The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Social Will as the Basis for a New Scientific Order

Lecture given to the Zurich Student Union, SSV

[ 1 ] The requested topic for this evening is “Social Will as the Basis for a New Scientific Order.” I do not know what motivated the choice of this particular topic, but when the request reached me, I found it extremely fortunate, because it strikes a chord that I consider necessary, especially in view of the facts that the social movement has brought into the present, and which truly speak a much clearer language than anything that has been discussed and negotiated in preparation for the social question over the last few decades.

[ 2 ] One can trace this development of the social movement in recent times, in the present, over a long period of time, and one could notice, precisely in relation to social aspirations, which have increasingly expressed themselves in one direction or another in these social or other aspirations, that something has crept in, has crept into this social will, into the social sentiment of modern times, which may appear to be a covering for a superstition of older medieval times that prevailed in a completely different area, a superstition that comes to mind again when one delves into the second part of Goethe's “Faust” and come across the scene where Goethe has his character Wagner prepare the homunculus, the little man who wants to be on his way from becoming a homunculus to becoming a human being. According to Goethe, medieval superstition is based on the fact that at that time, people wanted to form something truly alive from what was only theoretical, only the external facts soberly and dryly compiled and summarized by the human mind, which is capable of conceiving the essential. Goethe was particularly aware of the impossibility of forming something living from abstractions that are detached from external life. This medieval mindset does not exactly dominate today's thinking, but it seems to me that in all the impulses and instincts of our contemporaries, many of our contemporaries who would like to claim social aspirations, a metamorphosis, I would say, of certain superstitions prevails. One observes the development of social life as it has unfolded in the course of human history up to the present, and one devises certain principles, certain tenets, according to which one should proceed, or, as one hears on some sides, which want to realize themselves, and then one thinks that with abstract principles, according to which the homunculus should be formed, one can also form what one might call the social organism.

[ 3 ] For it is actually the unconscious of modern humanity that strives for this social organism, I may say. One need only realize the following to understand this. The social life of humanity is, of course, nothing new as such; it only appears in a different form in modern times. Until modern times, the social structure of the social organism was actually determined by human instincts, by the subconscious of human impulses. And that is what is significant in the emerging forces of modern times, that humanity can no longer remain at the level of mere instinctive will, that it must simply, challenged by the nature of development, equip itself with a conscious will precisely in relation to the shaping of the social structure. But if one wants to equip oneself with conscious will, one needs thoughts that underlie this will and are based on reality, not just thoughts that are completely abstracted from reality, but thoughts that connect one's own will with the forces that are inherent in natural events, in the workings of the world itself. In a sense, one must become related with one's own will to the creative forces of natural existence.

[ 4 ] This is something that large sections of humanity still have to learn. They must learn to remember that one cannot actually proceed in this way, thinking: What must happen in order to create a possible social structure out of a social structure that is perceived by many as unbearable? One cannot proceed in this way. One cannot devise anything that are, in a sense, social diseases. One can only direct one's best efforts toward finding within human beings themselves how people living together in society must bring their mutual relationships into mutual harmony in order to develop in this alternating life what is necessary to bring about the social structure.

[ 5 ] From my many years of studying social issues, I have come to believe that this fundamental question, which is regarded as a unified one precisely because of abstract thinking today, must be viewed in three parts, as a three-part question: first, as a question of the spirit; second, as a question of law; and third, as a question of economics. What has emerged in modern capitalist economic life has emerged on the basis of technology, which has developed in recent times and has, as if hypnotized, directed human attention solely to this economic life, completely distracting attention from the fact that the social question is not only an economic question but above all a spiritual question and a legal question.

[ 6 ] I will take the liberty of dealing first with the spiritual question, not because, as some believe, the consideration of spiritual life is subjectively particularly close to my heart, but because I am of the opinion that, even if proletarian-minded people of today refuse to to see anything in the spiritual realm that can contribute to the solution of the social question, it is precisely for the realistic observer of this social question that the spiritual must come first. To understand this, one must consider the soul of the person affected by the modern social movement in its true form. One must try to recognize what actually lives in the socialist-oriented circles in terms of impulses of will. Above all, one must fathom where these impulses of will have come from.

[ 7 ] You see, as modern human life dawned with technology and capitalism, the ruling section of humanity, the so-called ruling class, became increasingly separated from what was developing in various areas as the proletariat. Today, there is a gulf between proletarian will and non-proletarian life that is almost impossible to bridge, as anyone with insight will acknowledge, unless one at least attempts to engage in social movements not only with old ideas and old impulses of will, but with new ideas and impulses of will. Over time, a belief has developed more and more within the proletariat itself—and, given the circumstances, this belief cannot be regarded as unfounded in any way—the belief that the socially disadvantaged class has nothing to hope for from the classes that have ruled society until now if it relies on their good will, their ideas, and so on. If I may say so, a deep mistrust has crept in between the different classes of people. And this mistrust has arisen from underlying factors that have not yet fully entered the consciousness of humanity, but which still exist in the subconscious. It has arisen from the fact that the working class, especially at the beginning of modern times, placed its ultimate trust in the bourgeoisie, and that it was deceived, not in its convictions, but in its feelings, by this ultimate trust. You see, today people talk about the proletarian worldview. Many people, including leading figures, who believe they are expressing proletarian will in their thinking, do not actually know what the origin of their entire thinking and will is. The demands that arise from life itself and are alive in today's social movement stand in strange contrast to what even the proletariat itself thinks about these demands, about these social impulses of life.

[ 8 ] If I were to briefly express what I mean in this area, I would have to say: Proletarian, social culture has thus emerged; but within proletarian sentiment, within social culture and life, there is a legacy that stems precisely from those views and attitudes toward life that arose in the bourgeoisie at the decisive moment of their historical development.

