The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. On the History of the Social Movement

[ 1 ] Rudolf Steiner: Ladies and gentlemen! This evening I will not be getting ahead of what is actually intended to be established here—namely, study evenings based on the book *The Key Points of the Social Question*—but rather I will try to offer you a kind of introduction to these evenings. Through this introduction, I would like to help you sense the perspectives from which this book was written. Above all, it was written from the perspective of the immediate present, out of the conviction that the social question, too, has taken on a new form as a result of current events, and that it is necessary today to speak about the social question in a completely different way than it was discussed from any perspective prior to the catastrophe of the World War. This book represents, in a sense, an attempt—at this very moment in human development, when the social question is becoming particularly urgent and when, in fact, every person who is consciously engaged with the present—who does not passively and sleepily observe the life of humanity—should know something about what must happen in relation to what is commonly called the social question. So it might be quite helpful, to begin with, if we look back a little today. I may have to mention certain things in the process—but we will then cast them in a somewhat different light than they have been presented—and I will have to mention things that are, in part, already familiar to you.

[ 2 ] As you probably know, the arguments raised today regarding the social question have been put forward for quite some time. And even today, the names Proudhon, Fourier, and Louis Blanc are cited as the first to have addressed the social question as far back as the mid-19th century. You also know that the way this social question was addressed up until the mid-19th century is referred to by today’s advocates—or at least by many of today’s advocates of the social question—as “the age of social utopias.” It is good to clarify what is actually meant when one says: In its initial stage, the social question presented itself as existing within an “age of utopias.” But one cannot speak of this matter in an absolute sense; rather, one can really only speak from the perspective of the contemporary advocates of the social question. They feel as I am about to describe. They feel that all social issues that arose during the era I will first discuss were in the stage of utopia. And what do people mean by this when they say that the social question was in the stage of utopia back then? By this they mean—as was already noted at the time; Saint-Simon and Fourier observed it well—that even after the French Revolution, there are people belonging to a certain social minority who possess the means of production and other material goods, and that there are a large number of other people—in fact, the majority—who do not possess such things. These people can only work with the means of production by entering the service of those who own the means of production and the land; they have, in essence, nothing but themselves and their labor. It has been observed that the lives of this vast mass of humanity are marked by hardship and, for the most part, by poverty—in contrast to those who belong to the minority; and attention has been drawn to the situation of the minority and to the situation of the majority.

[ 3 ] Those who, like Saint-Simon, Fourier, and even Proudhon, have written about this social condition of humanity have proceeded from a certain premise. They have proceeded from the premise that it is necessary to point out to people: “Look, the vast majority lives in misery, in bondage, in economic dependence; this is not a dignified existence for the vast majority. This must be changed.” — And all sorts of means were then devised through which this inequality among people could be altered. But there was always a certain premise, and that premise was that one said to oneself: If one knows the root causes of this inequality and if one has sufficiently forceful words, if one possesses enough moral consciousness to strongly point out that the vast majority of people live in economic and legal dependence and are poor, then this discourse will move the hearts and souls of the minority—the wealthy, the more privileged minority. And because this minority will realize that things cannot remain as they are—that changes must be brought about, that a different social order must emerge—a different social order will thereby be brought about. So the premise was that people would be moved, out of the deepest impulse of their souls, to do something for the liberation of the vast majority of humanity. And then proposals were made as to what should be done. And it was believed that if the minority—if the people who are the leaders—recognize that what one intends to do is good, then a general improvement in the condition of humanity will occur.

[ 4 ] A great deal of exceptionally wise things have been said from this perspective, but most advocates of the social question today view everything that has been undertaken in this direction as utopian. That is to say, people no longer expect that all one needs to do is say: “This is how the world should be organized,” and then economic, political, and legal inequality among people would cease. — It is of no use today to appeal to the understanding or the insight of those who are privileged, who are in a position of advantage, who possess the means of production, and so on. If I am to express what has been lost in the course of the second half of the 19th century, I must say that what has been lost is faith in people’s insight and good will. That is why the advocates of the social question—the ones I am referring to now—say: One can devise beautiful plans for how to organize human society, but nothing will come of it; for no matter how beautiful the plans one preaches, no matter how moving the words with which one appeals to the hearts and souls of the ruling minorities, nothing will happen. All of these are worthless ideas, and worthless ideas that paint a picture of the future are, in reality—to put it simply—utopias. So there is absolutely no point, it is said, in imagining anything that is supposed to happen in the future, for there will be no one there who will let go of their own interests, who can be moved in terms of their conscience, their moral insight, and so on. - Faith in conscience and moral insight has been lost in the broadest circles, particularly among those concerned with social issues. People tell themselves that individuals do not act according to their insight at all when they establish social institutions or lead their social lives; rather, they act according to their interests. And the wealthy, of course, have an interest in retaining their wealth. The socially privileged have an interest in preserving their social privileges. Therefore, it is an illusion to expect that one need only tell people to do this or that. They simply do not do it, because they act not out of insight but out of self-interest.

