The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Translated by Steiner Online Library

The prevailing circumstances and the opposition of various circles with a vested interest in the economy are forcing the “Coming Day” to renounce a broader socio-economic program for the immediate present and to keep its activities within narrower limits. In the near future, it will consist of the association of several economic enterprises with spiritual undertakings that support each other. The spiritual undertakings: Waldorf School, Clinical-Therapeutic Institute, Biological and Physical Research Institute, are intended to serve scientific-spiritual and moral-social progress in a way that meets the demands of the present and the near future. The purely economic enterprises are intended to provide the material basis for the overall enterprise. They are to support those enterprises that can only bear economic fruit and financial returns in the future, because the spiritual seed that is now to be poured into them can only bear fruit after some time.

The shareholders will continue to receive the promised dividend from this narrower range of activities. If possible, the program can be expanded to include this transformed program. Although the program, originally developed for the further development of economic life in connection with the cultivation of spiritual values, is a necessity of our time, its comprehensive realization is currently impossible due to the little cooperation of the contemporary world involved in economic life. So what is possible in the short term must take precedence over what is necessary. Those personalities who show understanding for the idea of the “Coming Day” will find themselves all the better in it with their interests. Serving them will be the duty of its leadership.

The Coming Day
Stock Corporation for the Promotion of Economic and Intellectual
Values
signed Leinhas

[After discussing the first three agenda items (annual report, annual accounts and discharge of the management, resolution on the appropriation of the annual result) and a break, agenda item 4: supplementary elections to the board of directors is to be discussed.

Rudolf Steiner: Certain events have occurred in the last few days that make it necessary for you to have a precise insight into the circumstances before debating agenda item 4. You will best get a picture of the situation if I read two documents to you that will provide you with background information for dealing with this topic.

Rudolf Steiner first reads out Director Arnold Ich's letter of resignation. A copy of this letter is attached to these minutes and belongs to them.

Rudolf Steiner: I would just like to comment that the meeting mentioned here was brought about by the fact that Mr. Storrer and Mr. Day came to see me in Berlin on Monday, March 13, and at that time presented the result of discussions they had had with the management of ' Futurum” and expressed the view that they had to think of the intellectual leadership of ‘Futurum’ in a completely different way than it had been before, and that measures should be taken to do justice to the idea of ‘Futurum’ in accordance with the original program. I would like to make it explicitly clear that what Mr. Storrer and Mr. Day presented was the result of discussions that had taken place at the Futurum management and about which I had been informed. Storrer and Day implied that they had held meetings with other personalities and wanted to hear my opinion about them. I said: “Of course, everyone is free to hold such meetings; but no decisive action can be taken regarding the affairs of Futurum before I am present in Dornach.”

When I came to Dornach and was informed that meetings had taken place in which the directors Ith and Oesch, i.e. the entire management, had also participated, I naturally had no objection to attending these meetings - not as president of the board of directors, but as a private individual - in order to know what had been presented. Immediately after Mr. Storrer had raised the point about the management of 'Futurum', Director Ith declared that he wished to leave the meeting. I pointed out that I was also a guest and was not in charge of this meeting. That is the first point about the resignation of the first director.

Rudolf Steiner reads out Director Dr. Oesch's letter of resignation, a copy of which is attached to the protocol and which is to be regarded as part of this protocol.

Rudolf Steiner: As you can see from this, the board of directors is initially without management. I should perhaps add that the following members of the board, as it has always met, were present at its meetings: Etienne, Gimmi, Hirter and I. Three board members resigned from the board due to illness and other reasons. So there were only five board members left, one of whom does not usually come, so the board has shrunk considerably.

It goes without saying that the circumstances just presented to you have an extremely profound impact on all of Futurum's affairs. As for myself, I would like to make the following comment: the various foundations, be it the Waldorf School, the “Kommende Tag”, the “Futurum” and many others, had taken up an extraordinary amount of my time and energy, and it was quite natural that during this time the much livelier activity for the anthroposophical movement as such had to take a back seat. But now circumstances make it necessary for anthroposophical activity itself to be expanded to a greater extent. If one takes the view that if one bears nominal responsibility, one must also bear it in fact, that is, one must know that one is responsible for every individual matter, then it is basically not possible, in addition to a very demanding anthroposophical movement, to also devote oneself to the economic foundations as intensively as is absolutely necessary according to my own views.

The resignation of the two previous directors has created an entirely new situation for me. Since you are mostly anthroposophical members, you will see it as a necessity that the anthroposophical movement be continued to a much greater extent than has been possible in recent times.

If things go so far as to cause the resignation of the entire management, you can understand that it is no longer possible for me to conduct the business in the responsible manner that I believe it should be conducted. Therefore, I cannot do other than tell you that if the possibility arises from within this assembly that “Futurum” can continue without the old management, whose resignation seems irreversible, I would resign. As you will understand, I have no intention of somehow getting involved with a new management. That would necessitate my having to give up every other activity in the next few weeks. Among other things, it would mean that I would have to give up the already planned trips to the Netherlands and England. So if the anthroposophical movement is not to be harmed, something must be done; I can only tell you what that something is as a definite decision when the debate on the circumstances described continues. But this decision will be: if the possibility arises from the shareholders' circle that “Futurum” can be continued in the sense of its program, I will resign from my post as chairman of the board of directors because of the work I have to do for the anthroposophical movement.

I open the discussion on item 4.

[Willy Stokar and Willy Storrer, as representatives of a group of shareholders, are highly critical of the work of “Futurum” to date, saying that the spiritual goals of forming an association in the sense of the threefold social order have not been achieved at all. They therefore believe that Rudolf Steiner should be discharged of his duties as Chairman of the Board of Directors. Willy Stokar proposes a new board of directors, which should consist of

Ernst Gimmi (so far),

Consul Krebs (so far),

Willy Stokar,

Edgar Dürler,

Karl Day,

Willy Storrer, who are all willing to take on the responsibility.

In the assembly, this is perceived as an outrage.

Rudolf Steiner: One would have to examine the criticism that has been expressed about “Futurum” to see if it is valid. On the other hand, the meeting will have to be clear about how it takes a stand on the question as such.

[Further comments on this matter. Mistakes are admitted, but the meeting is warned against hasty decisions.

Rudolf Steiner: In order to avoid getting into unfruitful digressions in the discussion, please take into account that the first discussions, which created the basis for what followed, took place in the “Futurum” Directorate itself. This is very important. After all, you have an attempt at forming an opinion about “Futurum”. I explained to you how difficult, indeed how impossible it would be for me to continue as chairman under the changed circumstances. Now the question is whether I should say that I would resign as chairman if the meeting were to find a way of continuing the Futurum, and from this point of view I ask you to consider the matter. We should remain objective and consider the possibility of how the “Futurum” can be continued. It is not possible for me to work with a rump board of directors.

There is also something else. I would never have agreed to become president of the board of directors of Futurum AG here in Switzerland if Mr. Hirter had not agreed to become vice president at the request of Mr. Molt and Dr. Boos. As you can see, my presidency essentially depended on having someone like Mr. Hirter at my side, who is so successful and well respected in Swiss business circles. But now Mr. Hirter is also resigning from the board of directors. Mr. Etienne also informed me today that he is forced to resign. Mr. Gimmi has explained to you that he asks you to make a genuine attempt to work constructively with the individuals who have criticized the management of “Futurum”. Mr. Gimmi himself has resigned from the previous board of directors in favor of the new proposal. So I would be a chairman of the board without a board of directors and without a management. I must ask you to provide advice here, either to make positive counter-proposals for the election of board members and for the election of directors or to enter into a factual discussion to see if you can accept the proposals made by one side. Ultimately, whether or not the gentlemen can do this, they will have to show. At least they have shown the goodwill to become members of the board. And I also ask you to show this goodwill if necessary. If you cannot propose other members of the board and get them approved, then you are obliged to respond to the gentlemen's proposals in some way.

The discussion is becoming disorderly.

Rudolf Steiner: We must continue the discussion in an orderly fashion.

[Further contributions. Johann Hirter expressly declares that he is no longer available. Question about the separation of the spiritual activities.

Rudolf Steiner: For the clinic and laboratories and for everything that is grouped around the journal 'Das Goetheanum', and for everything that is grouped around the school, it would be a matter of ensuring that I can continue to do for them in the future what I have done for them so far, just as I have done it so far. After the exclusion of the above-mentioned enterprises, to which I will gladly stand as I have stood so far, the purely economic enterprises remain: These are the knitwear factory, the office A.G., the cold glue factory, the cardboard factory Gelterkinden, the umbrella handle and stick factory Bönigen and the trading department. There is a new fact for this. If I am to tell you exactly the point at which this became an issue for me, it is that, albeit indirectly, I was approached about negotiations that took place within the management. It is impossible for me to have someone come to me and, as it were, stand between me and the management. That is possible under the one condition that he is right. This is clear, isn't it? Otherwise such a meeting could not have taken place at all within the Futurum management. The moment the management stopped going along with me, that was that for me. You must look at things impartially. Now the case is on hand - I have read to you: “In order to create the basis for a development of ‘Futurum AG’ in line with the founding tendencies, decisions will be unavoidable that make a reorganization of the personnel necessary. I would like to contribute my share to this,” and so on (from Dr. Oesch's resignation letter). Dr. Oesch has therefore formally resigned. You have heard that he has already been designated by those prominent figures who have declared their willingness to continue the matter. This group has a director, while I am left without management and a board of directors. You have a group of prominent figures, including Mr. Gimmi and Mr. Krebs from the old board of directors and Dr. Oesch from the old management. This group can start by laying the names of leading personalities on the table of the house, quite apart from the fact that they themselves will be leading personalities. They will not expect me to continue without a board of directors and management.

[Further comments. Someone would rather make their money available for spiritual values.

Rudolf Steiner: It is of course out of the question for the shareholders to start a run on the funds invested with “Futurum”. It is not easy to get money today because the money market is completely inflexible.

[Several proposals for election to the board of directors. Since some of the proposed candidates refuse, only the candidates already proposed by Willy Stokar remain for election.

The vote confirms the removal of the previous directors, including the Rudolf Steiners, with the exception of Gimmi and Krebs, and the election of the new board of directors. After the vote, the remaining agenda items are dealt with. The meeting ends at 7:30 pm.

My dear friends, I believe I have given you a very important insight into anthroposophical [spiritual] science. I will develop this further tomorrow.

I would just like to ask you one thing now. I am obliged to tell you something more mundane, and since I don't have another opportunity to say this more mundane thing, I would like to ask you not to underestimate what I said “sub specie aeternitatis” alongside what I now have to say as something mundane.

I would like to draw your attention to a newspaper report that has already appeared in a wide variety of Swiss newspapers about the events at the “Futurum” general assembly and what emerged from it. Now, as I said, I cannot take another opportunity, I do not want to call you together specially. I ask you all very much to make a distinction between the important matters that we have just discussed and what I have to say now. I do not want the first to be wiped out by the second.

But I would like to note a few things here before taking the opportunity to speak about them in public, and that must be done. I will read you the relevant sentences from this report, which are:

The report was received with satisfaction.

However, as far as the impact of the ideas of the threefold social order and associative economics emerging from the anthroposophical movement is concerned, several shareholders stated that expectations have not been met. It has proved impossible during the financial year to realize the idea of an associative economic system within such a small group of associated economic enterprises. This would only be possible if a corresponding reorganization of economic life could be undertaken on a larger scale. It was therefore demanded that the company abandon the offensive against the current economic system and initially turn its main focus to the greatest possible economic efficiency. As this direction had the majority of votes, there was a need for personnel changes in the administration and for the company to break away from its previous close connection with the anthroposophical movement of Dr. Rudolf Steiner. There were no differences with the spiritual movement, but there was a decision to separate it from “Futurum AG” in order to ensure that the latter would have full development opportunities as an economic enterprise. This has the consequence that the spiritual-economic enterprises such as the clinic, laboratories, publishing house and so on are to be separated from “Futurum” in the near future and remain with the anthroposophical movement.

My dear friends, I believe that if you reflect on the content of these sentences, you will have to say to yourselves: The worst enemy that could arise against the anthroposophical movement in Switzerland could not write worse sentences than those written here. For here, above all, the silliness is written that the reproach that can be made to the “Futurum” is that it has not fulfilled its expectations because it has not fulfilled what is demanded of the anthroposophical movement by the “Futurum”. And then it is said – as I said, putting these things together is nothing more than a huge, capital absurdity – then it is said: So the Futurum must separate itself from the anthroposophical movement, must give up the offensive against today's economic system.

My dear friends, I myself must naturally regard this form of expression as one of the worst attacks on my own personality. You will feel this when you consider the matter. Because here nothing less is said than: Dr. Steiner, with his anthroposophical movement, is becoming very dangerous because he is taking action against the modern economic system; so we have to do it differently, we have to move away from him.

My dear friends! This is the very way to completely destroy the Anthroposophical movement. But besides, anyone who understands what I myself have been dealing with in terms of economics in recent years will find that it is an unscrupulous untruth to say that, because one does not want to be offensive, one has to move away from the Anthroposophical movement and then from me.

As if this offensive had come from me! It was completely different people who took this offensive approach!

My dear friends! When I read this at first, I thought that some inept editors had written it who are not familiar with the anthroposophical movement as such. But today I was presented with the original, the original letter to the editorial offices, and this original letter to the editorial offices for these acts, which are already hostile to anthroposophy, comes from the current management of “Futurum”.

This is what has been sent to all Swiss editorial offices by the current management of “Futurum”, that is, by the side that has actually always conducted this so-called offensive in an outrageous manner. If they were to write in a reasonable way, they would actually have to admit to themselves that they have spoiled things in the most stupid way possible by proceeding in this way and constantly throwing the most stupid things at people's heads in public lectures.

This, my dear friends, is what is happening today. And actually, no worse insult has been made to the anthroposophical movement than here by the present management of “Futurum”. As I said, I only received it today that this has been issued by the current management of “Futurum”.

I must emphasize here, and this cannot be emphasized enough, that I consider it a dishonest, lying attack when it is said that one has to turn against the offensive that has been driven against today's economic system in order to get by. It is a falsehood that, if it were not done out of stupidity but out of intention, could have no other purpose than to finally culminate in the entire anthroposophical movement being shaped in such a way that I am thrown out of it in order to have it for oneself. I am not saying that this must be the intention, but if one wanted to achieve this intention, one could not do it more subtly than through such writings.

This, my dear friends, is necessary to say, after it became clear to me today that this writing originated from the current management of “Futurum”. Of course, I do not mean what I have discussed in relation to the current composition of the board of directors of “Futurum” and so on, which was somehow said in a still benevolent way. But the present management of Futurum has begun its activities by taking the most urgent steps to undermine the anthroposophical movement in Switzerland. You can imagine what consequences such a thing must have in the near future.

There we have it: this anthroposophical movement is a dangerous movement, it undermines today's economic system; one's own “Futurum” must break away so as not to be in these dangerous waters!

I don't know if it has been read in the right way. It must have been read, even by anthroposophists. But if it is read and felt in the right way, then it must also be felt as I have just expressed it. But then it cannot be allowed to go without informing the public that this is a thoroughly untruthful, objectively untruthful, unworthy attack against the Anthroposophical Society by the present management of “Futurum”. I cannot characterize the matter otherwise.

I now ask you to really consider the matter, because the situation is such that it is no longer possible to put up with everything that is being said and done to us from all sides. It is no longer possible. I am only giving this to you all for consideration for now, but for careful consideration.

Tomorrow at 5 p.m. there will be a eurythmy performance and at 8 a.m. we will continue today's reflection here.

It is necessary to explicitly point out that it was not the anthroposophical movement that trumpeted these crazy things out into the world, but the same side that is now blaming it on the anthroposophical movement.

Erwin Hahl: Emphasizes that the reconstruction [of the Goetheanum] is absolutely necessary; raising money is an urgent necessity. Suggestions to get money through factory enterprises, such as machine factories.

Rudolf Steiner: I would ask you to remain in your seats for just a few more moments. I do, however, have something to say about the two points Mr. Hahl has discussed.

My dear friends, at the same moment that I decided with a heavy heart to take over the chairmanship of the Anthroposophical Society myself, I said to myself: Certain things that have taken place among us in recent years must not be allowed to happen again. And among these things is the fact that industries or the like are to be established or taken over by us, through which one strives to get money, to give money. This must not happen again. We have had the very worst experiences with this principle in recent years. You will remember, at least many of you, my dear friends, that when here, from about the same place, just a few steps to the right, years ago, the proposal was made to proceed with such foundations, I asserted that it cannot be expected that the appropriate personalities can be found in the present to stand behind these foundations and represent them to the end in such a way that the result is that money is given in order to get money back. Another experience has emerged – which is much more in line with my warning at the time – which is that we have given money, good money that we could use for our good cause, to lose. We don't want to do that again, my dear friends. Today we want to be very clear about the fact that we only want to work our way out of the good hearts of our friends, so that our friends know: we are not striving for this or that and promising this or that, but we are doing this or that with this money.

And so I would like to make it a condition for taking over the chairmanship from me that those financial experiments in connection with all kinds of industries, which have brought us such difficult experiences in recent years, are not repeated. It has been shown that the personalities who have been involved in a large number of experiments have not taken further care of them, and that they are now being continued by those who have something better to do now. There are, in fact, even better things.

Now, my dear friends, that prevents me from advising you in any way in this direction. Those things that have already been inaugurated in this direction must be continued with all energy, that is self-evident; but to get involved in something new of the same kind does not befit us for the next few years, when we must take every care not to let this ideal good that we have be influenced by such side currents. In the future, every friend must know that what he gives is used for the ideal endeavors as it is; it is not used somewhere first to be transformed into the form where it should then be more. - That will be something we, as I said, will not do again.

As for the second point, I found what Mr. Hahl said extremely gratifying; but that has already happened, especially during the summer, and Mr. Hahl only needs, in a very amiable way, to pay his dues where the collection has already been introduced for the construction of the Goetheanum. We do not always need to create new funds for what already exists. This could only be discussed in terms of how to make the existing fund quite substantial. 'But we do not need new funds, otherwise we will ultimately no longer know our way around because of all the funds.

This is the matter that I would still like to recommend to you. I have said it in this dryness because it really seems necessary to me that it be said today in this dry and clear way. I have spoken many times recently about the failure of these things, as they are also being conducted again with an industrial society. If something like this is to be done, then it should be done purely for itself, quite apart from the Anthroposophical Society. If they then want me to give purely practical advice, for my sake, on the production of machines and the like, then they may do so. But you will never see me, after the experiences I have had, offer my hand and enter such enterprises myself as a member of the board of directors or similar councils.

Before Dr. Steiner's address, it was announced that the resolution passed at the Annual General Meeting of ["Futurum"] on 4 April 1923 to liquidate ["Futurum AG"] by merging it with ["Internationale Laboratorien und Klinisch-Therapeutisches Institut Arlesheim AG/ILAG"] klinisch-therapeutisches Institut Arlesheim AG /ILAG] cannot be implemented in the planned manner, namely to acquire the Futurum share capital of 2 million francs at the written-down value of 1 million francs. On the contrary, as a result of the general deterioration of the European economic situation, the assets of Futurum AG have to be reduced even further, to 450,000 francs. In order to raise this amount, however, the International Laboratories A.G. is obliged to increase its share capital from 500,000 francs to 950,000 francs.

