The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. Socialist Blindness of Soul

[ 1 ] It seems that many people cannot find their way into the idea of the threefold organization of the social organism because they fear that this idea wants to tear apart in the organization of social life what in reality must work together in undivided unity. Now it is true that man, who is active in economic life, comes into legal relations with his fellow man through his economic activity, and that his spiritual life is dependent on these legal relations and is also conditioned by his economic situation. These three life activities are united in man; by leading his life, he is involved in all three.

[ 2 ] But does this give audi a reason for these three activities of life to be managed from one center? And does it mean that all three are managed according to the same principles? In man and his activity many things flow together which come from the most diverse sources. He is dependent on the qualities inherited from his ancestors. But they also think and act according to what the upbringing of other people who are not related to them has made of them. How strange would it be if someone wanted to claim that man as a unit is torn apart because heredity and upbringing affect him from different sides? Must it not rather be said that man would remain imperfect if heredity and education worked from one source to shape his life?

[ 3 ] What has to flow into man from different sides by nature in order to meet the needs of his being precisely through this diversity is understood, because not understanding would be absurd. But one does not want to accept the realization that the development of mental faculties, the ordering of legal relationships, the shaping of economic life can only properly include man in their circles if they are regulated within the social order in which he lives, from different centers, according to different points of view. An economic life which of itself regulates the rights of the economically active people and educates and instructs them according to the interests prevailing in it, turns man into a cog in the economic mechanism. It stunts his spirit, which can only develop freely if it develops according to its own impulses. It also atrophies the emotional relationships with his fellow men, which do not want to be affected by the position he occupies in relation to them as a result of his economic situation; which rather urge for a regulation in the sense of the equality of all men in relation to the purely human. - A legal or state life, which administers the development of individual human capacities, presses upon this development like a heavy burden; for it will naturally, from the interests arising in it, develop the tendency to unfold these capacities according to its needs, not according to their own nature, even when at the outset the best will exists to take account of the peculiarities of men. And such a legal life imposes a character on the economic branches it operates that does not come from the economic needs themselves. Within such a legal life, man is spiritually restricted and economically hindered by paternalism from developing interests that are appropriate to his nature. - A spiritual life that wanted to establish legal relationships of its own accord would also have to arrive at an inequality of rights from the inequality of human abilities; and it would have to deny its true nature if it allowed itself to be determined in its activities by devotion to economic interests. In such a spiritual culture, man could not come to a true awareness of what the spirit can truly be to his life; for he would see the spirit debased by injustice and distorted by economic goals.

[ 4 ] Mankind in the civilized world has come to its present position because the three spheres of life have grown together in many respects over the last few centuries to form a unified state. And the unrest of the present time consists in the fact that an immense number of people, unconscious of the real character of their aspirations, are pressing to form these three spheres of life as special links in the social organism in such a way that intellectual life can develop free from its own impulses; that legal life is democratically built on the conflict - direct or indirect - of people who are equal to one another; that economic life develops only in the production, circulation and consumption of goods.

[ 5 ] One can arrive at the insight that the tripartite structure of the social organism is necessary from various starting points. One of these starting points is the realization of human nature in the present. From the point of view of a certain social theory and party opinion, one may find it quite unscientific and impractical to say that psychology must be consulted in the organization of human coexistence, insofar as this psychology recognizes what is appropriate to human nature. But it would be an immeasurable misfortune if all those people were silenced who want to preserve the right of this "social psychology" in the organization of social life. Just as there are colour-blind people who see the world "grey in grey", so there are psychology-blind social reformers and social revolutionaries who want to shape the social organism as an economic cooperative in which people themselves live like mechanized beings. And these psychologically blind agitators themselves know nothing of their blindness. They only know that there has always been a legal and a spiritual life alongside the economic life; and they believe that if they organize the economic life as they see fit, then everything else will come "by itself". It will not come; it will be ruined. That is why understanding with those who are blind to psychology is quite difficult; that is why it is unfortunately also necessary to take up the fight with them, which does not come from those who see psychology, but from them.