[ 5 ] In the broadest sense, one might say that Karl Marx gradually—but truly only gradually—came to embrace this view. One can identify a number of distinct phases in Karl Marx’s life. In his youth, Marx was also an idealistic thinker and, in the sense I have just described, still believed in the feasibility of utopias. But it was precisely he—and later his friend Engels as well—who, in the most radical way, abandoned this reliance on human insight. And if I were to characterize in general terms what is actually a great historical narrative, I could say the following: Karl Marx ultimately came to the conviction that the world could not be made better in any other way than by appealing to those people who have no interest in preserving their property or their privileges. As for those who have an interest in retaining their property—one cannot rely on them at all; they must be left entirely out of the equation, for they would never deign to respond in any way, no matter how eloquently one might preach to them. In contrast, there is precisely the vast mass of proletarian workers, [who have no property to lose]. Karl Marx himself came to embrace this conviction at a time when what we today call the proletariat was essentially just emerging in Central Europe; he saw the proletariat in Central Europe emerging for the first time out of different economic conditions. When he later lived in England, the situation was somewhat different. But at the time when Karl Marx was evolving from an idealist into an economic materialist, it was still the case that the modern proletariat was only just emerging in Central Europe. And so he told himself: This modern proletariat has interests entirely different from those of the ruling, leading minority, for it consists of people who possess nothing but their labor power, of people who can make a living in no other way than by placing their labor power at the service of the propertied classes—namely, at the service of those who own the means of production. If these workers stop working, then they—and this was especially true at that time in the most radical sense—are cast out onto the streets. They have nothing else before them but the prospect of forced labor for those who own the means of production. These people have interests entirely different from those of the property-owning class. They have an interest in seeing the entire former social order come to an end, in seeing this social order transformed. One need not preach to them in a way that appeals to their reason, but only in a way that appeals to their self-interest. One can rely on that. Preaching to those whose understanding one is supposed to count on achieves nothing, for people do not act out of understanding; they act solely according to their interests. Therefore, one cannot appeal to those whose understanding one would have to appeal to, but must instead appeal to the interests of those who, out of an inner compulsion, have no choice but to advocate for the new era. This is the egoism toward which Karl Marx evolved. Consequently, he no longer believed that humanity’s progress toward new social conditions could come from any human endeavor other than the work of the proletariat itself. According to Karl Marx, the proletariat can strive for a renewal of human social conditions only on the basis of its own interests—its purely egoistic interests. And in doing so, the proletariat—though now not out of philanthropy but out of self-interest—will also liberate the rest of humanity, because there can be nothing else but what is brought about by people who are not attached to old values and who have nothing to lose from such a transformation.

[ 6 ] So one might say: On the one hand, there are the ruling, leading circles, who have certain rights that were granted to them in earlier times or that they enforced in earlier times, rights that have been passed down through their families, and to which they cling. These ruling, leading circles possess this or that, which they in turn pass down within their circles, their families, and so on. These circles always have something to lose in the event of a transformation, because, of course, if they lost nothing, no transformation would take place. The point is that those who have nothing are to receive something; therefore, those who have something can only lose. So one could only appeal to reason if that reason were to give the propertied, ruling class the impulse to want to lose something. They won’t go along with that. - That was Karl Marx’s view. One must therefore appeal to those who have nothing to lose. That is why, in 1848, the “Communist Manifesto” concludes with the words: “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains; they have everything to gain. Workers of the world, unite!”

[ 7 ] Now, you see, this has, in a sense, become a conviction since the publication of the Communist Manifesto. And today, when certain sentiments—already influenced by this worldview—are prevalent among the majority of the proletariat, it is hard to even create a mental image of what a tremendous shift in socialist thought took place around the middle of the 19th century. But it would be good if you were to take, for example, *The Gospel of a Poor Sinner* by Weitling, a tailor’s apprentice—a work written not long before the *Communist Manifesto*—and compare it with everything that has been written since the publication of the *Communist Manifesto*. In this “Gospel of a Poor Sinner,” which is truly inspired by genuine proletarian sentiment, the language is—one might say—in a certain sense even poetic and passionate, yet it is thoroughly a language that seeks to appeal to people’s good will and understanding. This is Weitling’s conviction: that something can be achieved through people’s good will. And this conviction did not fade until the middle of the 19th century. And the event that caused it to fade was precisely the publication of the Communist Manifesto. And since that time, since the year 1848, we have actually been able to trace what we today call the social question. For if we were to speak today as Saint-Simon, Fourier, or Weitling did—well, we would truly be preaching to deaf ears. For to a certain extent, it is entirely true that one cannot make any headway on the social question by appealing to the reason of the ruling, leading circles who possess wealth. That is certainly true. The ruling and leading circles have never admitted this, nor are they likely to admit it today—they are not even aware of it, even if they do, because unconscious forces play an extraordinarily large role in the human soul.

[ 8 ] You see, our intellectual culture has, after all, become almost entirely a matter of empty rhetoric over the course of the 19th century. And the fact that we live in a world of empty rhetoric when it comes to intellectual culture is a much more significant social reality than is generally realized. And so, of course, members of the ruling and leading circles also say all sorts of fine things about the social question, and they themselves are often convinced that they already possess the good will. But in reality, they only believe that; it is merely their illusion; the moment anything concrete is undertaken in this regard, it immediately becomes clear that it is an illusion. We will speak more about this later. But as I said, we can no longer speak today as people did in the age of utopias. This is the true achievement brought about by Karl Marx: he showed how humanity today is so entangled in illusionism that it is nonsense to count on anything other than selfishness. We must come to terms with this; therefore, nothing can be achieved if one tries to rely in any way on selflessness, on good will, or on people’s moral principles—I always say “with regard to the social question.” And this shift—which has led to the fact that we must speak quite differently today than, for example, we could have spoken in the first half of the 19th century with regard to the social question—this shift came precisely with the Communist Manifesto. But it did not all happen at once; rather, it was still possible—even after the Communist Manifesto and well into the 1860s, as you all know—that this entirely different way of social thinking, the approach of Ferdinand Lassalle, captured hearts and minds. And even after Lassalle’s death in 1864, what was known as Lassallean socialism continued. Lassalle certainly belongs to the category of people who, even though the other way of thinking had already emerged, still counted on the power of ideas. Lassalle still wanted, above all else, to appeal to people as such—to their understanding and their social will. But this Lassallean perspective gradually faded, and the other—the Marxist perspective—gained the upper hand; it sought to rely solely on the interests of that segment of the human population that possessed nothing but themselves and their labor power. Yet this did not happen overnight. Such a way of thinking developed only gradually among humanity.

[ 9 ] In the 1960s, 1970s, and even into the 1980s, it was certainly the case that people who belonged to the proletariat—or who were among those who were politically or socially dependent, even if not strictly proletarians—viewed their dependence in a certain moral light and morally condemned the non-dependent segments of the population. In their view, it was the ill will of the ruling, leading circles of society that kept the vast majority of the proletariat in a state of dependence, that they paid them poorly, and so on. If I may put it simply, I can say that in the 1960s, 1970s, and well into the 1980s, a great deal of social indignation was manufactured, and discourse was framed from the standpoint of that social indignation. Then, in the mid-1980s, the remarkable turnaround actually began in earnest. The more prominent figures in the social movement then stopped entirely in the 1980s from speaking about social issues out of moral indignation. That was, after all, the time when those social leaders—whom you, being younger, have only seen pass away—were at the height of their influence and were still, more or less, burning with youthful zeal: Adler, Pernerstorfer, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Auer, Bebel, Singer, and so on. It was precisely then, in the 1980s, that these older leaders increasingly stopped preaching this “indignation socialism.” I would like to put it this way: these leaders of socialism gave voice to their deepest convictions when they transitioned from the old “indignation socialism” to their newer socialist worldview. You will find that what I am telling you now is not written in any book on the history of socialism. But anyone who lived through that time and experienced it firsthand knows that, when left to their own devices, people spoke that way.