[ 9 ] The observer of this development must see this decisive moment in recent historical development in the fact that the newer scientific way of thinking has developed — please note that I am not saying natural science, but the modern scientific way of thinking — in such a way from old spiritual impulses that this scientific way of thinking did not acquire the same driving force, the same spiritual driving force that the old worldviews had.

[ 10 ] The old worldviews were rooted in broader human impulses than the modern scientific way of thinking. These old worldviews were able to send impulses into the human soul through which people could answer, intuitively and emotionally, the question that always moved them so deeply: What am I actually as a human being in the world? Such momentum in the life of the soul is not given to the newer scientific way of thinking. Of course, out of historical necessity, which is nonetheless a historical disaster, the old worldviews took a hostile stance toward the newer scientific way of thinking at the decisive moment, instead of allowing it to flow into them in full friendship, which was fundamental to the spiritual life of human beings and their souls. And so the following situation arose.

[ 11 ] The machine, the capitalist economic order, tore a number of people out of their previous context of life, out of the context of life in which these people had previously existed, out of completely different living conditions for their sense of humanity, for their sense of human dignity. There was a connection between what man is and what he does. Just think of the connection that existed quite clearly in the old crafts until the 13th century and later still existed in remnants! Out of this connection, a large group of people were thrown into the machine, thrown into the modern economic order. There is no relationship whatsoever to the means of production; there is no possibility of creating any effect between the human being and what he actually does. And so it is precisely that side of the human being that the modern proletarian in the machine age does not develop that is dependent on asking: What am I worth as a human being? What am I worth as a human being?

[ 12 ] This question can no longer be answered from outdated, worthless contexts of life, but must be drawn from within oneself, from that which is independent of external contexts of life. And for this class of people, there was nothing else but what came with the machine age, with the economic order in world-historical simultaneity: modern scientific thinking emerged.

[ 13 ] The old classes were not compelled to make this scientific way of thinking their belief, their view of life; they only needed to make it their theoretical conviction. For what they brought into life was something handed down, impulses that originated in other times and which they inherited from older times. It was the proletarian alone who was torn out of everything, who therefore could not profess any view of life connected with the old contexts of life, and who, precisely because of his entire external existence, was predestined to make the new, the emerging, the content of his soul. So, as paradoxical as it sounds, as unbelievable as it seems to many, it is precisely this proletarian who is the true, purely scientifically oriented human being.

[ 14 ] In order to appreciate the full significance of this fact, one must not only have learned to think about the proletarian movement, one must also have been enabled by one's fate to think with the proletarian, namely to think with those people from the proletarian class who, from one side or the other, became the bearers of the proletarian movement. There, one could clearly feel how the following is spreading from older times into the immediate social present.

[ 15 ] It is true that you can say: Yes, bourgeois circles have adopted the scientific way of thinking to a large extent. — But take intelligent bourgeois circles yourself, think of people who are completely scientifically oriented in their thinking and convictions: with their feelings, with their whole sense of life, they are still involved in contexts that are not entirely determined by scientific orientation. One can be a materialistic thinker of modern times, one can call oneself enlightened, one can be an atheist, one can truly profess this as one's honest conviction, but one does not need to renounce all emotional remnants of the old contexts of life, which did not arise from this scientific orientation, but which arose in times when spiritual impulses still had the driving force outlined above.

[ 16 ] The purely scientific orientation had a completely different effect. I am not referring to the sciences, because this scientific orientation naturally had an effect on completely uneducated proletarians, but it had a completely different effect where it was carried over to the proletariat as a worldview.

[ 17 ] I would like to illustrate this with an example. Many years ago, I stood at a lectern together with Rosa Luxemburg, who has now tragically passed away; she spoke on the topic: “Science and the workers.” I keep thinking about how she pointed out to a large audience that all the prejudices related to human social status and human hierarchy in the old ruling classes are connected to the ideas that old intellectual worldviews carried with them. She believed that modern proletarians should focus solely on the fact that humans did not originate from angelic, divine sources, but rather that they once climbed trees in a completely indecent manner and developed from animal origins—origins which, when traced back in their development, must lead to the conviction that Man is equal to man. And all former differences in rank stem from some kind of prejudice. One must not look at the wording, but at the impact such words have on proletarian-minded souls.

[ 18 ] Looking purely at the concept, what I actually meant when I said: In recent times, the proletarian has been “scientifically” oriented in his entire worldview. And this scientific orientation did not fill his soul to such an extent that he could answer the question in the desirable way, according to his feelings, as he needed to: What am I actually in the world as a human being?

[ 19 ] And where did the proletarian get this worldview? Where did this scientific orientation come from, which he sometimes has to accept in a completely incorrect way? It is, after all, a science. He took it from the old heritage of the bourgeois class. It arose from the old worldview within the bourgeois class during the transition to the newer age of machines and capitalism, when machines and capitalism overwhelmed people.

[ 20 ] The next thing one often hears emphasized with the corresponding coloring is: Within the proletariat, human intellectual life has become what is perceived as ideology. You hear this most often when the foundations of the proletarian worldview are discussed: that art, religion, science, customs, law, and so on are ideological reflections of external material reality.

[ 21 ] But this feeling that everything is like this, that spiritual life is ideological, did not arise within the proletariat; the proletarian received it as a dowry from the bourgeoisie. And the last trust, the last great trust that the proletariat placed in the bourgeoisie, consisted in the fact that it took on nourishment, spiritual nourishment for its soul. Since it was deprived of spiritual life when it was called away from its older context to the machine and placed into the social structure, it could only look up to what had developed as knowledge about man and about the world; it could only look up to what had emerged from the bourgeoisie: it accepted, faithfully, dogmatically, I would say, it accepted the ideology of the bourgeoisie. It has not yet entered into conviction, but into the feeling of disappointment that must arise when one cannot regard the spiritual as something that contains a higher reality founded in itself, but must regard it only as ideology. It lives in the subconscious feelings of a large number of the bearers of the social movement; it is not yet known, but it is clearly felt: we have placed great trust in the bourgeoisie; we have inherited a legacy that should have brought us salvation and sustaining strength. The bourgeoisie did not bring us this; only ideology brought it to us, which contains no reality, which cannot sustain life.

