The Rudolf Steiner Archive

What is the meaning of the work of the modern proletarian?

[ 1 ] When today's lecture was announced, some people may have asked themselves: Where does the topic to be discussed come from? And after some investigation, they may have come to the conclusion that we are once again going to talk about the kind of understanding that is so strongly desired today by those who, over a long period of time, have brought about the current capitalist sea of social confusion, only to find that the water is now up to their mouths and they are no longer able to swim in this sea. They are looking for one rescue boat or another; but they will not find such rescue boats from the assumptions they usually make. For I do not want to talk to you about such understanding this evening. It seems to me that in the times we live in, completely different things are necessary. For let us look at what has actually become and what is playing itself out in the current circumstances, which are so frightening for some who are seeking just such an understanding.

[ 2 ] What is now called “the social question” did not arise yesterday. In the way it is discussed today, it is more than half a century old. But what actually led to this social question is much, much older; it is what has brought about the entire development of modern times, of the last centuries. And if we look at what the developments of the last centuries have brought about, we can summarize it briefly in the following words.

[ 3 ] There was a number of people, those people who are perhaps best described as those who lived from the capitalist economic order and who felt comfortable in the capitalist economic order. One could truly hear these people talk often enough about how far we had come in civilization. One could hear what had been achieved by humanity's ability to communicate quickly not only across the vast distances of individual countries and continents, but also across the oceans; how far we had come by spreading a certain level of education, enabling people to participate in what was called intellectual life, which was thought to have reached a very special height in our time.

[ 4 ] Now, I don't need to describe to you all the praise that has been heaped upon our modern civilization in this regard. But this modern civilization spread over a foundation. It would have been inconceivable without this foundation; it lived off this foundation. And what was in this foundation? In this foundation there were more and more people of the kind who, from their deepest soul feelings, had to cry out: Does what this modern life has brought us give us a dignified existence? What has this modern civilization condemned us to? — And so this modern humanity split more and more into two groups: those who felt comfortable or at least satisfied in this modern civilization, but who could only feel satisfied because the others in the underground had to devote their labor to a social order in which they could not really participate.

[ 5 ] However, this whole course of events led to something else developing. It led to the bearers of so-called civilization no longer being able to continue the old patriarchal conditions with their numerous illiterates. It developed that the people supported by capitalism had to educate at least part of the proletariat that served them. And from the education of the proletariat, something developed that is now expressed in facts that are so frightening, but for those who understand history, all too necessary: What developed was that, above all, a very large number of people, who had to form the foundation for this modern civilization, were now able to reflect on their situation, that they no longer had to surrender themselves instinctively, that they could ask the question in the most intense way: Do we have a dignified existence? How can we achieve a dignified existence?

[ 6 ] Those who had previously been the leading class of people had, in the course of modern economic life, linked this economic life, insofar as it suited them, with the modern state. Under the influence of modern times, the modern proletariat could not be excluded from this modern state, at least to a certain extent. And so it came about that, on the one hand, the proletariat strove to improve its situation within economic life and achieve a dignified existence, while on the other hand it attempted to fight for its rights with the help of the modern state.

[ 7 ] It cannot be said—as the facts of the present teach us—that little has been achieved in either direction. Through trade union activity, modern working-class society has attempted to achieve a great deal within the economic cycle: these were fragments of what must actually constitute a dignified existence within a healthy economic order. This has been achieved through state activity. However, further progress was hindered by the economic and political power of the class that had hitherto led humanity. And so, despite the fact that much has been achieved in both areas, the modern proletariat is still faced with the question: what is the meaning of my work in relation to what every human being in the world must claim as their human dignity?

[ 8 ] In response to what the proletariat has been calling out to this leading, ruling circle in various forms for many decades: “Things cannot go on like this!” – hardly a word of understanding has been heard. And those words that have been heard were actually at odds with what should have been striven for in the spirit of the times. Did we not hear, from all possible sides—from Christian socialists, from bourgeois socialists—this or that being said that could remedy the dangers that people believed they saw looming? Was it, in essence, more than just unctuous phrases that arose from the various religious, moral, and other prejudices handed down by this ruling class, which had been in power until then?

[ 9 ] These leading circles did not feel it, but another side of humanity did. Those who felt their direction from something quite different from empty rhetoric, those who felt their direction from the consciousness of the class that had been placed in the particular social position of being the foundation for this modern civilization. And so, despite the fact that much had been achieved on the other side through trade union, cooperative, and political life, something else emerged, something even more important, something that is the work of the modern proletariat, something that is full of seeds for the future, and something that is also richly supported by the facts of the present: It emerged that while the hitherto ruling class pursued its luxurious education, which could only be nourished and strengthened by capitalism, the proletariat, in the time it had left, sought a truly modern education in its assemblies, sought a spiritual life. This was what the hitherto ruling class of humanity did not want to see, that through thousands and thousands of proletarian souls a whole new education, a whole new view of humanity, was developing.

[ 10 ] It was in the nature of things that this proletarian education initially arose from the observation of economic life. For modern life had forged the proletarian to the machine. It had pushed him into the factory, harnessed him to capitalism. That is where he got his ideas. But these ideas—I just want to point out how intensely everything connected with Marxism struck a chord of understanding in the souls of the proletariat—this education was one that found little, truly very little, resonance among the ruling class, the class that had hitherto led humanity.

[ 11 ] Is it not characteristic that those who know the facts must say today: among the leading proletarian personalities, among those who really understand the proletariat, not just think about the proletariat, among those personalities who have absorbed what could be absorbed of truly fruitful education about economic life today, among them there truly lives today a 'more thorough, at least more fundamental knowledge of what is going on in the social organism than even among the most educated of the educated, even among professors who think about sociology, university professors. For it is characteristic that these circles, whose profession it is, so to speak, to deal with sociology and national economy, have resisted as long as possible everything that has emerged from an understanding of the modern proletariat. And only when the facts became urgent, when the facts allowed for nothing else, did some of these bourgeois leaders deign to incorporate various Marxist or similar concepts into their economic system.