[ 10 ] Let’s suppose that in the 1980s, such leading figures of socialism had come together for a discussion with those who were [pure] bourgeois in their outlook, and let’s suppose there had been a third group present: bourgeois who were idealists and wished well for all people, who would have agreed to make everyone happy. It could have happened that the bourgeois declared that there must always be people who are poor and those who are rich, and so on, because only that could sustain human society. Then perhaps the voice of one of the idealists would have risen, someone who was outraged that so many people had to live in poverty and dependence. Someone like that might then have said: Yes, we must make it clear to these wealthy people—the entrepreneurs, the capitalists—that they must let go of their possessions, that they must put in place measures through which the masses can be lifted out of their current situation, and so on. — Very fine speeches could be made along these lines. But then someone like that—who was just getting into socialism and its development at the time—would have raised his voice and said: “What are you talking about? You’re a child; that’s all child’s play, all nonsense! The people who are capitalists, who are entrepreneurs—they’re all poor wretches who know nothing other than what has been drummed into them for generations. Even if they heard that they should do things differently, they wouldn’t even be able to, because it wouldn’t occur to them how they should do it. The very idea that one can do things differently simply doesn’t register in their minds. One must not accuse people; one must not morally condemn them—they are not to be morally condemned at all; these poor souls have grown up in that whole milieu, and that’s what inspires the ideas they hold. To morally condemn them means understanding nothing of the laws of human development; it means indulging in illusions. These people could never want the world to take on a different form. To speak of them with indignation is pure childishness. It has all come to be this way out of necessity, and it can only come to be differently through necessity as well. You see, with such childish fellows who believe they can preach to the property owners, the capitalists, that a new world order should be brought about—with such childish fellows, there’s nothing to be done; no new world order can be brought about with them; they merely indulge in the belief that one can accuse these poor, hapless capitalists of needing to create a different world. — I must state the matter quite clearly, which is why some things are put in sharp terms, but still in such a way that you could certainly hear the speeches I’m referring to everywhere. If they were written down, they were, of course, retouched a bit, phrased a little differently, but that was the underlying message. Then they went on to say: With these guys—they’re idealists who have a mental image of the world in terms of an ideology—there’s nothing to be done with them. We must rely on those who have nothing, who therefore, out of their own interests, want something different from those tied to capitalist interests. And they won’t strive for a change in their circumstances out of some moral principle, but only out of desire—to have more than they’ve had so far, to live an independent life.

[ 11 ] In the 1980s, a way of thinking gained increasing prominence that viewed human development not in terms of the individual bearing special responsibility for his or her actions, but rather as the individual acting out of economic necessity. The capitalist, the entrepreneur, exploits others in complete innocence. The proletarian will not revolt out of a moral principle, but in all innocence out of human necessity, and will take the means of production—capital—out of the hands of those who currently possess them. This must unfold as a historical necessity. — This way of thinking emerged.

[ 12 ] Well, you see, it was actually not until 1891, at the Erfurt Party Congress, that all Lassallianism—which was, after all, still based on people’s common sense—gave way to belief in the so-called “Erfurt Program,” which was intended to make Marxism the official ideology of the proletariat. Read through the programs of the Gotha and Eisenach party congresses, and you will find two demands that were genuinely proletarian for that time and are still connected to Lassallianism. The first demand was: the abolition of wage labor; the second demand was: political equality for all people, the abolition of all political privileges. All proletarian demands up until the 1890s, up until the Erfurt Party Congress that brought about the great turning point, stemmed from these two demands. Take a close look at these two demands, and compare them with the main demands of the Erfurt Party Congress. What, then, are the main demands of the Erfurt Party Congress? They are: the transfer of private ownership of the means of production to communal ownership; the administration of all goods production, of all production, by a kind of large cooperative into which the existing state must be transformed. Compare the former program—which was the proletarian program of the 1880s—with what emerged from the Erfurt Party Program and has existed since the 1890s. You will see that in the old Gotha and Eisenach programs, the demands of socialism are still purely human demands: political equality for all people, and the abolition of degrading wage labor. By the early 1890s, the mindset I have described to you—one that had emerged over the course of the 1880s—was already taking effect. What had previously been more of a humanistic demand was transformed into a purely economic demand. There is no longer any mention of the ideal of abolishing wage labor; you read only of economic demands.

[ 13 ] Well, you see, these things are connected to the gradual development of the idea people had about bringing about a better social condition for humanity through external means. It has also often been said by such people, who still had ideals: “Oh, what’s the harm in smashing everything to smithereens? A different order must be brought about; so, a revolution must come, everything must be smashed to smithereens, the great upheaval must come, for only from that can a better social order emerge.” - That’s what some people still said in the 1880s—people who were good, idealistic socialists. They were answered by others who were in step with the times, who had become the leaders—those who, as I said, are now buried—and they said: None of this makes any sense; such sudden revolutions are pointless. The only thing that makes sense is for us to let capitalism run its course. We can see, after all, that in the past there were only small capitalists, but then they became big; they joined forces with others and formed capitalist groups. Capital has become increasingly concentrated. We are in the midst of this process, in which capital is becoming more and more concentrated. Then the time will come when there will really be only a few large capitalist trusts and consortia left. Then it will simply be necessary for the proletariat, as the propertyless class, one fine day to peacefully, through parliamentary means, transfer capitalist property—the means of production—into communal ownership. This can be done quite well, but we must wait and see. Things must develop in this way until then. Capitalism, which is actually an innocent child, cannot help being exploitative—that is the result of historical necessity. But it also paves the way, for it concentrates capital; once it is all neatly gathered together, it need only be taken over by the general public. No rapid revolution, but rather a slow development.