[ 22 ] One can argue at length whether ideology is really the fundamental character of spiritual life or not. That is not the point. The point is that this spiritual life is perceived today by a large part of humanity as ideology, and that when life is perceived as ideology, the soul becomes desolate, remains empty, spiritual momentum is paralyzed, and what has arisen today comes into being: the stripping of social will of the belief that something spiritual could develop somewhere, that a center could emerge somewhere, a real center from which salvation could come for our worldview or the like, also with regard to the desirable shaping of the social movement. I would like to say that, above all, spiritual life has been brought into the development of modern proletarian humanity as a negative factor; and the longings of this humanity demand a positive factor. They demand something that sustains the soul, and something that consumes the soul has been given to them as their heritage.

[ 23 ] This is something that hurts and quietly runs through our entire current social movement, something that cannot be grasped in terms of concepts, but which constitutes the formation of one of the members — we will get to know three — of the social movement, the current social movement. And as soon as one realizes that this is the case, one also asks oneself appropriately: Where did it come from and how can it be remedied? Instead of continuing to be paralyzed, how can this social will be fired up, how can it be energized? This is the question we must ask ourselves.

[ 24 ] Now an event occurred when modern intellectual life reached the decisive point I have already indicated. The ruling classes of that time were, through their entire living conditions, connected with what we today call the state. It has often been emphasized by individual people—I cannot cite all of this today due to time constraints, insofar as it is correct—it has often been emphasized that modern man believes that what he today calls the state has actually always existed. But that is not at all correct. What we call the state today, which in Hegelianism, for example, appears to be the very expression of the divine itself, is basically only a product of the thinking of the last four to five centuries. The social organisms of earlier times were quite different.

[ 25 ] Take just one fact, take the recent fact that the free educational institutions, the free higher educational institutions of earlier times, which were entirely self-sufficient in relation to the state, have developed into state institutions, that the state has, in a sense, become the custodian of humanity's intellectual heritage. That it has become this is a bourgeois interest at the beginning of modern times. It was the state that grew close to the soul of the citizen, to which he was connected with all his needs. And out of this impulse grew the relationship, the modern relationship between the intellectual heritage of humanity and the state, grew the fact that this state became the custodian of this intellectual heritage of humanity, and that it demanded of those who were to become its custodians that they actually organize their lives for it.

[ 26 ] If one looks a little deeper into the inner structure of the human intellectual heritage, one comes to the conclusion that it is not only the external administration of this intellectual heritage, the legislation on universities, that has become state-run, that legislation on schools and elementary schools has become state-run, but that the content of this intellectual heritage has also become state-run.

[ 27 ] Certainly, mathematics does not have a state character; but other branches of our intellectual heritage have been marked by the convergence of this intellectual heritage with state interests in recent times. And this convergence has not been without influence on the development of ideology on the part of intellectual property. This intellectual property can only preserve its own inner reality, carry it within itself, if it can administer itself, under its own powers, if it can give the state what belongs to the state out of its own immediate initiative, but if it does not have to receive demands from the state.

[ 28 ] Certainly, there will still be many today who do not see what I have just said as a fundamental social fact. But it will be seen that only then can the spirit of humanity, which reigns in reality, give what is right, when this spirit is separated from the external state organization and stands on its own. I know what objections can be made to this, but that is not the point; the only thing that matters is that, in order to flourish properly, the spirit demands that it can always emerge from the immediate free initiative of the human personality.

[ 29 ] This brings us to the true form of one aspect of the modern social question, namely that we must consider spiritual life correctly and recognize the necessity that that which intrudes into the structure of the state must gradually be brought out of this state again, so that it can develop its own inner strength and then have an effect in return, precisely because it is liberated, because it develops independently alongside the other elements of the social structure, and precisely because of this it can have the right effect on this social structure. If one is to talk about the practical aspects of this first element of social issues, one must say: the trend of development must be towards the denationalization of spiritual life in the broadest sense. And even one element of this spiritual life must be denationalized, in contrast to which it probably seems highly paradoxical today that one can speak of it in this way: the relationship that a judging personality enters into with people who have to do with criminal law or private law in some way is so human — this has also been recognized in certain psychologically oriented circles today, but the matter is approached from a completely wrong angle — so personal that judging immediately belongs to what must be counted as part of the inner life of the spirit. So I must include in this category not only what is accepted as religious conviction in humanity, all artistic life, but also everything related to private law and criminal law, where the tendency must develop toward denationalization.

[ 30 ] Why should anyone who hears of radical measures immediately think of a violent revolution? Even in socialist circles of recent times, this is gradually no longer being considered. I do not think that everything can be denationalized overnight; but I do think that it is possible for the social will of humanity to accept that the individual measures to be taken in relation to this or that – and this must happen every day here and there – are oriented towards such a gradual separation of intellectual life from the state. You will be able to imagine quite concretely what this actually means.

[ 31 ] We must regard the state as something that has become particularly dear to the soul of the bourgeoisie, which in recent times has increasingly developed into the ruling class. This bourgeoisie has now brought into this state not only spiritual life, but also that which, so to speak, has overwhelmed the entire social organism within recent human development: namely, economic life. Bringing this economic life into state life began with the nationalization of transport interests, the postal service, the railways, and so on. This gave rise to a certain superstition about the state, about the state-oriented human community. And the last remnant of this belief is the belief of socialist-oriented people: that salvation can only be found in the joint administration of the entire economic life. This, too, has been inherited from the bourgeois way of thinking and viewing the world.

