The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. The Social Question as a Philosophical, Legal, and Economic Issue

[ 1 ] Anyone thinking about the social question today should bear in mind that, in light of the lessons taught by the overwhelming facts of recent and contemporary history, this question can no longer be understood as merely a partisan issue—one arising solely from the subjective demands of individual groups of people—but must be understood as a question that historical life itself poses to humanity.

[ 2 ] When I speak of compelling facts that must lead to this view, I need only point out how, for well over half a century, the proletarian-socialist movement has grown ever stronger. And while one may, depending on one’s own views and circumstances, take a critical or appreciative stance—whatever the case may be—toward the ideas that have emerged within this socialist-proletarian movement, one must accept it as a historical fact that must be taken into account in a objective manner. And anyone who looks back on the horrific final years of the so-called World War will not be able to deny—even if they must acknowledge here and there different causes and triggers for these horrific events—that social demands and social contradictions ultimately played a major role in bringing about these terrible events, and, in particular, that now, as we stand at the end—the provisional end—of these horrific events, it is becoming clear and evident how, across a large part of the civilized world, the social question is taking shape as a consequence of this so-called World War. If it is taking shape as a consequence of this so-called World War, then it must undoubtedly also be true that it was somehow embedded within it.

[ 3 ] However, hardly anyone will properly take note of the fact in question if they view it solely from the most immediate—and often personal—perspective, as is so common today, and are unable to broaden their horizons beyond human affairs in general. And this broadening of horizons is precisely what is sought in my book The Key Points of the Social Question in the Necessities of Life in the Present and Future and what is to be further developed, particularly for Switzerland, through the journal Soziale Zukunft, which is published here in Zurich.

[ 4 ] Now, it must be said that, at first, most people who speak today about the social question naturally view it as an economic issue—indeed, at first, hardly anything other than a question of bread—and, at most, as the facts clearly show, a question of human labor: a question of bread and work. If one wishes to treat the social question specifically as a matter of bread and work, one must realize that people have bread because the human community produces it for them, and that this human community can produce this bread only when work is performed.

[ 5 ] But the way in which work should and must be done is connected, in both large and small ways, to the way in which human society—or any closed segment of that society, such as a state—is organized. And anyone who takes a broader view will soon see that a piece of bread cannot become more expensive or cheaper without many—enormously many—changes occurring in the entire structure of the social organism. And anyone who then turns their attention to the way in which the individual, through their work, interacts with this social organism will see that, even if the individual works just a quarter of an hour longer or shorter, this is reflected in the way society within a closed economic area provides bread and money for the individual. You can see from this: even if one wishes to consider the social question solely as a matter of bread and work, one immediately arrives at a broader horizon. I would like to speak to you about this broader horizon and its various aspects in these six lectures. Today, I would like to take the liberty of offering, first and foremost, a kind of introduction.

[ 6 ] Anyone who surveys the recent and most recent history of human development will soon find confirmation of what discerning observers of social life have indeed expressed with sufficient force. But only the discerning ones, of course! There is a work from 1909 that, it must be said, contains some of the best insights that have emerged from a genuine understanding of social conditions. It is Hartley Withers’s Money and Credit in England. In this work, something is openly acknowledged that should be evident today to anyone who sets out to address the social problem at all. Withers states openly: The way in which credit, wealth, and monetary relations figure in the social organism today is so complicated that it becomes confusing when one attempts to logically dissect the functions of credit, money, labor, and so on within the social organism, that it is virtually impossible to arrive at what is necessary to truly understand the matters at hand within the social organism. And what is expressed from such an insightful perspective is corroborated by the entire body of historical thought that we can trace in recent times regarding the social problem, regarding the social—and specifically the economic—cooperation among human beings.

[ 7 ] What have we actually seen? Ever since economic life has, in a certain sense, I would say, from being instinctively organized along patriarchal lines—ever since it has become increasingly complex due to modern technology and modern capitalism—people have felt the need to reflect on this economic life and form mental images about it in the same way one reflects and forms mental images, say, in scientific research and scientific work. And we have seen how, in the course of recent times, through so-called political economy, various schools of thought have emerged—what have been called the views of the mercantilists, the physiocrats, Adam Smith, and so on, up to Saint-Simon, Fourier, Blanc, up to Marx and Engels, and up to the present day. What has become apparent in this development of economic thought? One can turn one’s gaze to what, let us say, for example, the mercantilist school or the physiocratic school of political economy represented, or to what Ricardo—Karl Marx’s teacher—contributed to political economy; one can examine many other economists, and one will always find that these figures focus their attention on one or another current within these phenomena. Based on this one-sided current, they seek to derive certain laws according to which economic life should be shaped. It has always been evident that what is identified as such laws—based on the model of modern scientific concepts—fits certain economic facts, but other economic facts prove to be too broad to be encompassed by these laws. It has always turned out that the views that emerged—which, admittedly, appeared in the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries in such a way that they claimed to discover laws by which economic life could be organized—were one-sided. Then something very, very strange came to light.

[ 8 ] Economics has, in a sense, become a legitimate science. It has been incorporated into our official university disciplines, and attempts have been made to examine economic and social life using the full arsenal of scientific thought. Where has this led? Let us look at Roscher, Wagner, and others to see where they have arrived: at an examination of economic laws that no longer dares to formulate such maxims or impulses that could truly intervene in a formative way in economic life. One might say: Scientific political economy has become contemplative and observational. It has, to a greater or lesser extent, retreated from what one might call social will. It has not arrived at laws that could flow into human life so that they might have a formative effect on social life.