[ 14 ] You see, the secret of this perspective—the public secret of this perspective that underlies it all—was beautifully explained by Engels back in the 1890s. He said: Why rush into revolutions? What is happening slowly as modern capitalism develops—this accumulation of capital, this concentration of capital—all of that works in our favor. We don’t need to create a common ground first; the capitalists are already doing that. We only need to transfer it into proletarian ownership. Therefore—says Engels—the roles have actually been reversed. We, who represent the proletariat, have no reason to complain about this development; it is the others who have cause to complain. For the guys who are part of the circles of the propertied classes today must tell themselves: We are accumulating capital, but we are accumulating it for others. You see, those guys actually have to worry about losing their capital; they get sunken cheeks, they waste away from these worries about what’s to come. We, as socialists, are actually thriving very well amid this development. “We’re getting,” says Engels, “plump muscles and full cheeks and look as if we’ve got eternal life.”—Engels says this in an introduction he wrote in the 1890s, in which he characterized—quite rightly—what is developing there, and how one need only wait for the development that capitalism itself actually brings about. This development then culminates in the transfer of what capitalism has first concentrated into the common ownership of those who previously had nothing. — That was, in fact, the spirit in which the 20th century was entered by the leading circles of the proletariat.

[ 15 ] And that’s how people thought, especially since the time when Marxism was no longer taken as it had been in the 1890s, but rather when it underwent a “revision,” as they said—the time when the revisionists emerged, that is, those who are still alive today but are now elderly, such as Bernstein. So the revisionists came along. They said that one could accelerate the whole process somewhat, because if the workers just kept working until the capitalists had amassed everything, they would still suffer hardship beforehand—namely, they would have nothing in old age. So insurance programs were established and so on; and above all, the aim was to adopt the institutions that the ruling classes had established in political life. As you know, that was also the time when the labor movement emerged. And within the Socialist Party, there were two strongly divergent factions: the outspoken trade unionist faction and the actual—as it was called at the time—political party. The political party took the position that a sudden revolution would serve no purpose; development must proceed as I have just described. Therefore, the task was to prepare everything for the moment when capitalism was sufficiently concentrated and the proletariat held a majority in the parliaments. Everything had to be driven forward through the path of parliamentarism—the acquisition of a majority—so that, at the moment when the means of production were to be transferred to public ownership, the majority necessary for this transition would already be in place. Particularly among this group of people, who placed great stock in the political party, there was not much regard for the labor union movement at the end of the 19th century. At that time, the labor union movement was committed to establishing a kind of orderly competition between itself and the employers in order to secure wage increases and similar concessions from the companies from time to time. In short, the approach was to emulate the system of mutual negotiations that existed among the leading circles themselves, and to extend this to the relationship between the leading circles and the proletariat. As you know, it was precisely those within the labor movement who became the most bourgeois who were most strongly criticized by the representatives of the strictly political socialist system. And at the end of the 1890s and the beginning of the 20th century, one could see everywhere among those who were more oriented toward the political system a great contempt for those people who had become completely immersed in trade union life—namely, for example, the book printers, who in turn had developed a completely different system of trade union life to the extreme.

[ 16 ] These were two very distinct currents in social life: the trade unionists and those who leaned more toward the political party. And within the trade unions, the book printers in the Book Printers’ Association were, in fact, the model members; they were the very model members who had also earned the full recognition of bourgeois circles. And I believe that just as there was a certain fear, a certain concern about the political Socialist Party, so too did people gradually come to view with great satisfaction the emergence of such upstanding people as those in the Printers’ Union. People said of them: “They’re becoming bourgeois; you can always negotiate with them—it works out quite well.” If they raise their wages, then we’ll raise our prices—the ones we demand. That works. —And, isn’t that right, it worked for the next few years, and people don’t think any further ahead than that anyway. So people were very satisfied with this exemplary model of trade union development. Well, if I leave out a few of the finer nuances, one could say that these two tendencies more or less took shape right up until the times that were then taken by surprise by the catastrophe of the World War. But unfortunately, people didn’t learn everything from that catastrophe that they actually should have learned with regard to the social question.

[ 17 ] Isn’t it true that, when one considers the situation in Eastern Europe and Central Europe—setting aside the Anglo-American world and, to some extent, the Romance-speaking world as well—that is, when one limits oneself to Central and Eastern Europe—one can say that this narrative, which has always been defined as follows, has not really come to anything: Capital will become concentrated, and once a majority is secured in the parliaments, that capital will be transferred to public ownership, and so on. —The catastrophe of the World War has ensured that this cannot be expected to happen so smoothly today. Those who expected some kind of revolution have often been portrayed as childish, but when you get right down to it, what has actually happened in the last four to five years? Let’s keep in mind very clearly and distinctly what has happened. After all, you’ve heard it often enough yourselves—what has happened in the last four to five years: In July 1914, the governments went a little “off the rails”—or went very “off the rails”—and drove the people into the World War. People believed there was a World War going on; battles took place—but with modern means of warfare, with mechanized forces, it was something entirely different from earlier wars. There was simply no longer any possibility for anyone to become a particularly famous general, because in the end it all came down to whether one side had a greater supply of ammunition and other means of waging war, whether one side manufactured mechanical weapons of war better than the other, or had discovered a gas or something similar that the others did not have. First one side won, then the other discovered something new, then the first again; the whole thing was a terribly mechanical form of warfare. And everything that was said about what happened here and there on the part of people took place under the influence of empty rhetoric—it was nothing but empty rhetoric. And little by little, modern humanity will come to realize—even in Central Europe—just how much of it was mere rhetoric when one person or another, who was really nothing more than a somewhat eccentric average soldier, was elevated to the status of a great field marshal in Central Europe. These things became possible only under the influence of rhetoric. Well, that’s just how it was.

[ 18 ] Well, what actually happened? People didn’t notice it because they were so preoccupied with external events. While people believed that a world war had been fought—which was really just a mask—a revolution actually took place. In reality, a revolution has taken place over the past four to five years. People simply don’t know that yet; they haven’t taken notice of it yet. The war is the outward appearance, the mask; the truth is that the revolution has taken place. And because the revolution has taken place, society in Central and Eastern Europe is today in a completely different state, and the plans people had made for earlier situations are now useless. Today it is necessary to completely reorganize all the ideas that were formed in the past and to think about things in an entirely new way. And this is what has been attempted in the book *The Key Points of the Social Question*: to take full account of the situation into which we have been brought by the most recent events. It is therefore no wonder that people in the socialist parties, who cannot keep up fast enough, respond to this book with one misunderstanding after another. If only people would take the time to examine their own thoughts—to examine, even just a little, what they say they want—then they would see how deeply they are influenced by the ideas they formed up until the year 1914. That is the old habit.