[ 32 ] Now, intellectual life is placed on one side, economic life on the other; and in the middle stands the state.

[ 33 ] You may ask yourself: What should actually remain for the state? — because we will see shortly that economic life also cannot tolerate confusion with actual state life. We can perhaps arrive at a clear view on this question by considering what the bourgeois classes actually found in the emerging modern state. They found in this state the refuge of their rights.

[ 34 ] Let us now look at what rights actually are. I am not thinking only of criminal law, nor am I thinking of private rights, insofar as they do not relate to the relationship between individuals, but rather I am thinking of public law. Public law also includes, for example, negotiations on ownership. After all, what is property? Property is merely the expression of the right to own and use something as an individual. Property is rooted in a right. Everything that we often regard as an external thing is rooted in rights in its relationship to human beings. In more recent times, preceding our modern conception of the state, the bourgeoisie and those related to it had already acquired such rights; it found that such rights were best protected when it incorporated everything that could relate to such rights into the life of the state itself.

[ 35 ] And so the tendency arose to draw economic life more and more into state life. State life permeates the structure of economic life with a sum of rights. Now, these rights should by no means be taken away from state life in the development of the future. But social will must develop precisely in order to distinguish between all that is legal life, what is actual intellectual life, and what is economic life.

[ 36 ] The modern social movement illustrates this particularly clearly in that the ruling circles have not included something in the legal life of their modern state. While they have taken many things out of economic life, out of mere isolated economic life, and incorporated them into the legal structure of the state, there is one thing they have not incorporated into the legal structure of the state: the labor power of the proletarian worker. This labor power of the proletarian worker has been left inside the circulation of the economic process.

[ 37 ] This is what has had a profound impact on the mind of the modern proletarian, who has been made to understand by Marxism and its successors that there is always a labor market, just as there is a commodity market. And just as goods are offered on the goods market and there is demand for them, you bring your labor power—the only thing you possess—to the labor market, and it is considered only as a commodity. It is bought like a commodity; it is included in the modern economic process like a commodity.

[ 38 ] This brings us to the true nature of the second modern social demand. This is expressed in the fact that, out of a certain subconscious awareness of his human dignity, the modern proletarian found it intolerable that his labor power should be bought and sold as a commodity on the commodity market.

[ 39 ] Certainly, the theory of socialist thinkers says: This has come about through the objective laws of economic life itself, which have placed labor power on the market just like other commodities. This is in the consciousness, perhaps in the consciousness of the proletarian himself. But in the subconscious, something quite different prevails. In the subconscious, a continuation of the old slavery, the old question of serfdom, prevails. In this subconscious, one sees only that during the time of slavery, the whole person was a commodity on the labor market and could be bought and sold as a commodity, that then there was a little less of the person in serfdom, and that now all that remains is the worker's labor power. But with that, he also surrenders himself completely to the economic process. He feels that this is impossible, that it is undignified.

[ 40 ] This gives rise to the second social demand of modern times: to strip labor of its commodity character.

[ 41 ] I know that even today many, very many people think: How can this be done? How else can economic life be organized other than by remunerating work activity, labor? — But that means buying it! But one need only counter that Plato and Aristotle also found it perfectly natural, took it for granted, that slaves must exist. So one must forgive modern thinkers for considering it necessary that labor power must be brought to market.

[ 42 ] One cannot always imagine what may become a reality in the very near future. But today we must ask: How can labor be stripped of its commodity character? This can only be achieved by elevating it to the realm of the pure constitutional state, the state from which intellectual life, as previously characterized, is separated on the one hand, and on the other hand, everything that belongs to the economic process in the sense previously characterized is separated. If we divide the entire social organism or think of it as divided into these three parts: independent intellectual life, legal life, and economic life, then instead of the homunculus in the realm of economic life, we have the real homo in the realm of economic life, then we have set our spiritual eye on the truly viable social organism, not the one composed of chemical agents.

[ 43 ] I truly do not want to play with analogies between biology and sociology here — that is far from my mind, very far —, nor do I want to fall into the errors of Schäffle or Meray in his “Weltmutation” (World Mutation); I do not want any of that, it is not important. But what does matter is to see that, just as three independent systems operate side by side in the individual human organism—I have outlined this in scientific terms in my latest book, Von Seelenrätseln (Mysteries of the Soul)—so too must three independent systems prevail in the social organism: the spiritual system, the judicial system, then the system of public law — as I said, private law and criminal law are excluded — and the actual economic system.

[ 44 ] But then, if one has the regulating state life, the regulating legal life, between spiritual life and economic life, one has integrated something as viable into the social organism as one finds integrated into the natural human organism as a relatively independent system: the circulatory system, the lung-heart system, between the head system and the digestive system. But then, when it is developed entirely on its own ground from mere economic life – think of an administration, a democratic administration on this ground of legal life – when everyone has to claim their rights in the same way, which regulate the relationship between people solely on this ground, then the integration of the workforce into the economic process becomes something completely different from what it is now.

[ 45 ] You see, I am not giving you some principle, some theory: this is how you can do it if you want to strip labor of its commodity character – but I am telling you: how must people first position themselves, structure the social organism, so that through their activity, through their thinking, through their will, that which is viable as a social organism can come into being. I do not want to prescribe a universal remedy, but only to describe how humanity must be structured within the social organism so that its healthy social will continuously produces what makes the social organism viable. I want, so to speak, to replace theoretical thinking with thinking that is intimately related to and familiar with reality. What will come about if, quite apart from economic life, on a basis that exists in its own right, which administers and governs itself relatively independently according to its own powers, if labor law is negotiated on this basis purely from human foundations and laws are enacted from this? Then something will come about that will have a similar effect on the economic process as the natural foundations of this economic process have now. These natural foundations of the economic process are clearly visible to us when we really study the economic process. They regulate the economic process in such a way that their regulation eludes what human beings themselves can do in relation to this economic process. Isn't that true? One only needs to observe what is conspicuous.

