The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Preface and Introduction

[ 1 ] Those who approach the tasks of contemporary social life with the idea of some utopia must misjudge them. One can have the belief, based on certain views and feelings, that this or that institution, which one has laid out in one's ideas, must make people happy; this belief can take on overwhelming persuasive power; however, one can completely ignore what the "social question" currently means if one wants to assert such a belief.

[ 2 ] You can push this assertion to the point of seeming nonsense in the following way, and you will still get it right. One can assume that someone is in possession of a perfect theoretical "solution" to the social question, and yet he could believe something quite impractical if he wanted to offer mankind this "solution" he has devised. For we no longer live in a time in which we should believe that we can work in public life in this way. The state of people's souls is not such that they could ever say for public life: There see one who understands what social institutions are necessary; as he means it, so let us do it.

[ 3 ] In this way, people do not want to let ideas about social life get to them. This writing, which has already found a fairly wide circulation, takes this fact into account. Those who have attributed a utopian character to it have completely misjudged its underlying intentions. This has been done most strongly by those who themselves only want to think utopian. They see in the other what is the most essential trait of their own habits of thought.

[ 4 ] For the practical thinker, it is already part of the experience of public life today that no matter how convincing a utopian idea may seem, it can do nothing. Nevertheless, many have the feeling that they should approach their fellow human beings with such an idea, for example in the economic field. They have to convince themselves that they are just talking unnecessarily. Their fellow human beings can do nothing with what they say.

[ 5 ] This should be treated as experience. For it points to an important fact of contemporary public life. It is the fact of the alienation from life of what one thinks compared to what, for example, economic reality demands. Can we hope to cope with the confused conditions of public life if we approach them with a way of thinking that is alien to life?

[ 6 ] This question cannot be a popular one. For it prompts the confession that one thinks in a way that is alien to life. And yet without this confession, one will also stay away from the "social question". For only if one treats this question as a serious matter for the whole of contemporary civilization will one gain clarity about what is necessary for social life.

[ 7 ] This question points to the shaping of contemporary spiritual life. Modern mankind has developed an intellectual life that is highly dependent on state institutions and economic forces. Man is taken into the education and instruction of the state while still a child. He can only be educated in such a way as is permitted by the economic conditions of the environment out of which he grows.

[ 8 ] It is now easy to believe that this means that man must be well adapted to the living conditions of the present. For the state has the possibility of organizing the institutions of education and teaching, and thus the essential part of public intellectual life, in such a way that the human community is best served. And this too is easy to believe, that man becomes the best possible member of the human community if he is educated in the sense of the economic possibilities out of which he grows, and if through this education he is placed in that position which these economic possibilities assign to him.

[ 9 ] This writing must take on the task, which is not very popular today, of showing that the confusion of our public life stems from the dependence of intellectual life on the state and the economy. And it must show that the liberation of intellectual life from this dependence forms one part of the burning social question.

[ 10 ] Thus, this paper turns against widespread misconceptions. The takeover of education by the state has long been seen as beneficial to the progress of humanity. And socialist thinkers can hardly imagine anything other than society educating the individual to serve it according to its measures.

[ 11 ] It is not easy to accept an insight that is absolutely necessary in this field today. It is that in the historical development of mankind, what is right in an earlier time can become error in a later time. It was necessary for the emergence of modern human conditions that the educational system and thus the public intellectual life was taken away from the circles that held it in the Middle Ages and handed over to the state. The continued maintenance of this state of affairs, however, is a grave social error.

[ 12 ] This is what this paper aims to show in its first part. Spiritual life has grown to freedom within the state structure; it cannot live properly in this freedom if it is not given full self-government. Spiritual life, by the nature it has assumed, demands that it form a completely independent member of the social organism. The educational and teaching system, from which all spiritual life grows, must be placed under the administration of those who educate and teach. Nothing that is active in the state or in the economy should interfere with this administration. Every teacher must devote only so much time to teaching that he can also be an administrator in his field. He will thus take care of the administration in the same way as he takes care of education and teaching himself. No one gives instructions who is not himself at the same time engaged in active teaching and education. No parliament, no personality who perhaps once taught but no longer does so himself, has a say. What is directly experienced in the classroom also flows into the administration. It is only natural that objectivity and professionalism have the greatest possible impact within such an institution.