Rudolf Steiner: I would like to return to the point that was just mentioned by the chairman and which refers to the fact that, as a result of the recent write-down from 1 million francs to 450,000 francs in assets of ” Futurum AG in liquidation, those shareholders who cannot bear a further write-down due to their financial circumstances should not suffer any more damage than they already have as a result of the fact that a write-down of 2 to 1 million has taken place. So the write-down that has taken place today means that those shareholders who cannot bear a further write-down will not suffer. This could be made possible in the following way: We tried to persuade those shareholders who are willing to make a sacrifice to transfer their shares to the Goetheanum as a gift. As a result of shareholders donating their shares to the value of around 550,000 francs to the Goetheanum, there is no longer any need to pay a dividend for these 550,000 francs. This means that the dividend that 1 ILAG share receives can be paid for 2 “Futurum” shares. This can be achieved in the following way:

You have to bear in mind that the number of shares is not reduced as a result; ILAG has to pay the dividend on all the shares that exist. Of these shares, 550,000 francs in capital is owned by the Goetheanum. The Goetheanum waives the dividend on these shares. As a result, the dividend share corresponding to these gifted shares is allocated to the shareholders who own the 450,000 francs of remaining shares. They do not lose anything because the dividend is increased by the gifted shares. The purpose of this action is to ensure that those shareholders who cannot bear further write-downs can rest assured that they will receive 1 ILAG share and its yield for every 2 “Futurum” shares. This could only be achieved by those who can do without donating their shares to the Goetheanum, which in turn compensates the shareholders who cannot do without. I believe that this has now become clear to everyone. There is thus no possibility of any formality. Legally, everything has been taken care of and this whole action would fall through if further promises were attached to it. They would have made no sense if the shareholders who can no longer lose out could not be supported. This is a private matter that can be taken care of alongside the formalities, and I would ask you to include it in the discussion.

Question: Would the shareholders like to have something tangible as security, perhaps the shares that have actually been made available?

Rudolf Steiner: The demand for a guarantee is something that frankly I do not like very much. I think it is sufficient that this guarantee is provided by the shares themselves, and I do not think that a formal declaration would make the matter any more secure. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the donors most sincerely for their wonderful willingness to make sacrifices in the public interest. Emil Leinhas: It should be noted that the explanation that Dr. Steiner has just given has real content. He was able to make it because of the donations that were made available to him. It is thanks to his drive alone that the action has become possible.

Rudolf Steiner: We want to base the matter on reality. The matter will be arranged for ILAG in such a way that the future board of directors will have the auditors, who would otherwise only be present as cash auditors, as a real entity alongside them. We will propose that in the future the ILAG will have Dr. Wegman and me as auditors. We will ensure that this is done in the future by holding shares worth 550,000 francs. I believe it is better to base the matter on this personal relationship, which is just as real as a written declaration.

Once the proposed solution has been adopted by the General Meeting, the task of the liquidation committee is essentially complete, so that its members, Mr. Leinhas, Mr. Padrutt and Mr. Day, resign. It is considered sufficient that Futurum AG in liquidation is represented by the non-resigning member of the liquidation, Mr. Edgar Dürler, with sole signing authority, since Mr. Dürler is also being considered for the ILAG Board of Directors, “which is why, even in the current situation, he is the person who can properly supervise the separate administration.” At the end of the meeting, those present are invited to attend tomorrow's ILAG general assembly as guests.

From the minutes of the extraordinary general meeting of the International Laboratories and Clinical-Therapeutic Institute Arlesheim AG.

The meeting is opened by Dr. Ita Wegman. She proposes that Dr. Steiner be elected as president for the day. He provides information about the reasons for the new write-off of the “Futurum” assets in accordance with the meeting of March 24, 1924 [see page 425] and proposes:

1. To approve a contract between the Internationale Laboratorien und Klinisch-Therapeutisches Institut Arlesheim A.G. and 'Futurum A.G. in Lig.', by which the takeover of 'Futurum' can be undertaken for 450,000 francs.

2. To this end, the share capital of the International Laboratories and Clinical-Therapeutic Institute Arlesheim A.G. is to be increased from 500,000 francs to 950,000 francs. Both proposals are unanimously adopted.

Rudolf Steiner: As you know, we are striving to make a clear distinction between the spiritual and commercial interests of our members. This is particularly necessary for the Clinical Therapeutic Institute, which is to be separated from the International Laboratories by uniting with the Goetheanum Association. Furthermore, an experimental laboratory is to be affiliated to it, while the actual laboratories are to continue to be operated as a commercial enterprise under the title “Internationale Laboratorien Arlesheim A. G. Arlesheim” with a share capital of 950,000 francs. This independence will make it possible to put the business on a healthy and profitable footing.

Dr. Wegman and Dr. Steiner will remain closely connected with the clinic, which is now to become an integral part of the Goetheanum, especially with regard to the production of the remedies. In a meeting preceding today's general assembly, the board of directors decided to submit the following proposal for approval:

The International Laboratories and the Clinical-Therapeutic Institute Arlesheim A.G. in Arlesheim sell the Clinical-Therapeutic Institute to the Verein des Goetheanum. The exact purchase price will be determined by the Board of Directors after the annual balance sheet as of December 31, 1923, has been prepared. The company name is changed to “Internationale Laboratorien Arlesheim A.G. in Arlesheim”.

This proposal is unanimously approved. Since these resolutions also require a reorganization of the Board of Directors, Mrs. G. Ricardo, who is staying in America for an extended period, is recalled as a member of the Board of Directors, and Dr. Ita Wegman resigns. Mr. Emanuel Joseph van Leer and Mr. Edgar Dürler are newly elected to the remaining member of the Board of Directors, Mr. Geering-Christ.

The auditors must be replaced due to the resignation of the previous members, Ms. M. Viehoff and Mr. Karl Day. The following are proposed as replacements: Dr. Rudolf Steiner in Dornach, Dr. Ita Wegman in Arlesheim.

The chairman of the meeting (Dr. Steiner) emphasized that this would establish the necessary contact between the Goetheanum Association, which is purely spiritual, and the international laboratories, which are commercial. This solution guarantees the necessary cooperation.

The vote is unanimous in favor of the proposed candidates.

At the end of the meeting, the chairman notes that the resolutions passed today annul those of the Annual General Meeting of April 5, 1923.

Dear attendees, at your request I would like to discuss with you today some aspects of the social impulse, which wants to face the world under the name of the threefold social organism. And it may be carried out into the world from here, for the very reason that spiritual science is to be practised here and actually already today the widest circles could understand that a recovery of the general world conditions can only come about through a deepening of the spirit.

After this short lecture, we still have a tour of the building ahead of us, so you will understand that I want to be brief and can only give you a few aphoristic pointers to the essentials of the idea of threefolding.

This idea of threefold social order is not entirely new. It has its origin in decades of observation of the conditions prevailing in Europe, especially in Central Europe, and especially of those conditions that led to the terrible catastrophe of the last five to six years.

For the person speaking to you today, these circumstances, under which a large part of the world is now suffering terribly, did not come as a surprise. It was in the spring of 1914 that I gave a series of lectures to a small audience in Vienna – in Vienna, you know, the world conflagration started in Vienna! Within these lectures I had to say, simply under the obligation, I would like to say, to the time, that one should not calm down in doing so, but should always praise the great importance of the development of the present in all possible words, but that one should look at what is being prepared. And I had to say at the time – so it was in the early spring of 1914, many weeks before the outbreak of the World War! – Anyone who surveys the social conditions of Europe with a certain expert eye can only compare certain phenomena, especially in our economic life, with a kind of social cancer disease that must come to a terrible outbreak in the shortest possible time.

You see, anyone who said something like that in the spring of 1914 would have been seen as a dreamy idealist with pessimistic views. And those who considered themselves “practitioners” at the time spoke of the general political situation as being relaxed, of the best relations between the governments of Europe, and so on.

Today, it may well be pointed out that it was not the idealist who was wrong with his prediction, but rather the ten to twelve million people who have been killed since then by the world conflagration, and three times as many who have been crippled within the civilized world, who provide sufficient proof that the “idealist” was right to speak such words.

One is also reminded today in a certain way of the position that people who thought they were practical took at that time.

Even today, some will say that one is being pessimistic when making such a prognosis. One is not being pessimistic, one is only speaking out of an understanding of the circumstances.

And just as today, strengthened, so to speak, by spiritual science, one can take a deeper look at the situation, so it has been possible for decades. One could carefully observe how the individual relationships between states in Europe developed more and more into antagonisms, and how the measures taken were by no means sufficient to deal with the tensions that were accumulating everywhere. And one had to foresee what was coming: the years of terror that we now seem to have left behind us.

Today, however, it may be said that just before these terrible years, if I may put it this way, there were no ears to hear these things. It was only when a great part of Europe was struck by the terrible adversity that is now here that people began to listen. So people said at the time, there were no ears to hear, and even today we still have to wait and see if we are really being heard. Nevertheless, despite the hardship, despite the terrible lessons that the last few years have brought us, it cannot be said that the idea of threefolding, which has emerged from careful observation of the circumstances, has already been received in the appropriate way today. And so I would like to tell you right at the outset why people are so opposed to this idea of threefolding, why they consider it a kind of utopia, a kind of fantasy.

You see, the reason for this is that conditions of such a complicated nature, conditions that have spread such devastation and chaos, have actually never existed before in the whole of human development! Humanity has been through a lot; at certain times, a lot has also befallen Europe. Conditions as they are now have really not yet existed in the time of historical development.

Circumstances have brought it about that in the past small groups of humanity have been seized by phenomena of decline. Even when the great Roman Empire was heading for its decline, it was still a small area in relation to the whole earth. Today, the amalgamation of conditions that we have spread across the whole civilized world makes the phenomena of decline more visible. It is no wonder that it is now necessary to have not a small idea of how to improve this or that in a limited area, but rather a comprehensive idea that really intervenes as deeply as the confusion runs deep. The threefold social order is such an idea. It is based not only on observation of the actual situation but also on a consideration of the historical moment in which humanity finds itself today. And it is also because it actually takes into account all of present-day civilized humanity that the idea of threefolding is so rejected. It is considered utopian, it is thought to be something that has been thought up. But it is the most real, or at least wants to be the most real, that has to be integrated into the present circumstances.

If we take a look at the development of intellectual, political and economic conditions in the present day, we have to link them to the same development over the last three to four centuries. Anything further back has a completely different character. The last three to four centuries, and especially the 19th century and the period since then, have brought humanity to a very particular state of development. In some areas, this is not yet apparent. The health of the Swiss people has been rightly mentioned here. It must be counted on for the future. But it is also necessary, in order for this health to remain, that there be no illusions that, in the face of all that is now collapsing, a small area could remain isolated. This cannot be the case.

You see, there are large areas in Central and Southeastern Europe today that you know suffer greatly from the fall of the exchange rate. The economist opposes this fall in the exchange rate, I would say, as a major phenomenon compared to minor phenomena that have always existed in the past. It was known that when the value of a currency falls in any particular area, imports into that area are somewhat undermined; exports are thus all the more encouraged. This law can no longer be applied to the devastation of economic conditions that has occurred in Central and Eastern Europe.

But so far, only the disadvantages of the fall in the value of a currency in certain areas have been shown! It will not take them very long to realize the disadvantages of a currency appreciation in a country! They will come, and it will not take that long, then the countries with depreciating currencies, where economic conditions are declining, will not be alone in their worries; the countries with appreciating currencies will think with fear about their high currencies.

These things show those who can see into the circumstances how, despite the fact that the economic area of the earth basically forms a unit today, despite all state structures, how the weal and woe of a small area of the earth depends on the weal and woe of the whole earth. Therefore, even today, social conditions can only be considered in a completely international sense.

If we look at what has actually brought us to today's situation, we have to say: We see how far we have come – today you do not see it yet – – but you could actually say, you could see it in the malformation of Eastern Europe, in the malformation of Russia. It must be said: such things are deeply significant, as we can now read in Russia, for example – I will mention a small thing, but it is deeply significant – as we can now read in Russia. You could read that Trotsky called on people not to celebrate May 1, but to work on May 1. Please, over there in Russia, the ideal of socialism is to be realized on a large scale – a paradise was promised to the people. That which the proletariat has designated as its sign of manifestation for decades – the May celebration – is something that must be abolished there. It is only one expression of all that must be abolished there! For a long time people have spoken of the evils of militarism, and rightly so. In Russia, labor is currently being militarized. In Russia, it is currently being said that it is nonsense that a person here on this earth should have control over his own person. There can be no such thing as freedom of disposal over one's own person. This is clearly shown by the fruits it has borne in the extreme case to which the development of the last three to four centuries has brought it. We must look at these things. We must realize that this state – I do not mean the individual state, but the state in general – which has developed from quite different conditions over the course of these last three to four hundred years, that this state has overburdened itself with things that the state as such cannot provide. For why?

You see, in order to look at such things soberly and clearly, without fantasy, we have to embrace the idea that the whole life of humanity is something similar to the life of the individual human being. We cannot describe the life of the individual in such a way that we always say: Now, when a person is forty years old, he is in the world the effect of the cause that was present at thirty-nine years, which in turn is the effect of the cause present at thirty-eight years, and so on. We cannot say that, but there is an inner, lawful development in the human being. Man gets second teeth around the seventh year, according to an inner law. He goes through other developmental stages in later years. There is a certain impulse living within man that makes him ripe for something at a certain time. It is the same with all mankind. What has emerged in all mankind over the last three to four centuries is something from which mankind cannot escape.

There was no other way for humanity than to call for democracy. Whatever ideals have been set in the external social life, the ideal of democracy is the one that has most powerfully seized and must seize humanity of the present. The state must become democratic, democratic in the broadest sense. Especially in Switzerland, where there is an old democracy, people should feel this, but they will also gradually perceive the necessity to relieve this democracy of certain areas.

What does democracy mean? Democracy means that people should have the opportunity to decide for themselves, either by referendum or by representation, on matters that are the same for everyone and that are the concern of every mature person. That is the ultimate ideal of democracy: equality among people with regard to decisions, in other words, everything that is equal among people of legal age. But what did the state, which has just developed in the course of history and emerged from very different circumstances, strive for? There are two fields in human life where democratic decisions can never be taken: one is the field of intellectual life and the other is the field of economic life. Those who are sincere in their belief in democracy must realize that if democracy is to be complete, intellectual life must be excluded from the sphere of the purely democratic state, as must economic life.

Anyone who is able to observe in this area can see from obvious examples how impossible it is to carry intellectual life as such into the democratic political sphere. I will not speak of the conditions here; that is not for me; but it is not at all possible to look at these conditions only from a small point of view today, but one must look at the whole world, at least the whole civilized world.

But if you look at the former German Reichstag, which apparently existed until 1914 and beyond, you have a perfect example of how the state – whether it is more or less democratic is not important in this case – has become overburdened with purely spiritual matters. Among the parties in the German Reichstag, they had a very large party, the so-called Center. In the present metamorphosis of the old Reichstag, which is called the National Assembly, the Center Party is again playing a role. This Center Party had no interests except purely religious, that is, spiritual matters. If any economic or political question came up, it was decided by some compromise which the Center Party made with other parties. But it is quite natural that this Center always had only the interest to promote its own spiritual interests. In short, if you follow the train of thought to its conclusion, it becomes clear that matters of purely spiritual concern have no place in the political parliament.

Take economic life. You see, Austria is the country that really shows, I would say is the textbook example of what has developed under the newer conditions, of the fact that the countries must perish. Only, Austria is the textbook example of what is perishing!

Anyone who, like myself, has spent thirty years of their life in Austria and has been able to see the developments that took place in the last third of the 19th century could see all the conditions coming about that have developed there, could see all the newer social conditions occurring. They also thought of making a parliament in Austria. But how was this parliament formed? Four curiae were formed: the curiae of the cities, the curiae of the provinces, the curiae of the municipalities, and the curiae of the big landowners. These were purely economic curiae, economic associations that were elected to the political parliament. They then decided from their economic point of view what should be public law. There you have the other example! In the German Reichstag you have the example of how a party that seeks purely intellectual goals turns out to be a troublemaker in a purely economic parliament. In Austria you have built up a parliament based on purely economic curiae, and anyone who has observed the situation knows that this parliament was never able to deal with what would have been necessary in Austria, for example: to regulate the spiritual conditions insofar as they manifested themselves in the secular conditions of the nationalities.

In Austria one could see something else. There the state was only a political entity. There were thirteen official languages. These thirteen official languages could not be brought under one roof; one could not bring them under one roof under the impression, because the people with the different languages had the most diverse intellectual interests in Austria. They tried to preserve some of it through private channels. Oh, I was often there when, you know, such long straws, the ones in the so-called Virginia cigars, were auctioned off in America in favor of the school associations! The school associations were founded to do something out of the intellectual interests themselves that the state as such could not do. But the idea of a unified state was too much in people's minds for such private foundations to achieve any great or widespread effect. And so I could go on telling you about the impossibility of keeping together certain things that the modern state wants to keep together.

The medium-sized states of Europe and Russia have had to learn the hard way that the centralized state cannot survive as it has existed up to now. Those who have not yet been affected by this fate still believe that it can be averted. It cannot be averted unless we grasp the legal idea of how to remedy the situation by human will. And here, based on ample observation and consideration of historical circumstances, is where the idea of threefold social order comes in. It says: People must become ever more honest and sincere in their striving for democracy. But then the democratic principle must be limited to the mere state principle, in which every person has to decide in the same way on everything that concerns all mature people. As I said, this can be done either by referendum or by representation. But then, the entire intellectual life, on the one hand, must be separated out from this state structure, from what is to be administered strictly by parliament. This entire intellectual life has increasingly come into the power of the state in recent centuries, and even today most people regard it as a great advantage of the modern state idea to absorb intellectual life, especially the school system. There is still a great deal of resistance to the most terrible prejudices. But the world does not see the connections.

But if you ask yourself: how did it actually come about that today we are not only faced with class struggles, but with the approval of class struggles? That we are faced with a complete lack of understanding between people? That we are witnessing the tyrannical rule of a few hundred thousand people in Russia over millions of people today, pretending to be democratic? Where did it all come from? It has been slowly prepared. One needs to think of a single word – I have pointed this out in my book 'The Key Points of the Social Question in Present-Day Necessities of Life' – to see why, out of error, a large part of humanity today, the part of humanity that includes the proletariat, stands up and believes: Only by means of what you are all too familiar with, can they bring about any kind of change in the circumstances. The only word that needs to be mentioned is the one that could be heard at all, all social democratic events over decades: it is the word “ideology”. And this word, ideology, ladies and gentlemen, points to the entire course that the materialistic world view has taken in modern times.

Whatever one may think of the earlier conditions of humanity, we certainly do not want to restore the earlier conditions, we want forward and not backward; but one must still say: look at the man of the past! He knew that there lived in his soul something that had a direct connection with the spiritual that permeates the world. What, after all, has man known since the middle of the 15th century about these connections between his inner being and a spiritual in the world! The sun, they say, is a glowing ball of gas. What do people know today about the stars, about the sun! If you ask our scholars: what was the origin of the evolution of the earth? — they will tell you: it was once a nebula; then the sun and planets were formed over thousands of years. People have also surrendered to this realization! I have often referred to the description by Herman Grimm, who said: “Future people will have a hard time understanding the madness that speaks of the origin of the earth from the primeval mist in this Kant-Laplacean idea.” — But today it is regarded as a great development and science.

What was cultivated there then drove out the most diverse currents, and these currents flowed into the proletariat. And basically, what is being advocated in Russia today by Trotsky and Lenin is only the final consequence of what our scholars taught as materialism at the universities.

Here in Switzerland, there was a man who ranted a lot in the 1970s, but he saw what was coming. They didn't like him because he ranted a lot, Johannes Scherr. But besides a lot of ranting, he also saw important things. And he said as early as the 1970s: If you look at the economic development, if you look at the spiritual life, as it had to come down more and more, you will finally come to the point where Europe has to say: nonsense, you have won!

In the last five to six years, people have been saying, and still do: “Nonsense, you have won!”

Ideology, what does it mean? It means nothing other than: All spiritual life is ultimately only a smoke that rises from mere economic life. Economic conditions are the only reality, as Marxism preaches in all keys. And that which arises from economic conditions is that which man carries within himself as the content of his soul. Law, custom, religion, science, art: all ideology. This is the seed that has sprouted: ideology, disbelief in the spiritual life.