[ 12 ] I am not claiming here, on the basis of some vague theory, that this work was done by the modern proletariat, I would say, completely unbeknownst to the leading, ruling circles; I am claiming this because I was able to witness how this work was done. For years, I was able to be a lecturer in Berlin at the workers' educational school that Wilhelm Liebknecht, the old Liebknecht, had founded. And partly in this school, partly in what followed, one had a good cross-section of everything that had been worked on to bring about a new era based on a developed proletarian consciousness of humanity. All those who superficially treat this modern proletarian movement as a mere question of wages and bread, who do not understand how to treat it as a question of a dignified existence for all people, should have considered this long ago.

[ 13 ] In contrast, it is truly not very significant when people point out today how, within the world of facts that has emerged from social chaos, terrible and sometimes cruel things are happening. Those who understand how things have developed do not ask about the connection between these cruel or terrifying events and the modern proletarian movement, but are clear that it is the classes that have been in power until now that have brought about what is happening today.

[ 14 ] The moment in world history has only just arrived when the proletariat is beginning to bear responsibility for world historical events. What has resulted from capitalism, from the capitalist economic order in recent times and especially in the most recent times, is responsible for the terrible and in many respects insane catastrophe of the so-called world war.

[ 15 ] But what do we now see at the center of all that is the proletarian movement, the proletarian aspiration, indeed, the proletarian demand? At the center of it all, we see what the proletarian must feel about what he basically brings about and what the modern economic system alone can give to the social organism; for the leading cultural circles to date have basically been interested in only one thing about the proletarian, and that one thing is the proletarian's labor power. It is important to understand how profoundly the ideas of Karl Marx and those who followed in his footsteps affected the modern proletariat, because this modern proletariat felt that, above all else, clarity was needed regarding the way in which human labor power could be incorporated into the social organism.

[ 16 ] Well, it has often been said and has become clear in the widest circles: through the modern economic order, labor power has become a commodity among other commodities. That is the peculiarity of economic life, that it consists of commodity production, commodity circulation, and commodity consumption. But what has happened is that the labor power of the modern proletarian has been turned into a commodity.

[ 17 ] From this point of view, everything has basically been said within the proletariat. However, the question is usually only addressed from one side, so that it does not appear completely in the light that actually provides insight into the position of human labor in a healthy social organism. A question must be raised which, admittedly, arises from the Marxist question, but which must be raised in an even more precise and intense manner. The question must be asked: Can human labor power ever be a real commodity?

[ 18 ] This leads the question onto a completely different track. One will indeed ask: How can human labor be justifiably remunerated? How can human labor ever obtain its rights? And one can still assume that human labor must receive wages.

[ 19 ] In certain contexts, however, wages are nothing more than the purchase price for the commodity “labor.” But labor can never be a commodity! And where labor is turned into a commodity in the economic process, that economic process is a lie. For something is being thrown into reality that can never be a true part of that reality. Human labor cannot be a commodity because it cannot have the character that every commodity must necessarily have. In the economic process, every commodity must be able to be compared in value with another commodity. Comparability is the basic condition for something to be a commodity. But human labor can never be compared in value with any commodity product.

[ 20 ] It would actually be terribly simple, if only we had not forgotten how to think simply today. Just think, if, for my sake, ten people work together in a family, each doing their part, how can the work of one individual out of these ten be compared with the output produced by these ten? It is not possible to compare labor with the output of goods. Labor stands on a completely different basis of social evaluation than goods. This is something that has perhaps not been clearly articulated in recent times, but which lives on in the feelings of the modern proletariat.

[ 21 ] What lives in the demands of the modern proletariat? What lives in the feelings of the modern proletariat is actual criticism, world-historical criticism, which simply lies in the life of the modern proletarian and is hurled against everything that has been promoted as social order by the ruling circles up to now. This modern proletariat is nothing other than a world-historical critique itself. It is precisely the realization that labor power can never be a commodity that gives rise to the feeling, the fundamental feeling, that in modern times we are living in a tremendous, comprehensive lie; for labor power is being bought that, by its very nature, can never be bought.

[ 22 ] The modern proletarian is convinced that this situation must be remedied, as must be obvious to anyone with insight today. But he has been driven into what not he, but the hitherto ruling classes have made of the social organism. He has been excluded from everything else and has been forced into the economic process. Is it not understandable that he now wants to bring about the recovery of the entire social organism through a mere recovery of this economic process, the cycle of economic life itself? This has given rise to the ideals that have existed as the ideals of the modern proletariat up to now.

[ 23 ] It has been said that because capitalism, as private capitalism, has turned modern production into commodity production through the private use of the means of production, the modern proletariat has found itself in a position that only it can fully appreciate. This can only be remedied by returning to the ancient idea of cooperation, to that cooperation which, in a sense, proceeds from the production of one for the other and works toward self-production, in which one can no longer take advantage of the other, because then he himself would be taken advantage of. And further it has been said: How is this cooperative, this great cooperative, to be established? Here one must resort to the framework that has developed in recent times: the modern state. The modern state itself must be turned into a large cooperative, through which, in a sense, the production of goods is transformed into production for self-sufficiency.

[ 24 ] This is precisely where one must grasp the point at which one can say: on the one hand, one finds what is healthy in the intellectual life of the modern proletariat, and at the same time one finds where this intellectual life of the modern proletariat is capable of development, where it can progress from the stage it has reached so far to another stage.

[ 25 ] Those who disagree in this area should truly not take offense if, based on feelings that are just as sincere and honest as their own, one does not yet see perfection in the current proletarian worldview, but is compelled to point out that this proletarian worldview carries within it the seeds of progress, but that this progress must also be actively pursued. And it can be pursued.

[ 26 ] This will be admitted by anyone who understands what I already—about eighteen years ago—had to emphasize in the Berlin Trade Union House as a peculiarity, and then often again as a peculiarity of the modern labor movement in particular, and what I still consider to be absolutely correct today. I said at the time: For those who have an overview of the historical life of humanity and who have seen the modern proletarian movement emerge from this historical life of humanity with understanding, with inner understanding, it is striking that this modern proletarian movement, unlike any other human movement that has ever existed, is based on what may seem grotesque, one may find it paradoxical — on a downright scientific basis.“

[ 27 ] It is deeply, deeply true what the almost forgotten Lassalle struck up in this direction as a basic tone, as a basic demand of the modern labor movement in his famous speech on ”Science and the Workers." But one must look at the matter from a different perspective than is usually done today: one must look at it from the perspective of life. One can say that with regard to what has become accessible to the modern proletariat through what the leading classes had to give it if they did not want to leave it in illiteracy, the modern proletarian has gained the opportunity to take over, as if it were a legacy, what has developed in recent times, to take over from the efforts of the leading circles what has developed as a scientific worldview.

