The Tension Between East and West
GA 83
11 June 1922, Vienna
10. From Monolithic to Threefold Unity
When, some three years ago, at the request of a group of friends who were disturbed by the social aftermath of the Great War, I published my book The Threefold Commonwealth, the immediate result, from my point of view, was the profound misunderstanding it met with on every side. This was because it was promptly classed among the writings that have attempted, in a more or less Utopian manner, to advocate institutions which their creators envisaged as a sort of nostrum against the chaotic social conditions thrown up in the course of man's recent development. My book was intended not as a call for reflection about possible institutions, but as a direct appeal to human nature. It could not have been otherwise, given the fundamentals of spiritual science, as will be apparent from the whole tone of my lectures so far.
In many cases, for example, what I included solely to illustrate the central argument was taken to be my main point. In order to demonstrate how mankind could achieve social thinking and feeling and a social will, I gave as an example the way the circulation of capital might be transformed so that it would no longer be felt by many people to be oppressive, as frequently happens at present. I had to say one or two things about the price mechanism, the value of labour, and so on. All this solely by way of illustration. Anyone who seeks to influence human life as a whole must surely hearken to it first, in order to derive from it the human remedies for its aberrations, instead of extolling a few stereotyped formulae and recommending their indiscriminate application.
For anyone who has reacted to the social life of Europe in the last thirty or forty years, not with some preconceived attitude or other but with an open mind, it is clear above all that what is needed in the social sphere today is already prefigured in the unconscious will of mankind in Europe. Everywhere we find these unconscious tendencies. They exist already in men's souls, and all that is needed is to put them into words.
That is what made me give in to my friends and write the book I have mentioned. My purpose was to attempt, out of the sense of reality which—in all modesty we can say this—spiritual science instils in man, to observe what has been going on in Europe in recent years, beneath the surface of events and institutions, among all ranks and classes of society. What I wanted to say was not: I think that this or that is correct, but rather: This or that is secretly desired by the unconscious, and all that is required is for us to become conscious of the direction in which mankind is really trying to go. The reason for many of our social abuses today is precisely that this unconscious movement contradicts in part what mankind has worked out intellectually and embodied in institutions. Our institutions, in fact, run counter to what men today desire in the depths of their hearts.
There is another reason why I do not believe there is any real point today in simply advocating some particular Utopian institution. In the historical development of mankind in the civilized world we have entered a phase where any judgment about relationships among and between men, however shrewd, can be of no significance unless men accept it—unless it is something towards which they are themselves impelled, though for the most part unconsciously.
If we wish to reflect at all upon these things at the present time, therefore, I believe we must reckon with the democratic mood which has emerged in the course of man's history, and which now exists in the depths of men's souls—the democratic feeling that something is really valuable in the social sphere only if it aims, not at saying democratic things, but at enabling men to express their own opinions and put them over. My main concern was thus to answer the question: Under what conditions are men really in a position to give expression to their opinions and their will in social matters?
When we consider the world around us from a social standpoint, we cannot help concluding that, although it would be easy to point to a great deal that should be different, the obstacles to change are legion, so that what we may know perfectly well and be perfectly willing to put into practice, cannot be realized! There are differences of rank and class, and the gulfs between classes. These gulfs cannot be bridged simply by having a theory of how to bridge them; they result from the fact that—as I stressed so much yesterday—the will, which is the true centre of man's nature, is involved in the way we have grown into our rank or class or any other social grouping. And again, if you look for the obstacles which, in recent times, with their complicated economic conditions, have ranged themselves alongside the prejudices, feelings and impulses of class consciousness, you will find them in economic institutions themselves. We are born into particular economic institutions and cannot escape from them. And there also exists, I would say, a third kind of obstacle to true social co-operation among men; for those who might perhaps, as leaders, be in a position to exert that profound influence of which I have been speaking, have other limitations—limitations that derive from certain dogmatic teachings and feelings about life. While many men cannot escape from economic limitations and limitations of class, many others cannot rise above their conceptual and intellectual limitations. All this is already widespread in life and results in a great deal of confusion.
If, however, we now attempt to reach a clear understanding of everything which, through these obstacles and gulfs, has affected the unconscious depths of men's souls in recent decades, we become aware that in fact the essentials of the social problem are not by any means located where they are usually looked for. They reside in the fact that there has arisen in the recent development of civilized man, alongside the technology which is so complicating life, a faith in the supreme power of the monolithic state. This faith became stronger and stronger as the nineteenth century wore on. It became so strong and so fixed that it has never been shaken even in the face of the many shattering verdicts on the organization of society that multitudes of people have reached.
With this dogmatic faith that thus takes hold of men, something else is associated. Through their faith, people seek to cling to the proposition that the object of their faith represents a kind of sovereign remedy, enabling them to decide which is the best political system, and also—I will not say to conjure up paradise, but at least to believe that they are creating the best institutions conceivable.
This attitude, however, leaves out of account something that obtrudes itself particularly on those who observe life realistically, as it has been observed here in the last few days. Anyone who, just because he is compelled to mould his ideas to the spiritual world, acquires a true sense of reality, will discover that the best institutions that can be devised for a particular period never remain valid beyond that period and that what is true of man's natural organism is also true of the social organism.
I am not going to play the boring game of analogies, but by way of illustration I should like to indicate what can be discovered about society from a study of the human organism. We can never say that the human organism—or, for that matter, the animal or plant—will display only an upward development. If organisms are to flourish and to develop their powers from within themselves, they must also be capable of ageing and of dying off. Anyone who studies the human organism in detail finds that this atrophying is going on at every moment. Forces of ascent, growth and maturation are present continuously; but so too are the forces of decomposition. And man owes a great deal to them. To overcome materialism completely, he must direct his attention to just these forces of decomposition in the human organism. He must seek, everywhere in the human organ, ism, the points at which matter is disintegrating as a result of the process of organization. And he will find that the development of man's spiritual life is closely linked to the disintegration of matter. We can only understand the human organism by perceiving, side by side with the forces of ascent, growth and maturation, the continuous process of decay.
I have given this simply by way of illustration, but it really does illustrate what the impartial observer will discover in the social organism too. It is true that the social organism does not die, and to this extent it differs from the human organism; but it changes, and forces of advancement and decline are inherent in it. You can only comprehend the social organism when you know that, even if you put into practice the wisest designs and establish, in a given area of social life, something that has been learnt from conditions as they really are, it will after a time reveal moribund forces, forces of decline, because men with their individual personalities are active in it. What is correct for a given year will have changed so greatly, twenty years later, that it will already contain the seeds of its own decline. This sort of thing, it is true, is often appreciated, in an abstract way. But in this age of intellectualism, people do not go beyond abstractions, however much they may fancy themselves as practical thinkers. People in general, we thus discover, may admit that the social organism contains forces of dissolution and decline, that it must always be in process of transformation, and that forces of decline must always operate alongside the constructive ones. Yet at the point where these people affect the social order through their intentions and volition, they do not recognize in practice what they have admitted in theory.
Thus, in the social order that existed before the Great War, you could see that, whenever capitalism formed part of an upward development, it resulted in a certain satisfaction even for the masses. When in any branch of life capitalism was expanding, wages rose. As the process advanced further and further, therefore, and capitalism was able to operate with increasing freedom, you could see that wages and opportunities for the employment of labour rose steadily. But it was less noticed that this upward movement contained at the same time other social factors, which move in a parallel direction and involve the appearance of forces of decline. Thus with rising wages, for instance, conditions of life would be such that the rising wages themselves would gradually create a situation in which the standard of life was in fact raised relatively little. Such things were, of course, noticed, but not with any lively and practical awareness of the social currents involved.
Hence today, when we stand at a milestone in history, it is the fundamentals, not the surface phenomena of social life that we must consider. And so we are led to the distinct branches that go to make up our social life.
One of these is the spiritual life of mankind. This spiritual life—though we cannot, of course, consider it in isolation from the rest of social life—has its own determinants, which are connected with human personalities. The spiritual life draws its nourishment from the human individuals active in any period, and all the rest of social life depends on this. Consider the changes that have occurred in many social spheres simply because someone or other has made some invention or discovery. But when you ask: How did this invention or discovery come about? then you have to look into the depths of men's souls. You see how they have undergone a certain development and have been led to find, in the stillness of their rooms, so to speak, something that afterwards transformed broad areas of social life. Ask yourselves what is the significance, for social life as a whole, of the fact that the differential and integral calculus was discovered by Leibniz. If from this standpoint you consider realistically the influence of spiritual life on social life, you will come to see that, because spiritual life has its own determinants, it represents a distinctive branch of social life as a whole.
If asked to define its special quality, we would say: Everything that is really to flourish in the spiritual life of mankind must spring from man's innermost productive power. And we inevitably find that the elements that develop freely in the depths of the human soul are what is most favourable for social life as a whole.
We are, however, also affected by another factor, one that has become increasingly apparent in recent decades. It is the impulse—subsequently absorbed into a faith in the omnipotence of political life—for civilized humanity, out of the depths of its being, to become more and more democratic. In other words, aspirations are present in the masses of humanity for every human being to have a voice in determining human institutions. This democratic trend may be sympathetic or unsympathetic to us—that is not a matter of primary importance. What matters is that the trend has shown itself to be a real force in the history of modern man. But in looking at this democratic trend, we are particularly struck, if our thinking is realistic, by the way in which, out of an inner pressure, out of the spiritual life of Middle Europe ideas evolved, in the noblest minds, about the political community of men.
I do not mean to suggest that today we must still attach any special value to the “closed commercial state” put forward by one of the noblest of Germans. We need pay attention less to the content of Fichte's thought than to his noble purpose. I should, however, like to emphasize the emergence in a very popular form, at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, of what we may call the search for concepts of natural law. At that time, certain eminent and high-minded men devoted themselves to the question: What is the relation of man to man? And what in general is man's innermost essence, socially speaking? They believed that, by a right understanding of man, they would also be able to find what is the law for men. They called this “the law of reason” or “natural law.” They believed that they could work out rationally which are the best legal institutions, the ones under which men can best prosper. You need only look at Rotteck's work to see how the idea of natural law still operated for many writers in the first half of the nineteenth century.
In opposition to this, however, there emerged in the first half of the nineteenth century in Europe the historical school of law. This was inspired by the conviction that you cannot determine the law among men by a process of reason.
Yet this historical school of law failed to notice what it is that really makes any excogitation of a rational law unfruitful; they failed to see that, under the influence of the age of intellectualism, a certain sterility had invaded the spiritual life of mankind. Instead, the opponents of natural law concluded that men are not competent to discover, from within their souls, anything about law, and that therefore law must be studied historically. You must look, they said, at man's historical development, and see how, from customs and instinctive relationships, systems of law have resulted.
The historical study of law? Against such a study Nietzsche's independent spirit rebelled in On the Use and Abuse of History for Life. He believed that, if we are always looking solely at what has exercised mankind historically, we cannot be productive and evolve fruitful ideas for the present; the elemental forces that live in man must revolt against the historical sense, in order that, from these forces, there may develop a constitution of social relationships.
Among leading personalities there developed in the nineteenth century, at the height of intellectualism, a battle over the real foundations of law. And this also involved a battle over the foundations of the state. At least, it was generally assumed so at the time. For the state is, ultimately, no more than the sum total of the individual institutions in which the forces of law reside. The fact that the ability to detect the foundations of law had been lost also meant, therefore, that it was no longer possible to attain clarity about the real nature of the state. That is why we find—not simply in theory, but in real life as well—that, during the nineteenth century, the essence of the state became, for countless people, including the masses, a problem that they had to solve.
Yet this applied more particularly, I would say, to the upper and more conscious reaches of civilized humanity. From underground, the democratic attitude I have described was tunnelling its way towards the surface. Its appearance, if properly understood, leads us to conceive the problem of the nature of law in a way that is much deeper and much closer to reality than is usual today. There are many people today who think it self-evident that, from within the individual, you can somehow arrive at what is actually the law in a given sphere. Modern jurists, it is true, soon lose sight of the ground when they attempt to do so; and what they find, when they philosophize in this way or indeed think they are reflecting in a practical way upon life, is that law loses its content for them and becomes an empty form. And then they say: This empty form must be given a content; the economic element must be decanted into it.
On the one hand, then, there exists a definite sense of man's powerlessness to reach a concept or feeling of law from within himself. On the other hand, we do continually attempt to derive the nature of law from man himself. And yet the democratic attitude jibs at any such attempt. What it says is that there is no such thing as a general abstract determination of law; there is only the possibility that the members of a particular community may reach an understanding and say to one another: “You want this from me, I want that from you,” and that they will then come to some agreement about their resulting relations. Here, law springs exclusively from the reality of what men desire from one another. There cannot therefore be any such thing as a law of reason; and the “historical law” that has come into being can always do so again if only we find the right foundation for it. On this foundation, men can enter into a relationship in which, through mutual understanding, they can evolve a realistic law. “I want to have my say when law is being made”—so speaks the democratic attitude. Anyone, then, who wishes to write theoretically about the nature of law cannot spin it out of himself; he just has to look at the law that appears among men, and record it. In natural science too, our view of the phenomenal world does not allow us to fashion the laws of nature out of our head; we allow things to speak to us and shape natural laws accordingly. We assume that what we try to encompass in the laws of nature is already created, but that what exists in the legal sphere has to be created among men. This is a different stage of life. In this realm, man stands in the position of creator—but as a social being, alongside other men—so that a life may come about that shall infuse the meaning of human evolution into the social order. This is precisely the democratic spirit.
The third thing that presents itself to people today and calls for social reorganization is the complicated economic pattern which has developed in recent times, and which I need not describe, since it has been accurately described by many people. We can only say: This economic pattern certainly results from factors quite different from those controlling the other two fields of the social organism—spiritual life, where all that is fruitful in the social order must spring from the individual human personality (only the creativity of the individual can make the right contribution here to the social order as a whole), and the sphere of law, where law, and with it the body politic, can only derive from an understanding between men. Both factors—the one applicable to spiritual life and the other to political and legal life—are absent from economic life.
In economic life, what may come about cannot be determined by the individual. In the nineteenth century, when intellectualism enjoyed such a vogue among men, we can see how various important people—I do not say this ironically—people in the most varied walks of life, gave their opinion about one thing and another—people who were well placed in economic life, and whose judgment one would have expected to trust. When they came to express an opinion about something outside their own speciality, something that affected legislation, you often found that what they said, about the practical effect of the gold standard for example, was significant and sensible. If you follow what went on in the various economic associations during the period when certain countries were going over to the gold standard, you will be astonished at the amount of common sense that was generated. But when you go further and examine how the things that had been prophesied then developed, you will see, for instance, that some very important person or other considered that, under the influence of the gold standard, customs barriers would disappear! The exact opposite occurred!
The fact is that, in the economic sphere, common sense, which can help one a very great deal in the spiritual sphere, is not always a safe guide. You gradually discover that, as far as economic life is concerned, the individual cannot reach valid judgments at all. Judgments here can only be arrived at collectively, through the co-operation of many people in very different walks of life. It is not just theory, but something that will have to become practical wisdom, that truly valid judgments here can arise only from the consonance of many voices.
The whole of social life thus falls into three distinct fields. In that of spiritual life, it is for the individual to speak. In the democratic sphere of law, it is for all men to speak, since what matters here is the relationship of man to man on a basis of simple humanity—where any human being can express a view. In the sphere of economic life, neither the judgment of the individual, nor that which flows from the un-sifted judgments of all men, is possible. In this sphere, the individual contributes, to the whole, expert knowledge and experience in his own particular field; and then, from associations, a collective judgment can emerge in the proper manner. It can do so only if the legitimate judgments of individuals can rub shoulders with one another. For this, however, the associations must be so constituted as to contain views that can rub shoulders and then produce a collective judgment.—The whole of social life, therefore, falls into these three regions. This is not deduced from some Utopian notion, but from a realistic observation of life.
At the same time, however—and this must be emphasized over and over again—the social organism, whether small or large, contains within itself, together with constructive forces, also the forces of decline. Thus everything that we feed into social life also contains its own destructive forces. A constant curative process is needed in the social organism.