Where does this disbelief come from? This disbelief comes from the amalgamation of the spiritual life with the state life in recent centuries. For intellectual life, ladies and gentlemen, can only flourish if it is placed entirely on its own ground. Consider – I will pick out only the school system, because it is the most important area of the public intellectual life – the school system is organized so that those who teach and educate are at the same time the administrators of the teaching and education system. Just imagine: the teacher of the lowest class in the school has no one to obey but someone else whom he does not obey but whose advice he follows, who is himself involved in teaching and education. Someone who is so far relieved that he can simultaneously administer the teaching and education system, so that no one from any political department can interfere in the spiritual life itself, so that the spiritual life itself stands on its own feet. You can read about this in my book. I have tried to make the matter as clear as possible, that only a spiritual life that is left to its own devices can free us from all the harmful effects that have plunged us into misfortune. But only one that is drawn directly from the spiritual can, in turn, generate faith in the spiritual, the connection with the spiritual.

I would like to be clear. We founded the Waldorf School in Stuttgart because there is still a school law there that I would say leaves a small gap. This Waldorf School is a real unified school, because the children of the workers from the Waldorf Astoria factory are next to the children of the factory owners and so on, all together; it is a real unified school, a complete elementary school, up to the fourteenth, fifteenth year of age.

I held a pedagogical course for the teachers I selected myself, in order to prepare the teachers for this school, where teaching should only be done according to the knowledge of human nature, according to the observation of what what is in man; where teaching should not be based on some or other prejudice that it must be so and so, but on observation of what comes into the world through man, what should be taught from it. I have reported on this in a wide variety of journals, including here, on how the methods in the Waldorf School have been established. But what I want to mention to you now is this: if you consider such a course to be the way to teach and educate, then you are guided by what knowledge of human nature, what real spiritual science, reveals. But in today's school system, there is something else. There is also what the teachers believe to be the right thing for the education of the child. But then more and more something else has come. I had to look at it, precisely because I had to proceed very practically when I founded the Waldorf School with regard to its spiritual content. Coming from political life, the decrees are: First class: this and that must be taught, that and that is the teaching goal. Second class: this and that must be taught, that is the teaching goal. — You see, that comes from political life! Is it not obvious that it does not belong there, that the person who does not look inside, who understands nothing of teaching and education, must give the instructions? The prescriptions must come only from those who are educators, and they should not be called over as experts to the ministry, but should be involved in the living process of educating and teaching. Spiritual life must be placed on its own ground in all areas of the school system. Then the spirit will take hold of people again.

So that one must say: the state honestly realizes democracy by relieving itself of the intellectual life, which is based entirely on expertise and professional competence, in which, after all, one truly cannot decide by majorities, but only according to what one knows. There it is a matter of only the specialized and the factual being the deciding factors, of the decisions coming from the self-administration of the school system. That is one area that must be excluded from the state. The other area is the economic one. Do you see where all the things come from that are driving the world more and more into a general economic crisis today? Where do such things come from, as for example in 1907 in Europe, which could be very well noticed by individual people? But it happened at that time, even if not without pain, it still passed without major catastrophes for the world economy, I would say, only with the pain of some. Then again there was rejoicing among everyone about the great economic progress and “how we have come so gloriously far” in more recent times. No one noticed how certain characteristic phenomena were pointing to what is now gradually developing into a general world crisis. These characteristic phenomena...

All these things have taken place everywhere, on a small and large scale. They can essentially be traced back to the fact that since the beginning of the 19th century, money has gradually become the ruler over the entire economic life. Money as the ruler over the entire economic life; what does that mean? You see, whether it is wheat – because you have to look at the monetary value – it costs so and so many francs. When you buy skirts, if you just look at the monetary value: francs. In short, money is not specified, it is not based on the concreteness of economic life. It is something that exists in the non-real world, like the abstract concepts in the intellectual life, with which you cannot lure a dog behind the stove in reality. Except that the abstract, fantastic concepts do not cause as much harm as this generalized abstractness of money. One can point out how, in the course of the 19th century, the money lender gradually became the actual driving force in our economic life. Whereas before, it was only the economic, economic man who mattered. Gradually, the possibility also arose for states to become involved in economic affairs, so that states themselves became economic actors.

If one examines the causes of war impartially, one will find that they arose and had to arise from purely economic circumstances, because the circumstances I have mentioned developed. Here again, careful study provides insights into what is at stake: that we must return to a coming together of man with economic production itself. Man must again be brought close to what he produces. Man must again grow together with wheat and rye and everything else he produces, and he must change economic life according to what he produces. And people must not be allowed to multiply this money purely for the sake of it. Without thinking about these things, we will not get anywhere. A recovery of economic life is only possible if man is brought together with the economy again, working out of the needs of the economy.

But this can only come about if one does not organize from the state, but if one allows the people who are in the corresponding economic sectors to come together in associations, if one builds an economy of interests merely on expertise and skill and craftsmanship in economic life. Two things are necessary: first, that one can do what one wants to produce, and second, that one has the trust of the people. But this can only be achieved if one is involved in the corresponding branch of the economy and has grown together with it.

But this is how the individual occupations arise, this is how the laws of production and consumption arise. On the other hand, the various economic methods can only be brought into a certain relationship with each other if the various associations work independently, without interference from the state or any other authority. Just as intellectual life must be set apart from state life and stand on its own two feet, so must economic life. Intellectual life can flourish only if the individual who has the abilities can also develop these abilities for the benefit of his fellow human beings. Spiritual life is most ideal and most socially beneficial when the individual, who is gifted, can work in the service of his fellow human beings. Economic life is most effective when those who produce in any field, or when the consumer circles, combine in such a way that simply through the existence of the associations and connections, there is a real trust that is not dependent on money, when the credit system is a real one and not a mere fiction , as was the case in the previous period, and when you know that you can support any branch of production because the people you have now got to know and who have grown together with their branch of production are in that branch of production.

This is certainly still the case in small communities; in the large-scale conditions that have actually brought about the decline, it is no longer the case.

You see, I have only been able to sketch out what threefolding is about. I could only show you that, to a certain extent, the development of humanity has reached the point where what was once charged to the state as a unified entity now wants to be divided into three independent areas: the spiritual life, which administers itself independently, in the democratic state life, which will be the legal life in particular, and in the economic life, which is standing on its own two feet and is in turn a separate area. That alone is the essential thing: we can see from what the civilized world should and actually wants to strive today, except that people have not yet become aware of it, and that people want to hold on to the old conditions.

You see, it is very strange how one can see precisely in Social Democracy, as it is developing today, the most conservative principle. For what does Social Democracy want? It wants to turn the state into a single large cooperative, through which it could militarize everything. This could be said today when looking at Russia, where everything is being militarized. The militarization of labor is already being discussed from a Russian perspective, because social democracy with a Marxist slant says: the state is there. We now load everything onto it, education and economic life and everything. That is the unhealthy thing! The socialist idea in particular represents the last, most unhealthy consequence of what has developed over the last few centuries.

The healthy thing is to recognize that what has been charged to the state, what it cannot decide out of its democratic nature, must be separated from it and put on its own two feet, intellectual life and economic life. Of course, one can understand that many people today cannot go into such ideas, because people today have been brought up to regard the state as something that works best through a certain omnipotence. One is not really serious about the democratic idea if one wants to saddle the state with everything. One is only serious about the democratic idea if one wants to see that which can be treated equally among all mature people. If it depends on the individual person, on the abilities that he carries into this world from other worlds through his birth, then it is a matter of this world, this spiritual world, also having to be organized out of these abilities. In economic life, it is important that we do not impose an abstract organization on everything, which the monetary economy is by its very nature, but that it should be possible to manage out of the concrete economic life. But out of the concrete economic life, only associations can be formed that join together and that, through their mutual relationship, really achieve what can be a healthy relationship between consumers and producers. Of course, such a concept, which, as it were, addresses everything that is currently being pushed aside in the wake of decline, and which recognizes that decline can only be stopped by thoroughly seeking a new formation, such a concept cannot be understood immediately. One realizes that it cannot be understood immediately. For people are actually organized to always think to themselves: Yes, things are bad now, but they will get better again. They think that improvement will come from some unknown quarter. That is how it was done, for example, in Germany during the war. Whenever things went badly, people waited for improvement to come from some unknown quarter. It did not come! So today we should not wait for things to improve, from somewhere, we don't know where! No, humanity today – as the advent of democracy itself testifies – is called upon to act in a mature way. But one is only mature when one does not expect improvement to come from some vague source, but when one says to oneself: Improvement can only come from one's own will, from an understanding will that sees through the effect. [Gap] If only one percent of today's civilized humanity could bring themselves to a clear recognition of the danger for the whole civilized world, and could see, could see how urgently the conditions strive for threefolding! But threefolding is being trampled underfoot everywhere. If only one percent of people would understand things to a certain degree, things would get better. Because only through people can improvement come! The worst thing for humanity has always been fatalism.

But the worst thing today is precisely this fatalism! Recently, you could read here in a paper that appears in Basel a letter from a German who says: We in Germany must now accept going through Bolshevism. Then, when we have gone through Bolshevism, then — one does not know from where! — the better will come.

This is the most terrible fatalism. It is the consequence of the fact that, basically, the deepest essence of Christianity is still not understood today. The Christ came into the world for all men. He did not come into the world merely for the one people from which He proceeded; He did not fight merely for the one national God, for He taught: Not this one national God, but that which is God for all men, that is what matters. Have not people in the last five or six years looked back to the old Jehovah again, have they not fought everywhere for the folk gods by giving these folk gods the name of Christ? Was it the real Christ, the Christ to whom all people are entitled, that they spoke of? No, it was not the Christ to whom all people are entitled that was spoken of; it was the individual folk gods! And, of course, the individual peoples are spoken of in this sense today, as they were then, as embodying their separate ideals. Christianity, in turn, must be understood as a general one; but not just in words, but in mature ideas.

You see, just by giving a few sketchy thoughts in this short time today, but by speaking again and again to people about threefolding, there were also people who appeared who are “good Christians” today, that is, they appeared with phrases. They talked about all sorts of things, but they thought it should be said today that Christianity should be fulfilled, that Christ should really come. — I could only reply: There is a commandment: You shall not take the name of your God, the name of your Lord, in vain. — Does that make one a bad Christian because one does not always have the name of Christ on one's tongue? The Christ did not just want to be addressed with the name “Lord! Lord!” – but he wanted to bring an attitude among people that, when developed, takes on concrete forms, that do not always just refer to his name, but that bring about social conditions in his spirit that embrace all people equally.

It may appear that the words used do not mention Christianity, but this threefold social organism is intended to be in the spirit of true, genuine, practical Christianity. And I am deeply convinced, dear ladies and gentlemen, that one day it will be recognized that the idealists who speak of threefolding today are the true practitioners. And the others, who say: Oh, pipe dreams! — these are the ones who speak that way today, well, just as, for example, the foreign ministers of the German Reichstag and the Austrian delegation spoke almost identically in June 1914. These two practical gentlemen said something similar in Berlin and Vienna: Our friendly relations with St. Petersburg are the very best there are. The political situation has relaxed; we are approaching peaceful conditions in Europe - in May, June 1914! Negotiations are in progress with England, the practitioners said in Berlin, which will soon lead to satisfactory results. The satisfactory results then came in August 1914! So the “practitioners” spoke, so the practitioners foresaw things.

We should bear this in mind, ladies and gentlemen, when we hear such a proposal as the threefold social order being dismissed as the mere idealism of a few visionaries, whereas it should be seen as the most practical of proposals, the one that takes reality most fully into account and seeks to align itself with our times!

I thank you, my dear attendees, for listening to what I had to present. I can only ask for your indulgence, since in the short time available to me I could, of course, only present a few pure thoughts without the necessary proofs, but which you can find in the corresponding books and magazines, which are also available here in Switzerland, and which you can also find in “Social Future”, published by Dr. Boos. I have only been able to give you a few guiding ideas; and I only hope that these guiding ideas may perhaps be able to evoke in you the feeling that this impulse of the threefold social order is not a randomly thrown-out idea, but that this threefold is a response to the deepest needs of humanity today, but one that can truly lead humanity out of its current plight. It can lead us out of chaos and decline and towards a new beginning, which so many people today long for, and rightly so.

[Closing words of the organizer.

Dearly beloved! The significant facts that have emerged in the social life of the entire civilized world today, and which are being spoken of loudly and clearly, have arisen out of the catastrophe of the World War, which has lasted almost five years. Those who look at the world today with an alert consciousness instead of being spiritually asleep, in order to perceive what is on the horizon, cannot help but come to the conclusion that only significant, far-reaching measures can meet the challenge that stands before humanity today as a requirement of world history.

The time when it was easy to talk about all kinds of understandings through which, in a certain way, the old could be maintained in a comfortable way, that time is well past. Today it can only be about a completely, completely different understanding, about man's understanding with the great world-historical forces that want to be realized sensually from the present into the near future.

But although one has heard enough from some people in the last four to five years to say that with the world war catastrophe, an event has befallen humanity such as has never occurred in the course of what is usually called history, on the other hand, one cannot experience many feelings for the fact that in a time in which things are happening that have not yet happened in history, thoughts and measures must also be conceived and taken that, in a certain way, have never been taken before in the history of humanity.

Can it be said, esteemed attendees, that in recent times much understanding has been shown for the world-historical situation and its demands, in which we have come to be? If one wants to answer this question, then it actually presents an almost hopeless picture for today. Because, if you will allow me a personal comment, in the spring of 1914 I tried to summarize the judgment that I had been able to form from an honest observation of the situation over the past decades regarding the European and world situation. In the spring of 1914, before the terrible events of that year occurred, I tried to express to a small circle – a larger one would probably have laughed at me with my views at the time – how I actually see this coming world situation. And I had to say: That which is observed by someone who really has an eye for observing the great destinies of men, must say: We live in a time in which social and great political life is unfolding as if there were a great social ulcer, a kind of cancer that must soon break out in a terrible way. And I added the words at the time: One would like to shout out such a realization, so that people understand what is actually at stake.

Of course, “statesmen” – I say that today with caution, because one would be wise to only mention statesmen in quotation marks today – (laughter), “statesmen” spoke differently in the spring and early summer of 1914. For example, in the German Reichstag. The foreign minister, who was responsible for the events, said something like this: Through the efforts of the European cabinets, one can say that there is hope that world peace will not be disturbed in the near future. This was said by a leading statesman in May 1914. One may well ask oneself: What do people actually see of what is being prepared?

Well, this peace, which was so secure, has, at least, brought about twelve million deaths and three times as many people maimed in Europe. One may ask: Were the responsible leaders at the time somehow prophetic? They certainly were not. And now, again, from the most authoritative quarters, we are hearing similar unfounded judgments about that which is now pulsating as the most important thing in human development. The most important thing in human development, which lives and which pushes towards events that are just as meaningful, much more meaningful than those that have taken place in such a terrible way, is the social question, that is the social movement.

Now, it cannot be said, my esteemed audience, that the people who belong to the leading circles to date, out of some kind of devilish malevolence – even today, when the water is running into their mouths, so to speak – out of some devilish malevolence, are showing themselves to be absolutely unintelligent towards what is to happen and what wants to be realized. But something quite different underlies it. And it is actually because of this quite different thing that I would like to speak from my point of view on this very question.

What is at the root of the matter can be seen if one takes a little time to study the origins of what is known as the social question, which today – as the loud facts testify – has become something completely different from what it actually was four or five years ago; but it is a question that has been around for more than half a century. Due to modern developments, people are separated from each other as if by a deep chasm, by an abyss. On the one hand, there are those who have never tired of praising the high civilization of humanity that modern times have brought about, tremendously and completely. What songs of praise have been sung about this modern civilization! One only needs to remember a few. How often have people, when it suited them, said: There we have modern achievements, modern means of transportation, through which one can travel long distances at speeds that would have seemed fabulous to ancient people. Thoughts flash across the seas with lightning speed. And what about the actual spiritual culture, how it has been showered with adulation. But one must ask oneself: on what foundation did all that live, which was literally inundated with this adulation? Without what has all this modern civilization not become possible? It did not come about without being built on the foundation created by the great mass of humanity who were not allowed to and could not participate, who were in an economic situation that prevented them from participating in all the things that were praised. (“Bravo!”) This civilization has grown up on this basis, the basis of the physical and mental hardship and misery of a large part of humanity, on this basis it has grown up, through which a large part of humanity has actually lost its human dignity. One only has to look – I would say – at the time when the social question first arose in its very first attempts.

The people who sang the praises of this modern civilization came together, well, in mirrored halls for all I care; they talked a lot about the divine order of the world, talked a lot about what makes people good; talked a lot about the fact that people have to love each other; talked a lot about brotherhood. They spoke about these things in well-lit rooms with well-heated stoves. Where did they get the coal for these speeches about brotherly love and loyal fraternity, speeches that were made with all kinds of justifications? Yes, until the middle of the nineteenth century, it was possible to determine the basis on which this modern civilization had developed, through an investigation that the English government had conducted at the time. This indulgence in all sorts of empty talk about brotherhood of man and so on arose only from the fact that in the coal mines people work from a very young age. Some children as young as nine, eleven, thirteen! So they were put down into the mine shafts and never saw the light of day except on Sundays, because they were led down into the shafts so early that the sun was not yet shining, and so late that the sun was no longer shining. Due to the nature of the mining work, it was inevitable that these workers in particular would lose all sense of shame; naked men with half-naked women had to work together down there, on the one hand doing the most terrible work, on the other hand constantly in mortal danger. Well, I don't need to describe this to you any further. These things have truly not improved through the merit of those who sang the praises of civilization, but through the organization of the oppressed, they have improved somewhat since then. But the abyss has remained. The gap is there. Not much understanding has been gained since then for what the proletarian social movement really is. (“Bravo!”)

Now, when you see something like this, you may well ask: what is it about the ruling circles that makes it seem almost hopeless that anything favorable will come from them in the near future? Above all, in an age when so much is said about spiritual progress and so on, above all it is – this must be said without reservation – thoughtlessness. (“Very true!”) This lack of thought has taken a terrible hold on people because, above all, they are far too lazy to look at the realities. And so it has come about that the most unfounded judgments can be heard today about what is pushing its way to the surface as a legitimate demand from the souls of the broad masses of the proletariat. Of course, one does not have to go as far as the former German Kaiser – admittedly a man who was as far removed from the demands of modern times as any human being can be – one does not have to go as far as he who once said: social-minded people are like animals (Pfuil) that gnaw away at the foundations of the German Reich and must be exterminated. One need not go as far as he did, but a greater understanding of what is necessary is certainly emerging from certain quarters that were previously in the lead.

What must be emphasized again and again is that what today appears to some as such a terrible fact, which above all arises out of the life of the proletariat, is a powerful world-historical critique of what the ruling classes have done over the centuries. Until now, it was mostly a criticism that came from the assemblies in a very significant way – you just have to know it – in which the proletarians, for decades, again and again, shouted in the face of those who were the leaders up to now: It can't go on like this! In those gatherings, which the proletarians struggled for after working all day, in those gatherings, in which - as those who have lived with the issues know - the most serious human questions were discussed in a meaningful way over decades, at the same time as people outside were sitting in some worthless theater or spent their time in an even more reprehensible way, or even played cards. During this time, tremendous intellectual demands have emerged from the depths of the proletariat, something quite different from a mere question of bread or wages, as many today would like to believe, conveniently. Not many on the part of those who were the leading circles until now have any idea of this.

If we now ask: what were the underlying reasons for the views of the proletarian world? – we come across three human areas, those areas that we encounter again and again in social life. Firstly, there is the area of spiritual life; secondly, the area of legal life; thirdly, the area of economic life. These three areas are also the basis for consideration, for true, realistic consideration of the social question, which is actually threefold: an economic, a legal and a spiritual question.

Allow me, esteemed attendees, to speak here in this Goetheanum, as elsewhere, but especially here, first of all about the proletarian question as a spiritual question. When speaking of the origin of the social question, namely the origin of the proletarian movement, much has been said, and it has always been pointed out again how, under the influence of modern technology, of modern industry, and under the influence of, above all, modern capitalism, that which is called the proletarian movement has developed. Of course, what has been said is all true, to a certain extent; but something else comes into consideration.