[ 28 ] What matters is that the modern proletarian had to react to this scientific worldview in a completely different way than all other circles, even those who had directly developed this worldview. One can be a very enlightened person within the leading and hitherto dominant circles, a person whose innermost convictions spring from the results of modern science; one can, for all I care, be a natural scientist like Vogt or a popular scientific researcher like Büchner, and yet one's attitude toward the scientifically oriented worldview is different from that of the modern proletarian.

[ 29 ] Those who, out of the leading circles and their prejudices, namely their preconceptions and pre-sensations, theoretically profess modern education about man and nature, nevertheless remain stuck within a social order that is strictly closed off from the modern proletariat, whose structure and entire organization do not derive from what modern science tells us, but from what, before modern science, filled people's minds with religious, legal, and other ideas about human dignity. I was able to experience this once, I would say, in my own personal experience.

[ 30 ] It was at a time when I stood together with Rosa Luxemburg, who recently died tragically, in Spandau before a workers' assembly, where we both spoke about the modern worker and modern science. One had to see how what this modern science can instill in the modern proletarian soul has a completely different effect on the proletarian than even on the most convinced members of the previously ruling class, as Rosa Luxemburg made clear to the people: There is nothing that points to an angelic origin of humankind, nothing that points to the lofty starting points that the bourgeois worldview still likes to talk about; this modern bourgeois worldview itself asserts how humans began as climbing animals and how they developed from these conditions. Anyone who thinks about this – as the enthusiastic labour leader said at the time – anyone who thinks this through cannot remain stuck in the prejudices held by today's leading circles, in the prejudices of class distinctions, of the possibility of ranking people who all have the same origins, as is done within the leading circles today. This had a different impact than it did on the people in the leading circles. And it complemented what the modern proletarian understood as economics.

[ 31 ] What has been absorbed into people's souls is capable of further development, and I would like to tell you a little about this further development today.

[ 32 ] Anyone who surveys everything that comes into consideration for the question: How did the labor power of the modern proletarian come to be regarded as a commodity? — will gradually find themselves compelled to take their observations of economic life to the point where they must say: It is precisely because the modern worker has been drawn into this purely economic life that the labor power of the modern proletarian has also become a commodity within economic life. In this respect, we are merely seeing a continuation of what was the slave question in ancient times. Back then, the whole person was a commodity. Today, all that remains of the whole person is their labor power. But the whole person must follow this labor power.

[ 33 ] It is in the feelings of the modern proletarian soul that this should not be so in the future, that this is the last remnant of the old barbaric age that must be overcome. But this can only be overcome if the same clear intellectual power with which the modern proletariat has grasped economic and human nature is now used to grasp the science of a healthy social organism. And let me say a few words about this science.

[ 34 ] First and foremost, it is clear that we must ask ourselves: what is it that makes the labor power of the modern proletarian a commodity within the cycle of modern economic life? It is the economic power of the capitalist.

[ 35 ] These words about the power of the capitalist already point to the healthy answer. For who is diametrically opposed to power? Power is diametrically opposed to rights. This indicates that a recovery with regard to the utilization of human labor in the social organism can only occur if labor is removed, if the question of labor is removed from the economic process altogether and if it becomes a pure and fair question of rights.

[ 36 ] This brings us to consider more broadly whether there is a deeper difference between economic issues and legal issues. This difference does exist; it is just that today we are not yet inclined to take this difference seriously enough. People are not inclined to take seriously enough what, on the one hand, must be the effective forces in all economic life and, on the other hand, must be the effective forces in legal life itself.

[ 37 ] What influences economic processes? Economic processes are influenced by human needs and by the possibility of satisfying these human needs through production. Both are based on natural foundations: human needs on the natural foundations of human beings, and production on climatic, geographical, and other natural foundations. Under the influence of the modern division of labor, this economic life has led to what modern commodity exchange is and must be, namely commodity exchange in which commodities are mutually evaluated according to human needs and, after their mutual evaluation—I cannot describe this in detail, it would take too long—appear on the market and enter the cycle of the economic process on the market.

[ 38 ] Within this cycle of economic life, legal life cannot develop at the same time as in a closed cycle. Human nature does not allow legal life to develop within the social organism within economic life itself, just as it does not allow there to be only one centralized system within the human, natural human organism. I truly do not want to play with any comparisons from natural science this evening; but I believe that this is precisely a point where natural science must go beyond what it has achieved today. In my last book, “Von Seelenrätseln” (On the Mysteries of the Soul), I pointed out what is important, what natural science has not yet properly recognized: that there are three systems in the healthy human organism: the sensory-nervous system, which is the bearer of soul life; the respiratory and cardiac system, which is the bearer of rhythmic life; and the metabolic system, which is the bearer of metabolism. Together, these three systems constitute the human organism. But each system is centralized in itself; each has its own outlet to the outside world. Order and harmony are brought about in this human organism by the fact that these three systems do not interact chaotically, but unfold alongside each other, allowing the power of one to flow into the other in just the right way.

[ 39 ] Thus, such a threefold structure must occur in a healthy social organism. It must be understood that when human beings are active in the economic organism, they must then merely manage within this economic process. Then it is a matter of the administration and legislation of this economic process aiming to bring about the mutual evaluation of goods in economic reality, to initiate the circulation of goods in the most expedient way, to initiate the production of goods, and to initiate the consumption of goods. However, everything that does not relate to the satisfaction of the needs of one person by another, but rather to the relationship of each person to every other person, must be extracted from this mere economic process. That in which all people must be equal is something radically different from what can develop in economic life alone. Therefore, in order to restore the social organism to health, it is necessary to extract from mere economic life the life of law, the actual life of law. It is precisely this development that recent times have striven to oppose.

[ 40 ] What have the leading classes done so far? In those areas where it was convenient for them, where it seemed right for their interests, they have continued the old fusion that already existed in many areas between economic life and political state life. And so we see that in recent times, precisely under the influence of the leading circles of humanity, the so-called nationalization of certain branches of the economy has emerged. Nationalizing the postal service, telegraphs, and the like has been found to be in line with modern progress and required by this modern progress.