[ 13 ] Of course, one can object that not everything will be perfect even in such a self-administration of intellectual life. But in real life this will not be demanded at all. Only the best possible results can be achieved. The abilities that grow up in the human child will really be transmitted to the community if only those who can make their authoritative judgment on the basis of spiritual determinations are responsible for their training. How far a child should be brought in one direction or the other can only be judged in a free spiritual community. And what is to be done in order to help such a judgment to be justified can only be determined by such a community. From it, state and economic life can receive the forces that they cannot give themselves when they shape spiritual life from their own points of view.

[ 14 ] It is in the direction of what is presented in this paper that the institutions and the teaching content of those institutions that serve the state or economic life are also provided by the administrators of free intellectual life. Law schools, commercial schools, agricultural and industrial educational institutions will receive their organization from the free intellectual life. This writing must necessarily arouse many prejudices against itself if one draws this - correct - conclusion from its statements. But from what do these prejudices flow? One will recognize their anti-social spirit if one sees through the fact that they basically arise from the unconscious belief that educators must be unrealistic, impractical people. They could not be expected to make arrangements of their own accord that would properly serve the practical areas of life. Such institutions must be shaped by those who are involved in practical life, and educators must work according to the guidelines they are given.

[ 15 ] Those who think in this way do not see that educators who cannot give themselves guidelines down to the smallest and up to the greatest are only thereby alienated from life and impractical. They can then be given principles that come from apparently practical people; they will not bring up real practitioners in life. Anti-social conditions are brought about by the fact that people are not placed in social life who are socially minded by virtue of their upbringing. Socially sensitive people can only emerge from a type of education that is led and administered by socially sensitive people. The social question will never be solved unless the educational and spiritual question is treated as one of its essential parts. One creates anti-sociality not only through economic institutions, but also through the anti-social behavior of the people in these institutions. And it is anti-social to have young people educated and taught by people who are made alien to life by dictating the direction and content of their actions from the outside.

[ 16 ] The state establishes law schools. It requires of them that the content of jurisprudence be taught which it has laid down in its constitution and administration according to its points of view. Institutions that have emerged entirely from a free intellectual life will draw the content of jurisprudence from this intellectual life itself. The state will have to wait for what is handed over to it from this free spiritual life. It will be fertilized by the living ideas that can only arise from such an intellectual life.

[ 17 ] Within this spiritual life itself, however, will be those people who grow from their points of view into the practice of life. Not that which comes from educational institutions designed by mere "practitioners" and taught by people unfamiliar with life can become the practice of life, but only that which comes from educators who understand life and practice from their own point of view. How the administration of a free spiritual life must be shaped in detail is at least hinted at in this writing.

[ 18 ] Utopian-minded people will approach the text with all kinds of questions. Concerned artists and other intellectual workers will say: Yes, will talent flourish better in a free intellectual life than in the present one, which is run by the state and the economic powers? Such questioners should bear in mind that this writing is in no way meant to be utopian. It is therefore not at all theoretical: This should be this way or that way. Rather, it encourages communities of people who can bring about what is socially desirable by living together. Whoever judges life not according to theoretical prejudices but according to experience will say to himself: The creative person who creates out of his free talent will have the prospect of a correct assessment of his achievements if there is a free intellectual community that can intervene in life entirely from its own point of view.