When we look at spiritual life from this standpoint, we can even say, on the lines of the observations put forward here in the last few days: in Oriental society, the life of the spirit was universally predominant. All individual phenomena—even those in political and in economic life—derived from the impulses of spiritual life, in the way I have been describing. If now you consider the functioning of society, you find that for a given period—every period is different—there flow forth from the life of the spirit impulses that inform the social structures; economic associations come into being on the basis of ideas from spiritual life, and the state founds institutions out of spiritual life. But you can also see that spiritual life has a constant tendency to develop forces of decline, or forces from which such forces of decline can arise. If we could see spiritual life in its all-powerful ramifications, we should perceive how it constantly impels men to separate into ranks and classes. And if you study the reasons for the powerful hold of the caste system in the Orient, you will find that it is regarded as a necessary concomitant of the fact that society sprang from spiritual impulses. Thus we see that Plato still stresses how, in the ideal state, humanity must be divided into the producer class, the scholar class and the warrior class—must be divided, that is, into classes. If you analyse the reasons for this, you will find that differences of rank and class follow from the gradation which is implicit in the supreme power of spiritual life. Within the classes, there then appears once more the sense of human personality, which experiences them as prejudicial to the social system. There thus always exist, within spiritual life, opportunities for the appearance of gulfs between classes, ranks, even castes.
We now turn to the field of politics, and it is here especially that we must look for what I have been calling the subjection of labour, in the course of man's development, to the unitary social organism. It is precisely because theocracy, coming from Asia, developed into a political system that is now dominated by concepts of law, that the problem of labour arises. In so far as each individual was to attain his rights, there developed a demand for labour to be properly integrated into society. Yet as law cast off its links with religion and moved further and further towards democracy, there insinuated itself more and more into men's lives a certain formalized element of social thinking.
Law developed in fact from what one individual has to say to another. It cannot be spun out of a man's own reasoning faculty. Yet from the mutual intercourse of men's reasoning faculties—if I may so put it—a true life of law arises. Law is inclined, therefore, towards logic and formalized thought. But humanity, on its way down the ages, goes through phases of one-sided development. It went through the one-sided phase we call theocracy, and similarly, later on, it goes through the one we call the state. When it does so, the logical element of social life is cultivated—the element of excogitation. Just think how much human ratiocination has been expended on law in the course of history!
In consequence of this, however, mankind also proceeds towards the capacity for abstraction. You can sense how human thinking, under the influence of the principle of law, becomes increasingly abstract. What mankind acquires in one sphere, however, is extended at certain periods to the whole of human life. In this way, I would say, even religion was, as I have indicated earlier, absorbed into the juridical current. The God of the Orient, universal legislator and giver of Grace to men, became a God of judgment. Universal law in the cosmos became universal justice. We see this especially in the Middle Ages. As a result, however, there was imported into men's habits of thought and feeling a kind of abstraction. People tried increasingly to run their lives by means of abstractions.
In this way, abstraction came to extend to religion and spiritual life, on the one hand, and economic life, on the other. Men began to trust more and more in the omnipotence of the state, with its abstract administrative and constitutional activity. Increasingly, men regarded it as progressive for spiritual life, in the shape of education, to be absorbed completely into the sphere of the state. Here, however, it could not avoid being caught up in abstract relationships, such as are associated with the law. Economic activity, too, was absorbed into something that was felt to be appropriate when the state is in control. And at the time when the modern concept of the economy was formed, it was the general opinion that the state should be the power above all which determined the proper organization of economic activity. In this way, however, we subject the other branches of life to the rule of abstraction. This statement itself may sound abstract, but in fact it is realistic. Let me demonstrate this with regard to education.
In our age, where common sense is so commonplace, men can come together in a committee, in order to work out the best pedagogic procedures. When they meet together in this way and work out how education should be organized and just what should be covered by this class or the other in the timetable, they will—and I say this without irony—work out first-rate things. I am convinced that, so long as they are fairly sensible—and most people are nowadays—they will draw up ideal programmes. We live—or did live at least, for some attempt is being made to escape—in the age of planning. There is certainly no shortage of programmes, of guiding principles in any given area of life! Society after society is founded and draws up its programme: a thing is to be done in this way or that. I have no objection to these programmes, and indeed I am convinced that no one who criticizes them could draw up better ones. But that is not the point. What we work out, we can impose on reality; only reality will not then be suitable for men to live in. And that is what really matters.
And so we have reached a kind of dead end in the matter of programmes. We have seen recently how, with the best and noblest of intentions for the development of mankind, a man drew up one of these programmes for the entire civilized world, in fourteen admirable points. It was shattered immediately it came into contact with reality. From the fate of Wilson's fourteen abstract points—which were the product of shrewd intellects, but were not in accordance with reality, not quarried from life itself—an enormous amount can be learnt.
In education and teaching, it is not programmes that matter, for they after all are only a product of politics and law. You can, with the best of intentions, issue a directive that this or that must be done; in reality, however, we are dealing with a staff composed of teachers with a particular set of capacities. You have to take these capacities into account in a vital way. You cannot realize a programme. Only what springs from the individual personalities of the teachers can be realized. You must have a feeling for these personalities. You will need to decide afresh, each day, out of the immediate life of the individual, what is to happen. You will not be able to set up a comprehensive programme: this remains an abstraction. Only out of life itself can something be created. Let us imagine an extreme case: In some subject or other, there are available only teachers of mediocre ability. If, at a time when they were free of teaching and had nothing to do but think, these teachers were to work out pedagogic aims and issue regulations, even they would no doubt come up with something extremely sensible. But the actual business of teaching is another thing altogether; all that matters there is their capabilities as whole men. It is one thing to reckon with what derives solely from the intellect, and quite another to reckon with life itself. For the intellect has the property of overreaching; fundamentally, it is always seeking to encompass the boundless nature of the world. In real life, it should remain a tool in a specific concrete activity.
Now if we reflect particularly on the fact that what takes place between human beings, when they confront each other as equals, can turn into law—then we must say: The things humanity develops are all right when they are the outcome of contemporary abstraction; for that is how men do feel. Men establish legal relations with one another, based on certain abstract concepts of man, and they arrive at these legal relations through the circumstance that they stand together on democratic ground. Yet it will never be possible in this way to create for the whole of humanity something that springs directly from the life of the individual; but only what is common to the whole of humanity. In other words: to be quite honest, there cannot well up, from a democratic foundation, what ought to spring from the individuality of man within spiritual life.
We must, of course, realize that a belief in the predominance of law and politics was a historical phenomenon, and that it was historically legitimate for modern states, at the time when they came into being, to take over responsibility for the schools, since they had to take them away from other authorities who were no longer administering them properly. You should not try to correct history retrospectively. Yet we must also perceive clearly that in recent years there has developed a movement to shape the life of the spirit once again as something independent, so that it contains within itself its own social structure and its own administration; and also that what takes place in individual classes can stem from the vital life of the teacher and not from adherence to some regulation or other. Despite the fact that it has been regarded as a step forward to hand over spiritual life, and with it schools, to the state, we must make up our minds to reverse this trend. Only then will it be possible for the free human personality to achieve expression within spiritual life, including the sphere of education. Nor need anyone be afraid that authority would suffer in consequence! Where a productive influence is exercised by the human personality, the individuals concerned yearn for a natural authority. We can see this at work in the Waldorf School. Everyone there is pleased when one person or the other can be his authority, because he needs what the individual talents of that person have to offer.
It then remains possible for politics and law to function on a democratic basis.
Here again, however, the fact is that, simply through its tendency to abstractness, the state contains within itself the germ of what are later to become forces of decline. Anyone who studies how, by virtue of the existence of this tendency, what men do in the political and legal sphere cannot help becoming increasingly cut off from any concrete interest in a particular aspect of life, will also realize that it is precisely political life which provides the basis for the abstractness that has become increasingly apparent in connection with the circulation of capital. The formation of capital nowadays is much criticized by the masses. But the campaign against it, as conducted at present, reveals an ignorance of the true situation. Anyone who wanted to abolish capital or capitalism would have to abolish modern economic and social life as a whole, because this social life cannot survive without the division of labour, and this in turn implies the formation of capital. In recent times, this has been demonstrated particularly by the fact that a large part of capital is represented by the means of production. The essential point, however, is that in the first place capitalism is a necessary feature of modern life, while on the other hand, precisely when it becomes nationalized, it leads to the divorce of money from specific concrete activities. In the nineteenth century, this was carried so far that now what actually circulates in social life is as completely divorced from specific concrete activities, as the bloodless ideas of a thinker who lives only in abstractions are divorced from real life. The economic element that is thus divorced from specific activities is money. When I have a certain sum in my pocket, this sum can represent any given object in the economy or even in spiritual life. This element stands in the same relation to specific concrete activities as a wholly general concept does to specific experiences. That is why crises must inevitably arise within the social order.
These crises have been extensively studied. A theory of crises is prominent in Marxism, for example. The mistake lies in attributing the crises to a single chain of causes, whereas in fact they are due to two underlying trends. There may be too much capital, in which case the excess that is circulating gives rise to crises. It may also happen, however, that too little capital is available, and this also leads to crises. These are two different types of crisis. Such things are not examined objectively, even by political economists today. The fact is that, in the real world, a single phenomenon may have very varied causes.
We can see, therefore, that, just as spiritual life tends to develop forces of decline arising from differences of class, rank and caste, so too the life that is moving towards abstractions—and rightly so—includes a tendency, on the one hand to develop the constructive forces that are part of a legitimate formation of capital, but on the other hand to give rise to crises because capitalism results in abstract economic activity, in which a capital sum can be used indifferently for one purpose or another.
When people realize this, they become social reformers and work out something that is designed to produce a cure. But now you come up against the fact that, although the individual does shape economic life by contributing his experiences through the appropriate associations, he cannot as a single individual determine the shape of economic life. That is why, when we go beyond the political and legal and the spiritual spheres, I have posited the association as a necessity of economic life.
In this connection, I was struck by the fact that, when I was speaking in Germany to a fairly small group of working-men about associations, they said to me: We have heard of very many things, but we don't really know what associations are; we haven't really heard anything about them. An association is not an organization and not a combination. It comes into being through the conflux of the individuals within the economy. The individual does not have to adopt something handed out from a central body, but is able to contribute the knowledge and ability he has in his own field. From a collaboration in which each gives of his best, and where what is done springs from the agreement of many—only from such associations does economic life in general derive.
Associations of this kind will come into being. They are certain to arise, I have no doubt of that. To anyone who tells me this is Utopian, my reply is: I know that these associations spring only from subconscious forces in man. We can, however, foster them by the reason and make them arise more quickly, or we can wait until they arise from necessity. They will link together those engaged in production and commerce, and the consumers. Only production, distribution and consumption will have any part in them. Labour will come more and more under the aegis of law. On the question of labour, men must reach an understanding in a democratic manner. In consequence, labour will be insulated from the only force which can be effective in economic life—that which is the resultant of a collective judgment in associations linking producers and consumers, together with distributors.
In the sphere of economic life, therefore—in the associations—goods alone will have a part to play. This will, in turn, have an important consequence: we shall cease entirely to have any fixed notions of the price and value of an article. Instead, we shall say: the price and value of an article is something that changes with the surrounding circumstances. Price and value will be set by the collective judgment of the associations. I cannot go into this at length here; but you can follow it up in my book The Threefold Commonwealth.
I have been trying to outline how, from our observation, we become aware that social life falls into three regions, shaped by quite distinct and different factors: spiritual life, legal and political life, and economic life. Within the recent development of civilization, these three have been achieving some degree of independence. To understand this independence, and gradually to allocate to each field what belongs to it, so that they may collaborate in an appropriate manner, is the important task today.
Men have reflected in very different ways on this tripartite articulation of the social organism. And, as my Threefold Commonwealth began to attract attention here and there, people pointed out various things in it that were already foreshadowed by earlier writers. Now I do not wish to raise the question of priority at all. What matters is not whether it was a particular individual who discovered something, but how it can become established in life. If a lot of people were to hit on it, one would be only too pleased. One point must be noted, however: when Montesquieu in France outlines a sort of tripartite division of the social organism, it is merely a division. He points out that the three sections have quite different determinants, and that we must therefore keep them separate. This is not the tenor of my book. I do not try to distinguish spiritual life, legal life and economic life, in the way that you would distinguish in man the nervous system, the respiratory system and the metabolic system, if at the same time you wanted to insist that they are three systems, each separate from the other. In itself, such a division leads nowhere; you can advance only by seeing how these three different systems function together, and how they best combine into a single whole by each operating on its own terms. The same is true of the social organism. When we know how to establish spiritual life, political and legal life, and economic life on the terms that are native to each, and how to let them run off their native sources of power, then the unity of the social organism will also follow. And then you will find that certain forces of decline are released within each of these fields, but that they are countered through collaboration with other fields. This suggests, not a tripartite division of the social organism, as in Montesquieu, but a threefold articulation of it, which yet comes together in the unity of the social organism as a whole, by virtue of the fact that, after all, every individual belongs to all three regions. The human personality—and that is what is all-important—inhabits this triform social organism in such a way as to unite the three parts.
Especially in the light of what I have been saying, then, we find that what we must aim at is not a division but an articulation of the social organism, in order that a satisfying unity may be attained. And in a more superficial way, you can also see that, for over a century, mankind in Europe has tended to seek such an articulation. It will come about, even if men do not consciously desire it; unconsciously, they will so conduct themselves, in the economic, spiritual, and political and legal spheres, that it will come about. It is demanded by the actual evolution of humanity.
And we can also point to the fact that the impulses which correspond to these three different aspects of life entered European civilization at a particular moment in the shape of three quintessential ideals, three maxims for social life. At the end of the eighteenth century in Western Europe, a demand spread abroad for liberty, equality and fraternity. Is there anyone who bears with the development that has taken place in modern times, who would deny that these maxims contain three quintessential human ideals? Yet on the other hand it must be admitted that there were many people in the nineteenth century who argued ingeniously against the view that a unified social organism or state can exist if it has to realize these three ideals all together. Several persuasive books were written to demonstrate that liberty, equality and fraternity cannot be completely and simultaneously combined within the state. And one must admit that these ingenious arguments do evoke a certain scepticism. In consequence, people once again found themselves face to face with a contradiction imposed by life itself.
Yet it is not the nature of life to avoid contradictions; life is contradictory at every point. It involves the repeated reconciliation of the contradictions that are thrown up. It is in the propagation and reconciliation of contradictions that life consists. It is, therefore, absolutely right that the three great ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity should have been put forward. Because it was believed in the nineteenth century, however, and right down to our own times, that everything must be centrally organized, people went off the rails. They failed to perceive that it is of no importance to argue about the way in which the means of production be employed, capitalism developed, etc. What matters is to enable men to arrange their social system to accord with the innermost impulses of their being. And in this connection we must say: We need to comprehend, in a vital way, how liberty should function in spiritual life, as the free and productive development of the personality; how equality should function in the political and legal sphere, where all, jointly and in a democratic manner, must evolve what is due to each individual; and how fraternity should function in the associations, as we have called them. Only by viewing life in this way do we see it in its true perspective.
When we do so, however, we perceive that the theoretical belief that it is possible to accommodate all three ideals uniformly in the monolithic state has led to a contradiction within life. The three ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity can be understood in a vital way only when we realize that liberty has to prevail in spiritual life, equality in the political and legal sphere, and fraternity in the economic sphere. And this not in a sentimental manner, but in a way that leads to social systems within which men can experience their human dignity and their human worth. If we understand that the unified organism can come into being only when out of liberty spirit develops in a productive way, when equality functions in the political and legal sphere and fraternity in the economic one, in the associations, then we shall rise above the worst social dilemmas of the present.
For man gains a spiritual life that is rooted in truth only out of what can freely spring from him as an individual; and this truth can only make its appearance if it flows directly from men's hearts. The democratic tendency will not rest easy until it has established equality in the political and legal sphere. This can be achieved by rational processes; if not, we expose ourselves to revolutions. And in the economic field, fraternity must exist in the associations.
When this happens, the law—which is founded on a human relationship in which like meets like—will be a vital law. Any other kind of law turns into convention. True law must spring from the meeting of men, otherwise it becomes convention.
And true fraternity can found a way of life only if this derives from economic conditions themselves, through the medium of the associations; otherwise, the collaboration of men within groups will establish not a way of life, but a routine existence, such as is almost invariably the case at the present time.
Only when we have learnt to perceive the chaotic nature of social conditions that spring from the predominance of catchwords instead of truth in the spiritual sphere, convention instead of law in the political and legal sphere, and routine instead of a way of life in the economic sphere, shall we be seeing the problem clearly. And we shall then be following the only path that affords a correct approach to the social problem.