[ 41 ] Those who do not look to the interests of the hitherto leading circles, but who ask: What are the foundations of a healthy social organism? must think in the opposite direction. They must strive to ensure that the life of the actual political state, the state that has to ensure law and order, is increasingly separated from mere economic life. but above all, which must ensure that the corresponding legal life flows from this sphere into economic life. Those who do not have an eye, a spiritual eye, for how radically different economic life and the life of the actual political state are, do not correctly distinguish between the two in human life.

[ 42 ] Let us look at how things have developed today. Certain people speak from today's social situation, saying that within this social situation we have, first of all, the exchange of goods for goods. Well, that is necessary in economic life. We have just spoken about that. Then, secondly, they say, and they consider this to be justified, we have the exchange of goods, or rather the representative of goods, money, for labor. And thirdly: the exchange of goods for rights.

[ 43 ] What is the latter? I have already spoken about the second. Well, we only need to look at the relationship between landowners and the modern economic order, and it will immediately become clear to us what should be clear in this area for the future. Whatever one may think about the ownership of land, everything else is actually irrelevant to the real process in the social organism; the only thing that matters is that the owner of land has the right to use a piece of land exclusively and to assert his personal interest in this use.

[ 44 ] This has nothing whatsoever to do with the economic process as such. The only thing that has anything to do with the economic process—and only a distorted economic theory can object to this—is what is produced on the land as a commodity or with commodity value. The use of land is based on a right.

[ 45 ] However, within the modern capitalist economic order, this right is transformed into power, namely through the amalgamation of capitalism with ground rents. And so, on the one hand, we have the power that excludes such rights; on the other hand, we have the economic power that can force human labor to become a commodity.

[ 46 ] From both sides, nothing other than a life lie is realized if the goal is not pursued—pursued out of genuine social insight—of structuring the social organism into an economic organism and an organism of the political state in the narrower sense.

[ 47 ] The economic organism will have to be founded on an associative basis, on the needs of consumption in relation to production. From the diverse interests of the most varied professional circles, the most diverse cooperatives – one could also call them, using an old word, brotherhoods of humanity – will have to be developed, in which needs and their satisfaction are administered.

[ 48 ] What develops within this associative basis of the economic organism will always have to do with the satisfaction of one circle of people by another circle. In this area, the expert utilization of natural resources will have to be decisive, but then also the expert organization of the production, circulation, and consumption of goods. Human needs and human interests will have to prevail.

[ 49 ] This will always be contrasted by something radically different, namely that in which human beings are essentially equal to one another, where they must be equal, as is said with a phrase that has already become trivial today: where they must be equal before the law that they themselves give themselves as equal human beings.

[ 50 ] The cycle of the economic process will have to be based on association; in the narrower sense, the actual political organization will have to be based on a purely democratic foundation, on the principle of the equality of all people in their relationship to one another. This political organization will give rise to something quite different from the economic power that turns labor into a commodity. True labor law will spring from political life, which is separate from economic life, where only what can be negotiated between people as human beings regarding labor power can be used to determine wages, working hours, and other aspects of labor power.

[ 51 ] However much one may believe that things have already improved somewhat in recent times, what is fundamentally important has not improved. Because of the way in which the labor power of the proletariat is integrated into economic processes, the price of labor power turned into a commodity will depend on the prices of other economic products, on commodity prices. Anyone who really looks deeper into the economic process can see this. The situation will be different if, independently of the laws of economic life and its administration, a labor law exists within the political state, within the purely democratic administration and legislation of the political state. What will happen then?

[ 52 ] Then what humans contribute to the social organism through their labor will be in a relationship that is just as alive and self-determined as the natural foundations are today. Within certain limits, it is possible to shift the technical fertilization of the soil and the like, to shift the fixed limits of the natural foundations somewhat; but these natural foundations nevertheless determine economic life to a very large extent from one side. Just as economic life is determined from outside by this factor, so too must economic life be determined from outside by the other factor, in that it no longer makes labor dependent on itself, but rather that labor, determined on purely human grounds, can be offered to economic life. Then labor determines the price of goods, and goods no longer determine the price of labor!

[ 53 ] Then the only thing that can happen is that, if for some reason the labor force cannot perform sufficiently, economic life will become impoverished. However, this must be remedied by seeking a remedy on a legal basis, and not from economic life alone.

[ 54 ] Economic life is based solely on supply and demand. With labor law, which is based on the independent political state, all other rights will necessarily also be based on the same foundations. In short, one will necessarily have to see – I can only hint at this due to the brevity of time – the ideal of a healthy social organism in the future precisely in the separation of the two areas: legal life and economic life.

[ 55 ] And thirdly, what can be called the spiritual life of humanity must be attached to this independent economic life, this independent legal life.

[ 56 ] It is here that one will encounter the most resistance when speaking of this true continuation of the proletarian worldview. For it has become ingrained in human thinking in this area, even more so than in others, that the salvation of humanity can only depend on the absorption of the entire spiritual life by the state; and people do not yet see how the dependence of spiritual life on the state, especially in recent times, has arisen from what can be called the interest of the hitherto leading circles in the state, which has so thoroughly satisfied these very leading circles. These leading circles have found their interests satisfied in this state; they have allowed what they call spiritual life to be absorbed more and more by this state. Just as the political state is compelled by compulsory tax laws to bring about what can establish the equality of all people before the law, and just as the state is compelled to satisfy its needs through compulsory taxation, so, on the other hand, intellectual life must be truly emancipated from the other two areas of the social organism.

[ 57 ] It is precisely what has been striven for in this area—the amalgamation of spiritual life with state and economic life—that has led to the calamities of modern times. For that which is to live in the spiritual realm can only develop if it can develop in the light of true freedom. Everything that cannot develop in the light of true freedom withers and paralyzes real spiritual life and also leads it astray, which is unfortunately all too evident in the modern social order. But what is necessary in this area is to understand the inner connection between spiritual life in the narrowest sense and religious life, scientific life, artistic life, life in a certain morality, what connection there is between this life and everything that arises from individual human abilities and skills.

[ 58 ] Therefore, now that these things are being discussed here in a serious sense, in the serious sense of a healthy social organism, it must be said that spiritual life includes everything that has anything to do with the unfolding and development of individual abilities, everything that has to do with it, from the school system up to the university system, into the artistic and moral life, and even into those branches of the mind that form the basis of practical and economic life. In all these areas, the aim must be to emancipate intellectual life. So that this intellectual life can be placed in the free initiative of those who have the individual abilities of human beings, and so that this free intellectual life can only exist in a healthy social organism if it is also based on the free recognition and understanding of those who need to receive it. This means that in the future, intellectual life must no longer be administered in any way from the sum of what one has in one's pocket or in one's safe, or from the bureaucracy of the state.