[ 9 ] This same phenomenon has manifested itself in yet another way. There have been people who were broad-minded, benevolent, philanthropic, and had a fraternal attitude toward humanity—Fourier, Saint-Simon, and others of their ilk need only be mentioned from this perspective. With great insight, they developed visions of society whose realization, they believed, could bring about socially desirable conditions in human life. Now we know how those who today regard the social question above all else as a matter of life and death relate to such social ideals. Ask today those who believe they think in a truly contemporary socialist sense what they think of the social ideals of a Fourier, a Louis Blanc, or a Saint-Simon. They say these are utopias, images of social life through which one calls out to the ruling classes: Do this or that, and then many of the ills of social misery will disappear. But everything that is conceived in such utopias, so they say, lacks the power to take root in people’s will; it remains a utopia. No matter how beautiful the theories one might formulate, they say, the human instincts—for example, those of the wealthy—will not align with these theories; other forces must come into play. —- In short, a pervasive disbelief has emerged in social ideals that are brought to the people through feeling, sensibility, and the modern mode of cognition.

[ 10 ] This, in turn, is connected to what has actually taken place in the course of recent historical developments within the spiritual life of humanity. It has often been emphasized that what is today referred to as the “social question” is essentially connected to the capitalist economic order of recent times, which in turn has taken shape in the specific form we see today through the proliferation of modern technology and so on. But one will never do justice to all the factors involved unless one also takes something else into account: that along with the capitalist economic order and modern technological culture, a particular kind of worldview has emerged in the way of life of modern civilized humanity—a worldview that has borne great fruits, significant and transformative fruits of progress, particularly in technology and the natural sciences, but about which something else must also be said.

[ 11 ] If you follow one or the other of my writings, you will not fail to recognize that I am one who acknowledges—not one who rejects—and a critic of what has emerged in recent times through the scientific way of thinking. I fully acknowledge, for the sake of human progress, what has come about through the Copernican worldview, through Galileanism, and through the broadening of humanity’s horizons by Giordano Bruno and others—many others. However, what has developed alongside modern technology and modern capitalism is this: older worldviews have been transformed to such an extent that the newer worldview has taken on a strongly intellectualistic—and above all, scientific—character.

[ 12 ] One need only recall—though it is, of course, uncomfortable today to truly face such facts—how what we now proudly call our “scientific worldview” gradually developed; this can be demonstrated in detail through old religious, artistic-aesthetic, moral, and other such worldview currents. These currents of worldview had a certain impetus for life. Above all, one thing was characteristic of these worldviews: they led people to an awareness of the spiritual nature of their being. These older worldviews—whatever one may think of them today—spoke to people about the spirit in such a way that they felt a spiritual being living within them, one that is connected to the spiritual being that permeates and interweaves the world. In place of this worldview—which possessed a certain social impetus, a driving force for life—came the new, more scientifically oriented worldview. It deals with more or less abstract laws of nature, with sensory perceptions that are more or less isolated from the human being, and with abstract ideas and abstract facts. And one must view this natural science—without in any way diminishing its value—in terms of what it gives to human beings, and above all, how it gives it in such a way that human beings find the question of their own being answered. This natural science says a great deal about the interrelationships of natural phenomena. It also says a great deal about the physical constitution of human beings. But it oversteps its bounds when it attempts to say anything about the innermost nature of human beings. It provides no answer regarding the innermost nature of human beings, and it misunderstands itself if it even attempts to provide such an answer.

[ 13 ] Now, I am by no means claiming that what constitutes popular, general human consciousness has, as it were, already emerged today from the teachings of the natural sciences. But something else is true, deeply true: the scientific mindset itself has emerged from a certain mood of the modern human soul. If one perceives life in its entirety today, one knows that since the middle of the 15th century—and then increasingly over time—something has changed in the mood of the human soul compared to earlier periods. We know that a certain worldview has spread more and more throughout all of humanity—first among the urban population, but then extending out into the countryside—a worldview that has found its expression, as it were, in the direction of the natural sciences, much like a symptom. Thus, when we speak of the current state of the human soul, we are not dealing with a mere result of theoretical natural science, but rather with something that has come over humanity as an inner mood of the soul since the beginning of the modern era.

[ 14 ] And now the significant development took place: this scientifically oriented worldview emerged at the same time as capitalism and modern industrial technology. People were torn away from their old crafts and placed at the machines, crammed into factories. They stand beside it, crammed into it—a world governed solely by mechanical laws, from which nothing flows that has a direct connection to human beings themselves. From the old crafts had sprung something that provided an answer to the question of human value and human dignity. The abstract machine offers no answer. Modern industrialism is like a mechanical web spun around human beings, in which they are trapped, and from which nothing resonates with them—nothing in which they joyfully participate, as they did in the fruits of traditional craftsmanship.

[ 15 ] And so the divide became apparent between those who worked as industrial laborers in modern times—standing at the machines in the factory—who, trapped in their mechanical environment, could no longer muster faith in what the old worldview once held with such force, and those who broke away from it, because they could not reconcile it with life, who clung solely to what the world had just acquired in the newer intellectual life: the scientifically oriented worldview. And how did this scientifically oriented worldview affect them? It affected them in such a way that they told themselves—and felt more and more strongly—that: Whatever is presented as truth in a worldview is, after all, nothing but thoughts—thoughts that exist only as a reality of thought. Anyone who has lived among the modern proletariat, anyone who knows how social sentiments have gradually taken shape in recent times, knows what a frequently recurring word means in proletarian and socialist circles: the word “ideology.” Under the influences I have just described, spiritual life has become an ideology for the modern working class. The scientifically oriented worldview was received in such a way that people said to themselves: it provides only thoughts. The old worldview did not merely seek to provide thoughts; it sought to give people something that showed them: You are connected, through your own spirit, to the spiritual entities of the world. Spirit to spirit—that is what the old worldviews sought to give people. The modern worldview provides only thoughts, and above all, no answer to the question of the true nature of the human being. It was perceived as an ideology.