People will be rather shocked, perhaps, to find that I am not going to approach the social problem in the way many people think it ought to be approached. What I am saying now, however, is based solely on what can be learnt from reality itself with the aid of spiritual science, which is everywhere orientated towards reality. And it turns out that the fundamental questions of social life today are these:
How can we, by a correct articulation of the social organism, move from the all too prevalent catch-word (which is thrown up by the human personality when its creative spirit is subordinated to another) to truth, from convention to law, and from a routine existence to a real way of life?
Only when we realize that a threefold social organism is necessary for the creation of liberty, equality and fraternity, shall we understand the social problem aright. We shall then be able to link up the present time properly with the eighteenth century. And Middle Europe will then be able, out of its spiritual life, to reply, to the Western European demand for liberty, equality, fraternity: Liberty in spiritual life, equality in political and legal life, and fraternity in economic life.
This will mean much for the solution of the social problem, and we shall be able to form some idea of how the three spheres in the social organism can collaborate, through liberty, equality and fraternity, in our recovery from the chaotic situation—spiritual, legal, and economic—which we are in today.
The End.
Die Kernpunkte der Sozialen Frage
Meine sehr verehrten Anwesenden! Als ich vor drei Jahren etwa auf Verlangen einer Reihe von Freunden, die damals unter dem Eindruck der Ereignisse im sozialen Leben nach der vorläufigen Beendigung des großen Weltkriegs standen, meine «Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage» veröffentlicht hatte, da ergab sich für mich, ich möchte sagen, als unmittelbares Erlebnis, daß diese Veröffentlichung im Grunde mißverstanden worden ist auf allen Seiten, und zwar gerade aus dem Grunde, weil man sie zunächst einreihte in diejenigen Schriften, welche in einer mehr oder weniger utopistischen Weise in äußerlichen Einrichtungen versuchten darzustellen, was ihre Verfasser als eine Art Heilmittel gegen die auftretenden sozialen chaotischen Zustände empfanden, die sich im Verlauf der neueren Menschheitsentwickelung ergeben haben. Meine Schrift war gewissermaßen als ein Appell nicht an das Denken über allerlei Einrichtungen, sondern als ein Appell an die unmittelbare Menschennatur gemeint. Daß das aus geisteswissenschaftlichen Untergründen heraus nicht anders sein konnte, wird ja aus der ganzen Haltung der bisher gehaltenen Vorträge hervorgehen.
So hat man namentlich vielfach dasjenige, was ich eigentlich nur zur Illustration der Hauptsache gegeben habe, für die Hauptsache selbst genommen. Ich mußte, indem ich versuchte darzustellen, wie die Menschheit zu einem sozialen Denken, Fühlen und auch Wollen kommen könne, dies zum Beispiel daran illustrieren, wie möglicherweise die Kapitalzirkulation so umgewandelt werden könnte, daß sie von vielen Menschen nicht in der Weise drückend empfunden werde, wie das in der Gegenwart vielfach der Fall ist. Ich mußte das eine oder das andere über Preisbildung, über den Wert der Arbeit und dergleichen sagen. Aber das alles nur eigentlich zur Illustration. Denn wer, wenn ich mich jetzt des Ausdrucks bedienen darf, hineingreifen will ins volle Menschenleben, dem kommt es auch darauf an, dieses Menschenleben zunächst zu belauschen, um aus ihm heraus auf menschliche Art Auswege für Verirrungen zu finden, und zwar nicht durch Anpreisen gewisser Ideenschablonen, die dann auf den verschiedensten Gebieten des Lebens ausgeführt werden sollen.
Vor allen Dingen ergibt sich für den, der das soziale Leben Europas nicht mit dieser oder jener vorgefaßten Meinung, sondern mit unbefangenem Sinn in den letzten dreißig bis vierzig Jahren auf sich hat wirken lassen, daß eigentlich dasjenige, was heute sozial zu geschehen hat, bereits vorgezeichnet ist in dem unbewußten Wollen gerade der europäischen Menschheit. Überall kann man die unbewußten Tendenzen nach irgend etwas finden. Sie leben schon in den Menschenseelen, und man braucht ihnen durch Worte nur Ausdruck zu verleihen.
Das ist es, was mich veranlaßte, dem Drängen von Freunden nachzugeben und dieses Buch zu schreiben. Das war die Veranlassung, daß ich aus dem Wirklichkeitssinn, den die Geisteswissenschaft - in bescheidener Weise darf das ausgedrückt werden - dem Menschen anerzieht, versucht habe, das zu beobachten, was in allen sozialen Klassen und Ständen unter der Oberfläche der äußeren Erscheinungen und Einrichtungen in den letzten Jahrzehnten in Europa vorgegangen ist. Und ich wollte eigentlich nicht sagen: Das oder jenes finde ich richtig; sondern ich wollte sagen: Das oder jenes wird aus dem verborgenen Unbewußten heraus gewollt, und es ist notwendig, daß man sich einfach bewußt werde desjenigen, wonach die Menschheit eigentlich drängt. Und gerade darinnen ist der Grund für viele unserer sozialen Mißstände zu suchen, daß heute dieses unbewußte Drängen in gewissem Widerspruch steht zu dem, was die Menschheit in intellektualistischer Weise ausgedacht und in die Einrichtungen hineingetragen hat, so daß eigentlich unsere Einrichtungen dem widersprechen, was in den Tiefen der Menschenherzen heute gewollt wird.
Und noch aus einem anderen Grunde glaube ich nicht, daß es heute überhaupt einen besonderen Wert hat, irgendwie in utopistischer Weise die eine oder andere Einrichtung einfach hinzustellen. Wir sind innerhalb der geschichtlichen Menschheitsentwickelung in der zivilisierten Welt doch in das Stadium eingetreten, daß, wenn auch noch so Gescheites gesagt wird über das, was unter und zwischen Menschen geschehen soll, dies eigentlich gar keine Bedeutung haben kann, wenn die Menschen es nicht annehmen, wenn es nicht etwas ist, wozu die Menschen selber sich hindrängen, allerdings zumeist eben in unbewußter Art.
So glaube ich, daß heute, wenn man über solche Dinge überhaupt denken will, mit dem in der geschichtlichen Entwickelung der Menschheit heraufgekommenen demokratischen Sinn gerechnet werden muß, namentlich dem demokratischen Sinn, wie er auf dem Grund der Seelen der Menschen heute lebt, mit diesem demokratischen Sinn, daß eigentlich in sozialer Beziehung etwas nur Wert hat, wenn es darauf abzielt, nicht demokratische Meinungen zu sagen, sondern die Menschen dazu zu bringen, ihre Meinungen aussprechen zu können, geltend machen zu können. So war für mich die Hauptsache, die Frage zu beantworten: Unter welchen Verhältnissen sind die Menschen in der Lage, ihre sozialen Meinungen, ihren sozialen Willen wirklich zum Ausdruck zu bringen?
Wir müssen, wenn wir die Welt um uns herum in bezug auf das soziale Leben betrachten, uns sagen: Ja, wissen könnte man schon vieles von dem, wie das eine oder das andere anders sein sollte; aber was alles ist da an Hemmnissen, so daß das, was wir ganz gut wissen können, was wir ganz gut geltend machen wollen, nicht Wirklichkeit werden kann. Da sind die Standes- und Klassenunterschiede selber und sind Klüfte zwischen den Klassen der Menschen, Klüfte, die nicht einfach dadurch zu überbrücken sind, daß man eine Meinung darüber hat, wie sie überbrückt werden sollen, sondern Klüfte, die sich dadurch ergeben, daß eben, ich habe gestern so großen Wert darauf gelegt, der Wille, der das eigentliche Zentrum der Menschennatur ist, engagiert ist durch die Art und Weise, wie man sich in den Stand, in die Klasse oder in irgendeinen anderen sozialen Zusammenhang hineingelebt hat. - Und wiederum, wenn man auf etwas sieht, was sich in unserer neueren Zeit unter den komplizierten wirtschaftlichen Verhältnissen immer mehr und mehr neben die Standesvorurteile, die Standesempfindungen, die Standeswillensimpulse als solche Hemmnisse hingestellt hat, so findet man diese in den wirtschaftlichen Einrichtungen selber. Wir werden in gewisse wirtschaftliche Einrichtungen hineingeboren und können aus diesen nicht heraus. - Und eine dritte Art Hemmnisse für das wirkliche soziale Zusammenwirken der Menschen ist da: daß diejenigen, die vielleicht gerade als führende Persönlichkeiten in der Lage wären, jenen tiefen Einfluß auszuüben, von dem ich eben gesprochen habe, andere Schranken haben, die Schranken nämlich, die sich ergeben aus gewissen dogmatischen Lehren über das Leben, aus gewissen dogmatischen Empfindungen über das Leben. Wenn viele Menschen über die wirtschaftlichen Schranken, über die Klassen- und Standesschranken nicht hinaus können, so können viele nicht über ihre Begriffs- und Ideenschranken hinaus. Das alles ist, möchte ich sagen, schon reichlich Lebensinhalt geworden, der sich dann in seinem Ergebnis vielfach als Chaos darstellt.
Aber wenn man nun versucht, über alles, was sich durch diese Hemmnisse und Klüfte hindurch in den unbewußten Untergründen der Seelen in den letzten Jahrzehnten gezeigt hat, klar zu werden, dann wird man darauf hingewiesen, daß eigentlich die Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage ganz woanders liegen, als wo man sie gewöhnlich sucht. Sie liegen darinnen, daß in der neueren Zeit der Menschheitsentwickelung gleichzeitig mit dem Heraufkommen der das Leben so kompliziert machenden Technik in der zivilisierten Welt zugleich der Glaube an die Allmacht des Einheitsstaates heraufgekommen ist. Und immer stärker und stärker ist dieser Glaube an die Allmacht des Einheitsstaates im Laufe des 19. Jahrhunderts geworden. So stark und fest ist er geworden, daß er selbst unter den mancherlei erschütternden Urteilen, die sich große Menschenmassen über die soziale Organisation gebildet haben, nicht erschüttert worden ist.
Und mit dem, was als dogmatischer Glaube so über die Menschen kommt, verbindet sich dann etwas anderes. Mit diesem Glauben will man daran festhalten, daß in demjenigen, auf das man den Glauben wendet, eine Art Allheilmittel liege, so daß man dann in der Lage sein könne, zu sagen, welches der beste Staat ist; daß man dann auch schon, ich will nicht sagen, das Paradies heraufzuzaubern versuchen kann, daß man aber doch meint, man treffe die denkbar besten Einrichtungen.
Dadurch aber ist uns eines verlorengegangen, das sich vor allem dem aufdrängt, der das Leben seiner Wirklichkeit nach so betrachtet, wie es in den letzten Tagen hier betrachtet worden ist. Wer sich gerade dadurch, daß er darauf angewiesen ist, seine Ideen für die geistige Welt auszubilden, einen rechten Sinn für die Wirklichkeit aneignet, der kommt nämlich darauf, daß die besten Einrichtungen, die man für irgendein Zeitalter ersinnen kann, nur eben höchstens ihre Güte für dieses Zeitalter behalten können, daß es aber mit dem, was in der sozialen Organisation da ist, eine ähnliche Bewandtnis hat, wie zum Beispiel mit dem natürlichen Organismus des Menschen.
Ich will nicht ein fatales Analogiespiel treiben, aber ich möchte zur Veranschaulichung auf das hinweisen, was eben vom menschlichen Organismus aus auch im sozialen Organismus begriffen werden kann: Wir können niemals sagen, daß der menschliche, übrigens auch der tierische und pflanzliche Organismus nur in einer aufsteigenden Entwickelung sein könne. Soll das, was organisch ist, gedeihen, soll es seine Kräfte aus sich heraustreiben, dann muß es alt werden können, dann muß es auch absterben können. Wer genauer den menschlichen Organismus studiert, findet, daß dieses Absterben in jedem Augenblicke in ihm vorhanden ist. Immerfort sind die aufsteigenden, sprießenden, sprossenden, fruchtenden Kräfte vorhanden, immer auch sind die abbauenden Kräfte vorhanden. Und der Mensch verdankt gerade diesen abbauenden Kräften sehr viel. Ja, derjenige, der den Materialismus vollständig überwinden will, der muß sein Augenmerk gerade auf diese abbauenden Kräfte im menschlichen Organismus richten. Er muß überall das aufsuchen im menschlichen Organismus, wo die Materie gewissermaßen unter dem Einfluß der Organisation zerfällt. Und er wird dann finden, daß gerade an den Zerfall der Materie die Ausbildung des geistigen Lebens im Menschen gebunden ist. Wir können die menschliche Organisation nur begreifen, wenn wir neben den aufsteigenden, sprießenden, sprossenden und fruchtenden Kräften den kontinuierlichen Verfall beobachten.
Und wenn ich das auch nur zur Veranschaulichung sage, so kann es eben doch veranschaulichen, was der unbefangene Beobachter auch für den sozialen Organismus finden muß: Der soziale Organismus stirbt zwar nicht, dadurch unterscheidet er sich zum Beispiel von dem menschlichen Organismus, aber er wandelt sich, und aufsteigende und absteigende Kräfte sind ihm naturgemäß. Nur der begreift den sozialen Organismus, der weiß: wenn man die besten Absichten verwirklicht und irgend etwas auf irgendeinem Gebiet des sozialen Lebens herstellt, was aus den Verhältnissen heraus gewonnen ist, wird es nach einiger Zeit dadurch, daß Menschen mit ihren Individualitäten drinnen arbeiten, Absterbekräfte, Niedergangskräfte zeigen. Was für das Jahr zwanzig eines Jahrhunderts das Richtige ist, das hat sich bis zum Jahre vierzig desselben Jahrhunderts so verwandelt, daß es bereits seine Niedergangskräfte in sich enthält. Derlei Dinge werden manchmal gewiß in Abstraktionen ausgesprochen. Aber man bleibt im intellektualistischen Zeitalter bei diesen Abstraktionen, auch wenn man vermeint, noch so praktisch zu denken. Und so erleben wir es auch, daß die Leute zwar im allgemeinen zugeben, es seien im sozialen Organismus Absterbekräfte, Niedergangskräfte enthalten, der soziale Organismus müsse sich immer umwandeln, die Niedergangskräfte müßten immer neben den Aufgangskräften wirksam sein — aber da, wo wir mit unsern Absichten, mit unserm Willen in die soziale Ordnung eingreifen, da bemerken wir das in der Abstraktion Zugegebene doch nicht.
So konnte man in der sozialen Ordnung, die vor dem Weltkrieg war, sehen, daß der Kapitalismus zu einer gewissen Befriedigung auch für breitere Massen dann geführt hat, wenn er in einer Entwickelung drinnensteckte, die aufsteigender Art war. Die Löhne stiegen, wenn der Kapitalismus für irgendeinen Zweig des Lebens in aufsteigender Entwickelung war. Wenn man also immer weiter und weiter kam, wenn sich das Kapital immer freier und freier betätigen konnte, dann konnte man sehen, daß tatsächlich der Arbeitslohn und die Verwendungsmöglichkeiten der Arbeit immer mehr und mehr stiegen. Aber nicht in derselben Weise hat man das Augenmerk darauf gelenkt, wie in diesem Steigen zu gleicher Zeit andere soziale Faktoren enthalten sind, die ganz parallel gehen und die bewirken müssen, daß sich Niedergangskräfte geltend machten, daß sich zum Beispiel bei steigenden Löhnen die Lebensverhältnisse so gestalten mußten, daß eben die steigenden Löhne nach und nach so wirkten, daß sie gar nicht außerordentlich viel zur Besserung der Lebenslage beitrugen. Gemerkt hat man selbstverständlich solche Dinge. Aber die sozialen Strömungen verfolgte man nicht so, daß die Anschauungen selber lebens- und wirklichkeitsgemäß gewesen wären.
Und deshalb muß das soziale Leben heute, wo wir an einen wichtigen historischen Punkt hingestellt sind, in seinen Fundamenten betrachtet werden, nicht an den Oberflächenerscheinungen. Und da wird man auf die einzelnen Zweige, die in unserem sozialen Leben enthalten sind, geführt.