[ 46 ] Take, for example—and I want to give radically clear examples—the fact that in certain regions, albeit far away from ours, bananas are an extremely important commodity. But the work involved in bringing bananas to the place where they can be consumed is extremely small at their point of origin, say, compared to what is necessary in our European regions to bring wheat from its point of origin to its point of consumption. This work, which makes bananas consumable in relation to wheat, is roughly one to one hundred, or the ratio is even greater than one to one hundred. So a hundred times more work than is needed for bananas is necessary for the consumption of wheat. And so we could also cite the great differences that exist within the economic area with regard to the regulation of economic life. These are independent of what man himself brings to bear: they lie in the fertility of the soil, in other conditions, and the like; they enter into economic life as a constant factor, as a factor independent of the economic man. That is one side of the picture.

[ 47 ] Now imagine labor law as being completely separate from economic life, then, if economic interests no longer play an independent role in determining working hours and the use of labor in purely human interactions between people, something will develop that is independent of economic life and that influences economic life just as much as the factors provided by nature influence it.

[ 48 ] In pricing, in determining the value of goods on the commodity market, one must be guided by the effects of natural factors. In the future, if the social organism is to be viable, one will also have to be guided by how production must take place and how the circulation of goods must proceed. If it is not this circulation of goods that determines remuneration, working hours, and labor law in general, but if, independently of the circulation of goods and the commodity market, working hours are determined in the sphere of state legal life, solely on the basis of human needs and purely human considerations, then it will be the case that a commodity simply costs as much as the time necessary to produce it, which is necessary for a certain job, but which is regulated by a life independent of economic life, whereas, for example, economic life today regulates the employment relationship on its own, so that working hours and employment relationships must often be regulated in the economic process according to the prices of commodities. The opposite will occur with a proper structure of the social organism.

[ 49 ] Today, we can only hint at these conditions. But you see, they spring from a social will that is quite different from the one that has put us in such a sad situation in world affairs today; they spring from a social will that does not spin everything out of human thinking in a certain charitable way, as one must do in order for this or that to proceed in the right way, but they spring from a way of thinking that is so closely related to reality that it does not come to light when people are structured in this or that way in the social organism. Then, because they are healthily structured within the social organism, they will establish what is right, and then they will work in the right way.

[ 50 ] One only has to have experienced how the other socialists determined conditions in real life, in Austria, which has now already disappeared. It was a state, but it was not only legal life that existed within the state; economic life, which arose from the interests of individual human circles, also existed within the state in a very pronounced way. Just think of what the old Austrian parliament was like until the end of the 1890s! And from what was represented in this parliament emerged the conditions that played into the catastrophe of the World War, from this parliament, which consisted of four curias: the Chamber of Commerce, the large landowners, the curia of cities, markets, and industrial centers, and the curia of established economic circles. These economic circles were not represented on the basis of an economic parliament, but their interests determined the state system, meaning that public rights were determined according to their interests. Just as it is impossible for a confessional party, as was the case in the last German Reichstag, to emerge and influence the legal life of the state through definitions and institutions, so too is a social organism that is structured in such a way that economic interest groups determine legal life not viable. This legal life must develop separately, based solely on what concerns the relationship between people in a completely democratic manner. Then, through this legal life, the threefold organism will regulate economic life on the one hand and the natural basis of this economic life on the other.

[ 51 ] And within this economic life, which in turn has representatives from a wide variety of sides, purely economic factors and interests will be necessary. We will have a social organism in which — if I may express myself in the language of the times — there are now three classes, three areas, each with its own legislation and its own administration. They stand in relation to each other, I would say, as sovereign states, even though they interpenetrate; they deal with each other. That may be complicated, it may be inconvenient for people, but it is healthy, it is the only thing that will make the social organism viable for the future. For economic life itself can only be determined by its factors if the only interests at work in its sphere are economic interests, which can only be determined by the necessary relationship between production and consumption in economic life. However, this relationship between production and consumption can only arise in economic life on an associative basis, on an associative basis, as it could have been in the context of trade unions and cooperatives. Today, however, trade unions and cooperatives still have the character of having grown out of state life. They must grow into economic life and become bodies that serve economic life. Then the social organism will develop in a healthy way.

[ 52 ] I know that what I have said seems extremely radical to some. But whether it is radical or not is not important; what is important is that the social organism becomes viable, that people, by making the transition from the old instinctive social life to conscious social life, become imbued with impulses that spring from the insight into how one stands within the whole social organism. Today, one is considered uneducated if one cannot do basic arithmetic; today, one is considered uneducated if one does not know anything else that is part of education; but one is not considered uneducated if one has no social consciousness or if one stands within the social organism with a dormant soul. This is something that must change radically in the future! It will change when the judgment arises that it is simply part of the most elementary school education to equip oneself with social will, just as one equips oneself with knowledge of the multiplication tables. Today, everyone must know how much three times three is. In the future, it will not seem any more difficult to know how capital interest relates to ground rent, if I choose something from today's life. It should not be any more difficult in the future than knowing that three times three is nine. But this knowledge will provide a basis for a healthy standing within the social organism, that is, for a healthier social life. And this healthy social life must be strived for.

[ 53 ] What I have said is preparing itself in the healthy consciousness of humanity. One only needs to have a sense of what is preparing itself and what is striving for revelation and formation in our present, newer life.

[ 54 ] Think back to the three great ideals of the French Revolution: liberty, equality, and fraternity. Anyone who has followed what these ideas have undergone in the minds of people over time knows how often people have struggled logically with the contradiction that exists between freedom on the one hand, which points to individual personal initiative, and equality on the other, which is to be realized in the centralization of the state-oriented social organism. That is not possible. But the addiction to this confusion has arisen in recent times. The fact that today's capitalism has not yet been able to grasp the concept of the threefold social organism has arisen from the idea of a completely centralized state.