[ 16 ] And this is how the rift arose with the ruling, leading circles, which had preserved the tradition of the ancient teachings, the old aesthetic and artistic worldviews, the religious and moral perspectives of earlier times, and so on.

[ 17 ] These leading classes carried this forward for the whole of humanity, while their minds absorbed what had become a scientifically oriented worldview. A broad segment of the population, however, could no longer muster any inclination or sympathy for this traditional heritage. It adopted the scientifically oriented worldview as the sole content of its worldview. And it adopted this worldview in such a way that it perceived it as an ideology, as a mere construct of thought. People told themselves: Reality is only economic life; reality consists solely of how things are produced, how the products are distributed, how people consume, how people possess this or that or transfer it to others, and so on. Everything else in human life—law, custom, science, art, religion—is merely like smoke rising as ideology from the sole reality, from economic reality.

[ 18 ] And so, for the vast majority of humanity, spiritual life became an ideology. It became an ideology because, above all, the ruling and leading circles failed to understand—as they witnessed the new economic life taking shape and became immersed in it—that spiritual life needed to keep pace with this increasingly complex economic life. They clung to the tradition of the old days, a spiritual life that was oriented more or less as it had been in the past. The broad masses embraced the new spiritual life, but not in a way that gave them something that filled their hearts and souls.

[ 19 ] With such a worldview—one that is perceived as an ideology, one that makes one say: Law, custom, religion, art, and science are merely a superstructure, a veil over the only reality—the relations of production, the economic order—with such a worldview, one can think, but one cannot live. Such a worldview—no matter how triumphant it may be, as it indeed is, for the observation of nature—hollows out the human soul. What this worldview has fashioned out of the human soul is evident in the social realities of recent times.

[ 20 ] One does not do justice to these social realities by focusing solely on what people carry in their consciousness. From the perspective of their consciousness, people might say: “Oh, why are you talking to us about the social question as if it were a matter of the mind? The issue is that economic goods are distributed unequally.” We strive for equal distribution! —People may consciously perceive such things in their minds, but in the subconscious depths of the soul, something else is stirring—something that develops unconsciously because what would be true spiritual fulfillment for the soul does not flow down from consciousness, because what is at work there is only what hollows out the soul, what is perceived as ideology. The emptiness of modern intellectual life—that is what must be understood as the first link in the social question. This social question is, first and foremost, a spiritual question.

[ 21 ] And because this is the case—because an intellectual life has developed that, for example, in the field of political economy, particularly in the most distinguished branch, university political economy, has become a mere form of observation that does not, of its own accord, develop principles of social will—because it has come to pass that the greatest humanitarians, such as Saint-Simon and Louis Blanc, Fourier have devised social ideals in which no one believes—because whatever emerges from the spirit is generally perceived as utopia, specifically as mere ideology—because it is a fact of world history that an intellectual life has developed which functions merely as a superstructure of economic life, which does not truly penetrate the facts and is therefore perceived as ideology: that is why the social question, in its first aspect, must be understood as an intellectual question. The question stands before us today, one might say, in letters of fire: What must the human spirit be like so that it may learn to master the social question?

[ 22 ] We have seen that the scientific mindset, employing its best methods, has applied itself to political economy—but it has arrived at mere observation, not at a social will. Thus, from the very foundation of modern intellectual life emerges a state of mind that is incapable of developing economics as a basis for practical social will. What must be the nature of the mind from which such an economics emerges—one that can become the foundation of a genuine social will?

[ 23 ] It has been observed that the masses react with nothing but the cry of “utopia” when they hear the social ideals of well-meaning philanthropists; they do not believe that the human spirit is strong enough to overcome social realities. What must the nature of intellectual life be like for people to learn to believe once again that the mind can grasp the ideas that shape social institutions in such a way that certain social ills disappear?

[ 24 ] It has been observed that what is a scientifically oriented worldview is perceived by many as an ideology. But ideology, when it becomes the sole content of the human soul, hollows out that soul, generating in the depths of the subconscious what today manifests itself in the bewilderingly chaotic realities of the social question. What must the nature of spiritual life be so that it does not give rise to an ideology, so that it instills in the human soul what enables it to engage with social realities in such a way that people can truly interact with one another in a social manner?

[ 25 ] Thus, one sees first of all how the social question is a question of the spirit, how the modern spirit was unable to inspire social faith in itself, how this modern spirit was unable to provide anything that would fulfill the soul, but rather, as an ideology, provided something that desolated the soul.

[ 26 ] In today’s introduction, I would first like to show you, from a historical perspective, how the social question is perceived—in light of the conditions of modern life—as a question of the mind, a question of law, and a question of economics.