Einer dieser sozialen Zweige ist das geistige Leben der Menschheit. Dieses geistige Leben der Menschheit - wir können es selbstverständlich nicht abgesondert betrachten von dem übrigen sozialen Leben - hat seine eigenen Bedingungen. Diese sind an die menschlichen Individualitäten gebunden. Das geistige Leben gedeiht auf dem Untergrund der menschlichen Wesenheiten eines Zeitalters. Und davon hängt dann das ganze übrige soziale Leben ab. Man denke sich nur, wie vieles sich auf manchen sozialen Gebieten einfach dadurch verändert hat, daß von dem oder jenem diese oder jene Erfindung oder Entdeckung gemacht worden ist. Dann aber, wenn man fragt: Wie ist es zu dieser Erfindung oder Entdekkung gekommen, dann muß man auf den Grund der Menschenseelen hinsehen: wie die Menschenseelen durch einen gewissen Werdegang hindurchgegangen sind, wie sie dazu gebracht worden sind, ich möchte sagen, in ihren stillen Kämmerlein irgend etwas zu finden, was dann ganze breite Gebiete des sozialen Lebens umgestaltet hat. Man frage sich nur einmal so, daß das Urteil eine soziale Bedeutung gewinnt: Was hat es für eine Bedeutung für das ganze soziale Leben, daß die Differential- und Integralrechnung von Leibniz gefunden worden ist? Man versuche einmal, von diesem Gesichtspunkt aus den Einfluß des geistigen Lebens auf das soziale Leben wirklichkeitsgemäß zu betrachten, und man wird, weil dieses geistige Leben seine eigenen Bedingungen hat, darauf kommen, daß in diesem geistigen Leben ein besonders gearteter Zweig des allgemeinen sozialen Lebens gegeben ist.
Und wenn man fragt, welches diese besondere Artung ist, so muß man sagen: Alles, was im geistigen Leben der Menschheit wirklich gedeihen kann, muß aus der menschlichen innersten produktiven Kraft hervorgehen. Und man wird am günstigsten finden müssen für das gesamte soziale Leben, was sich in diesem Geistes!leben unbehindert aus dem entwickeln kann, was auf dem Grund der menschlichen Seele ist.
Dann aber stehen wir unter einem anderen Impuls, der immer mehr und mehr in den letzten Jahrzehnten hervorgetreten ist: unter dem Impuls, der sich dann hineinergossen hat in den Glauben an die Allmacht des Staatslebens, daß die zivilisierte Menschheit aus den Untergründen ihres Wesens heraus immer demokratischer und demokratischer geworden ist. Das heißt, daß Aspirationen in den breiten Massen der Menschheit vorhanden sind: jeder Mensch müsse mitreden, wenn es sich darum handelt, menschliche Einrichtungen zu treffen. Dieser demokratische Zug kann einem sympathisch oder unsympathisch sein, darauf kommt es zunächst nicht an. Darauf kommt es an, daß er sich als eine reale Kraft im geschichtlichen Leben der neueren Menschheit ergeben hat. Aber gerade wenn man auf das, was sich als solcher demokratischer Zug ergeben hat, hinschaut, dann kommt einem bei einem wirklichkeitsgemäßen Denken ganz besonders in den Sinn, wie aus dem inneren Drängen, aus dem geistigen Leben Mitteleuropas heraus bei den edelsten Geistern sich Ideen gerade über das staatliche Zusammenleben der Menschen entwickelt haben.
Ich will nicht sagen, daß man heute noch einen besonderen Wert zu legen hat auf das, was einer der edelsten deutschen Menschen als seinen «geschlossenen Handelsstaat» hingestellt hat. Auf den Inhalt wird man weniger Rücksicht nehmen müssen als auf das edle Wollen Fichtes. Aber ich möchte darauf hinweisen, daß in einer sehr populären Form um die Wende des 18. zum 19. Jahrhundert aufgetreten ist, was man das Streben nach Ideen eines Naturrechts nennen kann. Dazumal haben sich sehr bedeutende und edle Geister damit beschäftigt, die Frage zu beantworten: Wie steht Mensch zu Mensch? Was ist überhaupt die innerste Wesenheit des Menschen in sozialer Beziehung? Und sie glaubten, wenn sie den Menschen recht verstehen, auch finden zu können, was für den Menschen rechtens ist. Das Vernunftrecht, das Naturrecht haben sie das genannt. Sie glaubten, aus der Vernunft heraus finden zu können, welches die besten Rechtsinstitutionen sind, unter denen die Menschen am besten gedeihen können. Sie brauchen nur Roftecks Werk zu betrachten, um zu sehen, wie in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts noch bei vielen die Idee des Naturrechts regsam war.
Dem hat sich aber im Laufe der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts in Europa die historische Rechtsschule gegenübergestellt. Diese war davon beseelt, daß man nicht aus der Vernunft herausspinnen könne, was rechtens ist unter den Menschen.
Aber man bemerkte in dieser historischen Rechtsschule nicht, was es ist, das alles Ausdenken eines Vernunftrechts unfruchtbar macht; man bemerkte nicht, daß unter dem Einfluß des intellektuellen Zeitalters eine gewisse Unfruchtbarkeit in das Geistesleben der Menschheit gekommen war. Und so sagten sich die Gegner des Naturrechts: die Menschen seien nicht dazu berufen, aus ihrer Seele heraus etwas von dem zu finden, was rechtens ist, deshalb müsse man das Recht historisch studieren; man müsse darauf hinschauen, wie sich die Menschen geschichtlich entwickelt haben, wie aus ihren Gewohnheiten, aus ihren instinktiven gegenseitigen Verhältnissen sich Rechtszustände ergeben haben.
Man muß das Recht historisch studieren! Gegen solches Studium hat sich dann der freie Geist Nietzsches gewendet in seiner Schrift «Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben». Er meinte, wenn man immer nur hinblicke auf das, was historisch in der Menschheit gelebt hat, dann könne man nicht zu einer Produktivität und zu tragfähigen Ideen für die Gegenwart kommen; was im Menschen an elementaren Kräften lebt, müsse sich gegen den historischen Sinn aufbäumen, um aus diesen Kräften heraus zu einer Konstitution sozialer Zusammenhänge zu kommen.
Unter den führenden Persönlichkeiten war gerade im 19. Jahrhundert, in der höchsten Blüte des Intellektualismus, ein Streit über das heraufgekommen, was eigentlich die Grundlagen des Rechts sind. Und damit war auch der Streit über die Grundlagen des Staates gegeben. Wenigstens in der damaligen Zeit leugnete man das gar nicht. Denn der Staat ist im Grunde genommen bloß die Endsummierung dessen, was sich an einzelnen Institutionen ergibt, in denen die Rechtskräfte leben. Und so war eigentlich mit der Tatsache, daß man den Sinn für Auffindung von Rechtsgrundlagen verloren hatte, gegeben, daß man auch über die eigentliche Wesenheit des Staates nicht mehr mit sich ins klare kommen konnte. Daher sehen wir, nicht etwa nur in den Theorien, sondern auch im praktischen Leben, wie das Leben des Staates im Verlaufe des 19. Jahrhunderts für unzählige Menschen, auch der breitesten Masse, ein Problem geworden ist, das gelöst werden sollte.
Das ging aber doch mehr, ich möchte sagen, in den oberen, bewußten Partien der Menschheitszivilisation vor sich. In den Untergründen bohrte das, was ich als das Heraufkommen des demokratischen Sinnes charakterisiert habe. Dieses Heraufkommen des demokratischen Sinnes führt uns, wenn es richtig verstanden wird, dahin, die Frage nach dem Wesen des Rechts viel gründlicher, viel wirklichkeitsgemäßer aufzufassen, als sie vielfach heute aufgefaßt wird. Es gibt heute viele Menschen, die es als eine Selbstverständlichkeit betrachten, daß man irgendwie aus dem einzelnen Menschen heraus auf das kommen könne, was eigentlich auf diesem oder jenem Gebiete das Recht ist. Allerdings, neuere Rechtsgelehrte verlieren mit einem solchen Streben schon den Boden; und sie finden dann, daß sie, wenn sie in dieser Weise philosophieren oder auch glauben, praktisch nachzudenken über das Leben, dann für das Recht den Inhalt verlieren, daß das Recht ihnen etwas Formales wird. Und dann sagen sie: Das, was bloß formal ist, muß einen Inhalt bekommen, in das muß sich das Wirtschaftliche als Inhalt hineinergießen.
So ist auf der einen Seite ein deutliches Gefühl vorhanden, wie ohnmächtig man ist, wenn man aus sich heraus zum Rechtsbegriff, zum Rechtsempfinden kommen will; auf der anderen Seite sucht man dennoch immer wieder und wiederum aus dem Menschen heraus das Wesen des Rechts. Der demokratische Sinn aber bäumt sich gerade gegen dieses Suchen auf. Denn, was sagt er? Er sagt: Es gibt überhaupt nicht eine allgemeine abstrakte Festsetzung des Rechts, sondern es gibt nur die Möglichkeit, daß sich Menschen, die in irgendeiner sozialen Gemeinschaft stehen, miteinander verständigen, daß sie sich gewissermaßen gegenseitig sagen: Das willst du von mir, das will ich von dir - und daß sie dann übereinkommen darüber, was sich dadurch für sie für Verhältnisse ergeben. Dann ergibt sich das Recht rein aus der Wirklichkeit dessen heraus, was Menschen gegenseitig von sich wollen, so daß es eigentlich ein Vernunftrecht gar nicht geben kann, daß auch alles, was als «historisches Recht» zustande gekommen ist, noch immer zustande kommen kann, wenn man nur den richtigen Boden dafür sucht, und daß die Menschen auf diesem Boden in ein solches Verhältnis kommen können, daß sie aus gegenseitiger Verständigung wirklichkeitsgemäß das Recht erst hervorbringen. «Ich will mitte den können, wenn das Recht entsteht!», das ist das, was der demokratische Sinn sagt. Und derjenige, der dann etwa theoretisch über das Recht Bücher schreiben will, der kann sich nicht aus den Fingern saugen, was das Recht ist, sondern der hat einfach hinzuschauen auf das, was unter Menschen als Recht entsteht, und hat es mehr oder weniger zu registrieren. Wir sehen auch in der Naturwissenschaft nicht so in die Tatsachenwelt hinein, daß wir aus unserem Kopf heraus die Naturgesetze formen, sondern wir lassen die Dinge zu uns reden und bilden danach die Naturgesetze. Wir nehmen an: das, was wir in die Naturgesetze hineinfassen wollen, sei bereits geschaffen; das aber, was im Rechtsleben vorhanden ist, das werde unter den Menschen geschaffen. Da ist das Leben auf einem anderen Niveau, Da steht der Mensch im Gebiete des Schaffens, und zwar als soziales Wesen, neben den anderen Menschen, damit ein Leben, das den Entwickelungssinn der Menschheit in die soziale Ordnung hineingießen will, zustande komme. Das ist eben der demokratische Sinn.
Das dritte, das sich heute hinstellt vor den Menschen und nach sozialen Neugestaltungen ruft, das sind die komplizierten wirtschaftlichen Verhältnisse, die heraufgekommen sind in der neueren Zeit, die ich nicht zu schildern brauche, weil sie sachgemäß von vielen Seiten geschildert werden. Man kann nun sagen: Diese wirtschaftlichen Verhältnisse sind durchaus so, daß sie wiederum aus anderen Bedingungen hervorgehen als die beiden anderen Gebiete des sozialen Organismus, als das Geistesleben - da muß alles, was fruchtbar werden kann in der sozialen Ordnung, aus der einzelnen menschlichen Individualität hervorgehen, nur das Schaffen des Einzelnen kann da den rechten Beitrag geben zur gesamten sozialen Ordnung - und als das Rechtsleben, auf dessen Gebiet es sich nur darum handeln kann, daß das Recht und damit auch das staatliche Wesen hervorgeht aus der Verständigung der Menschen. Beide Bedingungen, die eine, wie sie für das Geistesleben, die andere, wie sie für das staatlich-rechtliche Leben gilt, sind nicht da im wirtschaftlichen Leben.
Im wirtschaftlichen Leben ist es nicht so, daß das Urteil über das, was geschehen könne, aus einem einzelnen hervorspringen kann. Wir haben gerade im Laufe des 19. Jahrhunderts, wo unter der Menschheit der Intellektualismus so zur Blüte gekommen ist, sehen können, wie einzelne sehr bedeutende Menschen - ich sage das nicht aus Ironie heraus, sondern um die Dinge wahrheitsgemäß zu charakterisieren —, die auf den verschiedenen Gebieten stehen, über das eine und andere ihre Meinungen geäußert haben, Leute, die gut darinnenstanden im wirtschaftlichen Leben, denen man auch zutrauen konnte, daß sie ein Urteil hatten. Wenn sie sich dann über irgend etwas, was über ihr Gebiet hinausging, was auf die Gesetzgebung Einfluß gewann, äußern sollten, dann konnte man oftmals sagen: Ja, das, was dieser oder jener gesagt hat, zum Beispiel über den praktischen Einfluß der Goldwährung, ist bedeutend und gescheit —, man staunt sogar, wenn man verfolgt, was sich abgespielt hat in den verschiedenen wirtschaftlichen Verbänden in der Zeit, als in verschiedenen Staaten der Übergang zu dieser Goldwährung gemacht worden ist, über die Summe von Gescheitheit, die da in die Welt gebracht worden ist; wenn man aber weiterstudiert, wie sich dann die Dinge entwickelt haben, die vorausgesagt worden sind, dann sieht man: da hat dieser oder jener sehr bedeutende Mensch zum Beispiel gesagt, unter dem Einfluß der Goldwährung würden die Zollschranken verschwinden. Das Gegenteil davon ist eingetreten!
Und man muß sagen: Auf dem Gebiete des wirtschaftlichen Lebens ist es so, daß einem Gescheitheit, die einem sehr viel helfen kann auf dem Gebiete des Geisteslebens, eigentlich nicht immer ein sicherer Führer sein kann. Man kommt allmählich darauf, sich zu sagen: In bezug auf das Wirtschaftsleben kann überhaupt die einzelne Individualität keine maßgebenden Urteile fällen. Da können Urteile nur zustande kommen gewissermaßen als Kollektivurteile, indem sie sich ergeben durch das Zusammenwirken vieler, die in den verschiedensten Gebieten des Lebens drinnenstehen. Das darf wiederum nicht bloße theoretische Weisheit sein, sondern muß lebenspraktische Lebensweisheit werden, daß wirklich Geltung habende Urteile nur aus dem Zusammenklang von vielen hervorgehen können.
Damit gliedert sich das gesamte soziale Leben in drei voneiander verschiedene Gebiete. Auf dem Boden des Geisteslebens hat der Einzelne zu sprechen, auf dem Boden des demokratischen Rechtslebens haben alle Menschen zu sprechen, weil es da auf das Verhältnis von Mensch zu Mensch aus der rein menschlichen Wesenheit heraus ankommt, darüber kann sich jeder Mensch äußern, und auf dem Gebiete des Wirtschaftslebens ist weder das Urteil der Individualität noch das Urteil, das zusammenfließt aus den unterschiedslosen Urteilen aller Menschen, möglich. Auf diesem Gebiete handelt es sich darum, daß der Einzelne in eine Ganzheit Sachkenntnis und Erfahrung auf seinem Gebiete hineinträgt, daß aber dann aus Verbänden heraus ein Kollektivurteil in der richtigen Weise entstehen kann. Das kann nur entstehen, wenn die berechtigten Urteile der einzelnen sich abschleifen können. Darum aber müssen die Verbände so gestaltet sein, daß in ihnen zusammenfließt, was sich abschleifen kann und dann in der Lage ist, ein Gesamturteil zu geben. So zerfällt das gesamte soziale Leben in diese drei Gebiete. Nicht irgendeine utopistische Idee sagt uns das, sondern die wirklichkeitsgemäße Betrachtung des Lebens.
Aber nun, das muß immer wieder und wiederum festgehalten werden, trägt der soziale Organismus, der kleine oder der große, neben den aufsteigenden Kräften auch immer die Niedergangskräfte in sich. Und so trägt alles, was wir in das soziale Leben hineinpulsieren lassen, zu gleicher Zeit seine Zerstörungskräfte in sich. Eine fortwährende Heilung ist im sozialen Organismus notwendig.