Above all, it is important to consider that with modern technology, with modern factory systems, with what must be described as the soul-destroying modern capitalism, a newer spiritual life befell humanity. This spiritual life was, however, initially developed in the bourgeois classes. The bourgeois classes have developed this newer intellectual life, which could be called scientifically oriented intellectual life, out of the old religious and other ideas. The proletarian world, which has been torn away from the circumstances in which it used to be, which has been led to the desolate machine, has been harnessed to the desolate capitalism, this proletarian world accepted this intellectual life of the bourgeois class with trust.

It is an important fact that in more recent times this proletariat has, so to speak, placed a last great world-historical trust in the bourgeoisie, and that this trust has been betrayed. («Very true! Bravo!») Let me speak first of this betrayal of world-historical trust.

I believe that I am not speaking out of some abstract theory, because I know how the intellectual life is lived within the proletariat, having worked at the Berlin Workers' Education School founded by the old Wilhelm Liebknecht. I myself taught the most diverse branches of this intellectual life. And from there I was able to gain access to the intellectual life of the various trade unions and cooperatives, as well as the political parties. There one saw how quite differently in the souls of the modern proletarians that which is called the modern, scientifically oriented enlightenment lives on. There you could learn not to think about the proletariat, as many believe today – that has no value – but to familiarize yourself so that you can think with the proletariat. That is what matters today. (“Very true!”) What matters most is to recognize that however enlightened we may be with regard to the newer natural science orientation, which has replaced the old religious orientation, it remains an enlightenment of the head. It remains an enlightenment alongside which all sorts of other things can persist in social life. One can be honestly convinced in one's mind by this newer scientific world view, just like the great naturalist Vogt or the popularizer of science Büchner, but if one belongs to the real leading circles, one is still part of a social order that is actually still made up of the old views. With their theoretical understanding, they accepted this scientific orientation; but they did not take it seriously for their whole being. This is what the modern proletariat had to do in its deepest soul.

Once, in Spandau, I stood on the podium at the same time as Rosa Luxemburg, who was recently tragically killed in Berlin. We were both talking about science and the workers. What Rosa Luxemburg said in her measured, thoroughly noble manner was, I would say, a perfect reflection of how the newer worldview affects the souls of proletarians. I will just hint at what Rosa Luxemburg said at the time. She said, for example, that the newer worldview had driven out of people the belief that they had all actually lived like angels at the beginning of the development of the earth; no, she said to the people, actually we were all quite indecent as humans at the beginning of the development of the earth and climbed around in the trees like climbing animals. That gives no reason to find justified the present class and rank differences. That gives a quite different idea of how people, in fact, should stand side by side in the world according to their physical origin. Yes, when this is said to the proletarian, who is compelled to make what used to be called a religious worldview out of these things, when it is spoken in such a way that it is received by the whole person, not just by the head, one can see what has struck the soul of the modern proletarian, how something completely different than a mere bread-and-butter question, which is certainly also the social question – we will talk about this in a moment – but something other than a mere bread-and-butter question, a question of human dignity, which is intimately connected with the other question that every human being must somehow ask, with the question: What am I actually in the world as a human being?

The medieval craftsman, who still said of his trade with a certain justification that it had a golden floor, could answer this question from his relationship to the craft. There was still a kind of professional honor for him from this relationship to the craft; there was also something that told him clearly: I have a certain value in human society. The dull machine, the soulless capitalism, they said nothing about that, absolutely nothing. They simply pointed out to the human being who had been put in front of one of these machines, who had been harnessed to capitalism, that this human being had to answer this question for himself in the modern scientific orientation: What am I actually as a human being? Above all, what is important from the world view, from science, is what has to do with human development, with human value and human dignity.

As I said, the proletarian placed his last great world-historical trust in what had been worked out – though it had been worked out by significant minds from within the bourgeois social order. He placed this last great trust because he believed that the question could be answered for him: What am I as a human being within human society?

Now, people said, based on their now enlightened worldview: human development is part of the divine order of the world. Or: it is the expression of the moral order of the world; or: historical ideas prevail. And what takes place in the human being is the result of historical ideas, of great world-historical thoughts.

The proletarian saw nothing when he was attached to his machine, harnessed to capitalism, by a divine world order, by a moral world order; he saw only modern economic life; he saw how all that what took place as intellectual life and what people called the divine world order, how it sprouts and emerges from what modern technology and modern capitalism have offered to the leading circles.

That then also became his view. His view was that basically everything that these leading circles have as intellectual life is basically a kind of luxury for them, in which those who are just as entitled to participate in what is produced as these leading circles are not allowed to participate. (“Very true! Bravo!”)

This was deeply ingrained in the souls of the proletariat. And in the scraps that fell from the table where what was concocted in bourgeois intellectual kitchens was offered to the people. They did not want to be fobbed off with that, but they placed above all the greatest value on understanding the spiritual life of humanity, understanding it differently than it has shaped itself out of the bourgeois development of modern times. What had developed there was, of course, seen as nothing other than a mirror image of what had developed in the state and economic life for the leading circles. It was rightly asserted that, in more recent times, this intellectual life was a mirror image of the economic life of those circles that had been favored by the newer economic life. This intellectual life was repeatedly called an ideology. The term “ideology” for this luxury intellectual life became that which, on the one hand, showed what the proletarian felt this intellectual life to be; on the other hand, it showed what he longed for: a real intellectual life that could penetrate his soul in such a way that this soul felt its connection with something that went beyond the most everyday interests in the machine and in capitalism.

Here, too, one need not always go as far as the late German emperor, who once called the proletarians not only enemies of the ruling circles, but enemies of the divine world order; (movement among the audience) but in a certain sense, one felt in the ruling circles in this area no different. What did the proletarian see of this whole intellectual life when he wanted to get a clear idea of it according to the truth? What did he see of it? Oh, what he saw of it – in one word it resounded again and again through decades and decades, since Karl Marx coined and processed this word in an understandable way for the proletariat, that is the word surplus value. Today, timid minds talk about this word surplus value in a very strange way. But the proletarian actually understood the following about surplus value: I have to produce this whole luxury intellectual life, this surplus value that feeds it. The proletarian felt nothing other than that he had to produce the surplus value for this intellectual life, and that this surplus value produces an intellectual life that erects a deep chasm between itself and the innermost needs of the soul. That is why Karl Marx and his followers found so much understanding in the souls of the proletarians, because from their deepest feelings – they did not even need to penetrate into everything theoretically – they experienced in their bodies what the added value actually means, which is subtracted from their labor and flows into channels that do not lead to their own habits of life. («Bravo!»)

Thus, in the realm of intellectual life, the first part of the modern social question arose, which is expressed in the concept of surplus value. The proletarian had to look into this surplus value; and what was produced from this surplus value escaped him, in that he could not participate in it as a human being. This is the first part of the social question, in so far as it took place in the realm of intellectual life. The proletarian could only see some kind of capitalism in this spiritual life, something that was entirely built on the basis of modern capitalism; certainly, on other foundations as well, but initially on this foundation of modern capitalism in the form of surplus value.

The second basis of life, from which the social demand arose, was the legal basis. What is justice? Dear attendees, talking about justice is actually just as difficult and just as easy as talking about the color blue to someone who is color-blind or blind, blind to what wells up in the healthy human mind, blind to what true justice is. A large part of humanity has indeed become blind under the influence of the modern economic system. That is why it is so difficult to talk to these people, just as it is difficult to talk about red or blue to a blind person. For if he wanted to stand on the legal ground and looked around him, what has the proletarian found on this legal ground in modern times? Rights? No, not rights, but privileges, especially for those who have come to these privileges through the modern economic order, or who have come to these privileges through old rights of conquest. What expressed itself on this legal ground was not the effect of the law; it was what the modern proletarian grasped with the word: class struggle. (“Bravo! Very true!”) The modern proletarian looked at the modern state by placing himself in relation to this modern state in such a way that he said to himself that this modern state did not represent what, as we shall hear shortly, every state should be: a living out of the law; but this state was the soil for the modern class struggle. And that is the second thing, in addition to surplus value: the modern class struggle, which confronted the modern proletarian; his class consciousness arose from this surplus value and the class struggle. His great longing is to overcome this class struggle. A social order in which there is no longer the terrible struggle of the rule of one class over another. That is the second form of the social question: the one against the rising class struggle.

The third form arises from economic life, if one has a healthy grasp of economic life. That which can actually be called economic life. What moves in this economic life? What should move in this economic life? Production of goods in the broadest sense, of course, that every human achievement that is required by human need is a commodity, production of goods, circulation of goods, consumption of goods.

But in more recent times, something else has been mixed into this economic cycle of production, circulation and consumption of goods, a remnant of an economic order of ancient times that had passed away, and which the modern capitalist people did not want to help overcome.

In ancient times, esteemed attendees, there were slaves; not only goods, not only what was produced by man or what was under man in nature, like the animal, was bought and sold on the goods market according to supply and demand, but man himself, who was a slave. Man was mixed among the goods. Man was pushed down into the economic order.

In the Middle Ages, serfdom existed for this purpose; less so, people were bought and sold. In more recent times, what remained was what Karl Marx again drew attention to. But in this area, one must be even more radical than Marx in view of the demands of modern times; he pointed out that within the modern commodity market, the human labor of the proletarian is still available as a commodity. This labor power is bought and sold on the market according to supply and demand, like any other commodity. (“Disgusting!”)

Basically, esteemed attendees, can the proletarian, as he has to live today, separate his humanity, his human dignity from his labor power? He must sell his labor power, sell in a certain sense his whole human being, when he sells his labor power [as a commodity]. (“Very true!”) That is the last remnant of the [medieval] world order in capitalism. That is the third great socialist demand, to divest human labor of the character of a commodity. Anyone who thinks sanely knows that human labor and human strength are something that cannot be compared to any commodity, that must not appear on the market like a commodity, that cannot be compared in price with any other commodity. Nevertheless, people are reluctant to remove from the economic cycle what human labor is.

People who are highly valued today because they played a certain, sometimes quite dubious role in the last period of the war, such as Rathenau, for example, he wrote in his latest book, “After the Flood” - by flood he means the last war catastrophe - he wrote: It would not really be appropriate to remove labor from the economic cycle. — That the actual proletarian demand for this is what such people sense; but in their anxious, thoughtless minds they do not find it advisable for the labor force to be stripped of the character of a commodity. Because – so Rathenau thinks – as a result, a great devaluation of money would flood over the entire modern economic order. — This is what is feared: the devaluation of money through the detachment of labor from the pure economic cycle. But it was precisely in this third demand, the detachment of labor from the mere pricing by the economic process, that the modern proletarian sensed that with which he summarized his question of human dignity and human value. Over the course of the last few centuries, and particularly in the nineteenth century, he had been drawn into the economic process in a new way.

This economic process, dear attendees, can be the subject of very interesting studies if we follow this modern economic process across the entire civilized world and see how it led to the terrible catastrophe of recent years. In essence, it was the economic process that grew out of capital that led to this terrible catastrophe, and we will not emerge from it merely as the people who want to conduct peace negotiations imagine. The fact that we will emerge in a completely different way is shown by the weather signs, for which, unlike in the case of world war, there are no hostile forces and neutral ones; it is shown by the social question, which will somehow stop at no territorial borders. This question, which will be an international question in the most eminent sense, and will bring international facts to the surface of human existence that the world has never seen before, shows this. This must be revealed at some point. Those who do not want to see it will be able to experience it first hand. (“Bravo, very true!”)

Now, esteemed attendees, in the economic process, the one who, although still in a cautious way, but in a very clear way, criticized the modern social order, as it was already possible in his time, found out, cautiously, but nevertheless very radically, pointed out to Goethe in the second part of “Faust” what it was actually due to. He lists the saints and the knights as actually originating from times gone by within the economic process, as he says. They stand every storm – so says the chancellor in the second part of Goethe's Faust: They stand every storm, the saint and the knight! – So says Goethe about the leading, guiding circles, the saints and the knights.

Now, in more recent times, dear attendees, these saints and these knights have changed somewhat. The saints have sometimes become quite unholy statesmen (laughter), and the knights have become modern militarism in its most diverse forms. (“Bravo, very true!”) They also stand and have stood their ground in every storm. But Goethe goes on to say something very true: they demand church and state as a reward, namely, everything that he understands by the spiritual life. And they also demand the state as a reward. (Laughter.) They have economic life for themselves anyway, they don't need to demand that first.

This is the part of Goethe's world view that still shines brightly in our time. And we need not stop at the old Goethe, but understand his applications in terms of the immediate present. («Hear, hear!»)

From all this we see that there is actually a threefold social question: the proletarian demands, as they arise as world-historical demands in this period, they show a threefold character, as I have stated. One is based on the spiritual, on the spiritual ground; the second is on the legal ground, the third is on the economic ground. Of the spiritual goods, the proletarian only recognizes that which he must provide as his basis, the added value. On the ground of the state, he sees himself only in the class struggle. And on the ground of economic life, he sees himself harnessed into the cycle of economic life, so that not only goods circulate in it, but also his own labor, that is, his flesh and blood.

Now I come to what I have had to form for myself from decades of observing European social conditions, from observing all that is being prepared and that will take shape in the coming decades. Of course, I can imagine that there are many here in this hall who will not entirely agree with the ideas that I can only sketch out here, as I present them. I can understand that. (Laughter.) But that is not the point. The point is that these ideas, as I intend to present them, are taken from reality. We can agree on this reality. If the agreement is built on an honest foundation, then an agreement will be found with those who are truly honest about the demands of modern times, which will be different from the one that people often talk about today.

During the war catastrophe itself, my dear attendees, I said to many a statesman – I emphasize once again, I say today “statesman” only in quotation marks – I said to many a “statesman”: said: What needs to be done is already clear today: You have the choice of either accepting reason today or letting what should and must happen befall you, facing revolutions and cataclysms. – One preached to deaf ears during the war catastrophe.

For example, not very far north of here during the war catastrophe, the world only had an ear for a personality who was considered to be quite practical at the time. What was not known about this personality – I am referring to Ludendorff – was that he was a visionary of the very first order , a person who was completely out of touch with reality, the likes of whom have not been seen since; anyone who had the opportunity to get to know this person, despite all the underlying reasons, knows that this person had not been fully compos mentis since August 5, 1914. Of course, you can make very clever strategic plans, but you can also be crazy. Every psychiatrist would have to admit that. (Laughter.)

The history of the war in recent years, ladies and gentlemen, will in many respects be a social psychiatry, a social doctrine of delusion. We will be able to learn a lot in this area; but we will have to have the courage to look into the truths. And this truth is, above all, that in recent years humanity has got itself so bogged down in false ideas that these false ideas have come to light in the horrors of this terrible war catastrophe.

When I ask myself: What is it that has actually caused everything that has developed in modern states over time to become the way it has become? I will start by giving you an example. The example is not taken from Switzerland. However, the social question is now an international question, and it must be studied where the examples are most clearly evident – the example is taken from Austria, which has now fallen to its fate. Austria would never have come to the disastrous Austro-Serbian conflict if social, legal and intellectual life in Austria had not developed in the way it did under the influence of completely wrong ideas, since the 1880s, when the development of a constitutional life, the constitutional life of the Austrian Reichsrat, began. What was that like? Members were elected by curia of the large landowners, the cities, markets and industrial centers, the curia of the chambers of commerce, the curia of the rural communities. The latter were only allowed to vote indirectly; the others were allowed to vote directly. (Laughter.) From these economic curia – for you will admit that they are purely economic curia – the members of the Austrian Imperial Council were elected. But this Austrian Reichsrat had to decide on the law. That is, one was guided from the outset by the view that legal life should develop only through the transformation of economic interests. Economic life was completely shifted into legal life. This has also been evident in other areas.

Of course, the German Reichsrat, for example, had universal suffrage. This had often been discussed, even direct suffrage – but it was precisely in more recent times that the new farmers' alliance was able to establish itself very firmly, that is to say, purely economic interests on the legal ground. I could now present you with countless examples of this kind, in which it is shown how precisely the blessings of modern times were sought, precisely the true progress of the times, by merging economic life with legal life. And today there are still people who cannot imagine that economic life should not actually be treated as one with the legal life. The propertied, leading classes, those who demand church and state as a reward, they initially found it convenient to include the telegraph, postal and transport systems in the sphere of the state. Then it went on and on. But especially for certain branches, they did not try to directly merge economic life and state life, but they tried to get the protection of the state for the dominant economic interests. And when one day one studies without prejudice why this war developed, then one will also find among the causes the unfortunate amalgamation of economic interests with legal and state interests in Central Europe. (“Bravo!”)

On the one hand, there is the attempt to fuse state life with economic life. On the other hand, intellectual life has been linked to state life. This intellectual life – after all, it was seen as a very special advance in modern times that this intellectual life did not develop independently, but was harnessed into state life. Indeed, most people today cannot even imagine that it is possible and necessary to retreat in this area, that one must work towards emancipating intellectual life again, detaching it from the state, and allowing economic life to develop on its own free foundation. People have developed and are still developing all kinds of short-sightedness in this area. This intellectual life, one can see, and I believe I have the right to say so, ladies and gentlemen, because I believe that this gives me the right, that throughout my whole life I have never stood on any ground other than that of the freely developing spiritual life, never in the spiritual life of any servant of one or the other state, nor was it the servant of any economic system, but always tried to develop the spiritual life from its own foundations. Therefore, I know what it means to have kept this intellectual life free. But has it been kept free in more recent times, when it has become more and more intertwined with state life? Well, much has been made of the fact that in the Middle Ages, certainly, the times, we would not wish them back, of course not, in the times of the Middle Ages, science was the drag-bearer of theology. Of course that was the case, and it must never return. But is it much different in more recent times in other areas? Of course, that which is formed as science within the state, the state institutions, is no longer as strongly in the background of theology as it was in the Middle Ages, but it is most certainly in the background of the state.

Not only are the scientific institutions and the schools administered by the state, but the state's influence has penetrated into the very content of intellectual life. Science has not become what it is in many constitutions of one country or another: free research, free teaching. No, science has become a servant of the state. There are already states in which modern science does not follow in the footsteps of theology, but, as the last few years have shown, this science is very strongly attached to the sword cord (laughter) and the garrison order is not completely out of touch with the garrison order, and that which has developed as the proletariat's view of this science is perhaps not so unimportant after all when it says: this science as an ideology is only a reflection of the prevailing economic and state order. Have similar conditions not prevailed in the fields of mathematics and physics in more recent times? It's not so clear-cut there, you can't just serve the state; but on the other hand, in areas that directly affect human life, you can serve the state quite strongly. In many cases, science, especially history – you can see it in that, but also in other branches of science – became a servant of the state. The respective rulers decided what was taught; the respective rulers appointed their theologians, lawyers, physicians, philologists, and so on, and science became a clear reflection of the state order, but science can only flourish if it is left to its own devices and develops on its own terrain.

Take history. Do you think that the history of the Hohenzollerns would be written in the future in the same way as it has been written by German professors in the past? (“No!”) That will not be the case. (Laughter.) This history of the Hohenzollerns was a perfect reflection of the intellectual life of the ruling powers. One need not go as far as the famous physiologist – he was otherwise a capable man, “honorable men they all are,” as Shakespeare says – who once spoke in a brilliant assembly and said: We German scientists are the scientific protection force of the Hohenzollerns. – Oh, it was a sincere word. (laughter)

You see, dear attendees, it was a sincere word, but not exactly the description of a desirable state. We need not go that far. But we can see how things will be quite different if the teacher at the lowest level of the school system no longer knows that he is treated according to the maxims of the mere political order, but that he is only administered by an administration that grows purely out of the soil of spiritual life itself. What happens when political life and spiritual life come together has been seen in the German Reichstag, but it can also be seen in other areas. In the German Reichstag we had the so-called Center Party, a party based purely on religion. It entered into coalitions with all kinds of other parties, and what was taken out of purely religious foundations flowed into the law of the Reich. These things, which could be multiplied a hundredfold as examples, testify that it is necessary that in the future that which has just been merged under the influence of modern capitalism - spiritual life, legal life or political life and economic life - that this in turn must be separated again, that a threefold social organism must come into being, that there must be a standing side by side, like sovereign states, an independent administration of spiritual life, an independent administration of political or state life, an independent administration of economic life. Only then will these three areas combine in a proper way to form a unity, when each of these three areas can develop out of its own strength.