[ 27 ] Let us consider what a prominent figure said not too long ago—and time and again—who was at the very center of active political and public life in our time, a life that has emerged from the spiritual life of our age. Those among the esteemed audience who have heard me speak here on previous occasions will not misunderstand what I am about to say, for in the days when Woodrow Wilson was recognized by the entire world outside of Central Europe as a kind of global conductor, I spoke out against this recognition time and time again. And those who have heard me know that I was never a “supporter,” but always an opponent of Woodrow Wilson. Even during the time when even Germany succumbed to the Wilson cult, I did not hold back in expressing this view, which I have repeatedly asserted here in Zurich as well. But today, now that this cult has, so to speak, come to an end, something can be said that need not be taken amiss, especially by an opponent of Wilson.

[ 28 ] Based on a keen sense of social conditions in America—as they have developed since the Secession and Civil War of the 1860s—this man accurately perceived the relationship between political and legal conditions and economic conditions. With a certain impartial perspective, he observed how the complex modern economic order had given rise to the massive accumulation of capital. He saw how the trusts and the large corporations were established. He saw how, even in a democratic system of government, the democratic principle has steadily eroded in the face of the secret negotiations of those corporations that had a vested interest in secrecy—corporations that, through the capital they had amassed, acquired great power and dominated vast masses of people. And time and again he raised his voice in defense of human freedom against the expansion of power arising from economic conditions. Out of a profoundly human sensibility—and this must be said—he felt how social reality is connected to the individual human being, and to the way in which the individual is ready to participate in this social life. He pointed out how crucial it is for the healing of social life that a free-spirited human heart beats beneath every human garment. He pointed out time and again how political life must be democratized, how power and the means of power must be taken away from the individual power structures, and how the individual abilities and strengths of every person who possesses them must be allowed to contribute to general economic, social, and political life as a whole. He emphatically stated that his own political system—which he evidently regards as the most advanced—suffers from the conditions that have developed.

[ 29 ] Why? Yes, new economic conditions have emerged: massive concentrations of capital, the expansion of economic power. Everything in this realm has surpassed what existed there only a short time ago. This economic structure has given rise to entirely new forms of human coexistence. We are facing a complete restructuring of economic life. And it was not I—based on some theory—but this statesman, one might say this “world statesman,” who articulated it: The fundamental flaw in recent developments lies in the fact that, while economic conditions have advanced—and people have shaped economic life according to their hidden power dynamics—the ideas of justice and the ideas of political community life have not kept pace; they have remained stuck at an earlier stage. Woodrow Wilson put it clearly: We conduct our economic affairs under new conditions, but we think we are enacting laws governing the economy from a perspective that has long since become obsolete—an outdated one. Unlike in economic life, a newer reality has emerged in the realm of legal life and political life; these have lagged behind. We are living within a completely new economic order while clinging to old political and legal ideas. — That is roughly how Woodrow Wilson puts it. And he emphatically states: Given this incongruity between the legal and economic spheres, what the current stage of human history demands—that the individual work not for himself but for the good of the community—cannot develop. And Woodrow Wilson offers a forceful critique of the social order that he observes around him.

[ 30 ] I must say—if you’ll allow me this personal remark—that I have gone to great, great lengths to examine Woodrow Wilson’s critique of current social conditions, specifically as he sees them in the United States, and to compare it with other critiques—I am about to say something quite paradoxical, but current circumstances very often require one to say quite paradoxical things; one must do so if one wishes to do justice to today’s reality—I have attempted to compare, in terms of both external form and internal impulses, Woodrow Wilson’s social critique, as a critique in the first place, with the critique of society leveled by progressive, radical social democratic circles. Yes, one can even extend this comparison to the most radical wing of today’s socialist thought and action. If one remains within the scope of what these people offer as criticism, one can say: Woodrow Wilson’s critique of today’s social order corresponds, almost word for word, to what even Lenin and Trotsky say, the gravediggers of contemporary civilization—of whom one must say that if what they have in mind is allowed to prevail for too long among humanity, even if only in certain areas, it will mean the death of modern civilization; it will inevitably lead to the downfall of everything that has been achieved through modern civilization. - And yet one must point out the paradox: Woodrow Wilson, who certainly always envisioned reconstruction differently than these destroyers, directs almost exactly the same criticism at the current social order as these others do.

[ 31 ] And he concludes that legal and political concepts, as they prevail today, are outdated; that they are no longer capable of influencing economic life. And strangely enough, if one then tries to turn this into something positive, if one tries to examine what Woodrow Wilson taught in order to bring about a social structure—a structure of the social organism—one can hardly find any answers! Individual measures here and there—measures that are also taken by others who offer far less incisive and objective criticism—but nothing truly far-reaching, at least not an answer to the question: How must the law, how must political concepts, ideas, and political impulses be shaped so that they can meet the demands of modern economic life, so that one can penetrate this modern economic life?

[ 32 ] Here we see how even the second aspect of the social question arises from modern life: this social question as a legal issue.

[ 33 ] First, one must seek a foundation for the law, for the political conditions, and for the state structures that must be in place so that they can take hold of and master this modern economic life. So one must ask: How does one move toward legal and political initiatives in response to the major demands of the social question? That is the second aspect of the social question.

[ 34 ] And just consider life itself: You will find that human life is threefold, just as the human being is situated within human society. Three aspects stand out quite clearly from one another when we consider the human being in his or her position within human society. The first is that if a person is to contribute something—as he undoubtedly must in modern society for the sake of a social order—if a person is to contribute to communal affairs, to communal work, to the communal creation of value, and to the communal production of goods, then he must first possess the individual aptitude, the individual talent, and the individual competence to do so. The second is that they must be able to get along peacefully with their fellow human beings and work together with them in peace. And the third is that they must be able to find their place, from which they can stand up for others through their work, their actions, and their achievements.