Sehen wir von diesem Gesichtspunkt aus auf das geistige Leben hin, so können wir in Gemäßheit der Betrachtungen, die hier in diesen Tagen gepflogen worden sind, geradezu sagen: Im orientalischen sozialen Leben war das Geistesleben universell maßgebend. Alles einzelne, im Grunde genommen auch im staatlichen, auch im wirtschaftlichen Leben, ist aus den Impulsen des geistigen Lebens so hervorgeholt worden, wie ich das in den letzten Tagen hier geschildert habe. Betrachtet man aber den sozialen Verlauf, dann findet man, daß für ein gewisses Zeitalter — für jedes Zeitalter ist es anders — aus dem geistigen Leben Impulse herausfließen, die in die sozialen Gestaltungen hineingehen, daß sich dann wirtschaftliche Verbände bilden nach den Ideen aus dem Geistesleben heraus, daß der Staat Einrichtungen trifft aus dem Geistesleben heraus. Aber man sieht auch, daß das Geistesleben fortwährend eine Tendenz hat, Niedergangskräfte zu entwickeln oder Kräfte, aus denen sich solche Niedergangskräfte bilden. Würde das Geistesleben in seiner Allmacht vor uns dastehen, so würden wir sehen, wie aus diesem Geistesleben heraus sich fortwährend der Impuls ergibt, daß die Menschen sich in Klassen, in Stände sondern. Und studiert man die Gründe, warum im Orient die Kasteneinteilung eine so große Macht hat, so wird man finden, daß man die Kasteneinteilung als notwendige Begleiterscheinung dessen ansieht, daß sich das soziale Leben aus den geistigen Impulsen heraus entwickelt hat. Und so sehen wir noch bei Plato, wie er darauf hinweist, daß die Menschheit selbst geschieden werden müsse im idealen Staat in Nährstand, Lehrstand, Wehrstand, also in Stände geschieden werden müsse. Wer die Gründe untersucht, warum das ist, der wird finden, daß sich eben in der Abstufung, die einmal mit der Allmacht des Geisteslebens gegeben ist, die Stände, die Klassenunterschiede ergeben, und daß dann innerhalb der Klassen wiederum die menschliche Individualität auftritt, die diese Klassen als Schädigung der sozialen Gestaltung empfindet. Also innerhalb des Geisteslebens finden sich fortwährend die Anlässe dazu, daß Klüfte zwischen Ständen, Klassen, selbst Kasten entstehen.
Und wenn wir dann auf das Gebiet des Staatswesens sehen, dann müssen wir vorzugsweise auf diesem Gebiete suchen, was ich in diesen Tagen bezeichnet habe als die Eroberung der Arbeit im Verlaufe der menschlichen Entwickelung für den gesamten einheitlichen sozialen Organismus. Gerade dadurch, daß sich aus Asien herüber die Theokratie zu dem Staatswesen entwickelte, das nun unter dem Einfluß der Rechtsimpulse steht, gerade dadurch entwickelt sich das Problem der Arbeit. Indem jeder einzelne zu seinem Recht kommen sollte, entwickelte sich die Forderung, daß die Arbeit richtig in den sozialen Organismus hineingestellt werden solle. Aber indem sich vom religiösen Leben das Rechtsleben loslöste, indem sich das immer mehr und mehr zur Demokratisierung hindrängt, indem sich das immer mehr und mehr entwickelte, sehen wir, wie sich in die Menschheit auch immer mehr und mehr ein gewisses formalistisches Element des sozialen Denkens hineindrängte.
Das Recht entwickelte sich ja aus dem heraus, was der einzelne Mensch dem andern zu sagen hat. Nicht aus der Vernunft kann man das Recht herausspinnen. Aber aus dem wechselseitigen Verkehr der Vernünfte, wenn ich mich des Wortes bedienen darf, unter den Menschen entsteht das lebendige Rechtsleben. Das tendiert daher zur Logik, zum formalistischen Gedanken hin. Aber indem die Menschheit eben durch ihre Epochen geht, geht sie durch Einseitigkeiten hindurch. Wie sie durch die Einseitigkeit der Theokratie hindurchgegangen ist, geht sie später durch die Einseitigkeit des Staates hindurch. Dadurch aber wird im sozialen Leben das logische Element gepflegt, das Element, das ausdenkt. Man braucht sich nur zu erinnern, welche Summe von menschlicher Denkkraft gerade auf das Rechtsleben im Verlaufe der geschichtlichen Entwickelung verwendet worden ist.
Aber dadurch steuert die Menschheit auch zu der Kraft der Abstraktion. Und man wird empfinden können, wie immer mehr und mehr das menschliche Denken gerade unter dem Einfluß des Rechtsprinzips abstrakter und abstrakter wird. Was aber auf einem Gebiet die Menschheit ergreift, das dehnt sich zu gewissen Zeiten über das ganze Menschenleben aus. Und so, möchte ich sagen, wurde, wie ich das früher angedeutet habe, sogar das Religionsleben in das juristische Leben herübergenommen. Der Weltengesetzgebende und den Menschen Gnade verleihende Gott des Orients wurde ein richtender Gott. Weltengesetzmäßigkeit im Kosmos wurde Weltgerechtigkeit. Das sehen wir insbesondere im Mittelalter. Damit aber war in die menschlichen Denkund Empfindungsgewohnheiten etwas wie Abstraktion hineingekommen. Man wollte immer mehr und mehr das Leben aus den Abstraktionen heraus meistern.,
Und so dehnte sich das abstrahierende Leben auch über das religiöse Leben, über das geistige Leben auf der einen Seite und über das wirtschaftliche Leben auf der anderen Seite aus. Immer mehr und mehr gewann man Vertrauen zu der Allmacht des Staates, der auf sein abstraktes Verwaltungs- und Verfassungsleben eingestellt war. Immer mehr und mehr fand man es dem Fortschritt gemäß, daß das geistige Leben in Form des Erziehungslebens ganz einfließen sollte in die Staatswelt. Dann aber mußte es eingefangen werden in abstrakte Verhältnisse, wie sie mit dem Rechtsleben verknüpft sind. Das Wirtschaftliche wurde auch gewissermaßen aufgesogen von dem, was man für den Staat als das Angemessene empfand. Und in den Zeiten, in denen die moderne Art des Wirtschaftens heraufkam, war die Meinung allgemein, daß der Staat diejenige Macht sein müsse, die vor allen Dingen über die richtige Gestaltung auch des Wirtschaftslebens zu bestimmen habe. Damit aber bringen wir die anderen Zweige des Lebens unter die Macht der Abstraktion. So abstrakt das selber aussieht, so wirklichkeitsgemäß ist es aber. Und ich möchte das nur veranschaulichen mit Bezug auf die menschliche Erziehung.
Es können sich in unserem Zeitalter, wo die Gescheitheit so billig ist, Menschen zu einem kleinen oder großen Kollegium — das ist schon ganz gleichgültig - zusammensetzen, um auszudenken, welches die besten pädagogischen Maßregeln sind. Sie werden — ich sage es ohne Ironie -, wenn sie so zusammenkommen und sich ausdenken, wie erzogen werden soll und was alles in dieser oder jener Klasse im Lehrplan sein soll, ganz Ausgezeichnetes ausdenken. Ich bin davon überzeugt, daß diese Menschen, wenn sie nur einigermaßen gescheit sind, und das sind heute die meisten Menschen, ideale Programme zustande bringen. Wir leben oder lebten wenigstens — denn man sucht ja schon davon abzukommen - in der Zeit der Programme. Was haben wir denn eigentlich reichlicher als Programme, als Leitsätze auf diesem oder jenem Lebensgebiet! Da werden Gesellschaften und wieder Gesellschaften begründet, die entwerfen ihre Programme: das soll so oder so sein. Ich habe gar nichts einzuwenden gegen diese Programme, bin davon überzeugt, daß keiner, der Kritik an diesen Programmen übt, im Grunde bessere macht. Nur kommt es nicht darauf an. Denn das, was wir ausdenken, können wir der Wirklichkeit aufdrängen, aber die Wirklichkeit wird dann nicht so, daß Menschen in ihr leben können. Und auf das letztere kommt es an.
Und so ist es, ich möchte sagen, zu einem vorläufigen Abschluß auf diesem Gebiete gekommen. Man hat gesehen, wie ein Mensch mit den besten, edelsten Absichten für die Menschheitsentwickelung der allerneuesten Zeit ein solches Programm für die ganze zivilisierte Welt in vierzehn ausgezeichneten Punkten aufgestellt hat. Es ist sofort zersplittert, als es mit der Wirklichkeit in Kontakt kam. Man sollte an dem Schicksal der vierzehn Wilsonschen abstrakten Punkte, die aus gescheiten Menschenhirnen hervorgegangen sind, aber nicht wirklichkeitsgemäß waren, nicht aus dem Leben gewonnen waren, außerordentlich viel lernen.
Und so kommt es auch in der Pädagogik, in dem Erziehungs- und Unterrichtswesen eben gar nicht auf Programme an, die doch nur aus dem Staatsleben und Rechtsleben heraus gegeben werden. Da kann als Verordnung ergehen in der allerbesten Weise, man solle dies oder jenes machen; aber in der Wirklichkeit hat man es zu tun mit einem Lehrerkollegium, das Lehrer mit diesen oder jenen Fähigkeiten umschließt. Mit diesen hat man lebensvoll zu rechnen. Kein Programm kann verwirklicht werden. Nur das kann verwirklicht werden, was aus den Individualitäten dieser Lehrer hervorgehen kann. Man muß Empfindung, Gefühl haben für diese Individualitäten. Man wird jeden Tag aufs neue aus dem unmittelbaren Leben des einzelnen heraus sagen müssen, was zu geschehen hat. Dann wird man nicht irgendein allumfassendes Programm hinstellen können. Das bleibt eine Abstraktion. Geschaffen werden kann etwas nur aus dem Leben heraus. Denken wir uns den extremsten Fall: Es wären für irgendein Gebiet überhaupt nur eine Anzahl Lehrer da mit mittleren Fähigkeiten. Nun, selbst wenn diese Lehrer in einer Stunde, wo sie nicht zu unterrichten, sondern nur zu denken brauchen, Lehrziele ausdenken sollten, Verordnungen geben sollten, so würden sie gewiß etwas außerordentlich Gescheites zusammenbringen. Aber etwas anderes ist es nun, an die Wirklichkeit des Unterrichts heranzutreten, da kommen lediglich ihre Fähigkeiten als Gesamtmenschen in Frage. Es ist durchaus ein anderes, ob man mit dem unmittelbaren Leben rechnet oder nur mit dem, was bloß aus dem Intellekt herausgeflossen ist. Dieser Intellekt hat nämlich die Eigenschaft, daß er die Dinge übertreibt, daß er im Grunde genommen immer das Unermeßliche der Welt umfassen will. Im wirklichen Leben sollte dieser Intellekt bloß Diener sein auf dem einzelnen konkreten Gebiet.
Aber wenn man besonders bedenkt, daß sich das, was zwischen den Menschen entsteht, insofern sie einander in völliger Gleichheit in ihrem Menschenwesen gegenüberstehen, als Recht entwickeln kann, dann muß man sagen: Was sich im allgemeinen unter Menschen entwickelt, wird ganz richtig, wenn es aus den Abstraktionen der Gegenwart heraus kommt, denn so empfinden die Menschen; sie begründen Rechtsverhältnisse untereinander, die auf gewissen abstrakten Menschenbegriffen fußen, und dadurch, daß die Menschen auf demokratischem Boden zusammenkommen, erst zu den bestimmten Rechtsverhältnissen werden. Aber es wird innerhalb des Allgemein-Menschlichen nichts geschaffen werden können, was aus dem unmittelbaren Leben des einzelnen hervorsprießen will, sondern nur, was für die Menschen im allgemeinen gelten kann. Das heißt, es wird auf demokratischem Boden, gerade wenn man ehrlich sein will, nicht das fließen können, was aus der Individualität des Menschen innerhalb des Geisteslebens erfließen soll. Daher ist es notwendig, daß man einsieht, wie zwar der Glaube an die Allmacht des Rechts- und Staatslebens eine Zeiterscheinung war, wie es auch geschichtlich berechtigt war, daß in der Zeit, in der die modernen Staaten heraufkamen, sich diese der Schule annahmen, weil sie sie anderen Mächten abnehmen mußten, die sie nicht mehr richtig verwalteten. Man sollte die Geschichte nicht nach rückwärts korrigieren wollen.
Aber man muß sich klar sein, daß aus der Entwickelung der neuesten Zeit die Tendenz hervorgeht, das Geistesleben wieder selbständig in sich zu gestalten, so daß das Geistesleben in sich seine eigene soziale Gestaltung, seine eigene Verwaltung hat, so daß auch das, was in der einzelnen Schulstunde vor sich geht, aus dem lebendigen Leben der Lehrerindividualität hervorgehen kann und nicht aus der Beobachtung irgendwelcher Verordnungen. Wir müssen uns entschließen, obwohl es als Fortschritt angesehen worden ist, das Geistesleben und mit ihm die Schule dem Staate auszuliefern, diesen Weg wiederum rückgängig zu machen. Dann wird es möglich sein, daß innerhalb des Geisteslebens, auch auf dem Gebiete des Schulwesens, die freie menschliche Individualität zur Geltung kommt. Und es braucht sich niemand zu fürchten, daß dadurch etwa die Autorität litte! Nein, da wo aus der menschlichen Individualität heraus produktiv gewirkt werden soll, da sehnen sich diese Individualitäten nach der naturgemäßen Autorität. Schon an der Waldorfschule können wir das sehen. Da ist jeder froh, wenn ihm der eine oder andere eine Autorität sein kann, weil er das braucht, was dieser andere produziert aus seiner Individualität heraus.
Und so bleibt dem staatlich-rechtlichen Leben die Möglichkeit, aus demokratischem Sinn heraus zu wirken. Wiederum aber ist es so, daß das staatliche Leben gerade durch seine Neigung zur Abstraktheit es in sich selber trägt, die Kräfte zu entwickeln, die dann zu Niedergangskräften werden. Und wer studiert, wie innerhalb des Staatlich-Rechtlichen dadurch, daß die Neigung zur Abstraktion besteht, sich eigentlich das, was Menschen tun, immer mehr und mehr abtrennen muß von dem konkreten Interesse am einzelnen Lebensgebiet, der wird auch einsehen, wie gerade im Staatsleben die Grundlage liegt für jene Abstraktion, die sich innerhalb der Kapitalzirkulation immer mehr und mehr herausgebildet hat. Die moderne Kapitalbildung wird ja von den breiten Volksmassen heute vielfach angefochten. Aber so, wie der Kampf geführt wird, wird er eigentlich nur aus Unkenntnis der Verhältnisse heraus geführt. Denn derjenige, der das Kapital oder den Kapitalismus etwa abschaffen wollte, müßte das ganze moderne Wirtschaftsund soziale Leben abschaffen; denn dieses soziale Leben kann nicht unter einem anderen Prinzip leben als dem der Arbeitsteilung, und mit ihr ist zu gleicher Zeit die Kapitalbildung gegeben. Sie äußert sich in der neuesten Zeit insbesondere dadurch, daß ein großer Teil des Kapitals durch die Produktionsmittel repräsentiert wird. Das Wesentliche aber ist, daß der Kapitalismus erstens eine notwendige Erscheinung innerhalb des modernen Lebens ist, daß er aber auf der anderen Seite immerzu auch, gerade wenn er sich verstaatlicht, dazu führt, daß das Geld abgetrennt wird von den konkreten Einzelgebieten. Und im 19. Jahrhundert ist das so weit getrieben worden, daß das, was eigentlich zunächst zirkuliert im sozialen Leben, so abgetrennt wird von den einzelnen konkreten Lebensgebieten, wie bei einem Denker, der nur in Abstraktionen lebt, seine blassen Ideen von dem wirklichen Leben abgetrennt sind. Das Wirtschaftliche, das in dieser Weise von den einzelnen Lebensgebieten abgetrennt ist, ist das Geldkapital. Wenn ich irgendeine Summe in meiner Tasche habe, so kann diese Summe jedes beliebige wirtschaftliche Objekt oder auch Objekt des Geisteslebens repräsentieren. Wie ein ganz allgemeiner Begriff zu den einzelnen Erfahrungen sich verhält, so verhält sich dieses Element zu den einzelnen konkreten Lebensgebieten. Das ist es, warum die Krisen entstehen müssen innerhalb der sozialen Ordnung.
Diese Krisen sind vielfach studiert worden. Im Marxismus zum Beispiel spielt die Krisentheorie eine große Rolle. Der Fehler besteht darin, daß man die Krisen auf eindeutige Ursachenreihen zurückführt, während sie in Wirklichkeit auf zwei Unterströmungen zurückzuführen sind. Es kann sein, daß das Kapital überschüssig ist, dann führt es dazu, indem es als Überschüssiges zirkuliert, daß Krisen entstehen. Es kann aber auch sein, daß zu wenig Kapital da ist, dann führt das auch zu Krisen. Und diese Krisen sind von verschiedener Wesenheit. Diese Dinge werden auch in der heutigen Nationalökonomie nicht wirklichkeitsgemäß studiert. In der Wirklichkeit ist es so, daß ein Ding die allerverschiedensten Ursprünge haben kann.