[ 59 ] Not only has this spiritual life been administered by the state, giving it a certain character in relation to the personalities involved in it, in relation to the personalities who administer it, but this spiritual life as we have it today, which the modern proletarian rightly perceives as an ideology, this spiritual life has become a mirror image of the interests and needs of the leading, ruling circles for and through the modern state, which they have formed for their own convenience, shaped according to these needs. Is it ultimately correct that all spiritual life is only a reflection, so to speak, only a superstructure of economic or state life? The modern spiritual life of the leading circles is only such a superstructure. Certainly, chemistry and mathematics will not easily be able to take on the character that results from the interests of the leading circles. The very extent to which they are pursued, but especially the light that falls on them from other branches of intellectual life, is determined by the fact that the interests of the leading circles of humanity, or at least those that have been leading until now, are merging with the interests of modern state life and thus with the interests of modern intellectual life in the state.

[ 60 ] Yes, this modern spiritual life has become a plaything of economic and political life, especially in the most important areas, where it is supposed to intervene in human souls if it is to determine its place in the social order. This can be seen in the way in which, up until this terrible war catastrophe, those bearers of spiritual life who were connected to modern state life through the detour of capitalism have, in essence, produced precisely in the most important areas of spiritual life that which could be placed at the service of the modern state.

[ 61 ] One could find not a hundred, but a thousand and a thousand times the evidence for this. You need only consider one thing: take the German history professors, the bearers of historical science. Try to get an idea of everything they have produced with regard to the history of the Hohenzollerns, and ask yourself whether, after this world-historical event, the history of the Hohenzollerns will now look the same as it did before. From this, one can see how intellectual life has become a mere plaything of those from whom it has not been free.

[ 62 ] Intellectual life must become free from the other two areas. But then spiritual life can incorporate into its own legislation and administration that which — strange as it may sound and surprising as it may be for some, it must be said — can today arise solely from capitalist prejudices: then spiritual life can truly become the conqueror of mere economic proletarian interests. For spiritual life is a unified whole. Spiritual life descends from the highest branches of spiritual life to those branches that arise when someone has to manage some undertaking based on their individual abilities. Just as they managed it today, they managed it from economic life under the influence of force, economic force. Just as they have to manage it in a healthy social organism, so it is from spiritual life. In a healthy social organism, spiritual life has its own legislation and administration with regard to the highest branches of this spiritual life, but also with regard to everything that will have a spiritual effect on the economic process precisely when spiritual life as such is independent.

[ 63 ] Then the influence of emancipated, independent spiritual life will appear in this economic process in the right way. Then what will be achieved through capital will no longer be achieved in the sense of modern capitalism. Then it will be achieved solely according to the impulses given by spiritual life itself.

[ 64 ] However, we must form the right ideas about these impulses. For example, what will a business actually look like under these impulses?

[ 65 ] Anyone who knows the fundamentals of spiritual life—and I know this very well—will not disagree with me when I give the following description of a business that receives its impulses not from economic power, but from the power of spiritual life: Through the free understanding of his co-workers, he will be enabled to use a certain capital fund to undertake something that is not for his own benefit, but because of the social understanding he will have acquired in the right spiritual life. Then, in such a business, the person who is appointed to his position through the free understanding of his co-workers, right down to the last worker, will be confronted with then, because a relationship of free understanding will then arise between this manager of an enterprise and those who work, it will quite necessarily develop what makes it possible, in addition to working hours, within every enterprise and within the cooperatives of enterprises, to speak freely about the whole way in which the economic process is integrated into the social organism as a whole. Then, under the influence of such a spiritual life, those who will stand in the place where capitalist entrepreneurs stand today will have to reveal themselves in relation to everything that their goods bring into the overall social process of humanity. Then each individual will understand the path taken by the product to which he contributes his labor, the product of the craft worker and of the one who has to direct this manual labor through his special individual abilities. Only then will it be possible for workers to conclude a genuine employment contract. For a genuine employment contract cannot be concluded if it is based on the premise that labor power is a commodity. A true employment contract cannot be based on these principles; rather, a real employment contract can only be based on the premise that the work necessary for the manufacture of a product is performed on the basis of the law, but that, with regard to economic considerations, there is proper cooperation between manual and intellectual workers, that, with regard to economic matters, there must be a division of labor between manual and intellectual workers that can only arise from the free insight of the manual worker as well, because this manual worker will then know, from his intellectual coexistence with the manager, to what extent his work, thanks to the existence of management, flows into the social organism to his own advantage.

[ 66 ] Only in such cooperation does the possibility cease that enterprises, which must be built on a capital basis, are built on advantage, on selfish advantage. Only then, when the social organism is healed in this way, can today's profit interest be replaced by purely objective interest. And the connection between man and his work will emerge again to a greater extent than was the case in earlier times.

[ 67 ] Let us look today at this connection between man and his work. On the one hand, there is the entrepreneur, who does what he considers to be work, but who distances himself from this work as quickly as possible. He even expresses this by referring to talking about his work as “shop talk” once he has distanced himself from it. He distances himself and then seeks to achieve what he strives for as a human being through all sorts of other things. It is precisely this relationship between people and their work that expresses how little people are connected to their work.

[ 68 ] But this is an unhealthy relationship. It is an unhealthy relationship that inevitably leads to another, namely that the modern proletariat has been torn away from the soil of the old craft, where people were deeply attached to their profession, drew their honor and human dignity from their profession, and where they were placed at the machine, harnessed in the factory; this creates an unhealthy situation in which he cannot establish a relationship with his work.

[ 69 ] But those who recognize the true basis of intellectual life know that such an unhealthy relationship between man and his work can only arise under unhealthy conditions. There is nothing in a healthy spiritual life that is free from politics and economics and only has an effect on them; there is nothing within such a spiritual life that is not immediately interesting and which, if handled correctly, connects people to their work because they know that what they do becomes a link in the cycle of the social organism. This is not something that can only be judged as something that cannot be otherwise, that people must also do uninteresting things. No, it must be judged in such a way that precisely that basis of spiritual life is sought which alone can evoke interest, connection between people and their work, and interest in this work in all areas, in all work.

