In practice, a person must experience that his thinking truly has meaning, that the truth of his thinking can truly take shape. But this practice was found only in economic life. Spiritual life must be able to give itself a practical life from foundations that are realities. That is precisely what makes these matters so immensely serious. Then, however, this spiritual life will not possess those abstractions that are today our great social—and, in essence, inner—evil; then this spiritual life will take shape as something very concrete.

[ 61 ] Oh, let us look at this spiritual life once more from a certain perspective. We see how ethical demands have been formulated within this spiritual life; we see how, based on certain philosophical foundations, ethics of feeling, ethics of love for one’s neighbor, and ethics of the divine or moral world order have been established within this spiritual life. What do these ethics speak of? They speak at length of the necessity of love for one’s neighbor, of human goodwill, of brotherhood. But their concepts, their ideas, remain at an abstract level, shadowy, and do not penetrate down into immediate, everyday life. Philistine—that is the word, even if it radically expresses something that does not seem so radical to people—our spiritual life has become philistine. It has become untrue. It moves in abstract heights; it cannot immerse itself in the immediate, practical, everyday reality. Yet it must immerse itself in this reality. It must become anti-philistine. Only when it immerses itself in the most mundane needs of daily life, only when the spirit proves itself capable of intervening in the most immediate—I would say, the most mundane—human actions, will the power of the spirit be able to manifest itself in social life. Then, however, it will become clear that the question of capitalism will be resolved at the same time as the question of spiritual life. Certainly, when formulated abstractly, there is much merit in saying that private capital has delivered modern human life to decay and economic warfare, and that a change must take place. At first, one can do nothing but say: Therefore, private property must come to an end. One can be as honest as anyone can be with this demand, yet one can still hold the view—precisely out of a deeper understanding of social impulses—that nothing significant will be achieved by transforming private property into communal property. On the contrary, the desolating capitalism would be replaced by bureaucracy, which is no less desolating. The throne and the altar would be replaced by the factory and the office. Well, whether conditions would be better is still open to doubt.

[ 62 ] The point at issue is that what is actually intended—what truly lives in the subconscious of the proletariat—should indeed come to pass: that capital, which exists through its connection with individual human abilities in the management of capital, should, in a certain way, intervene in the economic process. It is not the egoism of the individual, but the common good that should be served. For in this realm, the proletarian perceives an immensely significant principle of political economy—one that, perhaps precisely because it is so deeply rooted in life and so profoundly significant, has never been emphasized by modern economists. In ethics and morality, people speak of altruism and egoism as opposites; they find altruism beautiful and egoism extraordinarily ugly. What is not considered is this: as soon as one looks into ordinary economic life—into that social organism in which, in the modern sense, the old primitive economy has been replaced by an economy based on the division of labor—it becomes evident that the more advanced the division of labor has become, the less the individual can work for himself, at least in economic terms.

[ 63 ] I am thus articulating an economic principle that I have been striving to popularize since 1904; yet humanity refuses to understand this economic principle. Whether one likes it or not, in a social organism governed by the division of labor—and this is the case with every social organism in the modern civilized world—it is not possible to work and act in an economically selfish manner. Everything that the individual produces must accrue to the whole. And everything that accrues to the individual comes to him from social capital. Following the replacement of the natural economy by money, and the further division of labor that money has brought about, it has become a fundamental economic principle that a person cannot work for themselves in a social organism governed by the division of labor, but can only work for others.

[ 64 ] In truth, one cannot work for oneself in a social organism any more than one can eat oneself. You will say: If someone is a tailor and makes a suit for himself, then he is working for himself. That is not true when it happens within a social organism characterized by the division of labor; for the relationship he thereby establishes between the suit and himself—by making this suit for himself within a social organism with a division of labor—is entirely different from that in a primitive economy. Admittedly, it is not possible to present you with fully valid proof in these brief discussions today, but such proof can be provided, and I will point these things out in my book on “The Key Points of the Social Question.” One can demonstrate that when a tailor sews a coat today, he sews it for the purpose of serving his fellow human beings, so that he can work for other people. Today, the coat is no longer produced by the tailor solely for his own consumption; it is not produced in a self-serving sense; it is a means of production. It has taken on this different character simply because the tailor lives in a social organism based on the principle of the division of labor.