Und so sieht man, daß geradeso, wie das Geistesleben die Neigung hat, zu Niedergangskräften zu führen, die aus den Standesunterschieden, den Klassen- und Kastenunterschieden hervorgehen, so das Leben, das auf Abstraktionen hinarbeitet, und das mit Recht, in sich die Tendenz hat, auf der einen Seite zu den aufsteigenden Kräften, die in der berechtigten Kapitalbildung liegen, zu führen, auf der anderen Seite aber dadurch, daß der Kapitalismus in abstraktes Wirtschaften hineinführt, bei dem man mit einer Summe von Kapital das eine und das andere machen kann, dazu zu führen, daß Krisen entstehen.
Wenn man dies merkt, wird man zum Sozialreformer und denkt etwas aus, was zum Heile führen soll. Allein da tritt einem das entgegen: daß die einzelne Individualität zwar maßgebend sein muß für das wirtschaftliche Leben, indem sie ihre Erfahrungen beibringt, in entsprechenden Verbänden, daß aber aus dieser einzelnen Individualität für sich allein das Maßgebende im Wirtschaftsleben nicht hervorgehen kann. Darum stellte ich als das Notwendige neben dem Rechtlich-Staatlichen und dem Geistigen die Assoziation für das Wirtschaftsleben hin.
Und hier war auffällig, als ich in Deutschland draußen in einer kleineren Versammlung von Arbeitern über Assoziationen sprach, daß man mir sagte: Wir haben von vielem reden hören, aber was eigentlich Assoziationen sind, das wissen wir nicht, davon haben wir eigentlich nichts gehört. Die Assoziation ist keine Organisation, ist nicht irgendeine Koalition. Sie entsteht dadurch, daß sich die einzelnen Wirtschaftenden zusammenfinden, und daß jeder einzelne nicht das aufnimmt, was aus irgendeiner Zentralstelle heraus gemacht wird, sondern daß der einzelne das beitragen kann, was er aus seiner Erkenntnis des Gebietes, in dem er darinnensteht, weiß und kann. Und aus dem Zusammenartbeiten, bei dem ein jeder sein Bestes gibt und wo das, was geschieht, durch den Zusammenklang einer Anzahl entsteht, aus solchen Assoziationen kann sich erst alles übrige Wirtschaftliche ergeben.
Solche Assoziationen werden sich zusammenfügen. Das wird schon entstehen, ich habe keine Sorge. Wer mir sagt, das ist Utopie, dem sage ich: Ich weiß, daß diese Assoziationen entstehen einfach aus den unterbewußten Kräften im Menschen. Wir können aber diese Assoziationen fördern durch die Vernunft, wir können sie schneller entstehen lassen oder aber warten, bis sie sich aus der Not heraus entwickeln. In diesen Assoziationen werden vereinigt sein diejenigen, die Produktion, Handel treiben, und die Konsumenten. Und bloß Produktion, Zirkulation der Waren, der Güter und Konsumtion werden darinnen eine Rolle spielen. Die Arbeit wird immer mehr und mehr in das Gebiet des Rechtslebens hineinkommen. In bezug auf die Arbeit müssen sich die Menschen in demokratischer Art verständigen. Dadurch wird die Arbeit abgetrennt von dem, was einzig und allein im Gebiet des Wirtschaftslebens wirksam sein kann. Das kann nur das sein, was aus einem kollektiven Urteil in Assoziationen hervorgeht durch die Vereinigung von Produzenten und Konsumenten mit denen, die den Verkehr vermitteln.
Auf dem Gebiete des Wirtschaftslebens, in den Assoziationen, werden daher nur die Güter eine Rolle spielen. Damit ist aber etwas sehr Bedeutsames gegeben, daß wir überhaupt aufhören werden, über Preis und Wert einer Ware irgendwie feste Grundsätze aufzustellen, sondern wir werden sagen: Was Preis, was Wert irgendeines Gutes ist, ist etwas, was sich mit den Lebensverhältnissen ändert. Preis und Wert werden aufgedrückt werden durch das, was als Kollektivurteil aus den Assoziationen hervorgeht. Ich kann das nicht weiter schildern; aber man kann das Weitere in meinem Buche «Die Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage» nachlesen.
Ich habe nur darauf hindeuten wollen, daß wir durch die Beobachtung darauf hingewiesen werden, wie das gesamte soziale Leben in drei Gebiete zerfällt, die aus ganz besonderen, verschiedenen Bedingungen hervorgehen: das Geistesleben, das Rechts- und Staatsleben und das Wirtschaftsleben, Diese arbeiten sich gewissermaßen innerhalb der modernen Zivilisationsentwickelung zu einer gewissen Selbständigkeit heraus. Diese Selbständigkeit zu verstehen und jedem Gebiet das Seine allmählich zuzuteilen, damit sie gerade in der richtigen Weise zusammenarbeiten können, das ist es, worauf es heute ankommt.
Man hat in der verschiedensten Weise in der Menschheit über diese Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus nachgedacht. Und man hat auch, als da und dort die «Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage» von mir bekannt wurden, auf das eine und andere, was aus Früherem schon anklingt, hingewiesen. Nun, ich will nicht irgendeine Prioritätsfrage aufwerfen. Es kommt nicht darauf an, ob der einzelne dies oder das gefunden hat, sondern wie es sich ins Leben einführt. Man könnte sich nur freuen, wenn recht viele Menschen darauf kämen. Aber das muß doch bemerkt werden: Wenn von Montesqutieu in Frankreich eine Art Dreiteilung des sozialen Organismus definiert wird, so ist das einfach eine Dreiteilung. Da wird darauf hingewiesen, daß diese drei Gebiete eben durchaus verschiedene Bedingungen haben; darum solle man sie voneinander abtrennen. Das ist nicht die Tendenz meines Buches. Da handelt es sich nicht darum, so zu unterscheiden: Geistesleben, Rechtsleben und Wirtschaftsleben, wie man am Menschen unterscheiden würde das Nerven-Sinnessystem, Herz-Lungensystem und Stoffwechselsystem, indem man dabei sagen würde, das seien drei voneinander geschiedene Systeme. Mit solcher Einteilung ist nichts getan, sondern erst, wenn man sieht, wie diese verschiedenen Gebiete zusammenwirken, wie sie am besten eine Einheit werden dadurch, daß jedes aus seinen Bedingungen heraus arbeitet. So ist es auch im sozialen Organismus. Wenn wir wissen, wie wir das Geistesleben, das rechtlich-staatliche Leben und das Wirtschaftsleben jedes auf seine ureigenen Bedingungen stellen, aus seinen ureigenen Kräften heraus arbeiten lassen, dann wird sich auch die Einheit des sozialen Organismus ergeben. Und dann wird man sehen, daß aus jedem einzelnen dieser Gebiete gewisse Niedergangskräfte hervorgettieben werden, die aber durch das Zusammenwirken mit den anderen Gebieten wiederum geheilt werden. Damit ist hingewiesen, nicht wie bei Montesquieu auf eine Dreiteilung des sozialen Organismus, sondern auf eine Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus, die sich aber dadurch in der Einheit des gesamten sozialen Organismus zusammenfindet, daß ja jeder Mensch allen drei Gebieten angehört. Die menschliche Individualität, auf die doch alles ankommt, steht in diesem dreigegliederten sozialen Organismus so drinnen, daß sie die drei Glieder miteinander verbindet.
So können wir sagen, daß — gerade wenn man sich anregen läßt von dem, was hier gesagt worden ist — nicht etwa eine Teilung des sozialen Organismus, sondern die Gliederung desselben angestrebt wird, gerade damit die Einheit in der richtigen Weise zustande komme. Und man kann auch, wenn man mehr an die Oberfläche tritt, sehen, wie seit mehr als einem Jahrhundert die Menschheit Europas dahin tendiert, eine solche Gliederung zu suchen. Sie wird kommen, auch wenn die Menschen sie bewußt nicht wollen werden; denn unbewußt werden sie sich so im Wirtschaftlichen, Geistigen, Rechtlich-Staatlichen bewegen, daß diese Dreigliederung kommen wird. Sie ist etwas, was von der Menschheitsentwickelung selber gefordert wird.
Und so kann man auch darauf hinweisen, wie die drei Impulse, die gegenüber diesen drei verschiedenen Lebensgebieten in Betracht kommen, einmal wie drei bedeutungsvolle Ideale, wie drei Devisen für das soziale Leben, in die europäische Zivilisation eingetreten sind. Da hat sich am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts im europäischen Westen der Ruf nach Freiheit, Gleichheit, Brüderlichkeit geltend gemacht. Wer würde sich nicht sagen, wenn er es mit der Entwickelung der neueren Zeit hält, daß in diese drei Devisen drei bedeutungsvolle menschliche Ideale gelegt sind? Aber auf der anderen Seite wiederum muß man sagen, daß es viele Menschen im 19. Jahrhundert gegeben hat, die sehr geistvoll widerlegt haben, daß irgendein einheitlicher sozialer Organismus, irgendein Staat möglich ist, wenn er diese drei Ideale miteinander verwirklichen soll. Mehr als ein geistvolles Werk ist geschrieben worden, in dem nachgewiesen ist, wie nicht gleichzeitig im Staat völlig vereint sein können Freiheit, Gleichheit, Brüderlichkeit. Und man kann nicht sagen, daß das, was da in geistvoller Weise geschrieben worden ist, nicht recht sehr bedenklich machen müsse. Und so ist man da wiederum einmal in einen Lebenswiderspruch hineingestellt.
Allein das Leben ist nicht dazu da, keine Widersprüche zu treiben, es ist überall widerspruchsvoll. Und es besteht darin, daß es die aufgeworfenen Widersprüche immer wieder überwindet. Gerade im Aufwerfen und Überwinden von Widersprüchen besteht das Leben. So ist es außerordentlich berechtigt, daß die drei großen Ideale von Freiheit, Gleichheit, Brüderlichkeit aufgestellt worden sind. Weil man aber im 19. Jahrhundert und bis in unsere Zeiten herein fortwährend geglaubt hat, daß alles ganz zentralistisch geordnet werden müsse, deshalb kam man auch in dieser Beziehung in die Lebensirrtümer hinein. Und deshalb konnte man nicht durchschauen, wie es keine Bedeutung hat, sich herumzuschlagen über die Art und Weise, wie die Produktionsmittel verwandt werden, wie der Kapitalismus entwickelt werden soll und so weiter, sondern daß es sich darum handelt, die Menschen in Verhältnisse zu bringen, in denen sie ihre sozialen Angelegenheiten aus den ureigensten Trieben ihres Wesens ordnen können. Da müssen wir sagen: Wir müssen lebensvoll erfassen, wie wirken muß die Freiheit im Geistesleben, die freie produktive Entfaltung der Individualität; wie wirken muß die Gleichheit im rechtlich-staatlichen Leben, wo jeder das, was jedem Menschen zukommt, mit jedem anderen Menschen im demokratischen Sinn entwickeln soll; wie wirken muß die Brüderlichkeit in den konkreten Verbänden, die das umfassen, was wir die Assoziationen nennen. Nur wer so hinschaut auf das Leben, der sieht es richtig.
Dann aber wird man einsehen: Weil man in abstrakter Weise geglaubt hat, in dem bloßen Einheitsstaat, in den sich das Wirtschaftliche hineingeschoben hat, alle drei Ideale in gleicher Form unterzubringen, darum ist es zu dem Lebenswiderspruch gekommen. Die drei Ideale Freiheit, Gleichheit, Brüderlichkeit wird man einmal lebensvoll verstehen, wenn man einsieht, wie Freiheit im Geistesleben herrschen muß, Gleichheit im staatlichrechtlichen Leben und Brüderlichkeit im Wirtschaftsleben. Und zwar nicht in sentimentaler Weise, sondern so, daß es zu sozialen Gestaltungen führt, innerhalb welcher die Menschen so leben können, daß sie ihre Menschenwürde und ihren Menschenwert erleben. Begreift man, daß der einheitliche Organismus nur dadurch entstehen kann, daß aus der Freiheit heraus der Geist sich in produktiver Art entwickelt, daß die Gleichheit wirken muß im Staats- und Rechtswesen und die Brüderlichkeit im Wirtschaftsleben, in den Assoziationen, dann wird man hinwegkommen über die schlimmsten sozialen Schäden der Gegenwart.
Denn nur das, was aus dem Menschen frei als Individualität quellen kann, gibt ihm ein geistiges Leben, das in der Wahrheit wurzelt; diese Wahrheit kann nur zutage treten, wenn sie aus der Menschenbrust unmittelbar herausfließt. Der demokratische Sinn wird nicht eher ruhen, bis er auf staatlich-rechtlichem Gebiet die Gleichheit verwirklicht hat. Wir können das aus Vernunft tun, sonst setzen wir uns Revolutionen aus. Und auf wirtschaftlichem Gebiete muß die Brüderlichkeit leben in den Assoziationen.
Dann wird das Recht, das unter den Menschen gegründet wird aus einem Verhältnis heraus, wo der Gleiche dem Gleichen gegenübersteht, lebendiges Recht sein. Alles andere Recht, das gewissermaßen über dem Menschen schwebt, das wird zur Konvention. Wirkliches Recht muß hervorgehen aus dem Zusammensein der Menschen, sonst wird es zur Konvention.
Und wirkliche Brüderlichkeit kann nur eine Lebenspraxis begründen, wenn sie aus den wirtschaftlichen Verhältnissen selbst heraus, in Assoziationen, begründet wird; sonst begründet das menschliche Zusammenwirken in den Verbänden nicht Lebenspraxis, sondern Lebensroutine, wie wir das fast allgemein in der Gegenwart haben.
Erst wenn man fragen gelernt hat: Was haben sich für soziale chaotische Zustände ergeben unter dem Einfluß der Phrase statt der Wahrheit auf geistigem Gebiet, der Konvention statt des Rechts auf staatlich-rechtlichem Gebiet, der Lebensroutine statt der Lebenspraxis auf wirtschaftlichem Gebiet, dann wird man die Frage in der richtigen Weise stellen. Und dann wird man sich auf einen Weg begeben, der eigentlich erst die soziale Frage in richtiger Weise anschneiden kann.
Man wird vielleicht etwas schockiert sein, daß hier die soziale Frage nicht so angegriffen sein soll, wie manche glauben, daß sie angegriffen werden müßte. Aber hier soll nur aus dem heraus gesprochen werden, was der Wirklichkeit selbst gerade mit Hilfe der Geisteswissenschaft, die überall auf Wirklichkeit geht, abgewonnen werden kann. Und da ergibt sich, daß die Kernfragen des sozialen Lebens heute die sind:
Wie kommen wir durch eine richtige Gliederung des sozialen Organismus von der vielfach herrschenden Phrase, die aus der menschlichen Individualität dadurch hervorgeht, daß sie sich in ihrem geistigen Schaffen einem anderen beugen muß, zur Wahrheit, von der Konvention zum Rechte und aus der Lebensroutine heraus zur wirklichen Praxis?
Erst wenn man einsehen wird, daß der dreigegliederte soziale Organismus notwendig ist, um Freiheit, Gleichheit, Brüderlichkeit zu schaffen, dann wird man die soziale Frage in der richtigen Weise gestalten. Dann wird man auch den gegenwärtigen Zeitpunkt richtig an das 18. Jahrhundert anknüpfen. Und dann kann Mitteleuropa die Möglichkeit finden, zu dem, was Westeuropa gesagt hat, indem es gefordert hat: Freiheit, Gleichheit, Brüderlichkeit, aus seinem Geistesleben heraus zu sagen: Freiheit im Geistesleben, Gleichheit im staatlich-rechtlichen Leben und Brüderlichkeit im wirtschaftlichen Leben.
Dann wird für die soziale Frage manches getan sein, und man wird sich eine Idee darüber bilden können, wie die drei Gebiete im sozialen Organismus aus Freiheit, Gleichheit, Brüderlichkeit zusammenwirken können zu einer Gesundung aus unseren heutigen chaotischen geistigen, rechtlichen und wirtschaftlichen Verhältnissen heraus.
The Key Points of the Social Question
Ladies and gentlemen! When I published my “Key Points of the Social Question” three years ago at the request of a number of friends who were then under the impression of the events in social life after the provisional end of the Great War, it became clear to me, I would say as a direct experience, that this publication had basically been misunderstood on all sides, precisely because it was initially classified among those writings which, in a more or less utopian manner, attempted to describe in external institutions what their authors perceived as a kind of remedy for the chaotic social conditions that had arisen in the course of recent human development. My writing was intended, in a sense, not as an appeal to thinking about all kinds of institutions, but as an appeal to immediate human nature. That this could not be otherwise, given its spiritual-scientific background, will become clear from the overall tone of the lectures given so far.
