The Rudolf Steiner Archive

12. Law and Economy

[ 1 ] Among the various objections that can be raised against the idea of the tripartite organization of the social organism is one that can be put forward in the following way. The efforts of political thinkers in modern times have, in a certain field, amounted to the creation of legal conditions which take into account the economic relations of production which have arisen in the course of these times. All the work that has been done in this direction, it can be said, disregards the idea of the threefold structure and simply seeks to detach legal life from economic life.

[ 2 ] Those who raise this objection believe that they can use it to dismiss the idea of the threefold structure as something that throws the experiences of practitioners of life to the winds and wants to participate in the shaping of social life without these experiences. In reality, however, the opposite is the case. The opponents of threefolding say that we should consider the difficulties that have arisen in all attempts to find appropriate legal states for modern production conditions. One should consider the resistance encountered by those who have made such attempts. The advocate of threefolding, however, must say that precisely these difficulties are proof that the search has been conducted along the wrong path. They certainly wanted to find a form of social life in which the fulfillment of certain modern demands would result from a uniformly ordered economic and legal system. But it should be seen that in economic life, if it is managed appropriately, conditions arise which must work against legal consciousness if this effect is not counteracted outside the economic cycle. It is in the interest of economic life that persons or groups of persons who are particularly qualified for a production operation are able to accumulate capital for this operation. For it is only through the management of large amounts of capital in certain areas by capable people that the general public can be best served in the present. But this service, according to the nature of economic life, can only consist in the best production of the goods needed by the general public. With this production of goods, a certain economic power is placed in the hands of the people who serve it. That this cannot be otherwise is what the idea of threefolding reckons with. That is why it wants social conditions to be striven for in which this power can arise, but in which no social damage can be caused by it. It does not want to prevent the accumulation of masses of capital by individuals, because it realizes that this would also eliminate the possibility of placing the abilities of these individuals at the social service of the community. But it does want that at the moment when the individual is no longer able to manage the means of production in his sphere of power, these should be transferred to another capable person. This person should not be able to acquire them through his economic means of power, but through the fact that he is the most capable. However, this can only be realized if the transfer takes place according to aspects that have nothing to do with the economic means of power. Such points of view can only arise if people and their interests are also involved in circles of life other than economic ones. If man and man are connected on a legal basis that generates interests other than economic ones, then these interests will be able to assert themselves. If man is completely absorbed in the interests generated only by economic life, those other interests will not arise at all. If those in possession of the means of production are to develop the feeling that it is not he who works best in an economic position who acquires it through his economic power, but through his ability, then this feeling must grow on a soil of life which is created alongside the economic one. On its own soil, economic life produces the sense of economic power, but not at the same time the sense of social right. That is why the attempts to conjure up social law from economic thinking itself had to fail.

[ 3 ] The idea of the threefold structure of the social organism is based on such things founded in the reality of life. It is based on the experience of those who wanted to create modern legal relations for modern economic forms. But it is not led by this experience to add to the many failed attempts a new one in the same spirit. It does not want social rights to arise from a sphere of life from which they cannot arise, but it wants the life to be formed from which these rights can first arise. In modern times, the economic cycle has swallowed up this life; it must first be liberated from it again. The idea of the threefold structure can only be understood if one allows oneself to understand how economic life constantly needs the correction of its own forces from outside if it is not to produce effects within itself that inhibit it. Such a correction is supplied to it when, alongside it, an independent spiritual life and an independent legal ground provide the supply. This does not destroy the unity of social life, but in truth only brings it about in the right sense. This unity is not brought about by ordering it through a central power, but by allowing it to arise from the interaction of those forces that want to live as individuals in order to bring about the life of a whole. One should therefore not regard the experiences made with the attempts to create legal relationships for the newer economic life out of this life itself in such a way that one forms objections to the threefold structure from them; rather, one should realize that these experiences lead in a straight line to recognizing the idea of the threefold structure as the one demanded by modern life.