[ 65 ] Underlying everything that happens is this economic altruism. If, on the other hand, one sins against it—that is, if one superimposes upon this self-realizing foundation a superstructure through which one selfishly appropriates the fruits that actually accrue to the community in the true social process—then one introduces into the world what I would like to call a “real lie.” The selfishness of today’s economic order is nothing other than a sum of real lies, of sins against that which is actually happening beneath the surface and which is governed by the law of social, economic altruism.

[ 66 ] And it is the reaction of the human proletarian soul, which senses that altruism prevails economically in the modern social organism based on the division of labor; it is the reaction to the unhealthy, hypocritical egoism that finds its outlet in the struggle against capitalism.

[ 67 ] Social understanding must replace what is today simply social ignorance in the broadest circles of humanity’s ruling classes. Then social understanding will also advocate that what is brought about by capital must become a cycle, and that care must be taken to ensure that the administrator of capital is always the one who justifies this administration through his individual abilities. The moment he no longer justifies this stewardship through his individual abilities, ways and means must be found to ensure that the capital flows over to another who, through his individual abilities, can in turn manage this capital profitably for the benefit of humanity as a whole.

[ 68 ] This is what will be achieved through the free cultivation of individual human abilities within the spiritual organism: that the circulation of capital will function. Today, there is actually something similar to what I mean here, but only for the most despicable form of property that the modern economy possesses—the very most despicable, namely, intellectual property. It is acknowledged that intellectual property actually derives solely from the social order; even if it is based on individual abilities, an intellectual achievement cannot arise from a person’s mere individuality. We always owe it to social impulses. We are obligated to return it to those social impulses. That is why it is just that what a person produces intellectually should become part of the public domain some time after their death. In a similar way—though the timeframes must differ—material property is justified with regard to the individual only as long as that person can claim the right to dispose of it through his or her individual abilities. That which may remain with a person as long as these individual abilities are active must find the means and ways—through the indirect channel of the administration of the intellectual organization—to reach other individuals who, in turn, are placed in the service of the general public. A cycle of ownership of the means of production will take the place of today’s private property. That will be the great solution to the capital question. It is mere stammering in this area when people speak today of the socialization of the means of production. Such socialization of the means of production would only give rise to a bureaucratic order—one that would, in turn, engender the very same tyranny from the ranks of those who are demanding it today—and would never bring about the kind of order that can truly establish a healthy social organism. This healthy social organism must be established by ensuring that capital circulates among those who are intellectually capable. The circulation of capital means that, over time, what must be managed capitalistically can truly be managed in the interest of the common good.

[ 69 ] I can only hint at this as well. This, too, will be discussed in greater detail in my book The Key Points of the Social Question in the Necessities of Life in the Present and Future.

[ 70 ] But you can see from this that when spiritual life is left to its own devices, it is not only the spiritual life itself—in its more spiritual branches—that will be sought, but also that which in economic life depends on people’s spiritual capacities and abilities; this, too, would find its proper path toward a healthy future through the spiritual organism’s attainment of autonomy. It is this, above all, that will produce not merely shadowy thinking, a shadowy spiritual life, or a luxurious spiritual life, but a spiritual life that becomes aware of the spirit through the spirit’s ability to penetrate material life everywhere.

[ 71 ] This is something that becomes clear when one looks into the very foundation of humanity, as it is being developed by human beings today, at this very moment; the old catchphrases regarding whether spirit or matter is justified should be discarded today.

[ 72 ] I am speaking to you from the standpoint of a Spiritual Science—but a Spiritual Science for which the old debate between spirit and matter has become nonsense. For there is a third element at stake here, of which spirit and matter are merely the outward expressions. When one enters into this third element—where neither spirit nor matter is perceived, but rather the primal, living spirituality of the world itself—one arrives at that which no longer presents the cause as a single aspect of human life as a whole, but rather expresses all three aspects—economic life, legal or political life, and spiritual life—as the three manifestations of something profoundly deep. Then the great error—which today has become a practical error in life—of wanting to subordinate everything to economic life will be overcome. Then what will come into being is not a unity abstractly imposed upon the state organism, but rather economic life, legal or political life, and spiritual life will develop out of their own vitality. And as they develop, they will grow together into a unity.