Let us take the example of economic life. There we can see how this economic life is dependent on the one hand on the natural foundations, depending on the social territory in question, whether the soil is fertile or more or less infertile, depending on whether this or that thrives or does not thrive, the economic life of this or that is also. We can learn this from extreme examples. In a banana-producing country, where bananas are an important food, it turns out that the labor required to bring bananas from their place of origin to the consumer is a hundred times less than the labor required in our own, in our own Central European regions, to bring wheat from sowing to consumption. Of course, such extreme examples do not exist in the individual territories of our regions; but the individual economic branches of production differ so much from each other that different human labor is needed for them, and so on, and so on. Economic life depends on the natural foundation on the one hand. One can improve this natural foundation through all kinds of technical achievements; but a limit has been created on this side. On the other side, this limit must be met by another limit, which comes from the independent constitutional state. This other side will be created when we no longer see such peculiar things, which, while supposedly working with modern human rights, only cover up delusions.

Such institutions are, for example, the modern employment contract. As long as the worker has to conclude a contract, like a commodity, with the so-called entrepreneur, there can be no question of a legal relationship between entrepreneur and worker. Even if the entire employment relationship is removed from the economic process and placed in an independent legal organism, if real democracy prevails within the independent legal organism, where what applies equally to all people comes into consideration, if decisions are made on this legal basis regarding the duration and type of work, if a decision has already been made about the work before this work is even applied in the economic process, as is decided in the earth itself by the forces of nature about fertility and infertility before the economic process begins, only then is a real legal relationship possible between the so-called worker and employer, which must take on completely different forms in the future.

First of all, it must be determined how long one may work, how one works, and so on; then it must be determined what the relationship between the worker and the supervisor must be before the economic process can even be considered. But then the employment contract will only be able to extend to the appropriate distribution of what the worker and the supervisor produce together. Only then will justice be able to prevail in this area. (“Bravo!”)

Do not think, honored attendees, that by saying this I am somehow advocating a return to the old piecework wages. Only someone who fails to take into account what I am proposing here, in the context of a completely healthy social organism, would think that. The old piecework wages were also a wage. What I am proposing here is a contractual relationship, based on a self-evident legal relationship, between the person who performs the physical work and the person who, through his individual abilities, is to direct this work for the benefit of the social organism, not for his own capitalist, personal, selfish gain.

This is what I have to say about something quite different from, say, a renewal of the old piecework wage. The wage relationship ceases altogether. And what takes its place is a contractual relationship for the work produced. Then the worker will know where his surplus value goes; because then he will be in a position to stand freely in relation to the labor manager, because his relationship to the work is created on the basis of the law, then he will know how he can carry out the distribution in this free contract.

On the one hand, there is the employment relationship, but this can only be created if it is as independent as the relationship between the economic process and the rule of law in modern times.

Oh, I know, esteemed attendees, how many prejudices there are against this independent constitutional state on the one hand and the independent economic state on the other. But that is just what people have been deluding themselves about in recent times. The state as such has become a pure idol for the people, not to say a pure god. One can apply a saying of Goethe to this idol or god-state, although it is a saying that Faust speaks to the sixteen-year-old Gretchen in relation to religious questions: “The All-embracing, the All-sustaining, does not it grasp and sustain you, me, itself?” The modern capitalist, the modern employer, could say to the employee, much as Faust said to God: ‘The All-embracing, the All-sustaining, does it not embrace and sustain you, me, itself?’ And in private he might even think: but especially me. (Laughter.)

Dear attendees, the habit of thinking has become a strong one, and it will resist this autonomization of economic and state life. It will not be possible to achieve what must be achieved by way of mere cooperation, of cooperation encompassing the whole state. On the contrary, it will be necessary to separate legal life from economic life. Then, on the one hand, economic life will be able to develop merely as the circulation, production and consumption of goods, and what Social Democracy has always talked about will be realized, namely that it is no longer the case that production must be for production's sake, but that production is for consumption. (“Bravo!”)

But this cannot develop in any other way, my dear attendees, than if there is an independent legal basis that extends, on the one hand, to labor law, but on the other hand, mainly extends to so-called ownership, to so-called property, namely private property.

Anyone who wants to come to terms with private property, or more precisely, wants to come to terms with it, should, above all, be aware that for the social organism, for social life, the ownership relationship can only be a legal relationship. Initially, it is a privilege, a class relationship; but it is a legal relationship by nature. After all, what is ownership? Everything else is wishy-washy. What is important about property in social life is the right to dispose of some thing. That is a right, and it comes into consideration as a right, comes into consideration as a right, in that the right must be the object of the political state, in that this right is determined and regulated from person to person. In a purely democratic way, the economic state is that which arises out of human needs and out of necessary production. Thus, the constitutional state is that which arises out of that in which all people are equal, which concerns all people. We have an understanding from person to person, which must be established on democratic ground. The economic organism will develop out of what has been shown in the beginnings, but only in such beginnings, in the cooperative and trade union systems and so on, out of the various professional groups, out of the interests that develop between production and consumption, where associations are formed, and on the basis of these associations, which are managed purely appropriately, the economic state will be managed, for my part I say the economic state; I could also say the economic organism will be managed, the economic cycle, in which only goods will circulate. And in this economic organism, above all that which is still administered by the state laws today will prevail. Not the state will have to determine by laws what the currency is, which actually causes the strong price fluctuations, but in the economic organism that which is the administration of money can arise out of the mere administration of this economic organism. Money is what, after the natural economy, causes people living in a social organism to engage in a common economy. Money can be nothing other than the instruction that I have, on the basis of the fact that I myself have produced something, the instruction that I have, that at the right time, on the basis of what I have produced, I can get something else from someone else that they have produced. But this can only be achieved on the basis of the economic organism.

The actual state ground will only contain that which can be built on a democratic basis, on the legal basis, on the legal basis where all people are equal.

And spiritual life, which must be separated as the third element from the other two: today, spiritual life truly lives in very strange connections with state life, with political life. When I lectured on the same subject in Basel last Wednesday, a speaker in the discussion replied – I disagreed with much of what he said, but one point he made was something that really spoke of the mixing, the unnatural combination of spiritual life, or part of spiritual life, with economic life.

With regard to intellectual life, modern social democracy has only one link from which it says: religion must be a private matter, a religion separate from state life. Whatever the motive for this may be, the continuation of what this demand implies for intellectual life as a whole, the separation of intellectual life from state and economic life, is the key to the future. Otherwise, strange customs will continue to arise that point to the unhealthiness of our social life. As I said, this gentleman pointed out that, in this latest nuance, I don't know how to describe it without hurting its feelings, so let's just say that in this National Assembly of the German Reich there is once again a coalition between the Center Party and the Majority Socialists. (“Yuck!” and laughter) The Center Party and the Majority Socialists, they're going out together. The Center Party is made up of Catholic people, isn't it, very good Catholic people – yes, I don't know how Catholics can get together by working together in this way, even if it is with the majority socialists, but always with the social democrats, if you have seen the last pastoral letter from the Bishop of Chur, and read what it says! It says nothing less than that anyone who rebels as a soldier violates the divine world order, and that therefore no sins can be forgiven in confession by anyone who professes any social party. That is the latest pastoral letter, dated February 2, 1919. Yes, I wonder how that squares with the coalition of the Center Party and the Social Democrats in the German National Assembly? There the good Catholic people have allied themselves with others, of whom the Archbishop of Chur demands that no sins be remitted to them in confession, so they will have to go to hell laden with sins. So we see them walking hand in hand in the German National Assembly, these Catholics with those who cannot even be absolved of their sins in confession. I just want to know what is supposed to become of this coalition on its way to hell. Yes, the whole thing really does look quite ridiculous. But these absurdities, esteemed attendees, are realities in our present time. We can only escape from these realities and find our way back to a healthy state if we really commit ourselves to the threefold social order, striving ever more earnestly to ensure that the entire spiritual life, from the lowest school level up to the highest university level, is truly on its own ground. Anyone who is familiar with intellectual life knows that this intellectual life can only flourish from its own inner forces if it is independent of both the state and economic life. But if the person who is supposed to produce spiritually has to obey the instructions of a state, or even if he is a slave to this or that capitalist, this or that clique – some people are unaware of it, don't even know it, believe they are only following their genius by painting a picture, and in truth they are not following their genius at all, but they are following the capitalist economic order. (“Very true.”) People are just not sufficiently clear-minded to see the laws of modern social life in which they are immersed.

But this is the task above all: to look into it. Then one will also come to understand what this threefold social organism means. With the dawn of modern times, at the end of the eighteenth century, three significant words emerged from the French Revolution, and already at its beginning, like the motto of modern times: liberty, equality and fraternity. In the course of the nineteenth century, quite clever people, honorable men, have repeatedly emphasized how these three qualities contradict each other, how freedom is incompatible with equality; because if all people are equal, then the individual cannot develop freely. Now, in the book that will be published in the next few days about the social question, I will show that the progress in the development of what is called capital can only lead out of the damage of modern capitalism if everything that is capital is related in a certain way to the link of the social organism where individual spiritual abilities are administered. There it will be possible for that to occur – I can only hint at this here, you will find it more clearly explained in my book – which today, within certain limits, is only admitted for the most insignificant property that one can have in our present-day capitalist, materialistic time. What exactly is the most insignificant, most contemptible property for the leading people? The spiritual. At least, to be fair, it is still allowed to be transferred to the public domain, to become common property, 30 years after the death of the person who produced it. In the near future, things will have to be quite different with material goods. We will have to find the same way of transferring material goods to the public domain as we have only found for the most shameful matter, intellectual property. This spiritual property is rightly transferred. Because however it may be with the material abilities of a person and so on, you need talent and so on to produce something; but if something has been produced on the basis of the social community, then just as language is only found in the community, so all material goods can only have come about through the social community, and only have a relationship to this community in so far as one's abilities are linked to it. As long as a leader's abilities can be linked to a production company, he will continue to lead it in the future. Ways and means must be sought to ensure that material goods, like intellectual goods today, are included in the cycle of capital, of the means of production.

This is what must be considered, this is what must be incorporated into the future development of humanity. (“Bravo!”) There must, however, be freedom in the realm of intellectual life. But, as I said, people have always shown, very astutely, that this freedom would contradict equality. On the other hand, they had proved that equality would contradict fraternity. It would indeed contradict if it were understood according to the principle: And if you will not be my brother, I will smash your skull. Well, people talk like that, at least some people. But these three, they will be what flows into my heart, equality, freedom and fraternity.

What matters is that we do not merely examine them for superficial contradictions, but that we ask deeper questions, for example, about what lies behind them. And here it becomes clear to us that when these three meaningful social impulses were heard, people were still hypnotized by the unitary state, quite obviously hypnotized by the unitary state: the state that maintains you and yourself and me, but especially maintains me.

People were hypnotized by it. But these three impulses have their meaning precisely when the threefold social order is carried out. People still talk about it today; they use buzzwords: individualism, socialism, democracy. Certainly, dear attendees, just as liberty, equality and fraternity are three impulses, so too are individualism, democracy and socialism three impulses. They can only be understood if we know that individualism is that which is connected with the individual abilities and talents of the human being. This must be in the realm of spiritual life, democracy in the realm of the state, where the equality of all people comes into consideration, where what happens concerns all people, where labor law and property law - there will be no ownership - but management law will come into consideration. That which develops as socialism in the future will prevail in the field of economic life. And it will be the same with freedom, equality and fraternity. Freedom must be in the field of spiritual life. Therefore, the spiritual life must also be able to develop freely. Fearful minds, who say: But if the school is free, what will it turn into? Well, I think people know little about the modern labor movement. The modern worker has every interest in not falling back into the subservience of the ruling classes through some kind of ignorance. If you leave it up to him to send his children to school, then he will certainly do so. Others may stay away, however: those who belong to the class that already know what their little attempt at education has actually cost them and how often they skipped school while they were training. They didn't just skip school for days at a time, but sometimes skipped school to such an extent that their certificates are now of very little value.

Freedom in the field of intellectual life, equality in the field of political or state life, fraternity in the broadest sense in the field of economic life through associations and cooperatives, which will truly extend fraternity to the whole of economic life: Only then, my dear attendees, when it is realized that the social organization must be tripartite, will it be known how freedom in spiritual life, equality in democratic state life, and fraternity in economic life will develop alongside each other in the future. This will be the fulfillment of what has been resounding through humanity for more than a century.

So, looking at the interrelationships, at what is actually in the forces that already lie in the historical development of humanity today, will lead to the necessary recognition of these three elements, which I have only been able to sketch for you and which you will find further developed in my book.

But I believe, dear attendees, that however much people today, with all sorts of buzzwords, because it would be convenient for them to be able to remain in the old order, will struggle against such thoughts, it should be realized, however, in what way these thoughts are new. Many a person today says that he considers this or that to be good for the future. Oh, one can consider many things to be good! But I certainly do not imagine that I am any smarter than other people when it comes to the details of what should happen. That is why I am not proposing a utopia; on the contrary, what I have presented is the opposite of a utopia. What I have presented can be tackled anywhere, regardless of one's starting point. No matter how far the [revolution] has progressed in Eastern Europe or how far away it still is in other parts of Europe, it can be started anywhere by starting from a specific, real point and working, on the one hand, towards establishing free schooling and free spiritual life; on the other hand, establishing economic life that is independent of the state, which must develop in the future in the form of a cooperative, namely through the fraternization of production and consumption. This is the most real thing, the most practical thing that can be conceived at all in the present. For it is not based on some kind of program, it is based on the reality of the human being. It is said again and again: If you want to introduce a threefold social order, where is the unity? The unity will be the human being, esteemed attendees, because when it is objected: Do you want to restore the old class order, the lower class, the military class, the teaching class? Certainly, there is nothing particularly wrong with the lower class today, because people need it.

The military estate – well, so much has been said about it in recent years that I don't need to repeat the things! The teaching estate – well, that has become not unlike the teaching profession, the civil service. For it is not a matter of establishing new estates; it is a matter of the administration, the organization, which is completely separate from the human being, that is tripartite. The human being himself will be in all three organisms; insofar as he has individual abilities to develop, he will belong to the spiritual organism, will have relationships to it, will have to decide how he wants to integrate himself into the spiritual organism, and will, of course, belong to the state organism with regard to that which is the same for all people. The law applies to the economic organism that everyone must be included. The human being will be the unit. But in this way the human being will be able to be placed in terms of his true human dignity. That is what matters, that people are no longer divided, but rather that the social order itself is divided.

I believe, esteemed attendees, that those who are most likely to understand such a social order can arise from the proletariat. The proletarian truly has no reason to have much preference for the old orders that have been transferred to modern times, which some people today would still like to find so comfortable if only they were not challenged too much. (Laughter.) The proletarian has learned to rely on himself. He has learned to look for something other than what some people have received so far. He has perhaps also learned that new thoughts are necessary, that one must rethink, that one must not merely transform a few institutions with the old habits of thought, but that new thoughts are necessary, that rethinking is necessary. The fresh intellect of the modern proletarian is underestimated in many circles; it will find itself in such thinking. One should entertain such thoughts in a time when people so often say: The catastrophe of war has revealed something that has never been seen before in history. Those who absolutely do not want to believe that one needs these thoughts should consider that in such a time, when events have occurred that have not yet occurred, thoughts must also arise that are unfamiliar, unfamiliar to those people who only live in the old well-worn tracks. But I do believe that the proletariat, as it feels dissatisfied with the legacy of the old bourgeois order, will find its way into what is necessary as a new social order, especially for the healthy threefold social organism. Therefore, I believe that it is not in vain that it is spoken into the souls of the proletarians when this social order of the future is spoken of, which I believe wants to and must be realized because it lies within the innermost human impulse for the near future.

At the same time, this is what fills me with the hope that those who will come from the proletarian world will understand a reasonable, progressive movement in this sense, towards a healthy social organism. Then, precisely from the proletariat, would come that humanity which, through what it now strives for, out of need and misery, out of contempt for its human dignity on the part of the other classes, what it strives for , but for its class, it would develop out of what must become the development of the future, not for the benefit of one class, but for the benefit of all humanity, which must be striven for: the liberation of all humanity, the liberation of that in humanity that is worthy of liberation.

But this can only come about through social views that are not based on some kind of idea, but on observation of life. It is certainly true that enough words have been exchanged to date; but the only thing that can be done is to deepen our understanding of what can happen and what can be transformed into action. I wanted to talk to you about such views, which do not just repeat worn-out words and old views , but I wanted to speak to you of such thoughts that can be realized everywhere where there is goodwill. These are thoughts that should soon be transformed into deeds, because they must be transformed into deeds according to the demands of world history and are also required by people, more or less unconsciously, for the next stage of development. (Lively applause.)

We will now take a short break of about five minutes. Then there will be a free discussion. Those who wish to speak or have something to say on the subject should do so voluntarily and give me their name, or if someone wants to ask a question in writing, there will also be an opportunity to do so. Rudolf Steiner: Well, it seems that is not the case, dear attendees. I do not take this as a sign that you all agree with everything I have said, but nor do I take it as a sign that you all disagree with what I have said. But I do think that, yes, in fact, in terms of discussions, the matter is quite difficult today; because most discussions in this area are very often conducted in such a way that people bring their preconceived point of view with them; and those who take the questions at hand take the questions seriously, know how difficult it is to arrive at views that are grounded in reality, to arrive at reasoned views that can really lead to what we all long for. In our time, more than one would think, schoolmastering and the like is the order of the day.

And I myself, after having written the “Appeal” that has been signed by a whole series of people in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and which I presented at the Goetheanum, have recently had to learn, to my great satisfaction, that it was highly unusual for the doctor to come from Dornach, from the Goetheanum, when we know that book on the social question, which will be published soon. I myself have had to experience, for example, that someone told me it was highly remarkable that the doctor is coming from Dornach, from the Goetheanum, where we know that the spirit is constantly being talked about, and yet the whole appeal says nothing about the spirit. Well, it does say that spiritual life should be built on itself, and I have confidence that if it is built on itself alone, it will develop healthily. But I am not convinced by the declamations that one hears again and again today, that people will become healthy in their social lives if they turn away from matter and turn to the spirit – no, I am not convinced by these declamations.

Now you see, my dear audience, I am not looking for the spirit where people always talk about the spirit, but I believe that the real spirit is the one that has the strength to immerse itself in practical real life, that really has understanding for life. A spiritual worldview that only ever talks about spirit and ghosts, for my part, whatever it calls this spirit, that only ever has this lip service of the spirit, such a worldview seems to me, especially in the present time, not at all to point to something future, but rather it seems to me to be precisely the most terrible result of the order that is coming to an end.

This is what I would like to say in response to people telling me to speak more of the spirit: I do not seek the spirit in what is said, not in the what, but in the how, how life is understood, how one tries to understand life. And so, precisely because this view of the School of Spiritual Science that is to be established is taken as a starting point, I have been met with a number of objections, because people have expected something different. But the work that spiritual science, as it is meant here, actually wants to do is something that serves life. And in our time, dear honored attendees, those who devote themselves above all to those questions that today do not speak to us through mere words, but that speak through facts, serve life.

And do we not see it? Party views are walking around among us like mummies. Thoughts have been left behind by facts everywhere. Facts of greater force have emerged from the catastrophe of the world war; these facts must be dealt with. They will not be dealt with if we continue to dwell on the thoughts we have formed so far. We must learn to think differently today.

That is what I would like to have evoked as a kind of feeling. And in this feeling, in the feeling that a new era must come and that a new era is indeed heralded by the demands, however they may arise, that express themselves through the loudly speaking facts throughout Europe, however much some may resist them, in this feeling I would like to be understood by you above all. For when people find themselves more and more in common feeling, in common feeling, then that among them will be able to revive, which we are striving for through something that also wants this threefold social organism that I have established. I would like you to understand me in this sense. And so we can understand each other without having a discussion, which, as it seems, is not desired. But just because I would like to be understood in this way, I may also add to what I have already said today: It is a real source of great satisfaction for me to be able to welcome you here today, to these rooms, where I believe you will form an opinion that is different from those that have been formed here or there. I hope that you will be able to form the opinion that it is not just some kind of luxury ideas that are developed here in these rooms, but that serious and honest efforts are made to serve the highest interests of humanity. In this sense, these rooms aspire to be a university for spiritual science. And it gives me a very special inner and heartfelt joy to be able to welcome the ladies and gentlemen of the surroundings here in these rooms, especially when discussing such an important question. I hope it will truly not be the last time within these walls. (“Bravo!”)