[ 70 ] It will become apparent that when emancipated, free spiritual life, based on spiritual impulses, extends into the most minute branches of state and economic life in its administrators, then and only then can something arise that becomes a real, objective interest in everything and does not merely establish a commercial, merely external economic and advantageous relationship.

[ 71 ] However, the foundation for such a spiritual life must be laid. This foundation can only be laid if the entire school system is placed under the administration of spiritual life itself, if the lowest teacher no longer has to ask: What does the political state require of me? — but when he has to look up to those in whom he has confidence, when he looks to the areas of the social organism that administer spiritual life according to their own principles.

[ 72 ] In many respects, what I believe to be a natural outcome has an effect. Precisely as a true continuation of the proletarian worldview, it counteracts habitual ways of thinking. For while it has been inherited from bourgeois science to merge spiritual life, the state, and economic life, the goal of healing the social organism must be to make the three areas mentioned independent. Only if each of these areas—if I may use common terms—has its own parliament and its own administration, which relate to each other like the governments of sovereign states, only if they negotiate with each other through delegations, only if they exchange their common needs in trade, only then can the social organism be restored to health. And the question today is the fundamental question that arises from all the facts: How can the social organism be healed? It is obvious: this social organism is sick!

[ 73 ] Those who, out of their class consciousness, must make the justified demand that this social organism be healed, need to pursue the proletarian worldview in its fruitful seeds and develop it further in an appropriate manner.

[ 74 ] I admit that at first glance, some may disagree with what they consider to be right today when it is said that we must move in the direction of this social threefold division, this threefold division of the social organism. But as much as this contradicts the thinking habits of many people today, reality must not be guided by our convenience, nor by the beliefs of those who have hitherto considered themselves practitioners of life. Reality must be guided by what can be recognized as right from an honest, healthy sense of truth.

[ 75 ] What I have discussed does not refer to some kind of cloud cuckoo land. Oh, the time has come when many who, because they could only grasp the simple things and formed their habits of thought accordingly, considered themselves to be practical people, will have to admit that the despised, so very despised idealists, who think out of the necessities of human development, are the true practical people. What I have indicated to you is not a pipe dream; it is taken directly from what are the most immediate, everyday needs of humanity.

[ 76 ] Of course, I cannot go into every single area; I will conclude by touching on a single area, an area which, even if I can only touch on it briefly, will show how what I have apparently derived from the original idea of social life interferes with the worst thing of all. What is the worst thing in life? The very worst thing is that we must have something we call money in our pockets. But you also know what is attached to this money. You know how this money interferes with all of life. If we consider the development of a healthy social organism, which member is responsible for the administration of money? Until now, the state has been responsible for the administration of money due to certain developmental forces that are very old. But money is just as much a commodity in a healthy organism as labor is not a commodity. And everything unhealthy that interferes with the social organism from the side of money consists in the fact that money is stripped of its commodity character by the fact that today it is based more on the stamping of some mark by the political state than on what it must still be based on, because there is no other way in international trade: on its commodity value. Economists today are engaged in a strange dispute, a dispute that seems truly strange to those who understand. They ask whether money is a commodity, just a popular commodity that can always be exchanged for other commodities, whereas otherwise, if one has the misfortune, for example, only tables and chairs, one would have to go around with tables and chairs and wait to see if someone would give one vegetables in exchange for them, one can, by first exchanging tables and chairs for money, obtain things that are just right for one, that one needs at that moment, for the commodity money. While some say that money is a commodity, or at least the representative of the commodity that must be there, even if it is paper money, the corresponding equivalent in goods, others say that money is only what is created when the state stamps a certain mark on it by law. And now these national economic scholars are researching: What is the correct answer? Is money a commodity, or something that is created by a mere stamp? Is it merely an instruction for the commodity?

[ 77 ] The answer to these questions is simply this: money is neither one nor the other, but today it is both. It is one because the state stamps certain marks on it; it is the other because in international trade, and to a certain extent also in national trade, money can only circulate as a commodity in the circulation of commodities.

[ 78 ] A healthy social organism will strip money of any legal character; it will assign it to the administration and legislation, through its own natural process, including the introduction of money, the minting of money, the determination of the value of money within the economic cycle, to this same parliament, this same administration that manages the rest of the economic organism.

[ 79 ] Only when this happens can what the modern proletariat must strive for be placed on a healthy basis. That strange relationship that exists between wages and the nature of goods, that relationship, is also based on a lie of life. While on the one hand the worker believes that by demanding higher wages, if he gets them, he will achieve healthier living conditions, on the other hand the price of goods will always rise the price of goods continues to rise on the other side, as long as the economic cycle is not emancipated from the legal cycle of the political state. All these things will only be able to be placed on a healthy basis when this threefold division comes into being.

[ 80 ] Similarly, when the necessary independence of spiritual life is recognized, it will be understood that there is no need to create capitalist enterprises as such, but that the way in which capital has been managed in recent times, the way in which it has been used by being solely involved in the economic process, that is what has caused capital to have such a damaging effect, with which so much misery is associated.

[ 81 ] It must be understood that as long as the employment contract does not refer to the division of what the manual laborer and the intellectual worker produce together, but as long as the employment contract refers to the remuneration of labor, it will be impossible to place this on a healthy basis.

[ 82 ] Only by giving intellectual life its healthy reality will it be revealed in every case where it is necessary in the relationship between worker and intellectual leader that where the worker is taken advantage of, he is not merely taken advantage of by the economy, but is taken advantage of by the fact that the entrepreneur exploits his individual qualities, his intellectual qualities, in an improper, unlawful, and inhumane manner. The worker is not exploited by economic life; the worker is exploited by the lie of life that arises from the fact that in today's social organism, individual abilities can be used precisely to take advantage of the worker because they cannot be seen by both sides within the economic process; within a healthy spiritual life, they are seen and controlled by both sides.