[ 73 ] I am not thinking of any kind of restoration of the old estates: the teaching estate, the productive estate, the military estate. Precisely everything that is estate-based, everything that is class-based, is overcome by the fact that the social organism itself is divided into its three parts. But the human being stands within these three parts as the unifying element. For my sake, the individual is placed within a particular profession, within a particular structure. He stands in a living connection with the other parts. Out of free trust, he sends his children to the schools of the intellectual organization. In economic life, everyone is part of it anyway; in political and legal life, this is because political life must, above all, administer that in which all people are equal.

[ 74 ] Weak-minded people and thinkers tend to imagine, based on what I have just said, that this would essentially endanger the unity of state life. Indeed, what has endangered this unity of state life the most in recent centuries? Precisely the fact that people have sought an abstract unity—precisely the fact that they have chaotically jumbled together and fused these three members of the social organism, which were meant to develop independently. I have shown you how spiritual life would flourish under this unity. Economic life, however, despite the presence of the state, has developed in such a way that today it is giving rise to fierce opposition in numerous regions of the civilized world against what constitutes state life.

[ 75 ] A recovery will only occur if we work our way up from the customary way of thinking in this area to a vibrant understanding of the healthy social organism. And this can consist of nothing other than the coexistence—much like sovereign states standing side by side, managing their common affairs only through their delegates—of the economic organism, the legal or political organism, and the spiritual organism. Many still dispute this today. But the one who, like the speaker addressing you, has soon to complete his sixth decade of life and who, throughout his entire conscious life, has always kept his gaze fixed on the development of the proletarian movement, not merely by thinking about the proletariat, but by learning through the vicissitudes of his own life to think alongside the proletariat—such a person knows how many prejudices still pile up today against what the times demand, against what, in essence, lies dormant in the subconscious of proletarian souls: the threefold social order. I am not one of those—even though I have seen how, decade after decade, prejudices have piled up against this view, which I believe is the only one that contributes to the health of the social organism—I am not one of those who succumb to pessimism; I am not among those who stand in fear, even when events today take on a form that is terrifying to some; I am not among those who, perhaps in their twilight years, would say: how much, how much has been endured in vain! No, I belong to those—and I would like to mention this only as a personal remark at the end, so that you may fully understand the spirit of my discussion this evening—I belong to those who, looking back on their lives, would not say: “If you could be young again, would you want to live your life all over again?” —I would never say, “No”—but I would always say, “Yes!”

[ 76 ] Because of this affirmation of life, I do indeed feel distant from some who have lived this life alongside me up to my present age and who—as, unfortunately, must be said of our times—could by no means bring themselves to face what the stark realities of the present are capable of overcoming; but I have faith that those to whom I do feel close—even if I am three times their age—that those who are young today and to whom, to my great satisfaction, I am able to speak primarily, will be the ones who will grow into a time in which, although there will initially be much suffering, much pain, and much tragedy, but in which there will also be the opportunity to rethink and relearn in a truly profound and intense way. That is why I do not fear that, particularly within this circle, there will be many who will label what I have outlined today as a utopia.

[ 77 ] Something entirely different could be described today as a utopia, and it was recently described as such here in Basel by Kurt Eisner—whose life tragically ended just a short while ago—who said in his lecture: “The world, with its economic system and other social order in which we live, is something that even the boldest utopian two thousand years ago could not have imagined.” - Reality today is the most powerful utopia. Is it any wonder, then, that when one speaks of a reality demanded by the human soul, demanded by human reason—when one speaks of such a reality—it appears to be a utopia?

[ 78 ] But those who are young today will grow from today’s utopian vision into real realities. Strong strength, strong courage, and a certain goodwill toward spirituality—these three will constitute the true social will. And from this synthesis of true social life with the demands of the proletariat will emerge what must come to restore our social conditions.

[ 79 ] That today’s youth may find that spiritual path to knowledge—which today stands out like a beacon of fire against the social horizon—is precisely what I take for granted; it is precisely this that has led me today, with great satisfaction and deep love, to respond to the call that has come to me specifically from students. If we find vitality, courage, and a strong spiritual nature—along with a social will arising from these qualities—in those who look toward a future life, then, despite everything that appears oppressive and devastating today, the development of humanity will continue. Then what we may once again hope for will come to pass.

[ 80 ] But we may already hope today for a society that will prove that human life is always worth living when it is grounded in the freedom of the spirit, in the equality of all people before that which can truly ground human dignity, and on an economic life that, in its brotherhood and in its fraternal labor, is on a par with the freedom of intellectual life and the equality of the democratic order of political life.