[ 19 ] Isn't it true that these ideas people held until 1914 have become so deeply ingrained in people's minds that they can't be shaken off now? And what is the result? The result is this: Even though new action is necessary today, even though the revolution has taken place in Eastern and Central Europe, even though we must now carry out a reconstruction—not based on old ideas, but on new ones—despite all this, people continue to preach the old ideas. And what are the parties today, including the socialist parties? The socialist parties are those that continue to preach this or that socialist gospel today in the same old way they did up until July 1914, for there is no difference between these party platforms and the earlier ones—at most, a difference that comes from outside. To those who know the facts, it is clear that within the individual party factions, very little new—indeed, nothing new at all—is being said. The same old stale ideas are still being peddled today. Well, there is a slight difference: if you have a copper kettle and tap on it, it makes a certain sound; if you tap on a wooden barrel in exactly the same way, it sounds different; but the tapping itself can be exactly the same. It depends on what you’re tapping on whether it sounds different. And that’s how it is today when people regurgitate their party platforms. What’s contained in these old party platforms is actually the party’s old stock-in-trade; it’s just that, because social conditions are different now, it sounds a little different today, just as it sounds different when you tap a copper kettle or a wooden barrel. When the Independent Socialists or the Majority Socialists or the Communists speak—they’re just spouting old party platitudes, and it sounds different because there’s a wooden barrel there instead of a copper kettle. In truth, on many sides, people have learned absolutely, absolutely, absolutely nothing. But what matters is that we learn something, that this terrible World War—as it is called, though it was actually a world revolution—means something to us.

[ 20 ] And you can really say this: The broad masses are prepared to hear something new. But with the broad masses, it’s like this: They listen to what their leaders say. There is a good understanding there, a sound, healthy common sense among the broad, unspoiled masses, and one could actually always count on understanding when presenting something truly contemporary—something that can be called contemporary in the best sense of the word. This is partly due to the fact that the masses are unspoiled. But as soon as people enter the kind of educational system that has existed for the last three to four centuries, this quality of being unspoiled ceases to exist. If one considers what today’s bourgeois school education is—from elementary school all the way up to the university—and it will be worst of all once the socialist unified school system is established, for then everything that has been perpetrated by the bourgeois elementary school will be present to the greatest extent—then one sees: What is drummed into students in schools distorts their minds and alienates them from life. One must break free from all this stuff; one must truly stand on one’s own two feet in intellectual life if one wants to escape this distortion. But you see, it is through this distortion that the proletarian leaders, both great and small, have become what they are. They had to assimilate this education; this education is embedded in our schools and in popular writings—it is everywhere. And that’s when you start to develop such a withered mind and become impervious to the facts; instead, you get stuck on party platforms and opinions that have been instilled and hammered into you—that’s where you remain. Even if the world revolution were to come, you’d still just spout the old platforms.

[ 21 ] You see, this cause has essentially experienced what was intended in many respects by the book *The Key Points of the Social Question* and the lectures. At one point, there was a genuine focus on what the proletariat absolutely needs today—what is necessary given the current circumstances. This was understood at first [among the proletariat], but then those who are the leaders of the proletariat in the various party factions failed to grasp it. That is to say, I don’t want to be too unfair, and I don’t want to twist the truth; I don’t want to claim, for example, that these leaders don’t understand this book, because I cannot assume that they have read it or are familiar with it. I would not be stating the truth if I said: they cannot understand the book. But they cannot bring themselves to understand at all that something other than what they have been thinking for decades is necessary. Their minds have become too dry, too rigid for that. And so they cling to what they have long believed and consider that which is the opposite of all utopia to be a utopia. For you see, the book *The Key Points* fully anticipates that today one can no longer engage in utopias in the sense of Saint-Simon, Fourier, Proudhon, and so on, but also that one can never again take the position that development will simply happen on its own. For what Marx and Engels observed—what was unfolding [in their time], from which they drew their conclusions—can no longer serve as a basis for conclusions today, because the World War has swept it away; it no longer exists in its true form. Anyone who says the same thing today as Marx and Engels is saying something that Marx would never have said. He became anxious and fearful, especially in front of his followers, for he said: “As for me, I am no Marxist.” — And today he would say: “Back then, the facts were still different; back then, I drew my conclusions from facts that had not yet been so modified, so altered, as the World War subsequently changed everything.”

[ 22 ] But you see, those people who cannot learn anything from current events—who have the same mindset as the old Catholics did toward their bishops and popes—cannot even conceive that something like Marxism must also evolve in light of the facts. They still see the old realities before them, and that is why these people are still whistling and hissing the same things they whistled and hissed before the World War. This is how the socialists act, but so do the bourgeoisie. The broadest circles act this way. The bourgeoisie, of course, do this in a completely lethargic way, with a thoroughly slumbering soul; the others do it in such a way that, while they are indeed right in the thick of it and see the collapse, they refuse to reckon with the realities that are thereby revealed. What we need today is for something new to take hold among people. And that is why it is necessary to understand something like this [the threefold social order], which is no utopia but rather takes the facts into account. If, from that side, what takes the facts into account in this way is called obstructionism, then one could actually be quite satisfied. For if people call what they are pushing forward a “straight line,” then, in order to pursue something reasonable, one must cut across it to steer the unreasonable in a different, reasonable direction. But you see, those who do come to recognize what is reasonable should delve deeply into what is being presented here. And these evening gatherings can certainly serve that purpose.

