The Rudolf Steiner Archive

6. The Ability to Work, the Will to Work and the Tripartite Social Organism

[ 1 ] Socialistically-minded personalities see in the present form of profit within economic life a drive to work, on the elimination of which depends the establishment of healthier social conditions than those that have existed up to now. For such personalities the question becomes urgent: What will induce men to place their abilities in the service of economic production to the degree necessary, if egoism, which finds its satisfaction in profit, can no longer live itself out? It cannot be said that this question is given sufficient attention by those who think of socialization. The demand that in future man should no longer work for himself, but must work "for the community", remains insubstantial as long as one cannot develop realistic insights into the way in which human souls can be made to work "for the community" just as willingly as for themselves. One could, however, indulge in the opinion that a central administration would place every human being at his workplace, and that this organization of work would then also make it possible to distribute the products of labour in a just manner from the central administration. But such an opinion is based on an illusion. It reckons with the fact that people have consumption needs and that these must be satisfied; but it does not reckon with the fact that the mere consciousness of the existence of these consumption needs does not produce in man a devotion to production, if he is not to produce for himself but for the community. He will feel no satisfaction from this mere consciousness of working for society. Therefore, he will not be able to derive any drive to work from it.

[ 2 ] One should realize that the moment one thinks of eliminating the old one of egoistic gain, one must create a new labor drive. An economic administration which does not have this profit within the forces working in its circulation cannot of itself exert any effect at all on the human will to work. And precisely because it cannot do this, it fulfills a social demand which a large part of mankind has reached at the present stage of its development. This part of humanity no longer wants to be brought to work by economic compulsion. It wants to work from motives that are more in keeping with human dignity. Undoubtedly this demand is a more or less unconscious, instinctive one in the case of many people who must be thought of when it is raised; but in social life such unconscious, instinctive impulses mean something far more important than the ideas which are consciously put forward. These conscious ideas often owe their origin only to the fact that people do not have the mental power to really see through what is going on in them. If one deals with such ideas, one is moving in an insubstantial realm. It is therefore necessary, despite the deceptiveness of such superficial ideas, to pay attention to people's true demands, such as the one marked. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that low human instincts are at work at a time when, as in the present day, social life is in a state of wild upheaval. However, the demand for a humane existence, which is justifiably raised in the above sense, will not be quenched if one uses the prevalence of low human instincts to accuse them as well.

[ 3 ] If an organization of the economy is to come into being which cannot have any effect on the will to work of men, this effect must come from another organization. The idea of the tripartite social organism takes account of the fact that economic life at the present stage of development of civilized mankind should be limited to economic activity. The administration of such an economic life will be able to determine through its organs what the extent of consumer needs is; how best the products can be brought to the consumers; to what extent one or another product should be produced. But it will have no means of generating in man the will to produce; nor will it be able to provide the educational and instructional facilities by which those individual faculties of man are cultivated which must form the source of economic activity. In the old economic system, which has lasted down to the present day, men cultivated these faculties precisely because they could give themselves up to the hope of personal gain. It would be a fatal error to believe that the mere commandment of economic administrations, which only have economic activity in mind, could have a stimulating effect on the development of individual human abilities, and that such a commandment would have enough power to induce people to use their will to work. The idea of the tripartite social organism aims to ensure that we do not succumb to this error. It wants to create an area in the free, self-reliant spiritual life in which man learns to understand in a life-like way what human society is, for which he is to work; an area in which he learns to see through the significance of individual work in the structure of the whole social order in such a way that he learns to love this individual work because of its value for the whole. It wants to create the foundations in the free spiritual life that can be a substitute for the drive that comes from the personal desire for profit. Only in a free intellectual life can such a love for the human social order arise as the artist has for the creation of his works. But if one does not want to think of cultivating such a love in a free intellectual life, one must give up all striving for a new social order. Whoever doubts that people can be educated to such love must also doubt the possibility of eliminating personal profit from economic life. He who cannot believe that a free spiritual life produces such love in man does not know that the dependence of spiritual life on the state and the economy produces the addiction to personal gain, and that this addiction is not an elementary result of human nature. It is based on this error that it is so often said that people other than the present ones are necessary for the realization of the threefold structure. No, people are educated by the tripartite organism in such a way that they become different from what they have been up to now through the state economic order.

[ 4 ] And just as the free intellectual life will generate the impulses for the development of individual abilities, so the democratically oriented life of the constitutional state will give the necessary impulses to the will to work. In the real relationships that will be established between the people united in a social organism, when every person who has come of age will regulate his rights towards every person who has come of age, the will to work "for the community" may be kindled. It should be remembered that it is only through such relationships that a true sense of community can arise and from this feeling the will to work can grow. For in reality, such a constitutional state will have the consequence that every person will stand alive, with full consciousness, in the common field of work. He will know what he is working for; and he will want to work within the working community into which he knows himself integrated by his will.

[ 5 ] Whoever recognizes the idea of the tripartite social organism understands that the large cooperative with a state-like structure, which Marxist socialism strives for, cannot generate any impulses for the ability and will to work. He wants the real essence of man not to be forgotten above the reality of the external order of life. For the practice of life cannot merely take external institutions into account; it must take into account what man is and can become.