[ 81 ] Discussion

[ 82 ] Rudolf Steiner: I will take the liberty of addressing a few of the remarks made by the esteemed speakers in this discussion.

[ 83 ] First of all, I would like to point out that I do understand that the things I have said regarding the social order and the social organism cannot, I would say, instill conviction in the blink of an eye. In today’s lecture—which has already been long enough—I simply wanted to offer some food for thought, so to speak, that can then be explored further in one way or another.

[ 84 ] I know how deeply ingrained are the views expressed by the first distinguished speaker in this discussion regarding private property and the call for the socialization of the means of production. I would just like to draw your attention to one thing: Isn’t it true that people today have generally come to accept a mental image—or generally believe—that external facts are extraordinarily fixed; but our habits of thought are much more firmly entrenched within us. And what we have long become accustomed to in our thinking—above all as a human society, not just over decades but even over centuries—cannot leave us indifferent. That is why it is not easily recognized that, in all of this, which today takes the form of the transition from private property to common property, there is actually something at work here that is a legitimate demand, but which cannot immediately become the object of social will because a fundamental obstacle has not yet been overcome—an obstacle that will be overcome if you truly engage, with the deepest seriousness, with what I have presented today. What none of today’s socialists have overcome in their habits of thought—and thus not in the impulses of their will—is the concept of property. People would like to abolish private property; but because they have become so firmly accustomed to the concept of property, they cannot move beyond it. Property must exist; so, since it cannot be private property, they demand communal property, social property, nationalization, and so on.

[ 85 ] Just think through what I’ve presented today, and the old concept of property will disappear entirely. The objects that are property today—capital, means of production—will circulate. In other words, there is a living organism at work here. The person with the greatest aptitude for a given means of production will always be the one to manage it. Some may yet be convinced that this is not a utopia when they read what I have presented—though it is by no means exhaustive—in my book on the social question, which will be published in a few days. |

[ 86 ] But the point is precisely to break free from certain habits of thought that are all too deeply ingrained in everything people do today. That is what I meant when I pointed out that the means of production can only be associated with a person as long as that person’s abilities justify it. You see, today, among other sciences—including those where it is not immediately apparent—all the social sciences and historical disciplines are entirely under the influence of the natural-scientific mode of thinking; we also have political economy within these sciences. There is one thing in particular that is always overlooked. And in this context, perhaps we should address precisely this one point. People today suffer all too much from an ailment that Marx very aptly called “mors immortalis,” the death that cannot be killed. In life, everything is in motion; only the abstractions that people create in their minds are actually something fixed. That is what remains. And that is why, in the era in which conceptual thinking has developed in contrast to the earlier intuitive understanding—particularly since the mid-15th century—in this newer age, which differs fundamentally from all previous ones, people have in many ways become victims of concepts. When we delve into our most elementary sciences, we find genuine errors in methodology and theory [. . .]. This leads not to any useful, living social impulses, but develops into a hopeless way of thinking in the social sphere. Therefore, it will be difficult to engage with that revitalization of concepts that I am striving for in my presentations today. One would still like to cling to something that upholds the old concept of property. We must move beyond the concept of property altogether! And the first speaker in this discussion—if he thinks through to the end what I have outlined today—will see that the demand for nationalization or socialization of the means of production, and so on, is in fact nothing other than the demand that what is produced by the means of production be made available for the benefit of the general public. But perhaps—as current experiments are showing precisely where they are being carried out, though I do not wish to discuss these current experiments at all—perhaps this will be achieved to a certain extent through such experiments. Rather, it will be achieved when the means of production truly circulate—not when the collective, which is after all merely an abstraction and can only carry out certain actions based on some majority decision, holds ownership of the means of production, but when the means of production circulate so freely just as, for example, intellectual property is something that circulates freely thirty years after a person’s death—something that is, of course, then administered by the intellectual organism.

[ 87 ] What is to be achieved through the demand for the socialization of the means of production will still be able to interfere with the freedom of the individual without in any way undermining human individual abilities. This will be achieved precisely in the way I have spoken of today.

[ 88 ] My aim—which, I may say, has been a reality for thirty-five years now in the field of social issues—is to think things through to their logical conclusion in every instance, not to seek theories, but to seek what is feasible in life based on immediate experience.

