The Rudolf Steiner Archive

42. Shadow Putsches and the Practice of Ideas

[ 1 ] Few people today still strive for a clear insight into the changes that have taken place in all public affairs since 1914. People experience the hardship of the times. People hope for this and that. But we are far removed from any real reflection on what is happening before our eyes. There is an insurrectionary movement behind us in Germany. We fear new similar movements. - But can anyone say clearly what those behind such a movement actually want? They call it a movement of right-wing parties. Well, not so long ago, the word "right-wing party" had a reasonable meaning. This party had a precisely defined program. It was contrasted with the program of the left-wing parties.

[ 2 ] One should finally admit to oneself that these programs have become completely meaningless since 1914. Those who once stood on the right can no longer seriously speak of their program in the face of changing facts. If he has a sense of reality in him, he must realize that he can no longer want what was the content of his program only a short time ago. Nor can the leftist. For decades he has expressed his hopes for the future in his program. He must now see that this program could be talked about politically as long as one wanted to oppose another; but that it proves to be a phrase, since one is supposed to shape a social reality out of it. Do parties still fight against each other today in the spirit of their old programs? No. The programs have become phrases and only the people who once had something to do with these programs remain. There are no longer any "right-wing" or "left-wing" parties, only their shadows. Because parties are void without party programs.

[ 3 ] People who only a short time ago were united under the factual content of a certain direction of will still stand together out of old habit. They form groups. But their cohesion is basically only personal. The former reactionary has lost the content of his will, but he still holds together with those who were also reactionaries. He hopes that he will come to power together with them. He who was a Marxist a short time ago still clings to his Marxism because he has to talk about something in order to express himself. He does not draw any rational meaning from his Marxism. But he comes together, more or less radically, with others who were also Marxists; he forms groups with them that are held together merely by the personal kinship that stems from their earlier Marxism. The people in these groups also hope that they will come to power with people who have such personal kinship with them.

[ 4 ] The struggles of public life today have the same character. The judgments that assert themselves in these struggles also bear this character. Certain people get excited when they talk about the "militarist coup". They don't even realize how much nebulousness flows into their ideas. Basically, if the putschists came to power, they would know as little today about what to do as their opponents would know in the same case. One cannot really be afraid of any particular will of such a group; one can only have an indeterminate fear of the people who once had a particular will.

[ 5 ] When viewed correctly, the situation is substantially different from how it is usually viewed at present. The people who once exercised power are characterized by the fact that they acted out of a direction of will that was rendered impossible by the years of horror that Europe has gone through. The other people who want to replace them have not yet found ideas from the life situations in which they have been so far, which could provide possible social conditions in the realization.

[ 6 ] Groups of people, held together by old habits, by sympathies and antipathies, are fighting for power today. What both have in common is that they cannot do anything with power when they have it, because they lack an objective that has grown out of the facts.

[ 7 ] This situation is taking on ever greater dimensions. Public battles are increasingly losing their intellectual content. Democracy, conservatism, liberalism, socialism are words that used to have content but have lost it. Under these circumstances, life becomes directionless and barbarized.

[ 8 ] The idea of the threefold structure of the social organism takes this situation into account. It speaks of impulses that originate from the essence of humanity itself; impulses that want to shape themselves into social reality from the depths of human nature. It speaks again of a reality, one that reveals itself quite clearly in the facts of present life. For this idea it is obvious that the old party programs have lost their content and that only the memories of them remain in the people who had previously committed themselves to them. "Right-wing and left-wing" does not mean a reality today; the idea of the threefold structure seeks such a reality. We can strive to understand them, regardless of whether we still carry around an insubstantial "right-wing" or an insubstantial "left-wing" in our bodies from old habits, like a dead foreign body in a living organism. The bearers of the threefold idea have to fight with old habits, with the shadows of the past. In the midst of public instinctive actions that increasingly degenerate into striving for personal power, they want to set the direction of the will borne by the idea. They want to give life direction not in the sense of old shadowy phrases, but in the sense of the reality demanded by the times.