The Rudolf Steiner Archive

25. On the Matter of the Works Councils

July 1919

[ 1 ] Recently, there has been a tendency for the parties to adopt and implement the establishment of works councils, which the Bund für Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus intends to implement and has already partially implemented, by combining them into a works council. This would, however, lead to the very thing that the Federation wishes to prevent at all costs, if the idea of threefolding is to prove salutary: a merely partial implementation of threefolding. What is intended by threefolding as a whole would, if a part of it were cut off by one party for special purposes, only create new mischief and destruction. The Federation sees itself compelled to warn against such a strangulation by the parties. With the declaration below, it is once again addressing the public and protesting against the misuse of the idea of threefolding for destructive party experiments.

Declaration

[ 2 ] The Bund für Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus took its starting point from Dr. Steiner's appeal "An das deutsche Volk und an die Kulturwelt" and represents the views set out in Dr. Steiner's book "Die Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage". He sees the only salvation from the present extraordinary situation characterized by the peace treaty as the immediate tackling of his demands, which he summarizes again as follows:

1. Total independence of intellectual life, including education and the school system.
2. Restriction of state life to all those living conditions for which all people are equal before one another.
3. Regulation of the transformed wage and property relations by the constitutional state, with their complete separation from economic life, so that the latter has nothing to do with anything other than the production, distribution and consumption of goods.

[ 6 ] The Bund für Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus sees the achievement of its goal in the state releasing from its sphere of power, on the one hand, spiritual life and, on the other, economic life. - In the field of economic life, the Federation has worked for the works councils so that they can take the first practical steps towards a sensible socialization. At the same time, the renewal of intellectual life should be tackled immediately by founding a cultural council.

[ 7 ] The Bund must therefore absolutely adhere to the principle that a one-sided detachment of economic life from the state must not be pursued, but that at the same time as this detachment, intellectual life must be placed in its own position.

[ 8 ] The Bund counts among its members people from all professions, walks of life and parties, and regards the ideas expressed by its name as a path to the real unification of all people who, with good will, want to lead our people out of its deepest distress to a future that is possible. Where all party programs have failed in these tragic times, it will be our demands that will point the way to new paths in domestic and foreign policy. The bearers of the idea of a tripartite social organism resolutely refuse to be placed on any party platform with this idea. They will never identify with any of the existing party programs. Their aim is to speak to people and never to party members as such.

[ 9 ] The League can bear no responsibility for any movement, from whatever side it may come, which with its means or aims places itself outside this threefold structure; in particular, it sees in unilateral action in the field of economics or politics without the aim of the threefold structure only the source of an unlimited increase of misfortune.

[ 10 ] In the last hour, we expect the appointed circles to confront our aspirations before it is too late.

Bund für Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus
Stuttgart, Champignystrasse 17