[ 89 ] If you think through to its logical conclusion what I have presented today, you will see that, at every point in today’s social order, things can simply continue in the direction I have indicated. Therefore, what I have outlined is the opposite of any utopia: it is something immediately practical. Whether one begins in Russia, where things have progressed to a certain degree of destruction, or here in Switzerland, where the old order still stands and somehow continues to this day, everywhere one can achieve what I am calling for—the separation of spiritual life, economic life, and legal life—through the most diverse and concrete institutions. One need only, so to speak, reverse the course of the machine that has been driven in the wrong direction in recent times—indeed, in recent decades. As for the monopoly position of individuals—how could that possibly come about if the relationship between individuals is regulated within that one limb of the social organism, the constitutional state? A monopoly cannot arise, for as I will also show in my book, what a manager receives can be determined from the outset, whereas what results from economic conditions must either be reinvested in the business or, for the sake of balance, go to the general public—that is, to someone else who will then manage it if they have the ability to do so. All the harms caused by the current status of private property are eliminated in this way. This is what one should note about my arguments: that what others seek to achieve is in fact achieved here, albeit through means they deem inadequate. This is what I would like to say specifically in reference to the first distinguished speaker in this discussion.

[ 90 ] Certainly, he has pointed out a very valid point. You see, he described people who today speak of the individual state as an organism in the same sense that, in the natural sciences, an organism is simply an organism. In doing so, he is referring to a flawed line of thinking. The truth is that, if one is to make comparisons at all, one must make them correctly; in that case, the individual state can at most be a cell, while the entire organism can be the functioning Earth. This is what, I would say, undermines this truth when people conceive of that which is spatially limited as a whole. This line of thinking would cease immediately if one were to see that this organization, which is called the state—while it cannot be the case with actual organisms [...], it certainly can be the case with cells that come together. So, without delving too deeply into this intellectual exercise, I would just like to point out what is true: that the entire Earth has already become a kind of unified whole. But this is grounded in a different sense than I have explained. And as I said, I have dealt with these matters not theoretically, but based on direct experience.

[ 91 ] Of course, we must agree with the second speaker when he says: charity must become the fundamental principle of humanity. However, I would like to draw attention to one thing in this regard. I want to adopt the perspective of this second speaker. I always consider it more fruitful to speak with someone than to, so to speak, seek out precisely those points that could be raised as objections. You see, as the esteemed panelist said, people have been talking about love for one’s neighbor for two thousand years now. Nevertheless, despite all this talk of love for one’s neighbor—I ask you to consider the last four to five years! So perhaps the issue is not merely that we speak of love for one’s neighbor, but how we speak of it—whether we speak of it in an abstract way or whether we look concretely at how this love for one’s neighbor can be put into practice. And here I would like to adopt the viewpoint of the esteemed speaker in this discussion. You see, one of the most significant, most beautiful—that is, most significant for humanity—sayings in the Gospels, from Jesus Christ, is this: “I am with you always, even to the end of the world.” That is roughly how the correct translation would read. It is high time today to recognize that, in the truest Christian sense, this is a true word. We must not merely seek Christ in the Gospels; we must not merely seek the Christ who was, so to speak, laid to rest in the Gospels; we must seek the Christ who is alive, who walks among us. We must listen to what Christ proclaims anew every day. I believe that the one who hears Christ correctly is the one who, with each new age, is able to discern—from the place where the signs of the times appear—what Christ speaks for each age in a new way. And I believe that today he speaks to us through the ages in such a way that we must not stand still—not even with the verbal forms in which charity was preached in the past—but that we must move forward toward new forms, including in our outlook on life, just as we are clearly moving forward toward new forms of life itself. That is what I would like to offer for your consideration.