Roman Boos: Before Dr. Steiner's lecture on the problems of threefolding, I would just like to make the announcement that there will be an opportunity to ask questions after the lecture. I would kindly ask you to make use of this opportunity and ask any questions that arise in relation to these problems of threefolding.

Rudolf Steiner: Dearly beloved! It is not out of any personal or social arbitrariness that from this Goetheanum, or rather from the spiritual movement, of which this Goetheanum is to be the representative, a stimulus is also going out in the newer time with regard to the social question of the present and the near future. It is an inner necessity that, out of the seriousness with which the spiritual affairs of humanity are to be treated here, suggestions must also flow about the most important, that is, the social problems of the present and the immediate future of humanity.

Now, the suggestions that come from here have often been misunderstood in the strangest way. And by pointing out some of the principles of the social question that arise from here, I would like to take this opportunity to clear up misunderstandings either immediately in the discussions or afterwards, by linking them to questions.

When we look at the social question today, it is basically a misunderstanding that is actually quite old. The fact is that this social question was not seen in its true form during the period when it first began to arise most vehemently and when it developed most intensively. It only really emerged in its true form after the terrible war catastrophe of recent years, or perhaps during it. Before that, people had basically come to terms with it, talking about the social question from a wide range of party standpoints, or from one or other understanding – but mostly very limited understandings – that had been developed for this question, trying out this or that means of providing information, this or that institution, which were supposed to provide a remedy for one or other of the ills that arose in the course of the social movement. But a real, in-depth understanding of what is actually at stake in what we call the social question has not emerged in recent decades; it has not emerged since the middle of the nineteenth century, when it should have emerged. Today it turns out that this social question cannot be tackled without considering it as a human question, as a question of the life of our entire social existence within European and American civilization. And as long as we do not find a way to understand this [social] question as a human question, we will not arrive at views or institutions that can be of any significant help in finding a solution to this question that is as humane as possible.

There has been a lot of talk about the social question for a long time, and it must be said that at present people do not really have any idea of how this question has been in people's minds in the last decades of the nineteenth century, or how it has affected people's lives. It is the case that today people think relatively briefly, that they only see what is immediately in front of them, and that they are not given the opportunity to see larger connections. One does not, my dear audience, come to an understanding of this social question without seeing the larger context.

Now, the deficiency that is being pointed out here is actually present in all our current education. It is also present in the way in which our current education has taken hold of people from the most diverse social classes through the particular development of the civilized world in the second half of the nineteenth century. Spiritual science, as it is to proceed from this building here in Dornach, is not meant to be merely an uplifting of the human soul to spiritual worlds, nor is it meant to be merely the bringing of knowledge related to the spiritual world. Rather, it is meant to permeate all human activity with the fruits that can be obtained from this spiritual science. And now, in public lectures, I have emphasized for two decades that the most important thing in this spiritual science is not what one absorbs in terms of content – it is important, but it is not the most important thing, it is, so to speak, the precondition, but it is not the thing to stop at. It is not the most important thing to absorb the knowledge that the human being consists of these and those physical and spiritual elements, and that, from a spiritual point of view, human life proceeds in such and such a way. Rather, the most important thing is to progress from this spiritual-scientific foundation of human knowledge to something very much alive. That is how one must think of this progress. If one hears about the insights of spiritual science, if one reads about it – one can already read a lot about this spiritual science in numerous works of an authoritative literature – if one reads and hears about what it presents, one is forced to think quite differently from what one has been accustomed to thinking in the last three to four centuries. Everyone must feel that: If you want to understand what is offered here as spiritual science, you have to acquire different ideas, different concepts, from those that have been common today and for some time. But by acquiring these other thoughts, these other concepts, our thinking first becomes much more agile. Because the immobility of thinking is a hallmark of newer education. Thinking becomes much more agile. In order to even begin to grasp the larger contexts presented by anthroposophy, one must absorb more comprehensive concepts and, above all, concepts that do not get stuck in the details. So, to a certain extent, one first trains one's thinking to take in larger life scales. One also makes one's thinking more agile.

That this is so is actually corroborated by an external circumstance, ladies and gentlemen. You can hear time and again, when public anthroposophical lectures are given and the illustrious gentlemen of journalism deign to write something about them, you can always hear again: “In the hall there was mainly a female audience” — whereby the esteemed ladies present are not always paid compliments with regard to their spiritual and other constitutions. But in a sense it is not always untrue that the audience at such lectures is mainly an “audience of women”. But perhaps there is another side to this than is usually meant when this is raised as an accusation against the spiritual science movement; perhaps one could also say what I have often said in response to this statement, which is meant as an accusation: Yes, why are the men not there? They could come just as easily as the ladies, and perhaps it is not exactly because of the humanities that these men are not there, because after all - as you will admit, you usually cannot talk to those who are not there!

Now there is also an inner reason for this, and here I must ask you to really take what I have to say sine ira and without emotion. I am never pleased that – forgive me – the majority of the audience usually consists of ladies. I would very much like it – the ladies may not see this as any kind of allusion to anything – I would very much like it if, so to speak, every lady could have her gentleman at the lecture. But that is not the case, and it is not just an external reason, but there are deeper reasons.

You see, our entire modern education is basically a male education. How long has it been since women were able to participate in a certain way in what the educational means of modern times have to offer? Our entire civilization is more or less a male civilization. This was something I was confronted with very strongly in all the discussions in which I, for example, had to confront people like Gabriele Reuter with the fact that, yes, the women's movement can basically only have any significant impact on the entire social life of modern times if women do not simply enter into what is, after all, only a male education in our time. What would ultimately be the result if women all put on tails, trousers and top hats? They would just be going along with the men's tastelessness. But basically the same thing has happened in the intellectual sphere! Women have not brought what was in them into modern life, but have conformed, they have donned the intellectual trousers, that is, they have become the same kind of doctors as men have become , they have become lawyers or philologists just as men have become lawyers or philologists, and they are now even striving to become theologians just as men have become theologians – they have simply put on the intellectual trousers. It is the case that one must say: the women's movement will only become something when women contribute their special element – I do not mean the feminine at all now, but the special element – to our intellectual civilization, which comes from the fact that – well, I will express myself drastically, although it not always meant to be so drastic — that their brains are not constricted in Spanish boots, which come from the various faculties of the present day as well; for men's brains have been trained in these Spanish boots for centuries. They have become those thoughts that cannot overlook any great connections, that are above all immobile, rigid, and that can only view something like spiritual science, because it demands longer thoughts, as something fantastic. Thus women, protected by their naivety, come to the anthroposophical lectures through the fact that the false boot element of male education has not yet entered their brains. They come because, if I may express myself figuratively, their brains have remained even softer. It can still absorb more than the male brain. This is also a deeper reason. So I do not want to compliment the ladies that they have the better brain; they just have the one that is less deformed. I do not want to pay the ladies a compliment either, that they understand anthroposophy better because they are ladies, but only that they understand it better because they judge from the heart and have learned less of what one has been accustomed to learning in the last four centuries.

Spiritual science consciously opposes the education of the last four centuries and simply demands more comprehensive thoughts, which initially also make the imagination more agile, but from the imagination they make the whole person more agile. So it can be said that someone who has undergone training in spiritual science will more easily see through a reality, including its economic context, than someone who has only emerged from the education of the last few centuries.

I have already pointed out how little this education of the last few centuries was suited to looking at the essentials of the matter. I have pointed out how, in a certain period of the nineteenth century, the gold standard was introduced in place of the previous bimetallism. Those who advocated the gold standard claimed everywhere – you can read about it in the most diverse parliamentary reports – that free trade would be established through the gold standard. The customs barriers of the various countries would fall. Well, there is no doubt that if these tariff barriers had fallen, we would be in a different position today. But not only have the tariff barriers not fallen, anyone crossing borders today knows that many other barriers have been erected. None of the predictions of learned economists and practitioners of life have come true as a result of the gold standard, of monometallism. None of it has materialized; everywhere the opposite has happened: customs barriers have been erected. That means that the esteemed practitioners in all areas of life have been thoroughly mistaken; they have not foreseen anything of how reality works. What has come to light on a large scale – in business life – has come to light on a small scale everywhere and is still coming to light everywhere. What is meant by an overview of circumstances has not been taught to people. What could be learned in the highest schools did not result in an education of the human soul for an overview of the larger contexts of practical life.

But please do not think that I consider all the practitioners or the learned economists who have stated what I have just indicated to be fools. On the contrary, I find that the people who spoke in the European parliaments and wrote in the European newspapers, especially in the 1960s and 1950s, were very clever people. Very clever people predicted the wrong things, because you couldn't predict anything right under the circumstances that existed. Because, my dear attendees, cleverness doesn't help you if you can't gain life experience through that cleverness. And the conditions as they were in industrialism, in commercialism, they just offered only the possibility to see the next; they did not offer the possibility to also tie the most clever thoughts to that which lives in reality. One had become accustomed to seeing through the microscope in science, to magnifying the smallest, so that one would not have to judge something larger. This has trained people to see the smallest relationships. This is only a comparison, an analogy, but the analogy is valid.

Spiritual science, therefore, does not want to consider as important that which can be learned as content, but it wants to consider as most important the education that a person acquires through the thoughts that he must make if he wants to understand spiritual science. And that is why there is an inner necessity for this spiritual science to be applied today in the practical areas of life, because it aims to develop the kind of education that enables people to look clearly and without illusion at the practical areas of life.

And so we can say: because people were not able to look at the social question from such a broader perspective, they have not really seen it for what it is. Today, after the catastrophe of the war, we can actually see: all the discussions that have been held, all the fine theories that have been put forward, they are actually for nothing, they basically lead nowhere; because it is not at all about the wickedness of institutions; it is not at all about that, not in the big picture, of course it is in the details, but not to the extent that the illusionary theories of socialists and anti-socialists would have us believe. We are not dealing with something remotely similar to the antagonism between capital and labor – on which entire broad theories are built. No, we are dealing with something completely different. We are dealing with the fact that feelings and urges have grown in broad masses of the population of civilized humanity that have been ignored for decades and that should be understood. One should humanly understand what is surging up. One should ask oneself: What are the natures of the people who today demand revolution or something else, who today aspire to political power or the like? How did this come about in these human souls? One should look at what is a social question as a human question, then one could gain ideas about how to deal with what is before us. Again and again, the question was not: What are the souls of the broad masses of the proletariat made of? Rather, the question was: What are the living conditions of the broad masses of the proletariat, since the proletarians themselves, under the influence of bourgeois education, formed only concepts that had actually been trained in the economic science of the bourgeoisie. We do not have anything at all in today's general world education that realistically captures the social situation.

It can be said, ladies and gentlemen: The thing that weighs most heavily on the heart of anyone who is truly concerned about the social question today is that so few want to see clearly and distinctly the guilt that the leading circles have incurred in modern times, a real guilt, truly not so much in the sphere of external economic life as in the sphere of educational life, in the sphere of intellectual life. We have seen a whole new class emerge in the last few centuries. We have had this new class alongside us; we have seen how this new class has a completely new language for soul development that we have not looked at. We have continued to speak the old language of tradition in the educational life of the leading circles. No effort was made to bridge the gap between the leading classes and the classes that emerged in the proletariat. No real interest was paid to what was emerging in humanity as a human question. At most, institutions and facilities were set up to provide for the broad masses in the sense of the old-oriented charity, to provide for stomachs, clothing and housing, and so on. But no thought was given to the fact that it had become necessary to achieve a world view in which all people of the modern age could come together in understanding. Today we have the fruits. You read today in the newspapers of the proletariat, full of omissions about everything that has come from the leading, from the formerly leading classes. They read that actually all the thinking about capitalism in earlier times, you read that all that is useless, that a completely different spirit must come, the spirit of the great masses, the spirit that rises out of the great masses like smoke out of a chimney. The most abominable abstraction has become the idol of the broad masses of the proletariat; an indefinite spirit that is supposed to arise from the totality.

Two questions can be asked; one that must be answered from a deeper understanding of history, which says again and again that the spirit, if it is to work in life, must go through personalities, that a spirit never flies around without working through personalities. But the other question - it can be asked very specifically today. First, a practical realization of what can be meant in social terms has gone out from Dornach and from our friends in Stuttgart.

You know that our friends Molt, Unger, Kühn, Leinhas and others have joined forces in Stuttgart to translate into practical life what can come from Dornach in social terms. We then – I will of course omit the details – we then began to work in about April 1919. Of course, such work – where one is not dealing with wax figures but with the living humanity of the present – can only be done step by step, with exact consideration of the real conditions. And it may be said that, in particular, in the first 14 days of our work at that time, everything actually went quite well. To a certain extent, what had to be achieved was achieved: winning broader sections of the proletariat over to reasonable social ideas. If something else had been achieved at the time, namely to win broader circles of the bourgeoisie, the leading class, for these ideas, namely to win over those who were then leading, then something that could have been fruitful would certainly have happened. But the broader circles of the bourgeoisie basically failed at first because they did not know that they were dealing with a human issue. At the time, I said to many people in Stuttgart who could have been in a position to understand such things: Yes, you see, the fact that you and I are talking about social theories can certainly have a good theoretical and later also a practical value, but that is not what matters now. What matters is that we can do something, that we can bring together people who can really do something together. To do that, it is necessary, for example, to speak to the workers in a way that they can understand, so that you first have the workers. I even said: if you don't like some of the things that have to be said in the language of the proletariat to the proletariat, it doesn't matter at first, but what matters is that you bring people together. Just have the patience to bring people together.

There was really very little understanding of the fact that the modern social question is a human question. And so it could happen that one day the so-called leaders of the proletariat noticed – it is always the worst when the leaders of any party or class or religious community notice that followers are being acquired among their flock; that is always the most dangerous thing, actually. They are not very interested in things if you talk cabbage and don't win any followers. But when people realized: Yes, something is happening here, they appeared on the scene, and it soon became clear that through all the foolish warming up of old socialist theories and Marxism that could be done, it was done, people were persuaded that one did not mean well by them, but that one was also something of a disguised capitalist or at least a capitalist servant. In short, a few leading personalities appeared on the scene, and the masses quickly evaporated. This is something that teaches in a very concrete sense that the spirit is not something that comes out of the masses and flies around, but by showing us that the Stuttgart workers are more Catholic in their method of obeying than have ever been Roman Catholics, one could see that all this is a fuss, a phrase about the “spirit” that comes “from the masses,” that even today the masses, as they have always done, follow a few bellwethers. Not only does history teach this, but experience also teaches it. Because it would have been [therefore] a matter of undermining the ground - I say it quite sincerely - undermining the ground of the leaders. Until one admits to oneself that nothing can get better if the leaders do not get away from this leadership of the broad masses, who have emerged from the circumstances of the last decades, things will not get better. That is the crux of the matter. Therefore, one had to – and in this respect we too have made mistakes – one had to approach the masses directly, leaving out everything that the leaders did. It is a question of humanity, and it has basically arisen as a question of humanity, and it has been noticed here and there: it is not a matter of achieving individual institutions, but of achieving a world view and conception of life through which a bridge can be created between the people who emerged as the leading class from the old world order and those who are digging so wildly in the proletariat. But that is the strangest thing: those people who have seen something have always been like preachers in the wilderness. One can indeed make the strangest experiences through appropriate retrospectives.

When I wrote my first appeal, which was then published as an appendix to my “Key Points of the Social Question” and which so many people signed, some people were furious about it because I pointed out how the last decades, especially in Germany, were not at all suitable for setting and solving realistic tasks; and even today I still receive angry letters from “well-meaning” people about this first appeal. And yet, these people are all unaware of the facts. Facts are only reflected in something like the following.

V[iktor] Alim&] Huber wrote the following in a magazine in 1869 – I ask you to take note of the year, I choose this year and this quote quite deliberately because what was written here predates the reestablishment of the German Reich – Huber wrote the following in a magazine published in Stuttgart in 1869, for example, by first pointing out how the labor question arose , how the social question shines in through the windows; after he has explained how one should try, as he calls it, to create some alleviation of the contradictions that are bound to arise through the “corporation route”, through the route of appropriate union; after he – in 1869, my esteemed audience – after he has said: If the spirit that has been developed so far in view of the social question is further developed, the time will come when the military state will reveal this question in a terrible way as “to be or not to be”. These words appeared in a Stuttgart newspaper in 1869! I would like to know how many people have thought about this, now or after the so-called German revolution, where the words “to be or not to be” were used again and again, how many people have considered that a somewhat more clairvoyant person had already written this in 1869, at a time when people were confronted with completely different facts than they are today. The man wrote, after he had dealt with such things:

Here, too, we are ultimately referred to a reform, strengthening and multiplication of all institutions and means of social education of the people at all, but here in particular at the higher levels, as an indispensable condition of social reforms.

The man realized that it is a matter of spreading a particular intellectual life, which, however, did not yet exist at the time. But an understanding of intellectual life could have grown out of such foundations if people had listened to such people at all in the frenzy of the following decades. And this man spoke even more precisely in 1869:

It goes without saying that this cannot be the case without a fundamental change in the spirit of our universities, and all the more so the less one

— namely at the universities —

have any inkling or even understanding of this need and this profession.

Now, my dear attendees, while the man said in 1869: It must begin at the universities, something else must be introduced into the lecture halls, because it is far removed from the spirit must take hold in humanity if improvement is to occur –; while the man said this in 1869, today the people who “mean well” come and say: So we are founding adult education centers! That is to say, we take what has been concocted at the universities, cook it in somewhat more favorable preparations that it may benefit the masses, and administer the same stuff in smaller doses. What does that really mean? What it really means is that what was no good when the leading classes did it, now carried into the broad masses, should be good. The issue is not that we carry what has been taught further into the broad masses, but that we replace what has been taught and has brought us into the catastrophe with what is emphasized here, what is taken as a starting point here: we must first find the kind of spiritual culture that leads to the adult education center. We will not find this if we do not make an effort to find our way out of materialistic science and into spiritual science. What comes from the old science is what the leaders of the proletarians have learned, what the Trotskys, Lenins and so on have learned. This has led to what these people preach to the proletarians, what they set up. That, that is sufficiently widespread. That is the kind of thing you can't do anything with. What we need is what comes from spiritual science. It is not something that tells people, for example in the social sphere: let us set it up like this and like that, militarize work, and then a paradise will arise on earth! You will not find such a sentence in the 'Key Points of the Social Question'. In the 'Key Points of the Social Question' you will find this as a starting point: We want to have a possible social and viable social organism, that is, we do not want an earthly paradise, such a thing is perhaps quite impossible. It is not at all a question of whether one should strive for this or that, because of course people strive for something higher when they are offered something; because what one has once striven for as the highest is immediately the lowest in the next moment. What is important is not to promise people heaven on earth, but to study how the social organism becomes viable, how it can best be brought to life. Then it may turn out that not all of people's wishes can be fulfilled, but an especially ingenious person might say – I have known such people, I have met many a freeloader in my long life – it might occur to people, for example, could occur to people to say: It is a highly inappropriate arrangement that beings move on two legs, it could all be arranged differently; this physical human organism, there is so much that is inappropriate, and so on, and so on. There could well be specially designed heads that could imagine the human organism very differently from how it is. Of course, the imagination would not be a realistic one. But there are people like that, I have met them. Of course, there are also people who promise others paradise on earth. But that is no proof that it is possible to realize what people promise and in which they find understanding, because, of course, you only have to promise people what they want and desire, then you will find understanding in broad circles more easily than if you only talk about what is possible, if you only talk about what the social question can really achieve. That is what the “key issues of the social question” are all about.