[ 55 ] If we take up today what is already expressed in this desire, which finds expression in the three ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity, we can easily understand it today from the point of view of the threefold social organism. Then we find spiritual life as the first link. It must be completely permeated by the principle, the impulse of freedom. Everything must be based on the free initiative of human beings, and it can be, and will be most fruitful if it is based on this. With regard to the constitutional state, with regard to the state system that regulates the relationship between spiritual and economic life, the political system itself, what must permeate everything is the equality of human beings. And with regard to economic life, the only thing that can apply is brotherhood, the social sharing of the entire outer and inner life of one person by another.

[ 56 ] In the social organism, only interest can prevail within economic life. But this interest produces a very specific characteristic of the economic organ. What does everything in economic life actually point to, what does it all boil down to? Everything in economic life boils down to the fact that what the economic process produces can also be consumed in the best and most expedient way. I am talking about consumption in the narrower sense, from which the spiritual is then excluded. For example, labor, human labor, can be consumed. But modern man feels that his labor must not be merely consumed. Just as he acquires an interest through his labor, he must also acquire an interest in spiritual production through his rest, through his peaceful receptivity to the spiritual. People are consumed in economic life. They must continually tear themselves away from this economic life through the other two limbs of the healthy social organism if they are not to be consumed within economic life.

[ 57 ] The social question is not so much a part of modern life as it has now arisen and can perhaps be solved, and then is solved. No, the social question is something that has entered modern life and will no longer disappear from this life in the future of all humanity. There will be more and more social questions in the future. But this social question will not be solved all at once, not by this or that measure, but by the continuing will of the people, in that what the economic process consumes from the people is constantly regulated by legal life from a purely political standpoint, and what is consumed can in turn be constantly balanced by spiritual production through the independent spiritual organism.

[ 58 ] Anyone who has seen how the social question has developed in recent decades — it is not so long ago that the social question prepared itself for its present form —, who has observed attentively and with deep interest how this social question has developed from its beginnings, can come to thoughts, particularly with regard to social will and its guiding impulse for the future shaping of human life, which can perhaps be characterized by the following.

[ 59 ] Decades ago, many people, including many quite enlightened people, did not consider the social question to be something that existed at all. In my youth, I met an Austrian minister who looked across the Bohemian-German border and made the grotesque statement: “The social question ends at Bodenbach!” And I still remember very well how the first social democratic miners marched past my parents' apartment in a large group on their way to their meeting. I then observed how social consciousness arose, not as a reflection on the social movement, but through witnessing this social movement. I had to say to myself: a lot had to be gone through, and a lot of mistakes had to be made too! And even among socialist-oriented thinkers of more recent times, these mistakes have been quite numerous. It seems that in this area in particular, people do not experience this through the minds they develop. The error has become terribly widespread.

[ 60 ] From a spirit that has arisen in me from such observations, I have tried to speak to you this evening about social will. You have invited me as members of a community of people who look to what social will should bring to human welfare in the future.

[ 61 ] Those of us who, as older people, such as myself, have been speaking to such people for decades, sometimes look back on all that had to be transformed in order to arrive at the present. But then, through some of the things that had to be transformed, they also become convinced that the error was not fruitless, that even if today's facts speak a sad, often frightening language, people will still be strong enough to find a way out of what is perceived as unbearable by a large part of humanity today.

[ 62 ] In this sense, I ask you to take on board what I have taken the liberty of saying to you this evening. For the facts speak clearly in many areas. And they also speak clearly: the more people among those who are still young today take on board a genuine, viable social will, the more viable the efficient, human social organism will be.

[ 63 ] Anyone who wishes to speak may do so. Dr. Boos, who gave a lecture about a week ago today, has agreed to lead the discussion.

A speaker asks to speak (stenogram incomplete).

[ 64 ] Dr. Steiner: What you have asserted takes shape because you have overlooked what must happen as a result of the division into relative independence of the constitutional state on the one hand and economic life on the other. The labor organizations, some of which will be production companies, or consumer companies, or even combinations of the two, will only have to deal with economic factors that play a role within economic life itself.

[ 65 ] The regulation of labor law falls to the relatively independent state. There, I said, decisions are made on a democratic basis, everything that concerns the relationship between people. That is why I also mentioned, with regard to the foundation of this purely democratic state, that it is a link between the other two factors; on this foundation, equality of people before the law prevails. The mere wishes of individual economic organizations will cease to exist because they must be balanced with the interests of other groups in democratic legal life. — So that is precisely what is to be achieved; what you perceive as damage that would certainly arise if, for example, working hours were set within the organization of economic life, is to be remedied. The organizations of economic life only have to deal with economic life itself: regulation in the sense of labor law, in other words. But the determination of working hours is now only subject to the state body that deals with human relations.

[ 66 ] We must not forget the great changes that will occur between people as a result of unilateral interests being worn down. Of course, nothing in the world will be completely perfect, but unilateral interests will be worn down in a democratic state structure based on the equality of people before other people.

[ 67 ] Let us just consider that if, for example, a certain economic organization has an interest in working for a certain short period of time, it will have to reconcile this interest with the interests of those people who would suffer from this short working time. But if one does not think at all about any subconscious forces, then — just as in the natural organism, at least approximately, always approximately natural, that there are always equal numbers of men and women, which of course cannot and must not be a strict law of nature, it will also turn out that if the individual factors of the social organism interact in the right way, nothing harmful will arise from the fact that individual small interests can develop which are extremely harmful to others.