[ 92 ] Just a short while ago, over in Bern, I heard a speaker—a Catholic priest—who spoke very effectively. The man spoke in a manner very similar to our second panelist. He also said: Love for one’s neighbor must prevail; above all, Jesus Christ must lead the modern social movement. - I would like to say: nothing could actually be more self-evident than this. But then this gentleman went on to elaborate further—over in Bern, I mean—yes, he delivered what he said very effectively, but I myself remembered that I had already read these very words in my schoolbook forty-five years ago—they remain just words. The gentleman used the exact same words. I couldn’t help but think: Nevertheless, between the time those words were written in my schoolbook and what this gentleman said today lies the horrific catastrophe of the World War! — So surely it must be necessary today to rethink things, to approach them differently than they have been approached before. Are we not to learn anything at all? Are we to carry on in the same old rut, over and over again, just as our ancestors spoke of “love of neighbor”—even though, despite preaching love of neighbor, they could not prevent those dreadful days from coming? It’s not enough to preach love for one’s neighbor! I have often said in various circles: If there is a stove in the room, and I speak—as has now become customary in the bourgeois worldview—of all sorts of ethical demands, including love for one’s neighbor, then I would have to say: The stove has a duty to heat the room. But even if I try to say: “Dear stove, it is your duty as a stove to heat the room; it is your sacred duty”—and I repeat this over and over again—the room will simply remain cold! But I can save myself the speech if I load it with wood and light it. Then I’m taking concrete action, and the room becomes warm. Sometimes people talk about the way in which associations are supposed to form in economic life—how, as I’ve said, brotherhood is supposed to prevail on a grand scale and come about in concrete life; when people talk about how the social organism must be structured, they’re talking about something concrete. That already encompasses everything, including what love for one’s neighbor is meant to be! But merely talking about love for one’s neighbor—that, after all, is not what achieves anything today under our complicated circumstances. And when it is said, “Jesus Christ is to be the leader”—of course he is to be the leader. But it is not a matter of words, but of what one does. That is what matters—not merely exclaiming, “Lord! Lord!”—for he is already the Lord!—but what matters is that one truly follows him.

[ 93 ] When it is said here that the major spheres of life must form a unity, and one does not have a clear mental image of how these three spheres of life can be separated, then I would like to point out to you that it is indeed necessary to take this step forward in the realm of social thought—a step that, unfortunately, the natural sciences have not been able to take in their own field.

[ 94 ] In my penultimate book, On the Mysteries of the Soul, I pointed out how, by making use of everything that natural science is already capable of utilizing today, I was able to discover, in the course of thirty years of spiritual research, that the human organism is a threefold one; that the human organism is truly divided into the nervous-sensory organism, which is centered within itself and, naturally, stands in relation to the external world through the sense organs; that, secondly, alongside it stands the so-called rhythmic organism—the respiratory and cardiac organism—and, thirdly, the metabolic organism. All the activities of the human organism are contained within these three members, which are, however, centered within themselves; and it is precisely through this that they interact to form such a powerful unity—for each member has its center within itself, and it is precisely through this self-centeredness that the living unity comes into being. One should not think in this area in terms of the natural sciences; I do not wish to play with analogies like Schäffle or Meray—that is quite foreign to me—but I would like to point out that sound thinking struggles to apply this threefold division to the social organism. With regard to the social organism, we must not only apply this threefold division theoretically but also put it into practice. I cannot understand why it should be difficult to conceive of a spiritual organization governing itself—in a sense, governing itself sovereignly—the constitutional state, in turn, governing itself sovereignly, and the economic state governing itself sovereignly. The higher unity comes about precisely through this living interaction; whereas if one imposes a unity from the outset—be it a unity oriented toward economic life, a unity in legal life, as in this old constitutional state, or a unity in spiritual life, as was the case with the ancient theocratic institutions—these three elements interfere with one another; whereas they do not interfere when they interact to form a living unity, when they are truly centered within themselves; but this centering must be done in the right way.

[ 95 ] Recently, a member of the audience in Basel replied to me that he, too, could not form a mental image of what that would be like; surely, for example, justice and righteousness must be present in all three parts. - Yes, certainly justice and right must be present in all three members, just as the air, transformed in its material form, must be present in all three members of the human organism; but for that very reason, it must be processed internally through the respiratory and cardiac systems and prepared specifically in one member. In this way, it is effective in a special way for the other members. This is precisely what brings about the right unity: that one member produces and develops in the right way what is necessary for the others. This is the basis of the living organism. This is what human beings will have to address; for this is precisely what matters.

[ 96 ] That is what I must say in response to the objections raised regarding these classifications. What matters is that what can be achieved through this structure is precisely what lies unconsciously within the proletarian demands—but which can only be realized through conscious social will. And today, I wanted to speak to you about these various possibilities, as far as was possible in this short time.