[ 83 ] As I said, I can well understand that what I have mentioned here, precisely for the recovery of the social organism, may still be repugnant to many a proletarian mind today. I can understand that. I have been talking about these things among workers and with workers for years. I have not only administered individual branches of teaching within the workers' educational school, I have also conducted speech exercises with the workers. In the exercises that were conducted for speech practice, many things were also brought up by the workers in this community, which really showed the special coloring, the special nature of the demands of the modern proletariat. This gives you the ability not only to think about the proletariat, as the members of today's ruling circles or the previous ruling circles do, but also to think with the proletariat. That is what I wanted to tell you today: to think with the proletariat, not just about it!

[ 84 ] According to my will, it is this — I would like you to understand this — that we may differ here and there in terms of the content of our opinions, but that at this moment in world history, what matters is not whether we differ in one opinion or another, but whether we agree on that honest demand which must be the demand of the modern proletariat. Only by agreeing to this, by agreeing in honest desire, only then can the seeds be found that lie in the proletarian worldview for further development. For the time is past when one can merely discuss; the time is past when people who only want to serve their own interests could speak of understanding. The time has come when the demands of the modern proletarian, which have been emerging for decades from the undercurrents, are entering the world historical stage, where they are truly becoming the most important, most significant event of modern times.

[ 85 ] What has emerged from the chaos of modern economic warfare, of modern world war, what has long been, and what will perhaps increasingly fill the future, will be the social question. I did not want to present you with an unrealistic, theoretical solution or attempt at one today; I wanted to draw your attention to the fact that the time has come when the social question is there, when people in their social interaction must be structured into state, economic, and intellectual organs in such a way that a lasting solution to the social question can emerge from this healthy structure.

[ 86 ] This social question will not be solved overnight once it has arisen; but because it will always be there, just as life constantly generates new conflicts, there will always have to be that structure of humanity which honestly strives to resolve the conflicts that arise in social life. Whether attempts will be made to draw attention in the widest possible circles to the fact that the future lies in the further development of the proletarian worldview will determine where the starting point of the modern proletarian movement will lead. And it must actually lead from all the justified demands of the wage question, the bread question, to that powerful, world-historical upheaval which will pass from the consciousness of the modern worker into the general consciousness of humanity, which will establish, out of the dignity, out of the emotional dignity of the modern proletarian, the true human dignity for all people, which others have not yet been able to establish.

Several speakers expressed their views in the ensuing discussion. Rudolf Steiner concluded with the following closing remarks:

[ 87 ] Rudolf Steiner: Yes, first of all, with reference to the esteemed first speaker, I must make something of a fundamental remark. Very often, when one speaks, one is in a position of having to say that one does not really understand why things, as they were said by the first speaker, have to be said in precisely this form, as if it were a refutation of what one has said oneself. The first speaker spoke as if he felt compelled to oppose me on all points — even though he acknowledged some things, at least in relation to my overall position. I am not in a position to have to fight him, but I must say that I actually believe that anyone who has listened to me carefully will not have much to object to in what the first speaker said. I am in a position to acknowledge much more, also with regard to the content of what he said, as he seems to have somehow grasped what I actually wanted to say.

[ 88 ] Now, one thing seems important to me in the details. It is strange that the first speaker felt he had to emphasize that what I said arose from the fact that I only spoke with workers, not worked with workers. Yes, well, of course everyone can only work in their own field; but the way I worked with workers was such that one cannot say that I only spoke with workers. I also believe that those who perhaps understand more of what permeated today's lecture, the whole desire, will find it understandable that I have not been addressed in this way for years, although I understand that I am being addressed in this way today. I have not always been addressed in this way, but I believe that this is simply because at that time the workers already felt that what I had to say was not expressed in mere conversation with the workers.

[ 89 ] If it has become possible for me to speak in such a way as I had to speak again today, it is truly not something I learned. For let us ask ourselves the question: Who can actually count themselves among the proletariat? Those who, through their fate and their own strength, have brought themselves to speak to the proletariat and among the proletariat in the way that I, too, can speak today, but only as a free speaker. For in the circles with which I have been accused of associating, I have perhaps been treated just as badly, perhaps even worse, than I have been treated here this evening. It is something else entirely when, like me, one has fought one's way through; I will continue to do so in the short life that remains to me. But I have struggled for years by talking to the proletariat, working with the proletariat, starving with the proletariat. I did not ask “post office clerks how much they had so that they could starve,” but I had to starve myself. For the family I grew up in was in a much worse situation than perhaps all those “post office clerks” you can ask today. I did not learn to understand the proletariat simply by thinking about them, but I learned to understand the proletariat by living with them myself, by growing up in the proletariat, by learning and having to go hungry with the proletariat. From this background, even back then, when I was able to work with workers for years, it was clear that I was able to speak not from theory, but from a great deal of practical experience. I believe that this can also serve as a basis for determining whether one has a certain right to speak to proletarians or not.

[ 90 ] That is what I would like to say on this matter.

[ 91 ] Then a large part of what the first speaker said did not actually refer to me at all, it referred to the intellectuals. Yes, the chairman has already said: If anyone can talk about being pelted with mud, being pelted with mud by the intellectuals, then I can. For truly, if you were to examine the manner in which I have been besmirched, and in particular the nature of this besmirching, you would probably not envy me the association I have enjoyed with intellectuals.

[ 92 ] This is a personal remark; these are personal remarks in general. But what has been said in response to me is also basically personal, and that is why this remark had to be made.

[ 93 ] Now, of course, a large part of it did not refer to me at all, but to the student body. With regard to the latter: believe me, I am well aware that a large part of today's student body is rightly accused of not living up to the ideal of the lowest wage earner! Of course, there is a lot to be said about this chapter. But modern workers, in particular, should understand that, just as other social classes have been shaped by their circumstances, so too have modern students been shaped by their circumstances. Anyone who can impartially compare the aspirations of modern students with those encountered, for example, among the student body when I myself was still a student—a long time ago—will say that, with regard to the thoroughness with which the modern professoriate was involved in the decline of the bourgeoisie, on which the student body must of course depend — with regard to what served as an example for the modern student body — one can nevertheless feel a certain satisfaction for all the blossoms that are blooming for the better, especially in the modern student body. Even if things look today as if the student body is stabbing the workers in the back, I am quite certain that it is precisely from the student body that collaborators for social ideals will emerge, and I believe in very large numbers. Students today have many things to overcome. We must not forget how ironclad the constraints are that hold them back. Recently, I have had many opportunities to talk with young students about things that may be far removed from their immediate ideals, but which are close to what must develop as a healthy intellectual life in general out of today's sick intellectual life. I know how receptive young people are to a renewal of intellectual life. But I also know how great the temptation is, once you have left behind the enthusiasm of youth, obtained your diploma, and need to find a job in modern bourgeois society, how close the temptation is to sink back into philistinism and narrow-mindedness.