[ 35 ] With regard to the first, human beings depend on human society to develop their abilities and talents, to guide their minds, and to make the mind that it develops within them a guide for physical labor. For the second, human beings depend on being able to integrate into a social structure in which people can communicate in such a way that they can live together in peace. The first leads us into the realm of spiritual life. We will see in the following lectures how the cultivation of spiritual life is connected to the first aspect. The second aspect leads us into the realm of legal life, for legal life can only develop in accordance with its very nature by finding a social structure through which people can work and act together in peace and serve one another. And the third leads us into modern economic life—this modern economic life which, as I have described, Woodrow Wilson views as having, so to speak, become like a person who has grown tall but is wearing clothes that are too small, clothes that he has outgrown in every respect. For Woodrow Wilson, these clothes that are too small are the old legal and political concepts. Economic life has long since outgrown them.

[ 36 ] This expansion of economic life beyond what had previously existed as spiritual life and legal life was felt particularly keenly by socialist thinkers. And to gain a clearer understanding of what has been at work in this area, one need only point to one thing.

[ 37 ] As you know—and we will discuss all these issues in greater detail later—the modern proletariat is entirely under the influence of so-called Marxism. Marxism, the Marxist doctrine of transforming private ownership of the means of production into common ownership, has indeed been modified in many ways by various followers or opponents of Karl Marx; but Marxism is nonetheless something that shapes the mindset and worldview of broad masses of people today—and it plays a particularly significant role in what appears as such a perplexing social reality in the present. One need only pick up the remarkable little book—which is, after all, highly significant—by Friedrich Engels, the collaborator and friend of Karl Marx: The Development of Socialism from Utopia to Science, to familiarize oneself with the entire mindset embodied in this little book; then one will see how a socialist thinker conceives of modern economic life in relation to legal and intellectual life. For example, one need only properly understand the single sentence that serves as a summary in Engels’s aforementioned booklet: In the future, there must no longer be governments ruling over people, over individuals, but only the management of economic sectors and the administration of production.

[ 38 ] That means a great deal! It means that this side wishes to see an end to something in economic life that has become intertwined with it precisely as a result of the developmental impulses of recent times. Economic life, as I have shown, has outgrown legal life and spiritual life; in a sense, it has flooded everything and has exerted a suggestive influence even on people’s thoughts, feelings, and passions. And so it became increasingly evident that the way economic life is conducted actually determines people’s spiritual life and legal life. Those who are economically powerful—as has become all too clear—simultaneously hold a monopoly on education by virtue of their economic dominance. The economically weak remain uneducated. A certain connection has emerged between economic life and spiritual life, and a connection between spiritual life and political life. Intellectual life has increasingly become something that does not develop out of its own needs, that does not follow its own impulses, but rather—especially where it is publicly administered, in the education and school systems—is shaped according to the needs of the state authorities. People can no longer be viewed in terms of what they are capable of and for what purpose. They cannot be developed in the way their innate aptitudes require. Instead, the question is: What does the state need? What kind of capabilities does economic life require? What kind of people with a certain level of education are needed? Teaching materials, courses of study, and examinations are all geared toward these needs. Intellectual life is not shaped from within itself; rather, it is adapted to legal life, state life, political life, and economic life. At the same time, however—and this has been particularly true in recent times—this also makes economic life dependent once again on legal life.

[ 39 ] This interplay between the economy, the law, and the spirit—that is what people like Marx and Engels saw. And they saw how modern economic life could no longer accommodate the old legal form, nor could it accommodate the old spiritual form. They concluded that the old legal life and the old spiritual life had to be cast out of economic life. But they then fell into a strange superstition—a superstition about which we will have much to say in these lectures. They arrived at the superstition that economic life—they regarded spiritual life and legal life as an ideology, since they viewed them as the only reality—that economic life could bring forth the new legal relationships and the new spiritual relationships from within itself. One of the most disastrous superstitions arose: that one must conduct economic activity in a certain, lawful manner, and that if one did so, then intellectual life, legal life, and state and political life would arise of their own accord from economic life.

[ 40 ] How, then, could this superstition have arisen? This superstition could only have arisen because the actual structure of the human economy—the actual workings of modern economic life—was concealed behind what people have come to call the monetary economy.

[ 41 ] This monetary economy emerged in Europe as a consequence of very specific events. You need only take a closer look at history to see that around the time the Reformation and the Renaissance—that is, a new state of mind—were sweeping across the civilized world of Europe, the gold and silver deposits of the Americas were being tapped, and that the influx of gold and silver, particularly from Central and South America, was flowing into Europe. What used to be more of a subsistence economy is increasingly being overwhelmed by the monetary economy.

[ 42 ] The subsistence economy was still able to focus on what the land yields—that is, on the material aspects—and on what each individual is capable of and can produce—that is, on the practical and technical aspects. With the circulation of money, the focus on the purely objective aspects of economic life has gradually faded. As the monetary economy replaced the subsistence economy, a veil has, so to speak, been drawn over economic life. It was no longer possible to see the pure demands of economic life.

[ 43 ] What does this economic life provide for human beings? This economic life provides human beings with goods that they need for their consumption. We do not need to distinguish between intellectual and physical goods at this point, because intellectual goods, too, can be understood in economic terms as being consumed for human use. This economic life, therefore, provides goods, and these goods are values because people need them, because human desire is directed toward them. People must assign a certain value to these goods. As a result, they also have an objective value within social life, which is intimately connected to the subjective value that people attribute to them.