[ 23 ] Isn’t it true that what has long been derived from the facts has been attempted to be put into practice? And so we have been meeting for weeks—I don’t need to repeat all these things; you can, of course, ask questions or discuss the pros and cons after this lecture—we have been meeting for weeks to get what we call the works council up and running. We have tried to create this works council system based on the realities that are currently necessary—truly to create it in such a way that it arises from economic life itself, rather than from political life, which cannot serve as the foundation for economic life. For when one looks the facts in the face today, one must stand firmly on the ground of the threefold social organism. And anyone who today rejects this threefold social order is acting contrary to the historical necessity of human development. Today, it must be as I have often explained: that spiritual life stands on its own, that economic life stands on its own, and that legal or political life is administered democratically. And in economic life, the first step toward a truly social structure should be taken with works councils. But how can this happen? Only by first asking the question: Well, there is the impulse of the threefold social organism, which is new compared to all the old party relics; is there anything else new? Fools claim today that these ideas are just floating around in the air. If you listen to the discussions, they bring up all sorts of negative points, but they offer nothing that could be set alongside the threefold social order. It’s all wishy-washy when the socialist side claims that ideas are just floating around in the air—as was stated in a newly founded journal in a review of the threefold social order.

[ 24 ] First of all, it is a matter of raising the question and coming to terms with it: Is there nothing else? Then one adheres, for the time being, to the threefold social order until one can refute it objectively, until one can present an objectively equivalent alternative alongside it. We can no longer discuss the old party platforms; the World War has already settled that. Anyone who truly understands knows that these old party relics have been refuted by the catastrophe of the World War. But then, if one cannot answer this question by presenting something objectively equivalent alongside it, and if one wants to move forward, one can honestly say to oneself: So let us work in the spirit of the threefold social order. Let’s be honest with ourselves: The old party structures have lost their significance; we must work in accordance with the threefold social order.

[ 25 ] When I spoke in Mannheim the day before yesterday, a gentleman came forward at the end and said: “What Mr. Steiner said is fine, but it’s not what we want; we don’t want yet another new party on top of all the old ones. People who want something like that should join the old parties and work within them.”—To that I could only say: I have been following political life very closely for a long time—long before the gentleman who spoke there was even born. And although I have, through my life, become familiar with everything that has functioned as a social force in one way or another, I have never been active within any party or been able to belong to one, and it does not occur to me now, at the end of my sixth decade of life, to become a party person in any way: I do not wish to have anything to do with another party, nor with one I might found myself. So I do not wish to have anything to do with a party I might found myself either; no one need fear that a new party will be founded through me. For I have learned—precisely because I have never become involved with any party—that every party, by a natural necessity, becomes foolish after a certain time. And I have learned to pity those who fail to see this. Therefore, no one need fear that a new party will join the old ones. That is also why we have not founded a new party; rather, the League for the Threefold Social Order has come together to represent the ideas of the threefold social order, whose non-utopian character—whose realistic character—is, after all, understood by a number of people. Those who recognize this, however, should also honestly and sincerely commit themselves to it.

[ 26 ] Because that, too, must not happen: There is a play in which a rooster crows in the morning, and whenever the rooster crows, the sun rises. Well, the rooster cannot grasp the connection, so he believes that when he crows, the sun follows his call; it comes because he has crowed; he has caused the sun to rise. —If, after all, someone in non-social life succumbs to such a delusion as this rooster, who crows on the manure heap and wants to make the sun rise, it doesn’t matter. But if, under certain circumstances, it were to happen here that the idea of truly economic works councils were to flourish on the foundation of the threefold social order, and those people who foster this were to deny, for example, its origin—namely, that the impulse for the threefold social order set this idea in motion—and if these people were to believe that the works councils came about simply because they had crowed, then that would be the same error—and a very fateful one at that. But that must not happen. What is happening in this direction [of the works councils], what has been undertaken here, must not be detached; it must remain connected to the correctly understood impulse of the threefold organization of the social organism. And those who wish to realize the works council system in the spirit of this impulse can never agree to a situation where, for example, the works council system is established in a one-sided manner and people simply keep chanting “works councils, works councils.” That is not enough. It only makes sense if, at the same time, one strives for everything that the impulse toward the threefold social organism aims to achieve. That is what matters. For if you truly wish to understand what is written in the “Key Points,” then you must adopt the perspective that can be learned from the facts of the past four to five years. To those who see through these facts, they seem as if they had lived through centuries, and the party platforms seem as if their proponents had been asleep for centuries. Today, this must be faced clearly and unreservedly.

[ 27 ] What I have just told you, of course, I could just as easily have written as a preface to this book. However, it is only in recent months that we have seen just how rigid and unproductive party platforms are at present. But it would indeed be useful if precisely that were included as a preface to this book. I have told you today about many things that are not included in it, since it seems to me that you have decided to gather here to properly study the serious social issues of our time in connection with this book. But before you set out to do that, you must realize that you cannot simply plod along in the old style of party platforms and party templates; rather, you must resolve to address the facts realistically today and draw a line under everything that does not take these new facts into account. Only in this way will you grasp correctly what is to be achieved precisely through this impulse of the threefold social organism. And you will grasp it correctly when you find that every sentence in this book is capable of becoming action, of being translated into immediate reality. And most of those who say they do not understand this, or that these are utopian ideas and the like, simply lack the courage to think so powerfully today that their thoughts can intervene in reality. Those who are always clamouring about the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” “seizing power,” and “socialism” usually give very little thought to what they are saying. Therefore, these stock phrases cannot be used to intervene in reality. But then these people come along and say that [the “key points”] are merely proposing something that is a utopia. It only becomes a utopia in the minds of people who do not understand any of it.

[ 28 ] That is why we should make it clear to these people what Goethe once said—in a slightly modified form and with reference to something else—when he laughed at the physiologist Haller, who was a rigid naturalist. Haller had coined the phrase:

Into the heart of nature
No creative spirit can penetrate.
Blessed is the one to whom she shows
Only the outer shell!

[ 29 ] Goethe was reluctant to do this, and he said:

“Into the Heart of Nature”
O, you philistine!
“No creative spirit penetrates.”
...
“Blessed is he to whom she shows
Only the outer shell!”
I’ve heard this repeated for sixty years,
I curse it, but secretly.
Nature has neither core
Nor shell,
She is all at once.
Examine yourself above all else,
Whether you are core or shell!

[ 30 ] To those who speak of the threefold social order as a utopia, one might also say: You, above all, should examine whether what is haunting your own mind is itself a utopia or reality. - You’ll find that all these naysayers mostly have utopias in their heads, and that’s why reality in their own minds also becomes a utopia—or an ideology, or whatever they choose to call it. That’s why it’s so hard to get through to reality today—because people have blocked off their own access to it.