Thus, in many cases, what I actually gave only as an illustration of the main point has been taken as the main point itself. In attempting to describe how humanity could arrive at social thinking, feeling, and also willing, I had to illustrate this, for example, by showing how the circulation of capital could possibly be transformed so that it would not be perceived by many people as oppressive, as is often the case at present. I had to say one thing or another about price formation, the value of labor, and the like. But all this was really just for illustration. For anyone who, if I may use the expression, wants to intervene in full human life, it is also important to first listen to this human life in order to find human ways out of aberrations, and not by promoting certain templates of ideas that are then to be implemented in the most diverse areas of life.
Above all, it becomes clear to anyone who has allowed social life in Europe to affect them over the last thirty to forty years with an open mind, rather than with this or that preconceived opinion, that what actually needs to happen socially today is already predetermined in the unconscious will of European humanity. Everywhere one can find unconscious tendencies toward something. They already live in people's souls, and one need only give them expression in words.
That is what prompted me to give in to the urging of friends and write this book. That was the reason why, based on the sense of reality that spiritual science—if I may say so modestly—teaches people, I tried to observe what has been going on in all social classes and strata beneath the surface of outward appearances and institutions in Europe in recent decades. And I did not actually want to say: I think this or that is right; rather, I wanted to say: this or that is desired from the hidden unconscious, and it is necessary to simply become aware of what humanity is actually striving for. And it is precisely here that the reason for many of our social ills is to be found, in that today this unconscious urge is in a certain contradiction to what humanity has conceived in an intellectualistic way and incorporated into its institutions, so that our institutions actually contradict what is desired in the depths of human hearts today.
And for another reason, I do not believe that it has any particular value today to simply establish one institution or another in a utopian manner. Within the historical development of humanity in the civilized world, we have reached a stage where, no matter how cleverly we talk about what should happen among and between people, it can have no real meaning if people do not accept it, if it is not something that people themselves are driven to do, albeit mostly in an unconscious way.
So I believe that today, if one wants to think about such things at all, one must take into account the democratic spirit that has arisen in the historical development of humanity, namely the democratic spirit that lives in the hearts and minds of people today, with this democratic spirit that, in social relations, something only has value if it aims not to express democratic opinions, but to enable people to express their opinions and assert themselves. So for me, the main thing was to answer the question: Under what circumstances are people able to truly express their social opinions, their social will?
When we look at the world around us in terms of social life, we have to say to ourselves: Yes, we may know a lot about how one thing or another should be different, but there are so many obstacles that what we know very well and want to assert very well cannot become reality. There are the differences in status and class themselves, and there are gaps between the classes of people, gaps that cannot simply be bridged by having an opinion on how they should be bridged, but gaps that arise precisely because I placed so much emphasis on yesterday, the will, which is the very center of human nature, is engaged by the way in which one has lived into one's class, or into any other social context. - And again, when we look at something that in our more recent times, under the complicated economic conditions, has increasingly been placed alongside class prejudices, class sentiments, and class impulses as such obstacles, we find these in the economic institutions themselves. We are born into certain economic institutions and cannot escape them. - And there is a third type of obstacle to genuine social cooperation among people: those who, as leading figures, might be in a position to exert the profound influence I have just mentioned, have other barriers, namely those that arise from certain dogmatic teachings about life, from certain dogmatic feelings about life. If many people cannot overcome economic barriers, class and status barriers, then many cannot overcome their conceptual and ideological barriers. All of this, I would say, has already become a significant part of life, which then often manifests itself as chaos.
But if one now tries to gain clarity about everything that has emerged through these obstacles and divisions in the unconscious depths of the soul in recent decades, one is reminded that the core issues of the social question actually lie elsewhere than where one usually looks for them. They lie in the fact that in recent times, with the advent of technology that has made life so complicated in the civilized world, belief in the omnipotence of the unitary state has also arisen. And this belief in the omnipotence of the unitary state has become stronger and stronger in the course of the 19th century. It has become so strong and firm that even the various shocking judgments that large masses of people have formed about social organization have not shaken it.
And something else is connected with what comes upon people as dogmatic belief. With this belief, people want to hold on to the idea that what they believe in is a kind of panacea, so that they can then say which is the best state; that they can then, I won't say conjure up paradise, but that they believe they are creating the best possible institutions.
But in doing so, we have lost something that is particularly obvious to those who view life in terms of its reality, as it has been viewed here in recent days. Those who, precisely because they are dependent on developing their ideas for the spiritual world, acquire a true sense of reality, come to the conclusion that the best institutions that can be devised for any age can at best retain their goodness for that age, but that the same applies to what exists in social organization as, for example, to the natural organism of the human being.
I do not want to engage in a fatal game of analogies, but I would like to point out, by way of illustration, what can be understood from the human organism in the social organism: we can never say that the human organism, or for that matter the animal and plant organisms, can only be in an ascending development. If what is organic is to flourish, if it is to drive its forces out of itself, then it must be able to grow old, then it must also be able to die. Anyone who studies the human organism more closely will find that this dying is present in it at every moment. The ascending, sprouting, budding, fruiting forces are always present, and the destructive forces are always present too. And human beings owe a great deal to these very forces of decay. Indeed, anyone who wants to overcome materialism completely must focus their attention precisely on these forces of decay in the human organism. They must seek out everywhere in the human organism where matter, so to speak, decays under the influence of the organism. And they will then find that it is precisely to the decay of matter that the development of spiritual life in human beings is bound. We can only understand the human organism if we observe the continuous decay alongside the ascending, sprouting, budding, and fruitful forces.
And even if I say this only by way of illustration, it can nevertheless illustrate what the unbiased observer must also find for the social organism: The social organism does not die, which distinguishes it, for example, from the human organism, but it changes, and ascending and descending forces are natural to it. Only those who know that when the best intentions are realized and something is created in any area of social life that is derived from the circumstances, it will, after a while, show forces of decay and decline because people with their individualities are working within it, can understand the social organism. What is right for the twentieth year of a century will have changed so much by the fortieth year of the same century that it already contains within itself the forces of decline. Such things are sometimes expressed in abstractions. But in the intellectual age, people stick to these abstractions, even if they think they are thinking practically. And so we also experience that people generally admit that there are forces of decay in the social organism, forces of decline within the social organism, that the social organism must always transform itself, that the forces of decline must always be effective alongside the forces of ascent — but when we intervene in the social order with our intentions, with our will, we do not notice what we admit in abstraction.
Thus, in the social order that existed before the World War, it could be seen that capitalism led to a certain degree of satisfaction even for the broader masses when it was in a phase of upward development. Wages rose when capitalism was in an upward phase of development in any branch of life. So as progress continued and capital was able to operate more and more freely, it was possible to see that wages and the opportunities for employment were indeed rising more and more. But no attention was paid to the fact that this rise also contained other social factors that ran parallel to it and which inevitably led to the emergence of forces of decline, so that, for example, as wages rose, living conditions had to develop in such a way that the rising wages gradually had the effect of not contributing very much to the improvement of living conditions. Of course, people noticed such things. But social trends were not pursued in such a way that the views themselves were true to life and reality.
And that is why social life today, at this important historical juncture, must be considered in terms of its foundations, not its superficial manifestations. And that leads us to the individual branches that are part of our social life.
One of these social branches is the spiritual life of humanity. This spiritual life of humanity — which we cannot, of course, consider separately from the rest of social life — has its own conditions. These are linked to human individualities. Spiritual life flourishes on the foundation of the human beings of an age. And the rest of social life depends on this. Just think how much has changed in some social areas simply because this or that invention or discovery was made by this or that person. But then, when one asks: How did this invention or discovery come about? Then one must look into the depths of human souls: how human souls have gone through a certain process of development, how they have been led, I might say, to find something in their quiet chambers that has then transformed entire broad areas of social life. Just ask yourself this question, so that the judgment gains social significance: What significance does the discovery of Leibniz's differential and integral calculus have for social life as a whole? If you try to look at the influence of intellectual life on social life realistically from this point of view, you will come to the conclusion that, because intellectual life has its own conditions, there is a special branch of general social life within intellectual life.
And if one asks what this special nature is, one must say: everything that can truly flourish in the intellectual life of humanity must arise from the innermost productive power of human beings. And one will have to conclude that what is most beneficial for social life as a whole is that which can develop unhindered in this intellectual life from what lies at the bottom of the human soul.
But then we are under another impulse, one that has become increasingly prominent in recent decades: the impulse that has poured into the belief in the omnipotence of state life, that civilized humanity has become more and more democratic from the depths of its being. This means that aspirations exist among the broad masses of humanity: every person must have a say when it comes to making human institutions. One may or may not find this democratic trait appealing; that is not the point. What matters is that it has emerged as a real force in the historical life of modern humanity. But when we look at what has emerged as this democratic trait, realistic thinking leads us to realize how ideas about the coexistence of people in the state developed from the inner urges and spiritual life of Central Europe among the noblest minds.
I do not mean to say that we should still attach particular importance today to what one of the noblest German minds presented as his “closed commercial state.” We need to pay less attention to the content than to Fichte's noble intentions. But I would like to point out that at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century, what can be called the pursuit of ideas of natural law emerged in a very popular form. At that time, very important and noble minds were concerned with answering the question: How do human beings relate to one another? What is the innermost essence of human beings in social relationships? And they believed that if they understood human beings correctly, they would also be able to find what is right for human beings. They called this rational law, natural law. They believed that they could use reason to find the best legal institutions under which human beings could flourish best. One need only look at Rofteck's work to see how, in the first half of the 19th century, the idea of natural law was still alive and well among many people.
However, during the first half of the 19th century in Europe, the historical school of law opposed this view. It was inspired by the idea that one cannot deduce from reason what is right among human beings.
But this historical school of law did not notice what it is that makes all attempts to devise a rational law fruitless; it did not notice that, under the influence of the intellectual age, a certain sterility had entered the spiritual life of humanity. And so the opponents of natural law said to themselves: human beings are not called upon to find something that is right from within their souls, therefore one must study law historically; one must look at how human beings have developed historically, how legal conditions have arisen from their habits, from their instinctive mutual relationships.
One must study law historically! Nietzsche's free spirit then turned against such study in his essay “On the Use and Abuse of History for Life.” He believed that if one only ever looks at what has historically existed in humanity, then one cannot arrive at productivity and viable ideas for the present; the elemental forces that live within humans must rebel against historical meaning in order to arrive at a constitution of social relationships from these forces.
Among the leading figures of the 19th century, the heyday of intellectualism, a dispute arose about what actually constitutes the foundations of law. And with it came a dispute about the foundations of the state. At least at that time, no one denied this. For the state is basically just the sum total of the individual institutions in which the forces of law live. And so, with the loss of the sense of finding legal foundations, it was inevitable that people would no longer be able to come to terms with the actual essence of the state. Therefore, we see, not only in theory but also in practical life, how the life of the state became a problem for countless people, including the broadest masses, in the course of the 19th century, a problem that needed to be solved.
But this was more prevalent, I would say, in the upper, conscious strata of human civilization. In the underground, what I have characterized as the emergence of the democratic spirit was taking root. This emergence of the democratic spirit, if properly understood, leads us to understand the question of the nature of law much more thoroughly and much more realistically than it is often understood today. Today, there are many people who take it for granted that one can somehow arrive at what is actually right in this or that area from the individual human being. However, more recent legal scholars are losing ground with such aspirations; and they then find that when they philosophize or even believe in this way, when they think practically about life, they lose sight of the content of law, that law becomes something formal for them. And then they say: that which is merely formal must be given content; the economic must be poured into it as content.
So, on the one hand, there is a clear sense of how powerless one is when one wants to arrive at the concept of law, at a sense of justice, from within oneself; on the other hand, one nevertheless seeks again and again to find the essence of law from within human beings. But the democratic spirit rebels precisely against this search. For what does it say? It says: there is no general abstract definition of law at all, but only the possibility that people who belong to some social community communicate with each other, that they say to each other, as it were: you want this from me, I want this from you – and that they then agree on what this means for their relationship. Then the law arises purely from the reality of what people want from each other, so that there cannot actually be a rational law, that everything that has come about as “historical law” can still come about if one only seeks the right ground for it, and that people can enter into such a relationship on this ground that they actually produce the law out of mutual understanding. “I want to be able to participate when law comes into being!” That is what democratic sentiment says. And anyone who then wants to write books about law, for example, cannot just make up what law is, but must simply look at what arises among people as law and more or less record it. In natural science, too, we do not look into the world of facts in such a way that we form the laws of nature out of our heads, but rather we let things speak to us and then form the laws of nature accordingly. We assume that what we want to grasp in the laws of nature has already been created, but that what exists in legal life is created among human beings. Life is on a different level there. There, human beings stand in the realm of creation, as social beings, alongside other human beings, so that a life that wants to pour the developmental sense of humanity into the social order can come into being. That is precisely the democratic sense.
The third thing that stands before people today and calls for social restructuring is the complicated economic conditions that have arisen in recent times, which I do not need to describe because they are being described appropriately from many sides. One can now say: these economic conditions are such that they arise from conditions other than the two other areas of the social organism, namely spiritual life — where everything that can be fruitful in the social order must arise from individual human individuality, and only the creative activity of the individual can make the right contribution to the entire social order — and legal life, in which the only issue can be that the law, and thus also the state, arises from the understanding between people. Both conditions, the one that applies to spiritual life and the other that applies to state and legal life, are not present in economic life.
In economic life, it is not the case that judgment about what can happen can spring from an individual. We have seen, particularly in the course of the 19th century, when intellectualism flourished among humanity, how very significant individuals — I say this not out of irony, but to characterize things truthfully — who were active in various fields expressed their opinions on one thing or another, people who were well versed in economic life and who could also be trusted to have sound judgment. When they then had to express their opinions on something that went beyond their field, something that influenced legislation, one could often say: Yes, what this or that person said, for example, about the practical influence of the gold standard, is significant and clever — one is even amazed, when one follows what took place in the various economic associations at the time when the transition to this gold standard was made in various countries, at the amount of cleverness that was brought into the world; But if you continue to study how things developed, as predicted, you see that this or that very important person said, for example, that customs barriers would disappear under the influence of the gold standard. The opposite has happened!
And one must say: in the field of economic life, wisdom that can be very helpful in the field of spiritual life cannot always be a reliable guide. One gradually comes to the conclusion that, when it comes to economic life, individuality cannot make authoritative judgments at all. Judgments can only be made, so to speak, as collective judgments, resulting from the interaction of many people who are involved in the most diverse areas of life. This, in turn, must not be mere theoretical wisdom, but must become practical wisdom for life, that truly valid judgments can only arise from the harmony of many.
Thus, the whole of social life is divided into three different spheres. In the realm of spiritual life, the individual has a say; in the realm of democratic legal life, all people have a say, because what matters there is the relationship between people based on their purely human nature, and every person can express their opinion on this; and in the realm of economic life, neither the judgment of the individual nor the judgment that flows from the undifferentiated judgments of all people is possible. In this sphere, it is a matter of the individual contributing expertise and experience in his or her field to a whole, but then a collective judgment can arise in the right way from associations. This can only arise if the justified judgments of the individuals can be smoothed out. For this reason, however, associations must be structured in such a way that they bring together what can be refined and are then in a position to give an overall judgment. Thus, the whole of social life falls into these three areas. This is not told to us by some utopian idea, but by a realistic view of life.
But now, it must be stated again and again, the social organism, whether small or large, always carries within itself not only the forces of ascent but also the forces of decline. And so everything we allow to pulsate into social life carries within itself at the same time its destructive forces. Continuous healing is necessary in the social organism.