[ 44 ] But how is the value of goods expressed in economic terms in modern times? The value of goods—which essentially determines what these goods mean in social and economic life—how is this value expressed? This value is expressed in prices. We will be discussing value and price in the coming days; today I merely wish to point out that in economic life, and indeed in social life in general—insofar as this social life depends on economic activity and on goods—the value of goods for human beings is expressed in their price. It is also a great mistake to confuse the value of goods with their monetary prices. And it is not so much through theoretical considerations as through practical experience that humanity will increasingly come to realize that there is a distinction between the value of goods produced economically—which depends on human subjective judgment and on certain social, legal, and cultural conditions—and that which is expressed in the price relations revealed through money. But in modern times, the value of goods is obscured by the price relations that prevail in social circulation.

[ 45 ] This underlies modern social conditions as the third element of the social question. Here, here one will come to recognize the social question as an economic question: when one returns to what documents the actual value of goods, as opposed to what is expressed in mere price relations. Price relations cannot be maintained—especially in times of crisis—except by the state, that is, the legal framework, assuming responsibility for guaranteeing the value of money, and thus the value of a single commodity.

[ 46 ] But something new has emerged. There is no need to engage in theoretical reflections on what has resulted from the misunderstanding regarding price and value; one need only point to a factual development that has occurred in recent times. In economics, it is said that in earlier times—in Germany even until the end of the Middle Ages—there existed the old natural economy, based solely on the exchange of goods, and that this was replaced by the monetary economy, in which money serves as the representative of goods and, in fact, only goods of value are ever exchanged for money. But we are already seeing something emerge in social life that seems destined to replace the monetary economy. This other system is already at work everywhere, though it has not yet been noticed. But anyone who looks beyond the abstract understanding of their cash book or account ledger, anyone who looks beyond the mere numbers and can read what is written in those numbers, will find that the numbers in today’s cash books or account ledgers do not merely represent goods, but that these numbers often express what one might call credit relationships in the most modern sense of the word. What a person is able to achieve precisely because it is assumed that he is capable of this or that—what can inspire trust based on a person’s competence—is, strangely enough, what is increasingly finding its way into our dry, sober economic life.

[ 47 ] If you study today’s business records, you will find that—in contrast to mere monetary value—what is gaining ground is the reliance on human trust and human competence. The figures in today’s business ledgers reflect a major shift—a social metamorphosis—if one reads them correctly. While emphasizing that the old natural economy has been transformed into a monetary economy, one must also emphasize today that the third stage is the transformation of the monetary economy into a credit economy.

[ 48 ] Thus, what has existed for a long time is once again replaced by something new. As a result, however, that which points to the value of human beings themselves also enters into social life. Economic life itself, in terms of the production of value, is facing a transformation, is facing a question—and that is the economic question; that is the third aspect of this social question.

[ 49 ] In these lectures, we will have to examine this social question as a question of the spirit, as a legal question, as a question of the state or a political question, and as an economic question. The spirit will have to provide the answer to the first question: How can we make people capable so that a social structure can emerge that does not contain the current ills, which are inexcusable? The second question is this: Which legal system will, under advanced economic conditions, restore peace among people? The third is: Which social structure will be capable of placing people in their proper place so that, from that position, they are able to work for the benefit of the human community, in accordance with their nature, their talents, and their abilities? This leads to the question: What value should be accorded to a person’s individual worth? Here we see before us the transformation of the economy arising from new conditions.

[ 50 ] The social question presents us with an intellectual, a legal, and an economic issue. And we will see that even the smallest aspect of the social question can only be understood properly if we view this social question, at its core, as an intellectual, a legal, and an economic issue. More on this tomorrow.

Q&A Session Following the First Presentation

[ 51 ] It is only natural that, since I have only given an introduction today, questions may very easily be asked that can only be properly answered in the coming days, in the context of the lectures. One such question is the one that was posed to me first:

[ 52 ] How can an objective standard of value for goods be established?

[ 53 ] Well, as I said, I’d just like to say a few things about this question, because a discussion in the coming days will have to address this very issue, and it can then be answered in context. However, I would still like to say the following on this matter.

[ 54 ] You see, when asking such a question, it is essential to be absolutely clear: one poses this question within the context of economic life. The question of the value of goods can only be posed within the context of economic life. But that means it will be necessary to familiarize oneself with many things that are currently required in terms of a kind of re-learning and rethinking. The present day sees itself very much as something that thinks in an immensely practical way. People today are quick to dismiss this or that as “gray theories.” But truly practical thinking is not all that far off. And it is precisely those who often call themselves practitioners today who are dominated by the grayest of theories. They are only capable of expressing these gray theories within an obvious daily routine and therefore consider them practical, because they fail to see whether they have a fruitful or destructive effect on life.

[ 55 ] What is being advocated here—the threefold social order—is intended to differ from socialist or other theories in that it is something derived, in the most eminent sense, from practical life. Therefore, it must be said that any inquiry into the objective value of a good, a service, or a product must be firmly grounded in economic life. However—and here I come to something that is still foreign to the current way of thinking—the point is not to find some definition of what the value of a good is. After all, people have always come up with the most beautiful definitions for all sorts of things, but very beautiful definitions often turn out to be precisely those that do not help one take even a single small step forward in life. When we speak of the value of goods, the point is not that we can say this or that is the value of a good, but rather that the value of the good finds its real expression in the circulation of human exchange—that the good I produce actually yields me as much as I need to perform such a task. So the point is that the good enters into the circulation of goods with its corresponding value. And reflection need not concern itself with specifying what the objective standard of value for a good is; rather, reflection must concern itself with finding a social structure through which human-produced goods enter social life in such a way that they circulate within it for the benefit of the community. The task, above all, is to identify the conditions under which commodities acquire more or less value.