That is why, because only this can be spoken of, we have arrived at the threefold social organism, which seems utopian only to those who look at it superficially, because wherever you look at life, if you are not blinded by preconceived theories, you will see that the main structure of our present-day intellectual life, so-called intellectual life, has been built up and promoted by the fact that the unified state has blessed this intellectual life with its principles, that the unified state, certainly under the compulsion of confessional necessities – at the time when it happened – has blessed this intellectual life with its principles, that the unified state has blessed this intellectual life with its principles, that the unified state has blessed this intellectual life with its principles, that the unified state has blessed this intellectual life with its principles, that the unified state has blessed this intellectual life with its principles, that the unified state has blessed this intellectual life with its principles, that the unified state has blessed this intellectual life with its principles, that the unified state has has been promoted by the fact that the unified state has blessed this intellectual life with its principles, that the unified state, certainly under the compulsion of confessional necessities – at the time when it happened, it was a necessity, today we can go beyond it – that the unified state has shaped this intellectual life by taking over the schools. It educates its people as it needs them. It educates theologians as it needs them, it educates lawyers, doctors, as it needs them. Switzerland, for example, needs doctors who have only been educated in Switzerland, at Swiss faculties, because a doctor educated a few hours away cannot practice medicine in Switzerland; and it is the same with philologists, it is the same with everyone. The state, when it has control of education, must of course impose its point of view.

Now imagine, instead of such a state education, an education system that is completely self-governing, an education system that, from the lowest to the highest schools, has as administrators those who are actively involved in this spiritual — the teacher teaching only enough to have free some hours in which he can devote himself to the administration of the educational system; no one else is involved in this administration of the educational system except those who are actively involved. No corporate body has a say in it, no parliament; for what is to be said regarding the training for intellectual life requires specialized training and expertise, requires certain abilities and could only be trained if intellectual life stands on its own ground. As soon as something that arises from majority opinion or from the average view is decreed as law and then passes over into the administrative sphere, the sphere of spiritual education must wither away. And there is an inner connection between the materialistic type of our modern spiritual life and the nationalization of that spiritual life.

You see, you can experience special things there. People cannot always see immediately if they are not familiar with spiritual science, which shows itself through itself, through its entire being: what must be striven for through it can only be striven for in free spiritual life ; it can only be striven for if it comes solely from the personalities, if it is only as good and as bad as the personalities of an age can make it, if one does not succumb to the illusion that There are laws that prescribe how teaching should be done. What use are laws! It depends on the teachers, on the real, concrete teaching personalities; it depends on the people who are involved in teaching, in the spiritual realm, that they also manage this at the same time. If we were to hypothetically assume the sad case that in an age, in a generation, there were only stupid teachers, then this generation would have to be educated in a stupid way. That would still be better than having good laws for the teaching system, and these good laws being treated even worse than when stupidity springs from within the human being. In the spiritual sphere it is necessary that what happens should come out of the abilities of the human being, for in this way it will always be the best conceivable for a given age. That is what matters. That is why it is not immediately apparent that this freedom, this emancipation of spiritual life as one of the links in the social organism, is a necessity. It may happen that very well-meaning, very clever people raise the objection – it comes up again and again – let us say, for example, it is someone, I will say now, in State X – so as not to offend anyone – it is someone in State X, and they are told that it is necessary, the threefold social order, the freedom of spiritual life. He will perhaps say the following: Yes, in the other state Y, Z and so on, it is already as you say, but with us in X, there, there we notice nothing of the dependence of teaching on the government, on the state powers; with us, the education system is not disturbed by the state powers.

Yes, my dear attendees, I would like to say: That is precisely the problem, that people say so, because by saying so, they no longer realize how dependent they are. They are so dependent that their dependence appears to them as freedom. Only dependence goes through their heads. They approve of everything that is put into their heads, and because they obediently follow the state's orders as a matter of course, they do not feel in the least confused by them. They do not even realize what the matter is. That is perhaps the very worst of all, that especially in the intellectual field, but especially in the educational field, it has already come to such a pass that people no longer feel at all how they are dependent, that they glorify this dependence as freedom. Of course, if someone thinks like the pastor who had just preached a sermon and in which he explained that, according to the wisdom of the world, man is best built, a hunchback was waiting for him at the church exit and asked the pastor: “Yes, Reverend, can you tell me that I am also best built?” He replied: “For a hunchback, you are built very well indeed.” Yes, you see, when we speak of freedom of thought to people who perceive dependency as freedom, they tell us: “Yes, we have complete freedom!” That is the one link in the threefold social organism, the free spiritual life.

Just as little as spiritual life can tolerate the schematic classification of the democratic state, in the least because democracy can only lead to the manifestation of average opinions, and average opinions are most intolerable in the free development of intellectual life, just as little as intellectual life tolerates the schematic principle of the state, just as little does economic life. Economic life can only be based on real conditions, just as intellectual life can only be based on human abilities. Spiritual life must work in the way that is possible from the talents of the people of an age; economic life must work in such a way that it can develop fully in this economic life, with expertise, professional competence and involvement in a branch of economic life, so that others who have to do with this branch of the economy can have confidence in those who are involved in it. This means that economic life is only possible if it is built on associative lines, if it is built in such a way that what belongs together in economic life joins together, that economic circles - be they professional circles or circles that face each other, such as production circles, consumption circles, and so on - join together in such a way that they are associated.

Of course, not every circle can be associated in every circle; but it is possible for the whole economic life to be associated in an indirect way. But because the individual economic circles are associated with each other in this way [see blackboard drawing, p. 596], the person who is in any association stands [opposite another] and can gain from the circumstances he faces, through contracts or similar, what is necessary to have the basis for a proper economy. You can never organize economic life, but only associate it. You cannot organize how the individual professions should work and so on from a central location, as Lenin and Trotsky wanted to do, but you can only, by having the professional associations, try to bring them into such economic associations that one supports the other, that one gains trust for one's work from what one learns from the other.

To look at the circumstances realistically is so terribly far from the people of the present. Oh, what irony of facts we are experiencing in our time! We have seen, my dear ladies and gentlemen, that in certain states the blessing of militarism has been pronounced by parliaments, that no one but at most smaller parties has raised objections. It is decades behind us. We have seen, especially during this war, that those who have the least understanding of the situation have once again let loose their decrees out of anti-militarism!

It does not matter at all whether one was right or not, but rather that one knows why one can be right, that one knows the circumstances. And we have seen that today in socialist Germany, for example, a thunderstorm is brewing over militarism, and we see a man who now, in a legislative assembly, says, “Militarism has not only had dark sides, but militarism has brought great benefits to humanity. We have seen how those who went to war learned how to organize; and when they came back, we found that the people who had gone through the school of this war were the best people to organize work in the factories in a military sense. We have experienced that we have obtained a correct hierarchy of people through the training of this war, in that the people of this war have learned to work systematically and to subordinate themselves. We have come to understand the victory of the military order for social life.” – And just a few weeks ago, this man continued in this vein! Who was it? Trotsky in Moscow, justifying the militarization of Russian labor!

Yes, one would like to ask in the face of such things: Is there really no spark of alertness left in humanity today, when it does not look at this stark contradiction of life? Should life go on when these stark contradictions are part of this life? The point is really that, for example, in these 'key points of the social question', nothing else is striven for than that which can arise – it is clearly emphasized at one point in detail – which can arise precisely out of the present institutions. If the people who are involved in these current institutions only begin to set themselves the goal of what the meaning of threefolding is, then one can work in the spirit of threefolding everywhere, if one sets oneself the goal of threefolding, if you know that it can only be a matter of achieving, on the one hand, a free spiritual life, as I have characterized it, and, on the other hand, an economic life that works only out of economic necessities.

You see, it has even become possible to have people together in Stuttgart for a few weeks with whom one could talk about the next requirements of a non-state, free economic life. Not just once, but many times, I said to the people there: Those who will now be called upon to work on this free organization of economic life will soon, when the going gets tough, see that they cannot stop at socialist phrases, at Marxism and so on, but that they will have to work from the specific demands of economic life, and each in his own place; the plant manager, the labor manager, as well as the proletarian, they will have to work, each from his own place, from the point of view of economic life itself. This will bring to light completely different questions than those that are usually raised today, and especially those raised by practice. Just now, people were beginning to realize that, among many other things, it is necessary, for example, to figure out how a certain article in a certain economic area must have a very specific price, a very specific price range, and that the institutions must be set up in such a way that a certain price range is available. I showed people how to achieve these price ranges through arrangements, not through things like, for example, the monetary theorists with their statistics, with their state office, which is all utopian, but how to achieve it through the actual social structure, through what arises from the interaction of the associations. What is the practice today? Today it is practice that something becomes more expensive due to certain circumstances. More pay is demanded, or there is a strike. Because more pay is demanded, other things become more expensive, of course, and then more pay is demanded again. And so what is most important must be taken into account: a certain price level, that which is considered the most trivial by our social circumstances. Today, most people view any price increase with indifference, even if it is ruinous for our lives as human beings.

We were just about to enter into the practicalities, and we cannot make any further progress, ladies and gentlemen, unless as many people as possible develop an understanding of the specific issues. What do you expect to achieve with people who understand nothing of what needs to be done, who only understand what their agitators tell them? Do you think you can bring about a new economic order with them? You can only bring about a new economic order with those who have first gained an understanding of the demands of life itself. Everything else that the “key points of the social question” for a free economic life demand is already contained in this. For what individuals have spoken of, where it has been recognized – and after all, it must be said: the idea of threefolding, a part of it, is recognized – that is even made into an objection by theorists; people always come to me and say: Yes, what you are saying is already wanted here and there! I can only say to people: I would love it most of all if everything I say were already wanted. I am not at all striving to say something new, but rather what follows reasonably from the circumstances!

But that is the essential thing, that the details are demanded here or there, but that it is a matter of summarizing these very details. It is the big picture that is at stake. That is why spiritual science must intervene, because it educates in the big lines. It is right that here and there understanding arises for this or that, but then one must have the opportunity to bring it to bear. And so it also becomes clear to individuals how nonsensical it is when, for example, a judgment is to be made about an issue that should interest industry. Now, in the branches that have been nationalized, judgments are made by the state central representation or the like. That is, a majority of people make judgments that can, under certain circumstances, overrule that small minority who actually understand something about the matter; apart from everything else that is being developed in terms of reciprocity and so on, about which individual, namely western states, provide wonderful opportunities for study, as do southern states. Therefore, some have suggested: Well, we must have parliament, we must have the unified state; so at least for economic life we need industrial committees, professional representations in parliament. Yes, but what matters is that these professional representatives in parliament can first of all really assert for themselves what can then be decided from professional association to professional association, what is necessary; not that everything is mixed up again in one parliament, so that perhaps what is to be decided for this group is decided by the others, who have no say in it. Sometimes one has experienced very strange things in relation to majorities, for example in Austria, which is of course the “model state” for the downfall of the state. Because this Austrian state, one has seen it perish – I lived there for three decades – one has seen it perish if one has seen with open eyes what was actually going on there. In this Austrian state, there was a time when they wanted to revise the existing school law. They wanted to replace the existing school law with a reactionary one. This school law would have been rejected by a minority if conditions had been normal. The only way to achieve a majority was to get the Poles to vote with the other people in favor of this reactionary school law. The Poles had to form a majority with the other reactionaries. The Poles said at the time: “All right, we'll form a majority with you, we'll make the bad school law with you, but our Galicia must be exempted from this bad school law!” So the people came together in the common parliament. There was one community, the Polish delegation, that worked with the others to give the countries of the others, those who did not want it, a school law from which they exempted their own country. Krass stood out in particular at the time. But how could this not be the case in many other areas in a parliament like the Austrian one, which actually only had economic representatives? Because, you see, when a minister in Austria, Giskra, said at about the same time as Huber [in Stuttgart] set out his views: “There are no social issues, they stop at Bodenbach” – this has been discussed several times – people in this country were dreaming of a new era. Dreams came that a new era was needed and that a parliament had to be set up. So they set up the parliament based on four curiae: the curia of the large landowners, the curia of the cities, markets and industrial centers, the curia of the rural communities and the curia of the chambers of commerce – which, due to their special nature, were all economic cooperatives, all economic communities. They then formed the parliament, which made Austrian laws, fabricated rights. It is quite natural that a majority could not be formed by the representatives of the chambers of commerce and the large landowners, and that they made laws that were in their interests, not laws that would have emerged from what has been dawning more and more in humanity in modern times from the feeling of democracy. It is precisely those who take democracy seriously who must separate economic life and intellectual life, which cannot be based on democracy at all, but which arise from factual and specialized knowledge. They must separate economic life and intellectual life must separate economic life and intellectual life from what is legal life in the broadest sense, which can only develop when the mature human being opposes the other mature human being as an equal in parliament. But then only that which concerns every mature human being in relation to every other mature human being as an equal may be decided in this parliament. And the question must always be: it cannot be a matter of professional committees being formed in a democratic parliament and then the decisions being brought about by majority vote, but rather that what is the future action in economic life should emerge from negotiations, from the direct negotiations of economic associations, that which develops out of the essence of economic life itself.

What appears as the threefold social order is not a theory at all, it is not a program at all. I have experienced enough programs. In the 1880s, I used to drink my black coffee after dinner at the Viennese writers' café, the so-called Café Griensteidl. In addition to writers and authors of all sizes, poets, painters and sculptors – each was a great talent, which everyone else denied – social reformers and Marxists also met there. Viktor Adler was always there too. There you could experience the programs at noon and in the evening and at midnight in the most diverse forms. Everyone always knew what was best, and everyone thought the world would become a paradise when their social program was implemented. The opposite of all this program-making is what is striven for by the threefold social organism. Put in a simple formula — what does it actually mean? It means that there are three distinct and separate spheres of interest in the social life of humanity. One of these is the spiritual life. No one has the right to claim that they know how this spiritual life can best be administered; no one has the right to say: I prescribe a program for this spiritual life. If you are grounded in reality, as you are in spiritual science, you will not say this. But one does say: Let this spiritual life be administered by the people who are called to do so, who are actively involved in it, then you can spare yourself your program; then the right thing will come about through what life brings forth. The point is not to set out programs for the threefold social order, but to point out how people must find themselves in life so that from week to week, from year to year, the best arises in life itself. And in the same way, it is a matter of giving economic life a form such that, through economic activity, that which must arise again and again arises. For you see, the most absurd thing of all is to draw up social programs that are supposed to apply forever. Because the social question arises once and for all, but it cannot be solved overnight. The social question is a certain kind of living condition, it is a human question, and the only way to solve it is to organize life in such a way that it is continuously resolved, so that from week to week, from year to year, from decade to decade, there are always people who can bring about what can solve the social questions. The social question cannot be solved all at once, but must be solved continually throughout life. But for this it is necessary that this life should be such that the people who are called to solve it develop out of this life.

Apart from economic and spiritual questions, there are still those that simply arise between people who have come of age. These are decided democratically. They are the legal questions in the broadest sense. That is what life itself demands: that is, we must not formulate a program or develop a theory, but we must reflect on how people should live together so that life can be shaped. Today we cannot discuss whether it is already too late for European civilization, or whether there is still time for people to come together in this way. But we should keep saying to ourselves: the social question has not been grasped in its true form because the essential thing has never been expressed at all, because it was always believed that programs had to be found or institutions had to be devised, whereas it would have been necessary to communicate in such a way that humanity would have formed common interests where life demands common interests. If economic life is, of course, to stand on its own feet today – we cannot demand that tomorrow the people who are inside, who are now full of liberal, socialist or conservative ideas, should judge from the point of view of economic requirements. In the 1950s and 1960s, this would have been possible to a high degree. Today, far too much confused stuff has entered people's heads. But that is not for us to decide; instead, we muster the will to ensure that the right thing happens even today. But we should keep an eye on how, by diverting attention to completely different areas instead of coming together in the face of aligned interests, we have to divert things to completely different areas. Let us assume, hypothetically at first – which, of course, is a hypothesis today – that people, regardless of whether they are supervisors or employees, are fully involved in economic life and have been accustomed to deciding economic issues based on economic facts for some time. Then, even if it took a generation, a commonality of interests would have formed, which must exist, for example, when those who are producers have to work together. The worker and the foreman both have the same interest, if only the same interests are cultivated. The worker and the foreman do not have different interests with regard to, for example, remuneration; they have the same interests. But in order for their feelings to be fulfilled by these same interests, they have to oversee economic life. You can only oversee it if you can learn about one association by having something to do with the next association, which in turn has something to do with the next one [and so on], so that a network of relationships of trust is formed. You can only learn what the true interest is in this way. Instead, true interests are carried out of all this. The people who are work managers stand there [in the blackboard drawing: filled circles

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These things are found difficult to understand. Those who find them difficult to understand say: Yes, it is not clear. Yes, my dear audience, this is just life, and what is from life requires that those who want to understand it look at life. But today people no longer look at life, today they look at their prejudices. One person has acquired his prejudices from Marx, another from the liberal or social-democratic leaders, a third from the pastor, and so on and so forth. Today they only look at what is theory, what they only call practice. And so today one senses something of what individual people have actually felt for a long time.

You see, something strange happened to me. I gave a lecture in Stuttgart and also here in various places in Switzerland, in which I said, based on the matter: Today, instead of an original spiritual life, we have a phrase that is very close to the lie; instead of a real legal life, we have only convention. Something similar could perhaps still happen in relation to these things. But now I have spoken about the third area, about the economic, and I have said: in the economic sphere we do not have a real practice of life, not that which grows out of economic conditions, but mere routine. Now you think that is what I said, and today I read – namely, only today I read this Huber, really, I am not trying to pin something on you that is not true, I really read him today – and there I read in this Huber – he has invented certain corporate interests, I read in this Huber: “But where in our empire?” — says the 1869 in Stuttgart —, “where are the men who can make these arrangements?” And then he continues and says: “Least of all do we find them among practitioners, among those who call themselves practitioners, because today nothing but routine prevails there.” And – he says – we would need at least ten [men]. “But when I look around,” he says, “I want to exempt his majesty right away (he is, as people were then, loyal, a very loyal gentleman), but since he is out of the question anyway, not only are there not ten, but around the steps of the throne and everywhere outside there is not even one.”

I don't know, I couldn't quickly examine the extent to which the man was right for the year [18]69; but in our present circumstances, one has every reason to seek out those who at least have a heart and mind for studying and responding to the real circumstances. That is what is at stake today. We need people who recognize that a renewal of intellectual life and a reorganization of economic life on its own foundations are absolutely necessary. We need this because we have to relieve the state, which then forms the third link of the threefold social organism with its legal and related relationships. Everything in more detail can be found in my book “The Key Points of the Social Question”. We need this third link, which throws the others to the left and right; in short, we need the structure of the social organism from which a structure of the human being can emerge that is suited to the difficult, extraordinarily complicated and difficult conditions of the present, which will become even more complicated and difficult in the near future.

That is why I wanted to draw attention to this again today: that an impulse in the social sphere does not come from Dornach here with a spiritual-scientific movement through an arbitrary act, not through the arbitrariness of an individual [person] and not through the arbitrariness of the Anthroposophical Society, because it is actually true what individual people have repeatedly and repeatedly come to realize in recent decades: Things can only improve if we undertake a fundamental transformation of our entire spiritual life. But this transformation must not remain a mere theoretical demand, it must not be expressed only in idealistic terms, it must not shrink back from really presenting to the world a spirit such as has not been known before. Many people today can talk about the spirit. But it is not a matter of talking about the spirit, but of giving positive, concrete spirit. Positive, concrete spirit must be creative, creatively also in economic life. The time must be considered over when people said: Economic life is external, the spiritual world is not involved in it, it is found precisely when one departs from economic life, when one leaves the coarse material, when one ascends to the spiritual in higher regions. The time when people spoke in this way, that is the time that brought about rivers of blood in Europe. And the people who still speak from their pulpits today: 'Return to the old Christianity!' — to them we must say again and again: If we return to you, we can indeed start again — with the things that finally led us to 1914. It is a matter of having the courage to really present the new spirit to people. But then we must also be serious about it. Today, people approach us and say, 'So, what is being done in Dornach in the economic sphere?' Let us say, for example, that someone who is involved in economic life in America says, 'It's all very well to be working on the economy in Dornach; if they know how to do it, they should tell us.' This would imply that we are demanding a program. But here we are not working with programs, with things that are alien to life, but here we are seeking to create life. Therefore, no one can demand of us that we find a program to be implemented by this or that American bank, but here it is a matter of creating a center of life that is a real, living center around which people must organize themselves. Therefore, the American bankers must be told: It does not depend on you working out your program through your bank, which is given to you from here; but it depends on you centering what you do around Dornach, that you seek union with Dornach. Because it is not about issuing lifeless programs, but about creating a real center that must create as such. Here one cannot merely study; from here one should work.