[ 94 ] Of course, we will not arrive at a definitive solution to what we hope and long for overnight. But it should be recognized that wherever such a longing, such an intelligent yearning for what the modern proletarian rightly demands takes hold, it should not be suppressed by conflating the one with the other in a certain fanatical, dogmatic way. I believe that this dogmatism should give way, at least to a certain extent—even if the means cannot be chosen too leniently in the modern struggle—to the attitude I spoke of in my lecture: that it should matter less what the differences in thought are, but rather the equality of honest will.

[ 95 ] Now, ask yourself how many of those whom you say are stabbing you in the back are dependent on the circumstances in which modern students find themselves, and ask yourself, on the other hand, how much honest will is asserting itself among today's youth. Cultivate it rather than paralyzing it by falling into dogmatism.

[ 96 ] Now, as for what the second speaker said at the beginning, I can say that I agree with the comment made on the left, that it is not so different from what I myself said; and I am not so insistent that things be said exactly as I said them. If anything can help improve the situation today, I am delighted. And so I do not want to judge too harshly anything else that was said by the second speaker; I would just like to correct something that may indicate that this speaker did not take the matter quite so seriously. For example, he questioned my reference to having taught for many years at the Workers' Educational School in Berlin, suggesting that it was probably just a liberal educational association. I explicitly stated that it was the Workers' Educational School founded by the late Wilhelm Liebknecht! Now, I don't believe that you would attribute to old Liebknecht the founding of just any educational association for the working class, as the working class at that time would not have accepted it anyway. The audience was not made up of “ordinary bourgeois liberals,” but solely of workers, solely from proletarian circles and organized Social Democrats across the board!

[ 97 ] So I believe that some of my other words were not understood correctly by this gentleman, as I had intended, and as they could be understood if one did not come with a prejudice not only when the other person has a different opinion, but even when he expresses what one himself thinks only in a slightly different form, because he believes that it is necessary, at this moment in world history, to take a more comprehensive view of things, and because he believes that not everyone who judges only by the immediate circumstances can be called a practical person today, but that the true practical person is the one who sees the bigger picture.

[ 98 ] As for the interpretation of the “appeal,” where it has been pointed out that it corresponds almost word for word with what I have said to you this evening — you will not be surprised, since you have heard that the “appeal” was written by me myself, and you will not demand that when I speak here or there, for example when I speak to citizens, that it should sound different from what I am saying here from the podium.

Interjection: Either the same everywhere, or...

[ 99 ] That is precisely what I am saying: I am saying that the “appeal” contains the same thing that I have said here. Nowhere in that “appeal” is there anything other than what I have said here.

[ 100 ] What matters to me is that what I say is the truth in my mind, and I will speak the truth wherever I am allowed to speak the truth. I only speak the truth; that is what matters to me. That is what I have to say in this regard. I will not exclude anyone from anything if they can reconcile it with their convictions and say yes to what I myself say. For I believe that the only way we can succeed is by speaking the truth, regardless of the impression it makes on people, whether they agree with it or not. That is what I wanted to say on this matter.

[ 101 ] And then, in conclusion, I would just like to comment on what the next speaker said: that I had not said anything about the way of fighting. But from my words, you could gather everywhere what I actually think about this way of fighting. I believe I have made it sufficiently clear that it is not my opinion that superficial understanding, or whatever all the nice things are called, can be what matters today. Today, we have entered a stage of reality where, in fact, there is no other option than to not only come up with empty ideas about how things need to be changed, but also to come up with ideas about what new thoughts are truly possible to bring into people's souls. For the old ideas have shown what kind of social order they can bring about, and this has proven that these old ideas are useless. That is why I believe that, first and foremost, for the most immediate practical purposes, it is important that those who have honest social intentions first of all agree on what can be done.

[ 102 ] Today in Switzerland – I don't know whether to say “thank God” or “unfortunately” – we still find ourselves in circumstances that are not like those in Central and Eastern Europe. Central and Eastern Europe are in circumstances that can really only be overcome by returning to the original ideas of the social organism. And if no attempt is made to first discuss the fundamental questions among the proletariat itself, such as how to emerge from this chaos through the simplest organizations, which in my opinion must all bear the character of the threefold social organism — if recovery is not brought about among the proletariat itself by creating new organizations based on new ideas, I see no salvation at all for decades to come.

[ 103 ] irst of all, we will have to start with what may seem to you to be an insignificant point: we must first realize that we are not only confronted with bourgeois institutions and bourgeois conditions, but that we are confronted with bourgeois science.

[ 104 ] I said this in the Berlin Trade Union House sixteen years ago, and it was correctly understood even within the proletariat. The proletariat still has the task of first expelling what is bourgeois science from its thinking, and not of establishing any institutions in the spirit of bourgeois science, but in the spirit of precisely those new ideas that can perhaps only be found by the proletariat, because the proletariat is emancipated from all other human contexts in which, unfortunately, bourgeois people are involved.

[ 105 ] Therefore, the most important thing today is to carry out what may seem to you to be the most insignificant thing: the emancipation of intellectual life, the development of freedom in intellectual life. If we succeed in achieving a truly free intellectual life, if we succeed in ensuring that science, which is beholden to capitalism, no longer sets the tone, even in proletarian circles, only then will we be on the road to recovery. I do not want a narrowing in the bourgeois sense, I do not want a narrowing at all, but rather an expansion of proletarian tasks.

[ 106 ] And I firmly believe—no matter how much people who speak from the point of view that I can understand very well, such as the second speaker, object that what I have said is not understood sentence by sentence— I firmly believe, based on my long life among the proletariat, that what I have said will not be understood by the other classes at first, but precisely by the proletariat. And unfortunately, we will have to wait until it is understood by the proletariat. But I believe that it will be understood there.

[ 107 ] And with this in mind, I would like to say that I can also look back with a certain satisfaction on what I wanted to achieve this evening. I truly did not want to convince you in every detail. I respect your free personality too much for that; I respect everyone's free consent too much for that. But I believe that many of you will think differently about what I have said than you did today. And it is this belief that I assume is part of the recovery of the social organism.