The Rudolf Steiner Archive

38. Ideas and Bread

[ 1 ] Can the dissemination of an idea such as the threefold nature of the social organism bring about a fruitful public will in the face of economic hardship today? This question is asked by many. And all too often the answer is: first you have to fight for the bare bread; then, when you have achieved this, you can turn to ideas again.

[ 2 ] It is precisely against this view that this journal has had to speak again and again. The fact that we lack bread is really only due to the fact that the ideas through which we have tried to acquire it up to now have proved incapable of providing it for us. It is not the bread that has eluded us and to which we can appeal; it is the work that must be summoned in order to bring the bread to light. But the work cannot be done fruitfully without the idea that gives it direction and purpose. One does not want to admit a simple fact: The leading personalities up to now have given the work directions and goals based on ideas in which the workers have lost confidence. As a result, we have collapsed. If we do not want to admit this, the decline will continue. If we make this admission without reserve, then we must realize that the only way to save ourselves from decline is to grasp new ideas.

[ 3 ] Today, things are such that there is really no particular reason to take a keen interest in whether Erzberger has the worse things to say to Helfferich or Helfferich to Erzberger. The main thing is that both have grown out of circumstances and continue to think in terms of those circumstances that have brought about the collapse of our public life. It is important that the ideas that haunt the minds of the Erzberg and Helfferichs are replaced by others. Heliferich has raised the battle cry: Erzberger is a pest of German public life; he must be removed from it. There is no reason to doubt the content of this call. But its representation by people with Helfferich's ideas leads nowhere. We will only get further if we can cultivate ideas of a social order that will do away with all Helfferichian and Erzbergerian politics. Whether one or the other is more guilty is certainly of great legal interest; a new insight must leave no doubt that the ideas of both are to blame for the decline of public life.

[ 4 ] What prevents the germination of such a new insight? It could easily be obvious to anyone who wanted to learn from the facts. But how many have learned from the facts of war; how many are inclined to learn from those that first emerged after the war of arms? The "genuine" Marxist and also the weakened Marxist socialist doctrine are deeply imbued with the idea that the remedy for a prosperous future must be sought in the economic basis of the social order. At the moment in world history when the bearers of socialism are advancing into the places formerly occupied by people who oppose them, the management of a substantial part of economic life is being taken care of by Erzberger alongside socialists.

[ 5 ] We will not get beyond these things as long as we do not gain confidence in ideas that no longer want to have their practical implementation taken care of by the old routiniers, but that are capable of approaching this implementation themselves. Those who speak of the threefold nature of the social organism want to cultivate the will to practice life that results from new ideas. They are often asked: Yes, how do you think this or that should be carried out? They must answer: First of all, it is necessary that the idea of the threefold structure itself be grasped as a practical basis and acted upon. Then they point out what form this or that institution must take if threefolding is to become effective in public life. When they speak in this way, those who do not want to judge for themselves according to what they have said call on the old "practitioners" in some field or other for help. They have "not had time" to deal with the new ideas. They listen on the fly to what the bearers of these ideas actually want, quite naturally do not understand the slightest thing from a detail that has been torn out and pass judgment: - "utopia", "well-intentioned idealism", but insubstantial for practice.

[ 6 ] We must look these facts in the eye without prejudice if we want to recognize the basic conditions under which an idea such as that of the threefolding of the social organism can advance, and if we want to evaluate the obstacles that this idea encounters. No matter how practical the individual proposals of the proponents of the idea of threefolding may be, they will be fought on the side of those who do not respond to this idea themselves. It is therefore necessary at the present time that the understanding of this idea be spread as widely as possible. All special measures taken by the promoters of this idea must first of all serve to spread the idea.

[ 7 ] The real realization of fruitful new ideas alone can enable us to find the ways in which we can find bread again. Fleeing from these ideas will leave us completely breadless. The only thing that can help is the realization that the lack of bread was preceded by the lack of ideas, that the latter is the cause of the former. The path we have taken is: Lack of ideas, lack of bread. The path we must take is to find in ideas the will to shape work. In this way - bread will be produced.