The essential thing is that everything that comes from here is seen as life, not as theory, not as thought, not as idea. Therefore, those who go to Dornach or to the Waldorf School to see how things are done, how they themselves can do it, will not get it right. Rather, those who understand: Here a beginning has been made, here a start has been made. One must work together with that with which the start has been made, not with a theory but with life. In working together, ladies and gentlemen, we can find ourselves with all the people of the civilized world today - but in living together.

We must once and for all make it clear that the spirit does not live in empty thoughts, not in abstractions. And because we want to assert here that the spirit does not live in abstractions, that the spirit is a living thing, we cannot satisfy the person who only wanted to seek out what abstract thoughts are, which could now be realized in any way , but we can only satisfy those who understand that we must work together in the sense in which it is characterized, as it is suggested - but not programmatized - in the “Key Points of the Social Question” and the next issue of “The Future”. Not just lecturing from here that the mind is a living thing, but the living mind should be sought. We will see whether there is enough understanding in the world for the fact that the living spirit, not the abstract spirit, must be sought, that we must seek for an improvement of the future, for a true construction not just any abstract idea, but [that we must seek] the living spirit. (Lively applause.)

Discussion

Rudolf Steiner: Ladies and Gentlemen, is there perhaps someone here who has a question to ask orally or something to say? Two questions have been submitted in writing (about the “threefold state”; question of whether a school association should have a say in the free spiritual life of the “threefold state”).

Now, esteemed attendees, sometimes it is necessary for me to become a terrible pedant, which I otherwise abhor, for the sake of the matter! The state is conceived of as one of the three limbs of the threefold social organism, and it is actually impossible to say: the threefold state. It can be tolerated for the sake of expediency, but attention must also be drawn to such things from time to time. I am saying this because the question here explicitly mentions “the threefold state”.

Now, questions are understandably asked from the present consciousness, and that is ultimately quite right. But if you want to look at life, you have to realize that life is a process of becoming, and that some things that are desirable may only happen after a long time, but that, if the courage is there, they may also happen relatively quickly. And so one must also consider the questions a little, must consider that questions are asked from the circumstances of the present, perhaps even from the very close circumstances of the future, but in a form that can no longer be asked. Not this question, in particular. Because, believe me, it will be a matter of the spiritual life being administered by those who are alive in it. Those who are truly alive in it will naturally have to ensure that all that can in any way be favorable to their decisions is fully incorporated into them. Now imagine that I am a primary school teacher and a child enters the first class at the Waldorf School. It would be perfectly natural for the school to proceed in the same way as a sensible doctor would, who, when a case of illness arises, does not make a snap judgment but familiarizes himself with the biography of the patient. You have to get to know and read the biography when you get a schoolchild in order to know what the child has been through so far. The best way to get to know the child is, of course, to talk to the mother, although the father should not be left out completely. But here only the mothers are asked. Take just one small point from what I said today about the free spiritual life. Take seriously the fact that this free spiritual life will bring to fruition all those factors that make this free spiritual life possible. What follows from this? It follows inevitably that mothers will be drawn into it. This is self-evident! But we should not want to transfer to the free spiritual life what has so terribly emerged bit by bit in the old spiritual life. When something occurred somewhere, no matter how trivial, you could hear everywhere: Yes, a law should be made. People had nothing else on their minds but: a law should be made. A law should be made for everything! So I took the liberty of saying in a lecture in Nuremberg: What is the ideal of the modern person? And I characterized this there in such a way that I said: Man actually only wishes nowadays that he is always accompanied in his life by a policeman on his left and a doctor on his right; so that he has the doctor for the time of illness, and the policeman or another faculty takes care of the other half of life. That is precisely what we want to achieve with such a social organism: to enable people to take care of themselves, to produce, as a matter of course, what is needed for the laws that the philistines want everywhere. I know that today people usually say in such a case: Yes, but people are not yet mature enough for that. For me, this and many other things are precisely the reason why, when someone tells me: People are not yet mature enough for that, I answer that two things result from this; firstly, that he considers himself mature, and secondly, that he is certainly not mature when he thinks that he understands this, but that the others are not yet mature for it, that he is therefore judging from a subconscious self-knowledge that is not alive in his consciousness. It is not a matter of waiting for people to mature, because we can wait until the end of the days on earth, but rather of seizing the moment and then waiting to see what happens under the circumstances. When people mature, some questions simply resolve themselves out of the circumstances.

The other question that has been asked here is: “Can any of the forms of association that are common today, a labor cooperative or an individual company, be considered particularly suitable as a starting point for the associative form?”

Now, my dear attendees, consider life in its becoming again. Consider it in such a way that it is constantly transforming itself, just like the organism itself, until a certain degree of stationarity is initially achieved in one area or another, then remains for a period of time, and then dies off. You will find it already hinted at in the 'Key Points of the Social Question'. What we have today should initially be the starting point. It cannot be any different. Today we have joint-stock companies; indeed, we even set them up. We have set one up in Stuttgart. So we set them up ourselves, are in the process of setting one up here, as humanities scholars. We are building everywhere on what already exists. We are not talking about some utopian fantasy, but want to build on what already exists. Then we might have all sorts of associations emerging from what already exists: cooperatives, joint-stock companies, I don't know what all, and we are only looking for the associations. [See blackboard drawing, p. 597]

But the fact that these associations enter associative life means that they change again, and that the joint-stock companies will take on a different form when associative life awakens. The cooperatives will also take on a different form. It does not matter - suppose there were a corporation here that was abominable, it would also associate. By itself it is abominable; but by being placed in the network of association, it is constantly influenced, gradually carried along by what arises from associating, and in time becomes something quite different, or perishes. For us, it is not a matter of abolishing something, but of accepting things as they are. And if something is bad, then it naturally perishes. But to abolish something through laws can never be the issue.

That is what weighs most today, that healthy thoughts must first enter human souls! You see, I would like to say this, although it was already hinted at in the lecture: the fact is that what hurts most today is that for a long time no effort has been made to build the bridge across the gulf between the classes. What concern did they have for the fate of the proletariat during the long decades of the second half of the nineteenth century? Basically, they watched what was happening; they didn't care much about it, except that they sometimes heard in larger cities that people said: There's a house again where they're having thicker shutters made because they're afraid something will break out soon! – At most, people were concerned about such things in this way. But no one sought to create a vibrant life that would have been the basis for understanding.

In my “Key Points of the Social Question in the Necessities of Life in the Present and Future,” you will find an indication of how the worker in each factory should actually be led through the entire process of production, introduced to the knowledge of the raw products, and made familiar with the path the product takes, so that he has a common interest with the plant manager and takes an interest in it. Today, of course, this is still very difficult, and even if it is aspired to, it cannot be achieved overnight! It is still very difficult today for the very reason that you can experience being in a company and getting along very well with one or two workers; you get along very well with them. But when it comes to making a decision, they say to you: Yes, but I can't have the same opinion, I have to have the opinion that my union dictates to me. That's just how people are today. But why have they become like that? They have become like that because in the leading circles, where leadership should have remained, there was no desire to get to know the world. Yes, they said they wanted to get to know it, they gradually did something out of their ideas. But the one who has gotten to know it knows even more about the things.

From the years when I was a teacher at the Workers' Education School, which was basically a Social Democratic institution, I could see how the plant managers knew absolutely nothing about what was going on among the workers, and I could see how they were not interested in it either. What I am saying now may be seen as an exaggeration, because one is in the same case as the one who says that laws should... [illegible in shorthand] and so on, and so on. The states may want to stifle intellectual life, but here in X we feel no such oppression. Just as they closed their eyes there, closed for decades to what was actually coming! At most, they locked people up. But what matters is that a person really gets to know life. And that is still missing today to the utmost degree. That is one thing I would like to say in response to such questions.

From what is said, one can tell everywhere that people only know a small circle. That will change. Just consider what I said in response to...; the people were not stupid at all: here he comes and asks, and the arguments that were put forward were very clever; but they could not know anything about what is explained when one is inside a factory. Through the associations that arise more and more, where one is in a lively exchange, where one does not have to check first, but where one knows how far trust can be placed in things, one's own experience teaches what can be learned. That is what you need for your judgment. Until now, you could only judge according to prejudices and therefore judged by the by. And economic experience is given by those principles of association that I spoke of in my “key points”. That is what matters.

Does anyone still have a question?

Emil Molt, Stuttgart: I don't know whether it is allowed, whether there is still time to ask a few questions, because I don't know whether here in Dornach there is a rule that when social questions are discussed there is neither time nor clocks; but for us in Stuttgart it is the case that we can really talk without time. I would now like to tie in with what has just been said.

Especially if you are a working person involved in the threefold order, then it weighs heavily on your soul, especially in recent times, that you have had so few points of attack to implement the threefold order in reality. Last year, as has also been mentioned this evening, we tried to to put the threefolding into practice through the proletariat, and in doing so, we did not, however, disregard the fact that bourgeois circles, above all among these circles, should also become acquainted with the matter. The success has been described this evening. The parties have withdrawn their sheep, and the employers have rejected us from the start. Our work continued. Something left over from working with the proletariat is always like this: the proletarian side in particular is still showing us the judgments that, for example, all the meetings that have now been held by associations, parties and so on are so terribly boring and full of empty phrases. We are told this by the proletariat in particular, that it was a different time, when Dr. Steiner in Stuttgart still had something to tell us about the issues, about the social issues.

But we do find that the proletariat in general is not sufficiently mature to fully grasp the core issues. And we find, on the other hand, that the business community simply makes it impossible by dismissing anyone who works intensively in this direction as a Spartacist or Bolshevik.

We always ask ourselves: What can be done, especially now, not only to get the threefold order into people's heads, but above all to introduce it into practice? And here I would like to, because the question is actually always coming up again and again, especially now that in Germany [...] is such a way that employers would rather cling to big capitalism than to implement social progress, and on the other hand, the trend is so strongly to the right that we have to take that into account. They have a completely different view of things. In these times, people who dedicate their entire being to the threefold order are repeatedly shaken by the question: What has to happen to implement the threefold order of the social organism before it is too late, before it is impossible, before civil wars and economic chaos occur? In this regard, the one who is asking the question feels a particularly heavy burden on his soul from posing this question, and he would be grateful for an answer.

Rudolf Steiner: If I have understood the question correctly, it is this: How is it possible today to introduce anything practical at all into the world in the field of threefolding, given the resistance that is ultimately brought from all sides to the threefolding of the social organism?

This question is, of course, the one that weighs on one. But on the other hand, this question is based on a completely different one that must not be ignored. That is precisely the question: how do you approach something in a truly living way? And I have basically already hinted at something in answer to this question very quietly between the lines in the lecture, by saying: Of course we have also made mistakes. And that is true. We have not yet grown out of the child's shoes in the practice of the threefold social organism. For example, I want to draw attention to the following.

If you want to have a living effect, if you want to promote something in life, then it is important to really work out of life and try to understand life. Now, the situation today is that when one speaks before a proletarian assembly, one has the choice of either speaking in the language of the proletarians about what is ultimately for the good of the proletarians, developing it out of the ideas that the proletarians have. And I have always tried to do that. Or you can do the other: you talk from a general theory, you say this and that must happen – then you are thrown out the door! Because the proletariat today is very quick to make its decision.

Now, that actually never happened in Stuttgart, that we were thrown out the door; but something else happened. You see, I naturally spoke in such a way everywhere that I was not thrown out the door, because I would not have considered it very beneficial – I don't just mean because of the small abrasions that can happen, but because then you can't achieve anything, right, you can't achieve anything from outside the door! I didn't speak in such a way that you were thrown out the door. But then it is known that I said this or that in this or that meeting. Then I spoke to someone who was even a minister, and to him I said in all my innocence: Just wait and see what comes of it. It's not about throwing things in people's faces that make them angry, but about getting people to work with you.

So we wait until we are ready to work together. Then what must be the arithmetic mean of one opinion and the other, will perhaps emerge, or the others will be converted to your opinion, and so on. But we have to work from life.

And I was inclined to do that too! So you just face things like that. You get angry when you hear that something has been said somewhere that only differs in form from what you are used to hearing; and in this regard, you see, we really have made mistakes. For example, I gave a lecture to the workers at the Daimler factory that could only have had a favorable effect if it had been understood in this way – it was spoken for the workers at the Daimler factory, it was spoken in their language.

Well, unfortunately it is the custom in our circles that it is always demanded, and it cannot be resisted, that everything that is spoken in front of any audience should now be printed with skin and hair and should also be readable for everyone else out of context.

Yes, my dear attendees, that is simply not on! And you should realize that it is not on. It is not possible for something like that to happen. We should refrain from broadcasting what I say to a particular audience to the whole world lock, stock and barrel, because it can only be understood in context. Therefore, I understand very well that I received a letter from Nuremberg from a bourgeois pastor who, of course, could not think the way a worker at the Daimler factory can think now, for example. It may happen that people come together when they really work. But it is quite natural that he was angry about the lecture at the Daimler factory, that it is so and must be so! But it is really not about me giving a lecture to excite the delight of a Nuremberg bourgeois pastor, but about working in a lively way, about bringing the proletariat to where it should be for its own good, in cooperation with the other circles, someday.

That is what we want to put into practice. It must be clearly understood that we are not speaking theoretically here, but as life demands, never taking anything for granted that misses the truth, but saying what life demands.

But now, I would say, everything of this kind must not be schematized. It would also be wrong to schematize it. Suppose I were to give a lecture here on Thomism, on Thomas Aquinas, and a socialist were to come who had never heard of the context. Well, he would naturally be furious about it. There is no way to prevent him from becoming angry at the public lecture. But the practical work must nevertheless be done differently than we have done it so far. One has to understand that there is differentiation in life. And so it is important that we first really agree on this preliminary question: How do we get together a number, a sufficiently large number of people – we don't have that yet – who really show that things have now reached the point where it can be seen that people no longer even speak a language that can be understood by each other, and that one must rise above what is spoken on the one side and on the other side on the party sides. Above all, we must work to spread our views, and only when we have a sufficiently large number of people will we be in a position to introduce our views further into contemporary universal life.

It is the same with all things that depend on willpower. You can see that life can only give you opportunities to become pessimistic from day to day. But one must will optimistically; one must will in such a way that what one sets out to do will happen. After all, free human will does not consist of always saying, “This cannot happen and that cannot happen”; rather, it is a matter of knowing what one wills and working in the direction of that will. And that is the only thing we can really do in the first instance, each in our own place. Then an extraordinary amount will happen; there is an objective difficulty in putting the threefold order into practice as a whole.

You see, my “Key Points of the Social Question” have grown out of decades of observation of European life in all its aspects. They have grown entirely out of practical life. And I am convinced that if the practitioners were to take them up, it would be best to reach an understanding. The reason why no agreement can be reached is not that the practitioners have not got into the habit of checking what is said on the basis of practice, but because they say: reform ideas in a book! Books contain theories, so it is a theory. People do not read the book. If they read and study it, they would see that it is different from other books. So this objective difficulty is a factor. Unlike all other similar books, this book, 'The Core of the Social Question', is a book of life. It is the product of decades of observation; there is nothing invented in it. Therefore, it does not come across in such a way that one could say it is easy to understand, like a newspaper article. But I would never want to admit that this book, for example, cannot be made understandable to everyone in serious work. I think it is also the case with this book that I found that theater directors always said: Yes, we won't get an audience with this play, we have to give other plays - which they imagined should get an audience. I have had the most extraordinary experiences there. For example, I met a theater director who was talked into a play; he gave it a try, and he was completely convinced, he only did it out of complaisance. And one evening he did it – and it was a failure. He bet his wife, who had a different opinion, he bet her the entire royalties that were coming to him. The wife bet him that if the play went well, she would get the royalties. Well, the man lost his bet, the play became one of the best-visited plays. So he said in his theater language: At the theater, you can fake everything, you can fake criticism, you can fake approval, you can fake everything, just not the box office. You can't fake the box office. At least it doesn't help if you fake the box office.

This is basically how it is when you say that something cannot be made understandable. It can be made understandable if you just find the right way of doing it. And I can't really go into the question of why it was said in Stuttgart that the evenings were interesting back then when I was there and then they became boring; but I would like to bring this matter into what I would call a direction of will. It is really not a matter of brooding over why things are the way they are, but of trying to find ways and means to make things understandable, to make things popular, and above all, not to harbor illusions. It is no different than that we first need a sufficiently large number of people who understand our ideas; then it will work. But we must never sit back and do nothing; we just have to work. And I believe we will find understanding if we do not shut the door on ourselves too easily by acting not out of life but out of our prejudices. We must not throw every theory in everyone's face, but we must speak to everyone in their language; not because we think they are more stupid than we are, but because it is sometimes difficult for us to speak in their language when they are cleverer than we are; but even then we should try to speak in their language, even if they are much cleverer than we are in their field.

Perhaps it is necessary for us to develop and maintain a real life practice for the promotion of the threefold social organism.

Emil Molt: Perhaps I can correct something about the boring evenings that were party meetings. The proletarians have learned to see that party meetings in particular are full of the most outrageous nonsense, and that it was different in the old days at the trade union building than it is now, when we still organized lectures for the public.

Rudolf Steiner: I just wanted to say that I understood that the evenings back then were interesting and that afterwards the party line was followed, of course not by our people. That's not what I meant, but what I meant was that it doesn't help us if people realize that they have got to know something better. It does speak well for the people when they realize this, but it does not help us if they do not follow us. We only have an influence on them if they put into practice what they have decided. Don't you agree, you see, with us the meetings were interesting. But they don't go to us, but to the others. This just goes to show that, above all, it must be considered how people are like a flock of sheep, how they simply follow their leaders, no matter whether they talk boring stuff or not. They also vote for their leaders when it comes to something, and they follow the training. And we have no illusions about this. It is no use just holding interesting meetings for the people; it only helps if we manage to throw out the leaders and lead the people. That is the experience. Of course, it takes time, and many other things are needed; but here too we have made mistakes, we have negotiated too much with the leaders. We should not have done that. Because we should have been clear about it from the very beginning: the people do not want to understand us and cannot understand us. And so it is in many different ways that we should and want to first acquire the full practice of life.

So I beg you not to think that I meant that our meetings have become boring; rather, I meant that this judgment is of no help to us. What good does it do to enter into a discussion about a judgment that is unfruitful in people? It doesn't help at all.

You see, I knew a Catholic priest very well. He often walked with me – I was still at school – for almost an hour, the way I had to make from school to home. In that place, there were often Jesuit sermons. And the pastor talked with me, even though I was still quite young, actually quite sincerely. I said to him at the time, out of all naivety: Yes, Reverend, how is it that you don't preach the sermons yourself? You only need to do that for the same community every Sunday. Why do you bring the Jesuits over for that? That's not necessary. - He replied: That's right, but it is necessary to talk the cabbage into people; only in this way are they good. And I won't talk it into them myself, they can't ask me to!

So what use is it for a person to understand something if they act differently because of the social structure in which they live! That is precisely what we have to come to, to understand life without illusion, completely soberly, even though we aspire to the highest heights of spiritual life. - I don't know if I have answered the question exhaustively.

Emil Molt: Certainly, Doctor.

Rudolf Steiner: Is there anything else that needs to be asked? Emil Molt: I have already pointed out that in Stuttgart it was not the custom to go home so soon after meeting someone.

Rudolf Steiner: Well, here there seems to be a tendency to

go home and go to bed. So I bid you all good night.