If we look at spiritual life from this point of view, we can say, in accordance with the considerations that have been made here in recent days, that spiritual life was universally decisive in Oriental social life. Everything individual, basically also in state and economic life, was brought forth from the impulses of spiritual life, as I have described here in recent days. But if we look at the course of social development, we find that for a certain age — it is different for every age — impulses flow out of spiritual life and enter into social structures, that economic associations are formed according to ideas from spiritual life, that the state makes arrangements based on spiritual life. But we also see that spiritual life has a constant tendency to develop forces of decline or forces from which such forces of decline arise. If spiritual life stood before us in its omnipotence, we would see how this spiritual life constantly gives rise to the impulse for people to divide themselves into classes and estates. And if one studies the reasons why the caste system has such great power in the East, one will find that the caste system is regarded as a necessary accompaniment to the fact that social life has developed out of spiritual impulses. And so we see in Plato how he points out that humanity itself must be divided in the ideal state into the productive class, the teaching class, and the military class, that is, into estates. Anyone who investigates the reasons for this will find that it is precisely in the gradation that once existed with the omnipotence of spiritual life that the classes and class differences arise, and that then, within the classes, human individuality emerges, which perceives these classes as damaging to the social structure. Thus, within spiritual life, there are constantly occasions for gaps to arise between estates, classes, and even castes.
And when we then look at the realm of the state, we must search primarily in this realm for what I have described in recent days as the conquest of labor in the course of human development for the entire unified social organism. Precisely because theocracy developed from Asia into the state system, which is now under the influence of legal impulses, precisely because of this, the problem of labor developed. As each individual was to come into his own, the demand developed that labor should be properly integrated into the social organism. But as legal life detached itself from religious life, as it increasingly pushed toward democratization, as it developed more and more, we see how a certain formalistic element of social thinking also increasingly forced its way into humanity.
Law developed from what the individual human being has to say to another. Law cannot be spun out of reason. But from the mutual exchange of reason, if I may use the word, among human beings, a living legal life arises. This therefore tends toward logic, toward formalistic thinking. But as humanity passes through its epochs, it passes through one-sidedness. Just as it passed through the one-sidedness of theocracy, it later passes through the one-sidedness of the state. But this cultivates the logical element in social life, the element that thinks things through. One need only remember how much human thinking power has been devoted to legal life in the course of historical development.
But in this way, humanity also steers toward the power of abstraction. And one can sense how, under the influence of the principle of law, human thinking becomes more and more abstract. But what takes hold of humanity in one area spreads at certain times to the whole of human life. And so, I would say, as I indicated earlier, even religious life was taken over by legal life. The God of the East, who legislated the world and bestowed grace upon human beings, became a judging God. The laws of the cosmos became world justice. We see this particularly in the Middle Ages. But with this, something like abstraction entered into human habits of thought and feeling. People wanted more and more to master life out of abstractions.
And so abstract life also spread over religious life, over spiritual life on the one hand and over economic life on the other. More and more, people gained confidence in the omnipotence of the state, which was geared toward its abstract administrative and constitutional life. More and more, it was considered progressive that spiritual life in the form of education should flow entirely into the world of the state. But then it had to be captured in abstract relationships, as they are linked to legal life. The economic sphere was also, in a sense, absorbed by what was considered appropriate for the state. And in the days when the modern way of doing business was emerging, the general opinion was that the state must be the power that, above all else, determined the proper organization of economic life. But in doing so, we bring the other branches of life under the power of abstraction. As abstract as this may seem, it is nevertheless true to reality. And I would like to illustrate this with reference to human education.
In our age, when intelligence is so cheap, people can get together in a small or large committee—it doesn't matter—to think up the best educational measures. When they come together and think about how education should be and what should be included in the curriculum for this or that class, they will come up with something quite excellent, and I say this without irony. I am convinced that if these people are reasonably intelligent, and most people are today, they will come up with ideal programs. We live, or at least lived—because people are already trying to move away from it—in the age of programs. What do we actually have more than programs, more than guiding principles in this or that area of life! Societies and more societies are founded, and they draft their programs: this is how things should be. I have nothing against these programs; I am convinced that no one who criticizes them can actually come up with better ones. But that is not the point. For we can impose what we think up on reality, but then reality will not be such that people can live in it. And the latter is what matters.
And so, I would say, we have reached a provisional conclusion in this area. We have seen how a man with the best and noblest intentions for the development of humanity in the most recent times has drawn up such a program for the entire civilized world in fourteen excellent points. It immediately fell apart when it came into contact with reality. We should learn a great deal from the fate of Wilson's fourteen abstract points, which sprang from intelligent minds but were not realistic, were not derived from life.
And so it is in education, in the system of upbringing and teaching, that programs, which are only issued from the life of the state and the life of law, are not important at all. Regulations can be issued in the best possible way, saying that this or that should be done; but in reality, one has to deal with a teaching staff that includes teachers with these or those abilities. These must be taken into account in a lively way. No program can be realized. Only what can emerge from the individualities of these teachers can be realized. One must have a feeling, a sense for these individualities. Every day, one will have to decide what needs to be done based on the immediate life of the individual. Then one will not be able to set up some all-encompassing program. That remains an abstraction. Something can only be created out of life. Let us imagine the most extreme case: there would only be a number of teachers with average abilities for a particular subject. Now, even if these teachers were to spend an hour not teaching but only thinking, devising teaching goals and issuing regulations, they would certainly come up with something extraordinarily clever. But it is quite another thing to approach the reality of teaching, where only their abilities as whole human beings come into play. It is quite different whether one reckons with immediate life or only with what has flowed out of the intellect. For this intellect has the characteristic of exaggerating things, of always wanting to comprehend the immeasurable nature of the world. In real life, this intellect should merely be a servant in the individual concrete field.
But when one considers in particular that what arises between people, insofar as they face each other in complete equality in their human nature, can develop into law, then one must say: What develops among people in general becomes quite right when it emerges from the abstractions of the present, because that is how people feel; they establish legal relationships among themselves that are based on certain abstract human concepts, and it is only when people come together on democratic ground that these become specific legal relationships. But within the general human sphere, it will not be possible to create anything that springs from the immediate life of the individual, but only what can apply to people in general. This means that, if one wants to be honest, what should flow from the individuality of the human being within spiritual life cannot flow on democratic ground. It is therefore necessary to understand that, although belief in the omnipotence of legal and state life was a phenomenon of its time, it was also historically justified that, at the time when modern states arose, they took over the school system because they had to take it over from other powers that were no longer administering it properly. One should not want to correct history backwards.
But we must be clear that recent developments have given rise to a tendency to shape intellectual life independently again, so that intellectual life has its own social structure and its own administration, so that what takes place in individual school lessons can emerge from the living life of the teacher's individuality and not from the observation of some regulations. We must resolve, even though it has been regarded as progress to hand over spiritual life and with it the school to the state, to reverse this course. Then it will be possible for free human individuality to come to the fore within spiritual life, including in the field of education. And no one need fear that this will undermine authority! No, where human individuality is to be productive, these individualities long for natural authority. We can already see this at Waldorf schools. Everyone there is happy when one person or another can be an authority for them, because they need what that other person produces from their individuality.
And so state and legal life retains the possibility of working from a democratic perspective. Again, however, it is precisely because of its tendency toward abstraction that state life carries within itself the forces that then become forces of decline. And anyone who studies how, within state-legal life, the tendency toward abstraction means that what people do must increasingly separate itself from concrete interest in individual areas of life will also see how state life in particular provides the basis for the abstraction that has increasingly developed within the circulation of capital. Modern capital formation is widely contested by the broad masses of the people today. But the way the struggle is being waged is actually based on ignorance of the circumstances. For anyone who wanted to abolish capital or capitalism would have to abolish the whole of modern economic and social life, because this social life cannot exist under any other principle than that of the division of labor, and with it comes the formation of capital. In recent times, this has manifested itself in particular in the fact that a large part of capital is represented by the means of production. The essential point, however, is that capitalism is, first of all, a necessary phenomenon within modern life, but that, on the other hand, especially when it becomes nationalized, it always leads to money being separated from the concrete individual areas. And in the 19th century, this was taken so far that what actually circulates in social life is separated from the individual concrete areas of life, just as in the case of a thinker who lives only in abstractions, his pale ideas are separated from real life. The economic factor that is separated in this way from the individual areas of life is money capital. If I have any amount of money in my pocket, this amount can represent any economic object or even any object of intellectual life. Just as a very general concept relates to individual experiences, so this element relates to the individual concrete areas of life. That is why crises must arise within the social order.
These crises have been studied extensively. In Marxism, for example, crisis theory plays a major role. The mistake is to attribute crises to clear-cut causes, whereas in reality they can be traced back to two underlying currents. It may be that there is a surplus of capital, in which case it circulates as surplus, leading to crises. But it may also be that there is too little capital, which also leads to crises. And these crises are of different natures. These things are not studied realistically in today's national economy. In reality, one thing can have very different origins.
And so we see that just as spiritual life has a tendency to lead to forces of decline arising from differences in social status, class, and caste, so too does life that works toward abstractions and rightly so, has the tendency, on the one hand, to lead to the ascending forces that lie in the justified accumulation of capital, but on the other hand, because capitalism leads to abstract economic activity, in which one can do one thing or another with a sum of capital, to lead to the emergence of crises.
When one realizes this, one becomes a social reformer and devises something that is supposed to lead to salvation. But then you come up against the fact that, although individuality must be decisive for economic life by contributing its experience in appropriate associations, this individuality alone cannot produce what is decisive in economic life. That is why I placed association for economic life alongside the legal-state and the spiritual as a necessity.
And here it was striking, when I spoke about associations in a small gathering of workers in Germany, that I was told: We have heard a lot of talk, but we do not know what associations actually are; we have never really heard anything about them. An association is not an organization, it is not some kind of coalition. It arises when individual economic actors come together, and when each individual does not simply accept what is decided by some central authority, but can contribute what they know and can do based on their knowledge of the field in which they work. And from this cooperation, in which everyone gives their best and where what happens is the result of the harmony of a number of people, everything else that is economic can arise from such associations.
Such associations will come together. That will happen, I have no worries. To those who tell me that this is utopian, I say: I know that these associations arise simply from the subconscious forces in human beings. But we can promote these associations through reason; we can make them emerge more quickly or wait until they develop out of necessity. These associations will unite those who engage in production and trade with consumers. And only production, the circulation of goods, and consumption will play a role in them. Work will increasingly enter the realm of legal life. With regard to work, people must communicate with each other in a democratic manner. This will separate work from what can only be effective in the sphere of economic life. This can only be what emerges from a collective judgment in associations through the union of producers and consumers with those who mediate trade.
In the sphere of economic life, in the associations, only goods will therefore play a role. This, however, means something very significant, namely that we will cease to establish any fixed principles regarding the price and value of a commodity, but will say: the price and value of any good is something that changes with living conditions. Price and value will be determined by what emerges as the collective judgment of the associations. I cannot describe this in further detail, but you can read more about it in my book “The Key Points of the Social Question.”
I only wanted to point out that observation shows us how social life as a whole is divided into three areas that arise from very specific, different conditions: intellectual life, legal and political life, and economic life. These areas are, in a sense, developing a certain independence within modern civilization. Understanding this independence and gradually assigning each area its own role so that they can work together in just the right way is what matters today.
People have thought about this threefold structure of the social organism in many different ways. And when my “Key Points of the Social Question” became known here and there, people pointed to one thing or another that had already been hinted at earlier. Well, I don't want to raise any question of priority. It doesn't matter whether the individual has found this or that, but how it is introduced into life. One could only rejoice if a great many people came to this conclusion. But it must be noted that when Montesquieu in France defines a kind of threefold division of the social organism, it is simply a threefold division. He points out that these three areas have completely different conditions, which is why they should be separated from each other. That is not the tendency of my book. It is not a matter of distinguishing between intellectual life, legal life, and economic life, just as one would distinguish between the nervous-sensory system, the heart-lung system, and the metabolic system in humans, saying that these are three separate systems. Such a division accomplishes nothing; rather, it is only when we see how these different areas interact, how they best become a unity by each working out of its own conditions, that we can understand the social organism. If we know how to place spiritual life, legal and state life, and economic life on their own unique conditions, allowing them to work from their own unique strengths, then the unity of the social organism will also emerge. And then we will see that certain forces of decline will emerge from each of these areas, but that these will in turn be healed through interaction with the other areas. This points not to a tripartite division of the social organism, as in Montesquieu, but to a tripartite structure of the social organism, which is brought together in the unity of the entire social organism by the fact that every human being belongs to all three areas. Human individuality, on which everything depends, is so embedded in this threefold social organism that it connects the three parts with each other.
We can therefore say that — especially if we are inspired by what has been said here — the aim is not to divide the social organism, but to structure it in such a way that unity can be achieved in the right way. And if we look more closely, we can also see how, for more than a century, the people of Europe have been tending towards such a structure. It will come, even if people consciously do not want it; for unconsciously they will move in such a way in economic, spiritual, and legal-political matters that this threefold structure will come about. It is something that is demanded by human development itself.
And so one can also point out how the three impulses that come into consideration in relation to these three different areas of life once entered European civilization as three meaningful ideals, as three mottos for social life. At the end of the 18th century, the call for liberty, equality, and fraternity made itself felt in Western Europe. Who would not say, if they follow the development of modern times, that these three mottos embody three meaningful human ideals? But on the other hand, it must be said that there were many people in the 19th century who very spiritually refuted the idea that any unified social organism, any state, is possible if it is to realize these three ideals together. More than one brilliant work has been written proving how freedom, equality, and brotherhood cannot be completely united in the state at the same time. And one cannot say that what has been written in such a brilliant way does not give cause for serious concern. And so, once again, we are faced with a contradiction in life.
But life is not meant to be without contradictions; it is contradictory everywhere. And it consists in overcoming the contradictions that arise again and again. Life consists precisely in raising and overcoming contradictions. It is therefore entirely justified that the three great ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity have been established. However, because people in the 19th century and up to the present day have continually believed that everything must be organized in a completely centralized manner, they have also fallen into errors in this regard. And that is why it was impossible to see that it is meaningless to struggle over the way in which the means of production are used, how capitalism should be developed, and so on, but that what matters is to bring people into circumstances in which they can organize their social affairs from the very instincts of their being. We must say: we must grasp in a lively way how freedom must work in intellectual life, the free productive development of individuality; how equality must work in legal and state life, where everyone should develop what is due to every human being with every other human being in a democratic sense; how brotherhood must work in the concrete associations that comprise what we call associations. Only those who look at life in this way will see it correctly.
But then one will realize: because one has believed in an abstract way that all three ideals can be accommodated in the same form in the mere unitary state into which the economic sphere has intruded, this has led to a contradiction in life. The three ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity will one day be understood in a meaningful way when we realize how liberty must prevail in intellectual life, equality in constitutional life, and fraternity in economic life. And not in a sentimental way, but in such a way that it leads to social structures within which people can live in a way that allows them to experience their human dignity and value. If we understand that a unified organism can only come into being when the spirit develops productively out of freedom, that equality must operate in the state and legal system and fraternity in economic life and in associations, then we will overcome the worst social ills of the present.
For only that which can spring freely from human beings as individuality gives them a spiritual life rooted in truth; this truth can only come to light when it flows directly from the human breast. The democratic spirit will not rest until it has achieved equality in the state and legal sphere. We can do this rationally, otherwise we expose ourselves to revolutions. And in the economic sphere, brotherhood must live in associations.
Then the law that is established among people on the basis of a relationship where equals stand opposite each other will be living law. All other law that hovers above people, so to speak, becomes convention. Real law must arise from the coexistence of people, otherwise it becomes convention.
And real brotherhood can only establish a way of life if it is based on economic conditions themselves, in associations; otherwise, human cooperation in associations does not establish a way of life, but a routine of life, as we have almost universally in the present.
Only when one has learned to ask: What chaotic social conditions have resulted from the influence of rhetoric instead of truth in the intellectual sphere, convention instead of law in the sphere of state law, routine instead of practice in the economic sphere, will one ask the question in the right way. And then one will embark on a path that can actually address the social question in the right way.
You may be somewhat shocked that the social question is not to be addressed here in the way that some believe it should be addressed. But here we will only speak from what can be gleaned from reality itself with the help of spiritual science, which addresses reality everywhere. And it turns out that the core questions of social life today are:
How can we, through a proper structuring of the social organism, move from the often-heard phrase that arises from human individuality, which must bow to another in its spiritual creativity, to the truth, from convention to justice, and from the routine of life to real practice?
Only when people realize that the threefold social organism is necessary to create freedom, equality, and brotherhood will they be able to shape the social question in the right way. Then the present moment will also be correctly linked to the 18th century. And then Central Europe will be able to find the opportunity to say, from its spiritual life, what Western Europe has said by demanding freedom, equality, and brotherhood: freedom in spiritual life, equality in state and legal life, and brotherhood in economic life.
Then something will have been done for the social question, and it will be possible to form an idea of how the three areas of freedom, equality, and fraternity can work together in the social organism to bring about a recovery from our current chaotic spiritual, legal, and economic conditions.