[ 68 ] What underlies my social thinking differs from many other social ways of thinking in that the latter are more abstract. Logically, one can always deduce one thing from another very well; some logical conclusions follow from others. However, only life experience can really be decisive in such questions. Of course, I cannot logically prove—no one can—that a discrepancy of interests cannot arise in such a future organism; but it can be assumed that if the forces can develop within their own sphere, which is appropriate for them, then a humane development will occur. I believe that if you consider what I would like to present, namely the establishment of working hours from the purely economic process into the legal sphere of the state, then these damages will not be able to arise in the practical realm. That is what I have to say on the matter.

Another speaker comments (stenogram incomplete).

[ 69 ] Dr. Steiner: I would like to comment on the remarks of the previous speaker as follows: Of course, every lecture suffers in a sense from the fact that one cannot say everything in a single lecture, and I do not know from which omissions in my lecture the previous speaker drew the conclusion that I have no opinion on the modern worker's psyche, that I do not take the modern labor movement into account, and so on. Everyone does this in their own way, of course. For example, I was a teacher for many years in various fields at a workers' educational school, and I practiced public speaking with workers in trade unions and also in political organizations. Today, I can rightly say that a large number of workers who give speeches in Germany today learned how to speak in my speech exercises. During these speech exercises, all kinds of questions were discussed, including questions that were certainly not far removed from the most intimate peculiarities of the working-class psyche. So I don't know—of course, I had no reason to highlight this particular practical aspect of my social work and intentions, but I also cannot quite understand how omissions from my speech could have led to the conclusion that I am so completely detached from the practical labor movement.

[ 70 ] Of course, it goes without saying that workers themselves are taken into account within the modern social movement. But just consider that I emphasized throughout the evening what the situation actually looks like within the proletariat. I spoke of the proletariat as such. If you listened carefully, you will have noticed how my lecture reflected what I believe to be a practical analysis of what is currently happening among the proletarian working class.

[ 71 ] As for the accusation that I may have presented too one-sided a view of what I believe to be a fundamentally important fact, namely that the bourgeois way of thinking has been adopted by the working class, and in particular by the leaders of the working class, this statement I have made, which I have of course only examined from certain angles, is really based on a more detailed study of the working-class psyche and the entire modern labor movement.

[ 72 ] I would like to draw your attention to the following example: a Russian writer whom I know personally recently pointed out in a very peculiar way that the philosophy that has followers has played a major role here in Zurich: the philosophy of Avenarius, which certainly grew out of a purely bourgeois background. At least, I cannot imagine that Avenarius ever thought that his philosophy would play the role it plays today in the labor movement in Russia. As far as I know, Adler in particular strongly advocates Mach's philosophical convictions, derived from natural science, here in Zurich. These two philosophical directions are, in a sense, the official philosophies of Bolshevism, of the most radical socialism. The Russian writer Berdyaev says this in an essay—it is included in the translation of a very interesting book on “Russia's political soul”—and in this essay Berdyaev has very clearly elaborated on this political soul. And so one could give you numerous examples; I could give you numerous examples similar to the one I took earlier from the speech by the late Rosa Luxemburg, which would prove to you that the last significant legacy of bourgeois life, one that has had a profound impact on the labor movement, is the bourgeois way of thinking, which is scientifically oriented. The possibility of turning intellectual life into ideology in the first place is of bourgeois origin. The bourgeoisie, if one may use such categories, was the first to turn the scientifically oriented way of thinking in the field of natural science into ideology. It did not transfer this to actual scientific thinking within its own class. This latter consequence was then drawn by proletarian thinking. Certainly, proletarian thinking drew other conclusions; but it drew conclusions from foundations that are clearly recognizable today as rooted in the bourgeois scientific way of thinking, and only developed a little further. The importance of this should not be underestimated.

[ 73 ] For those who are more deeply involved in the whole, who have developed a deeper interest in the role that the modern working-class psyche plays in the modern labor movement, are waiting, I would say, with a certain concern on the one hand, but also with a certain inner satisfaction on the other, for the moment when this will come to light within the modern socialist movement. One day, people will notice, will bring to consciousness what now still lies in the subconscious; one day, people will notice: Aha, we still have that in our higher thinking—if I may use the expression—in our higher thinking; that has to come out. We have a longing to orient our entire human dignity scientifically; the bourgeois lineage of science has not made this possible for us until now. We must seek a different spiritual life.

[ 74 ] I believe, however, that when this moment arrives, when the whole, full longing of the perhaps, from a certain point of view, only modern human being, namely the proletarian human being, comes out — even if it has not yet found full expression in modern times — when this longing of the modern proletarian for a complete education of the scientific way of thinking into a worldview, with the power of the old religions, when that has come about, when he no longer, because he has realized that he should no longer be a commodity, will draw the consequences of bourgeois thinking, then the moment will have come when one can speak of the fruitful organization of social will.

[ 75 ] In pure socialism and in its relationship to Bergson's philosophy, which the esteemed previous speaker emphasized, I believe that one should not take such a dogmatic stance. Of course, I do not want to discuss such philosophical questions today. The previous speaker said that Bergson is a typical representative of the most bourgeois way of thinking. Then socialism would have taken precisely bourgeois foundations from Bergson's philosophy! Today, for example, it can be proven that Bergson's philosophy is permeated by an immeasurable number of “Schopenhauerianisms” in terms of its content, that Bergson is much more influenced by Schopenhauer than you might think.

[ 76 ] Now, if one wanted to discuss such a thing in detail, one would have to be able to go into great detail. I cannot do that today, but I will just mention that there are also people within the proletarian world who consider themselves thinkers, such as Mehring, Franz Mehring, who in many ways is actually similar to Bergson; he characterized Schopenhauer as the representative of the most bourgeois philistinism in philosophy!

[ 77 ] One can have different opinions about these things, and I do not believe that one should be so dogmatic about them. One can hold the view that Bergson is the most advanced philosopher and that there are irrational elements in his philosophy. But one might ask: What does the irrational element have to do with the social question? A proletarian can be just as irrational as a bourgeois. I cannot quite see what all this irrationality has to do with it. One must make the dogmatic assumption that Bergson is absolutely the modern philosopher; so if the proletarians are to think correctly, they must become Bergsonians, mustn't they? That ran through the whole question.