[ 56 ] One need only point out the following, for example. Let’s assume that in some closed economic region, too much fat—too much fat suitable for human consumption—is produced. Well, one could, for my sake, use the surplus that people cannot consume to grease wagons. One can use it that way—fine. But this essentially reduces the value of the fat for that human community. Suppose too little fat is produced; then its value increases, and only those people who have wealth above the average can obtain it. Thus, one can specify the conditions under which the value of a good or a service rises or falls.

[ 57 ] The point is that a social structure must come into being through which the value of an individual good, in comparison with other goods, finds its corresponding expression in reality. Thus, the issue is not that one can state the value—which, of course, can be done through the corresponding monetary price—but that price does not fully express the value. The point is that we must ensure that, in comparison with other goods, the goods in question have their corresponding value. This question must therefore be placed within the context of economic life, and the focus must be not on a definition of value, but on the conditions under which goods can attain their corresponding fair value.

[ 58 ] That is what I would like to say first. My intention in saying this was simply to point out that, in many respects, we will have to transform the questions and ways of thinking we apply to social life. Humanity will have to get used to a new way of thinking. Today, even practical life—I would say—has been sucked into theory. And in this lecture, I wanted to suggest how, on the other hand, concrete life in the credit economy is gradually penetrating a life that has become entirely abstract—a life that has become abstract precisely under the influence of the monetary economy. You see, these matters are actually treated today with a certain scientific arrogance. People don’t even realize what complex relationships something like value—real value—depends on. If one considers merely the price, one has no picture of the real value. One must delve into the entire economic foundation. One can, for example, speak of price formation in the sense of gold price formation. One comes to the conclusion—economists, such as Unruh, have indeed pointed out this fact quite clearly, though without considering the broader context—that within a closed economic area, let’s say, a goose has a certain value, which is expressed in its price. That is the monetary value price. But if, as other economists have done, one then attempts to study the entire structure of the national economy on this basis, one inevitably arrives at very one-sided results, because within a closed economic area, the value of even geese cannot be determined by their mere monetary price alone. For value also depends on such factors: whether geese are raised within an economy to produce fattened geese for sale as geese, or whether they are perhaps raised to be plucked so that the feathers can be sold. So whether one is a producer of feathers or of geese—a great deal depends on that. This only becomes clear through a proper examination of economic life. If one merely records the figures statistically—how much individual items cost in monetary terms—then one gains no insight into the actual course of economic life, and thus no insight into the true valuation.

[ 59 ] So, if one wants to speak of values, one must address the relationships involved and stand firmly on the ground of economic life. Then there is no need to ask: How is value objectively expressed?—but rather: What social conditions are capable of assigning to a good, a service, or a human creation the value that is just in comparison to other services, other creations, and other goods? That would be the right question. The questions that today appear to be highly theoretical will, I would say, become very practical! And it is toward this “becoming practical”—which still seems quite foreign to some today, especially those who wish to be practitioners—that the threefold social order is working.

[ 60 ] The question then is:

[ 61 ] What were the circumstances that gave rise to the impulse to divide the social organism into three parts?

[ 62 ] Well, it must be said that the social question actually only became critical during this great catastrophe of World War I.

[ 63 ] I don’t like to get personal, but in matters like this, one is all too often compelled to do so. I have had ample opportunity to observe the course of the social question. For a long time, I was a teacher at a workers’ educational school in Berlin, where I was able to study the social question very closely through my interactions not only with adult students but also with students who were often quite elderly. There I came to know the social question from a wide variety of perspectives in practical life—first and foremost, from the perspective of how it lives in the souls of today’s vast, broad masses of people, and how difficult it is for precisely these broad classes of people to understand it. Yes, I saw—my time as a teacher was, after all, two decades ago—how, precisely at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, it would have been possible to instill ideas in the modern, broader masses of the working population that could have prevented today’s chaos and the current frenzy of destruction in the social sphere. Truly, I could see clearly: Twenty years ago, if attention had been paid to them, ideas born of the spirit would have been accessible to a broad segment of the population.

[ 64 ] Secondly, I came to understand what stood in the way of this by getting to know the other side as well. I had the misfortune, you see, of gaining followers—especially among the students—who held ways of thinking that were truly quite different from those that have since become mainstream. I saw how broad masses of the people were truly receptive to sound ideas. And I may say—without being immodest; I am really just stating facts—that usually when the socialist teachers, who were, after all, the typical agitators at the workers’ educational school, gave their courses, they would have a certain audience in the first quarter—since classes were held on a quarterly basis—; but then it dwindled rapidly. My audience—and I can truly say this because it is a fact—grew from quarter to quarter and eventually became too large for the leaders of the proletariat, for those leaders who have adopted the scraps of bourgeois science and exploit them in a manner all too familiar. When these people saw that I was gaining followers, arrangements were made to lump together the entire student body of that quarter, and about three emissaries—though of a lesser sort—from the leadership were also squeezed in. Yes, I was accused of not teaching a proper Marxist view of history, not teaching historical materialism, and of not using the natural sciences to introduce materialism or to support Marxism, but rather to seriously convey a scientific worldview to the masses. In short, I was accused of not being a true dogmatic teacher of the socialist system. Well, I dared to say at the time: You do, after all, want to create a mental image of a society that works toward the future. It seems to me that the first necessity here would be for you to uphold a genuine demand for the future: that you allow freedom of teaching!”—To which one of those sent in replied: “Freedom of teaching—we cannot recognize that; it has no significance for us in public life; we know only ‘reasonable coercion.’” And you see, under this “reasonable coercion,” things turned out such that all six hundred voted with me, while the three voted against me—yet they still ousted me. That is the other side of the development of the social question, which I, too, have come to know. There, one could already see what public forces actually underlie the social question.