[ 31 ] But we must tell ourselves that we have to work earnestly; otherwise, we will not be able to turn our will into action—and that is what matters: that we turn our will into action. And if we were to have to bid farewell to everything because we recognize it as a mistake, then—in order to move from intention to action—we would still have to turn to the truth that we wish to see through as truth, for nothing else can lead from intention to action except the uncompromising, courageous pursuit of truth. This should actually be written as a guiding principle, as a motto, at the beginning of these evening study sessions. I wanted to give you a preface to these study evenings tonight. I hope that this preface does not deter you from engaging with these studies in such a way that, before it is too late, thoughts that carry the seeds of action within them may finally take root and bear fruit in the world.

There will be an opportunity for discussion.

[ 32 ] Rudolf Steiner: The book *The Key Points of the Social Question* is, in fact, written in a unique way in two respects. First, it is written in such a way that it truly springs entirely from reality. Some people who read the book do not consider this. I can also understand that this is not fully taken into account today. I have spoken about this before in this circle—though not everyone who is here today was present then—regarding how people actually think today. I specifically referred to the example of Lujo Brentano, the professor of economics, who presented this so well in the previous issue of the *Gelbes Blatt*; I’d like to briefly repeat it because I want to build on it. This luminary of modern economics at the university—he is, so to speak, the foremost authority—developed the concept of the entrepreneur and, drawing on his enlightened thinking, attempted to characterize the traits of the entrepreneur. I need not list the first and second characteristics; as the third, he states that the entrepreneur is the one who places his means of production at the service of the social order at his own expense and risk. Now that he has this concept of the entrepreneur, he applies it. This leads him to the curious conclusion that today’s proletarian worker is, in fact, also an entrepreneur, for he corresponds to this concept of the entrepreneur with regard to the first, second, and third characteristics. For the worker possesses his own labor power as a means of production; he disposes of it, and with regard to it, he engages in the social process at his own expense and risk. - Thus, this luminary of economics very effectively incorporates the concept of the proletarian worker into his concept of the entrepreneur. You see, this is precisely how people think when they devise concepts that make no sense at all; they make no sense when concepts are required that are actually applicable to reality. But as unlikely as you may find it, one can safely say: well over ninety percent of everything that is taught or published today operates with such concepts; if one tries to apply them to reality, it works just as poorly as with Lujo Brentano’s concept of the entrepreneur. This is true in the natural sciences, this is true in the social sciences, this is true everywhere; that is why people have forgotten how to understand anything that operates with concepts grounded in reality.

[ 33 ] Let us take, for example, the foundation of the threefold social order. It is true that these foundations can be laid in a wide variety of ways, because life requires many foundations. But one of them is this: we know that in recent times, what might be called the impulse of democracy has emerged. Democracy must consist in every person who has attained legal maturity being able to establish their legal relationship in democratic parliaments—either directly or indirectly—with every other person who has attained legal maturity. But precisely if one wishes to establish this democracy in the world honestly and sincerely, then one cannot administer spiritual matters in the spirit of this democracy, for then every person who has attained legal age would have to decide on matters they do not understand. Spiritual matters must be regulated based on an understanding of the subject itself—that is, they must be left to their own devices; they cannot, therefore, be administered at all in a democratic parliament, but must have their own administration, which cannot be democratic but must arise from the nature of the subject itself. The same applies to economic life; there, matters must be administered based on economic experience and an intimate understanding of economic life itself. Therefore, economic life on the one hand and spiritual life on the other must be separated from the democratic parliament. From this arises the threefold social organism.

[ 34 ] There is now Professor Heck in Tübingen—the one I’ve already mentioned—who said that one need not at all go so far as to claim that the ordinary wage relationship, in which one is paid for one’s work, is in any way humiliating for the proletarian, since Caruso, after all, is also in a wage relationship. The difference is not one of principle: Caruso sings and receives his pay, and the ordinary proletarian works and also receives his pay; and he, as a professor, also receives his pay when he lectures. The difference between Caruso and the proletarian is merely that Caruso receives thirty to forty thousand marks for one evening, and the proletarian receives somewhat less. But that is not a difference of principle, merely a difference in the amount of compensation. And so, according to this witty professor, there is absolutely no need to feel that receiving compensation is degrading; he does not feel that way either. — Just as an aside. But now this clever professor has also written a long article against the threefold social order. He proceeds from the following premise: If we divide society into three parts, then we end up with three parliaments. — And now he shows that three parliaments won’t work, for he says: In the Economic Parliament, the small craftsman will not understand the perspectives of the big industrialist, and so on. — The good professor has formed his own ideas about the threefold social order, and I would also criticize those ideas—which I find even more foolish than Professor Heck does— which I, too, would criticize to the ground—he attacks them, even though he himself came up with them. The point is, in fact, not that three parliaments stand side by side, but that what does not belong in any parliament is removed. He simply creates three parliaments and says: “That won’t work.” — That is how one lives in concepts divorced from reality and judges everything else by the same standard.

[ 35 ] Now, it is precisely in political economy—in the study of economics—that almost nothing but unrealistic concepts have found their way in. But you see, I certainly cannot, now that time is pressing, write an entire library listing all economic concepts. Therefore, there are naturally a great many concepts in the “Key Points” that need to be discussed properly. For example, I need only draw your attention to the following:

[ 36 ] Isn’t it true that, in a time now behind us, social relations arose essentially through conquest alone? A certain territory was occupied by a people or a race; another people invaded and conquered the area. The races or peoples who had been there before were forced into servitude. The conquering people took possession of the land, and this gave rise to a certain relationship between the conquerors and the conquered. By virtue of being conquerors, the conquerors held possession of the land. Consequently, they were the economically powerful, while the conquered were the economically weak, and what emerged was a legal relationship. Consequently, in almost all earlier epochs of historical development, legal relationships—that is, privileges and rights to disadvantage others—were established through conquests. Then came the times when conquest could no longer be carried out freely. You can study the difference between free and constrained conquest by looking, for example, at the early Middle Ages. You can examine how certain peoples, such as the Goths, had pushed southward but into fully settled territories; there they were compelled to adopt a different social order than the Franks, who moved westward and found unoccupied territories there. This gave rise to different rights of conquest. In more recent times, it was not only the land-based rights—which had emerged from conquests—that came into play; added to these were the rights of those who held privileges based on property and who were now able, through economic power, to appropriate the means of production. Thus, in addition to what constitutes land rights in the modern sense, there was the ownership of the means of production—that is, the private ownership of capital. This then gave rise to legal relationships derived from economic conditions. As you can see, these legal relationships arose entirely from economic conditions.