[ 78 ] For it is undoubtedly true that tendencies have emerged in various areas of modern life that are in line with what I have characterized today. It would be truly sad for human life if it always went, so to speak, in the opposite direction, if it always developed in the opposite direction from what is right! Of course, that cannot be the case. I myself said that, for example, in the field of the judiciary, certain things have been stirred up by some very psychologically oriented people. One could, of course, cite countless such examples. But it is also a diversion of the discussion onto a side track if one does not address what has been asserted, but instead puts forward a favorite opinion. Certainly, one can sympathize greatly with some of what has been said today about principles relating to impulses that point more to historical periods; but without going into the latter any further – if I were to go into all these things, I would have to keep you here for a very long time – so without going into the latter any further, I would like to say: Many people today are still inwardly obstinate when it comes to the threefold division I have spoken about today. They say: There cannot be three different divisions that are governed and guided by different principles.

[ 79 ] But I did not speak of three different members governed by three different principles; I spoke of a threefold structure of the social organism! Just consider that this threefold structure of the social organism must gradually be found in our time, in accordance with its entire way of thinking, just as, for example, the ancient divisions that you also find in Plato and that were justified at that time. Someone once said to me after my lecture: So we have another reference to Plato's ancient divisions: the productive, the defensive, and the educational classes! What I said is the opposite of the division into productive, defensive, and educational classes, because it is not people who are divided into classes, but rather an attempt is made to divide the social organism. We humans should not be divided! The same person can very well be active in the intellectual sphere, or in the legal sphere, or even in the economic sphere. It is precisely this that emancipates humans from any one-sidedness in any of the spheres of the social organism. It is therefore not a question of dividing people into such independent classes when developing a healthy social organism, but of organizing the social organism itself according to its own laws. That is the fundamental difference. In the past, people were divided into classes. Now, in accordance with the thinking of our time, the social organism itself should be divided into classes so that people can look at what they are living in and be active in one or the other class according to their needs, circumstances, and abilities. For example, it will be quite possible in the future for a person who is active in economic life to be at the same time a representative in the purely political sphere of the state. However, he will then naturally have to assert his economic interests in a different way than he can assert what is solely relevant in the sphere of the constitutional state. These three branches will themselves ensure the demarcation of their territories. There will be no confusion, with one branch interfering in the affairs of another.

[ 80 ] This will be achieved much more effectively if the branches are kept separate. Of course, it is the same human dispositions that decide in one branch and the other. But just as the human body has three centralized parts—I don't want to draw analogies, but I would like to mention this—the nervous and sensory system, the pulmonary and respiratory system, and the metabolic system, so too does a healthy social organism have three branches. This is something that is not yet part of common thinking, but I believe that it will find its way into people's thinking, and that it should be taken no less seriously than one takes, so to speak, one's favorite opinion.

Dr. Roman Boos: May I take the liberty of addressing a question to the speaker regarding what has just been asked in the field of criminal law? Well, when the freedom of judges was mentioned, whether this also means a violation of the principle that no punishment should be imposed without a law—it seems to me that this means that criminal law as such should not be issued from the realm of free intellectual life, but from the political authority, that the question probably contains a misunderstanding on the part of Dr. Weiß, who meant that a violation of the principle is being demanded that no one can be sentenced to punishment who has not violated a specific law. — May I perhaps ask you to comment on this?

[ 81 ] Dr. Steiner: Yes, of course, in this question the system of public law touches on the system of practical jurisdiction. What I emphasized is the separation of practical judgment. That is why I used the term “judgment,” explicitly referring to practical judgment as distinct from general public legal life, which I must think of as centralized in the healthy social organism in the political state, in such a way that the healthy social organism must ensure in its public legal life that proceedings are conducted in accordance with a law determined by it. It goes without saying that judgments cannot be made in the most arbitrary manner. But I have not thought about such things, which are abstract and, in their abstractness, more or less self-evident. Even today, I did not have to talk about, say, the scope of the law, but rather about the social organism and social will. And so I ask you to consider the following in the context of the topic.

[ 82 ] You see, I have spent almost as much of my life in Austria as in Germany. I have been able to get to know Austrian life thoroughly; you can believe me when I say that it is not an abrupt assertion when I say that much of what has happened in the Austrian so-called state in recent times is connected with events that arose as profound imbalances in the 1870s and 1880s. Do not forget that in a state such as Austria, this would not be so radically apparent in other areas, but it does exist in one form or another – especially because the different language areas are mixed up in Austria. You could experience, for example, that a German, because he happened to belong to a court district in which a Czech judge who did not speak German presided, was judged by a Czech judge in a language he did not understand. He did not know what was being judged about him and what was happening to him; he only noticed that he was being led away. The same was true in reverse when a German judge who did not understand Czech judged a Czech who did not understand German. What I mean is the individual shaping, the free shaping of the relationship between the person being judged and the judge.

[ 83 ] So a state such as Austria could expect great success from this. But this impulse would have required that, for perhaps five or ten years—circumstances are constantly changing—the person being judged or sentenced could have chosen his judge, in a free choice of judge.

[gap in the stenogram]

[ 84 ] This is simply not a matter of intellectual life, but rather, from the outset, a matter of life in a constitutional state; the second, the state law, will ensure that judgments are made only according to a law that existed when the act was committed, as this falls within its jurisdiction; it will draw its own conclusions in each case, of course.

[ 85 ] But the question is quite different; if you take a closer look at things, you will see that all the solutions to these cases are very, very consistent. Today, I could only tell you the very first prerequisites; otherwise, I would have to talk not only all night, but also tomorrow.