[ 19 ] The "social question" is not something that has arisen in human life at this time, something that can now be solved by a few people or by parliaments and will then be solved. It is an integral part of the whole of modern civilization and, once it has arisen, it will remain so. It will have to be solved anew for every moment of world-historical development. For human life has entered into a state with the latest times which allows the antisocial to emerge again and again from the socially established. This must always be overcome anew. Just as an organism always returns to a state of hunger some time after saturation, so the social organism returns from an orderly state of affairs to disorder. There is no universal remedy for ordering social relations any more than there is a food that satisfies for all times. But people can enter into such communities that through their lively cooperation their existence is repeatedly given a social direction. Such a community is the self-governing spiritual member of the social organism.

[ 20 ] Just as free self-government emerges as a social requirement for intellectual life from contemporary experience, so does associative work for economic life. In modern human life, the economy is composed of commodity production, commodity circulation and commodity consumption. Through it human needs are satisfied; within it people stand with their activities. Everyone has his partial interests within it; everyone must intervene in it with the share of activity possible to him. What a man really needs, only he can know and feel; what he should accomplish, he will judge from his insight into the living conditions of the whole. It has not always been so, and is not yet so everywhere on earth; within the presently civilized part of the earth's population it is essentially so.

[ 21 ] The economic circles have expanded in the course of human development. From the closed domestic economy, the urban economy has developed, from this the state economy. Today we are faced with the global economy. It is true that a considerable part of the old still remains in the new; much of the new was already present in the old. But the fate of mankind depends on the fact that the above series of developments has become predominantly effective within certain living conditions.

[ 22 ] It is an ill-conceived idea to want to organize the economic forces in an abstract world community. In the course of development, individual economies have merged with state economies to a greater extent. But the state communities have arisen from other than merely economic forces. The desire to transform them into economic communities has brought about the social chaos of recent times. Economic life strives to organize itself by its own forces, independently of state institutions, but also of state thinking. It will only be able to do this if, from a purely economic point of view, associations are formed from circles of consumers, traders and producers. The size of such associations will regulate itself through the conditions of life. Associations that are too small would be too costly, associations that are too large would be economically too confusing. Each association will find the way to regulated intercourse with the others out of the needs of life. There is no need to be concerned that those who have to spend their lives in active change of place will be restricted by such associations. He will easily find the transition from one to the other if it is not state organization but economic interests that will bring about the transition. Institutions are conceivable within such an associative being that operate with the ease of monetary transactions.

[ 23 ] Within an association, an extensive harmony of interests can prevail due to expertise and objectivity. It is not laws that regulate the production, circulation and consumption of goods, but people out of their direct insight and interest. By their being within the associative life, men can have this necessary insight; by the fact that interest must be contractually balanced with interest, the goods will circulate in their corresponding values. Such an association according to economic considerations is something different from that in modern trade unions, for example. These have an effect on economic life; but they are not formed according to economic principles. They are modeled on the principles that have emerged in more recent times from the handling of state, political aspects. They are parliamentarized; they do not agree on what one must pay the other according to economic considerations. In the associations there will not be "wage-workers" who, through their power, demand the highest possible wages from a labor-entrepreneur, but manual workers will work together with the intellectual leaders of production and with those interested in consuming what is produced, in order to shape services according to the services in return by regulating prices. This cannot be done by parliamentary assemblies. One should be wary of such assemblies. For who would work if countless people had to spend their time negotiating about work? In agreements from person to person, from association to association, everything takes place alongside work. All that is necessary is that the association corresponds to the insights of the workers and the interests of the consumers.

[ 24 ] This is not a utopia. Because it does not say: This should be set up this way or that. It merely indicates how people will arrange things for themselves if they want to work in communities that correspond to their insights and interests.