[ 37 ] Now people come along and want to understand concepts of economic power, of the economic significance of land, and they want to understand concepts such as means of production, capital, and so on. Yes, but they lack any truly deeper insight into the workings of the world. So they take the superficial facts and fail to grasp what actually lies behind land rights, behind the power relations regarding the means of production. Of course, all these things are taken into account in my book. The thinking there is correct; when rights are discussed, it is done with an awareness of how those rights have developed over the centuries; and when capital is discussed, it is done with an awareness of how capital came to be. Care is taken to avoid using a term that is not fully grounded in its origins; therefore, these concepts appear differently than they do in today’s standard textbooks.

[ 38 ] But there is something else to consider as well. Let’s take a specific fact—the fact of how Protestantism first came into being. History books very often recount the story that Tetzel traveled throughout Central Europe and that people were outraged by the sale of indulgences and the like. But that wasn’t the whole story; that’s just the surface view. The main thing behind it all was the fact that there was a banking house in Genoa on whose behalf—not on behalf of the Pope—this indulgence peddler traveled around Germany, because this banking house had granted the Pope loans for his other needs. The whole story was a capitalist enterprise. From this example of the indulgence trade as a capitalist enterprise—where even spiritual matters were traded—you can study—or rather, if you begin to study it, you will gradually come to realize—that ultimately all capital power stems from the supremacy of the spiritual. If you study how capital actually came to its power, you will find the supremacy of the spiritual everywhere. And that is indeed the case. Isn’t it true that whoever is clever, whoever is resourceful, has greater power than someone who is not clever, who is not resourceful? And in this way, much of what constitutes the accumulation of capital arises—whether justifiably or unjustifiably. This must be taken into account when considering the concept of capital. Through such real-world studies, one comes to realize that capital is based on the unfolding of intellectual power and that, in addition to land rights and the rights of conquerors, the power of the old theocratic spirit has been added from another direction. Much of what later transitioned into modern capitalism originated with the old Church. There is a secret connection between modern capitalist power and the power of the old Church. And all of this has coalesced into a jumble within the modern power-state. Within it, you will find the remnants of the old theocracy, the remnants of the old conquests. And finally, the modern conquests were added to this, and the most modern conquest of all is now said to be the conquest of the state by socialism. But in reality, that is not how it should be done. Something new must emerge that completely does away with these old concepts and impulses. Therefore, it will be essential that, in our studies, we also grapple with the concepts that underlie all of this. Today, we must provide anyone who wishes to discuss social issues with a clear explanation of what law is, what power is, and what an [economic] good actually is—a good in the form of commodities and the like. The greatest mistakes are made in this area. I would like to draw your attention to one example; if you are not aware of it, you will misunderstand much of what is in my book.

[ 39 ] Today, the prevailing view in many quarters is that a commodity is labor stored up, and that capital, too, is labor stored up. — You might say it’s harmless to hold such notions. It is not harmless, for such notions poison the entire social mindset. Consider this: what is labor really—labor as the expenditure of physical strength? Well, the fact is that there is a big difference between, for example, wearing out my physical muscle strength by playing sports and chopping wood. When I play sports, I expend my physical muscle power; I can get just as tired and have to replenish my muscle power just as much as someone who chops wood. I can apply the same amount of labor to sports as to chopping wood. The difference does not lie in the fact that the labor power must be replenished—it must, of course, be replenished—but rather in the fact that one form of labor power is applied solely for my own benefit, in a selfish sense, while the other is applied in a social sense for the benefit of society. These things differ in their social function. If I now say that something is stored labor, I am not taking into account that labor actually ceases to be embodied in any object the moment work stops. I cannot say, “Capital is stored labor”—rather, I must say, “Labor exists only as long as it is being performed.” But in our current social order, capital retains the power to call upon labor again at any time. The fatal flaw does not lie in Marx’s assertion that capital is stored-up labor, but in the arrangement whereby capital grants the power to constantly put new labor—not stored-up labor—but new labor at its service. Much depends on this, and much will continue to depend on arriving at clear concepts regarding these matters that are grounded in reality. And this book of mine is based on such concepts that are now fully rooted in reality. It does not rely on concepts that were once quite useful for the education of the proletariat. But today, when we are called upon to build something, these concepts no longer make sense.

[ 40 ] You see, when I say, “Capital is stored labor”—that’s good for educating the proletariat; it instilled in them the sentiments it was meant to. It didn’t matter that the concept was fundamentally wrong—you can educate people even with fundamentally wrong concepts. But building something—that can only be done with correct concepts. That is why we need correct concepts today in all areas of the national economy and can no longer continue to work with incorrect concepts. I am not saying this out of frivolity—that one can educate even with incorrect concepts—but rather based on general principles of education. You see, when you tell children fairy tales, you don’t intend to build anything using the ideas you develop from them; education involves something different from what is involved in building within physical reality. There, one must work with real concepts. A concept such as “capital is stored labor”—that is not a concept. Capital is power and confers the power to put newly emerging labor at its service at any time. That is a real concept grounded in factual logic. One must work with true concepts in these fields. This has been attempted in the “Key Points.” Therefore, I believe that much of what is missing there—in terms of defining and characterizing the concepts—needs to be worked out. And whoever can then contribute to developing what is needed to understand the way of thinking that forms the basis of this book will make a very valuable contribution to these study evenings. So that is what matters, my esteemed audience; that is what matters most of all.

[ 41 ] Yes, isn’t it true that one would have to write an encyclopedia if one wanted to clarify all these terms—but what “capital” is can now be covered in a single study evening like this. Without having clearly understood today: What exactly is capital? What is a commodity? What is labor? What is law? —without these concepts, one cannot move forward. And these concepts are completely muddled in the broadest circles; above all, they must be set straight. One is downright driven to despair today when talking to people about the social order; they can’t keep up because they haven’t learned to master reality. That is precisely what needs to be addressed.