[ 65 ] It gradually became clear how, in human life and in human development in general, the spiritual, the legal-political, and the economic interact. But one could then see how, precisely under the most recent conditions, through the intertwining and interpenetration of the legal-political and the spiritual-cultural—which also includes national conditions—with the economic, the great economic empires, the economic imperialisms, came into being. One could see how the economic system—which, if it continues in the same way as it was regarded, particularly as an ideal by certain quarters at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries—must lead to perpetual crises. One could then see how this catastrophe of the World War is merely a single, massive crisis brought about by the gradual transformation of states from political entities into economic empires, which have absorbed only the political and spiritual essence within themselves.

[ 66 ] Let us consider the outcome of this catastrophe of the World War. Apart from occasional remarks, I have, in fact, spoken about the social question in the way I do now only relatively late in life, since I must, in a sense, address it as part of my duty. But I have observed the social movement of humanity throughout my entire life. And anyone who, like me, has spent half his life—thirty years— in Austria, has seen in this Austria a kind of textbook case—if one may apply that expression to a great historical phenomenon that was bound to collapse under its own circumstances—showing how the intellectual, and above all the national-cultural, legal-political, and economic conditions were all tangled up within it. Take, for example, southeastern Europe—that corner of the world from which the actual global catastrophe ultimately took its impetus—and you will see how what later flared up into a bright flame was set in motion by the Congress of Berlin, where Austria was granted the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This was a political program that intervened in the political structure of Austria-Hungary. But the conditions it created were no longer tenable the moment a complete upheaval took place in the Balkans—that is, a purely political upheaval, meaning an upheaval in the political-legal sphere. The old reactionary Turkish element was replaced by Young Turk rule. An immediate consequence of this was that Austria was led to annex, rather than occupy, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and that Bulgaria transformed itself from a principality into a kingdom. These were the political circumstances at play. Entangled within these political circumstances, however, were economic circumstances. And ultimately, the economic conditions interacted with the political conditions in such a way that this interplay gave rise to impossibilities in the course of world history. Because Austria’s political administration was also its economic administration, it was necessary to intertwine with the political conditions such matters as, for example, the expansion of the railroad from Austria to the southeast—the Thessaloniki Railway. It was a purely economic matter; yet the political circumstances constantly interacted with the economic ones. The whole situation rests on a failure to understand intellectual and cultural circumstances—namely, the contrasts between Slavic and Germanic cultures. These three elements became entangled, and from this entanglement arose the horrific catastrophe. One can study, year by year, how illusory conditions were created by the failure to distinguish between legal conditions, intellectual and cultural conditions, and economic conditions.

[ 67 ] But these circumstances call for separation, for keeping things apart. And one must remember how, with the advent of modern social conditions, legal life, intellectual life, and economic life sought to keep themselves apart from very early on. It was precisely the fact that something as terrible as this World War catastrophe could arise from such an entanglement—precisely that—that pointed out how, just as in a test tube in a chemistry laboratory, substances that are brought together but do not belong together eventually separate: in the same way, economic, intellectual, and legal conditions began to diverge relatively early on.

[ 68 ] I would just like to recall a phenomenon that emerged relatively early on. Later, after the Reformation and the Renaissance, it was obscured. If you study the history of the Middle Ages, you will find that the Church was opposed to interest; that is to say, the Church everywhere spread teachings to the effect that it was impossible—and incompatible with a truly Christian life—to charge interest on money lent. That was the teaching; that was the spiritual life. This teaching was considered noble. But the Church, through its representatives, actually charged a great deal of interest. Economic life became very sharply separated from spiritual life. The two drifted apart.

[ 69 ] And one could point to similar phenomena very strongly in recent years if, for example, one wanted to show how economic life—in the form of all sorts of black-market dealings and the under-the-table procurement of food—diverged from legal life, which was based on rationing. There you see phenomena similar to those in a test tube, where substances that do not belong together separate.

[ 70 ] All these matters must be studied in detail. And because, little by little, the complexity of modern living conditions is causing this disintegration to become increasingly apparent—both in international and national life—there arises, step by step, the necessity to work toward the threefold structure of the social organism, as I will describe it in the following lectures and as you will find it explained in my Key Points of the Social Question.

[ 71 ] One must be clear that a statement such as the one I quoted from Hartley Withers is entirely justified. Conditions have become very complicated in recent times. And only when one discovers how to identify certain fundamental laws—original ideas, as I have called them in my Key Points of the Social Question—which can then serve as a truly practical guide even in the most complex circumstances of practical life, only then can one hope to contribute something to what is today known as the social question. And only in this way can one hope to overcome what, little by little, in the form of slogans and party opinions, seizes the masses in such a terrible way and, unfortunately, becomes reality through people’s actions. Until we manage to lift the social question out of the turmoil of party politics and place it on the ground of a practical, rational understanding of reality, we cannot hope to make any progress. I would like to show you, through the following lectures, that such an approach is indeed possible.

[ 72 ] With this, I would like to have briefly outlined what I have to say about the origin and emergence of the threefold social order in modern life. Some details will, of course, become clear in the upcoming lectures.