[ 25 ] On the one hand, human nature ensures that they unite in such communities, if it is not hindered by state intervention; for nature creates the needs. On the other hand, free intellectual life can ensure this, for it brings about the insights that are to have an effect in the community. Those who think from experience must admit that such associative communities can arise at any moment, that they contain nothing of utopia. Nothing stands in the way of their emergence other than the fact that contemporary man wants to "organize" economic life from the outside in the sense that the idea of "organization" has become a suggestion for him. This organization, which wants to unite people for production from the outside, is opposed by the economic organization based on free association. Through association, man unites with another; and the planned nature of the whole arises through the reason of the individual. - One can say: What is the use of the dispossessed associating with the possessor? One might think it better if all production and consumption were "fairly" regulated from the outside. But this organizational regulation prevents the free creative power of the individual, and it deprives economic life of the supply of that which can only spring from this free creative power. And just try it once, despite all prejudices, even with the association of today's dispossessed with the haves. If no forces other than economic ones intervene, then the haves will necessarily have to compensate the have-nots for what they have given in return. Today, people talk about such things not out of the instincts of life, which stem from experience, but out of moods that have developed not out of economic but out of class and other interests. They were able to develop because in modern times, in which economic life in particular has become ever more complicated, it was not possible to deal with it with purely economic ideas. The unfree intellectual life has prevented this. Economists are caught up in the routine of life; the creative forces at work in the economy are not transparent to them. They work without insight into the whole of human life. In the associations, one person learns through the other what he needs to know. An economic experience of what is possible will form, because the people, each of whom has insight and experience in his own field, will judge together.

[ 26 ] Just as in the free intellectual life only the forces that lie within it are effective, so in the associatively organized economic system only the economic values that are formed through the associations. What the individual has to do in economic life results from living together with those with whom he is economically associated. Thus he will have just as much influence on the general economy as corresponds to his performance. How non-achievers integrate themselves into economic life is discussed in this paper. The weak can be protected from the strong by an economic life that is shaped solely by its own forces.

[ 27 ] So the social organism can break down into two independent members, which support each other precisely because each has its own peculiar administration, which arises from its particular powers. But between the two there must be a third. It is the actual state member of the social organism. In it everything asserts itself which must depend on the judgment and feeling of every man who has come of age. In the free life of the spirit, each person is active according to his special abilities; in economic life, each person fills his place as it results from his associative context. In the political-legal life of the state he comes to his purely human validity, in so far as this is independent of the faculties through which he can work in the free spiritual life, and independent of the value which the goods produced by him receive through the associative economic life.

[ 28 ] In this book it is shown how labor is a matter of this political-legal state life according to time and nature. In it, everyone is equal to everyone else, because it is only negotiated and administered in those areas in which every person is equally capable of judgment. The rights and duties of men are regulated in this member of the social organism.

[ 29 ] The unity of the whole social organism will arise from the independent development of its three members. The book will show how the effectiveness of movable capital, the means of production and the use of land can be shaped by the interaction of the three links. Those who want to "solve" the social question by means of an invented or otherwise developed economic system will not find this book practical; those who want to use life's experiences to inspire people to such forms of association in which they can best recognize the social tasks and devote themselves to them will perhaps not deny the author of the book the pursuit of true life practice.

[ 30 ] The book was first published in April 1919. I have made additions to what was expressed at that time in the contributions contained in the journal "Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus", which have just been collected and published as the publication "In Ausführung der Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus".^{1The "Bund für Dreiliederung des sozialen Organismus", founded in April 1919, serves to introduce the ideas contained in these writings. (It has its headquarters in Stuttgart, Champignystraße 17.)}

[ 31 ] You will find that the two writings speak less about the "goals" of the social movement and more about the paths that should be taken in social life. Anyone who thinks from the practical side of life knows that individual goals can take different forms. Only those who live in abstract thoughts see everything in clear outlines. Such a person often criticizes the practical aspects of life because he does not find them defined, not presented "clearly" enough. Many who consider themselves practitioners are just such abstract thinkers. They do not consider that life can take on the most diverse forms. It is a flowing element. And whoever wants to go with it must also adapt his thoughts and feelings to this flowing basic trait. Social tasks can only be tackled with this kind of thinking.

[ 32 ] The ideas of this text were fought for from the observation of life; they also want to be understood from this perspective.