Donate books to help fund our work. Learn more→

The Rudolf Steiner Archive

a project of Steiner Online Library, a public charity

The Social Question
GA 328

10 February 1919, Zürich

III. Fanaticism versus a real conception of life in social thinking and willing.

During the lectures last week, I pointed out that the present social situation, particularly where restrictions and difficulties have been experienced during its development, have made an understanding between different classes of humanity today something which lie relatively far into the future. The ruling class, as it has developed during the last century, the last decades up to the present, has its particular thought habits, particular inner impulses forming a basis for its thinking and willing. One could say an abyss exists between thought habits and what I characterized last week, this having developed out of quite a specific peculiarity in thought habits of the modern Proletarians, in whom the actual origin lies in what we call the social question today.

Whoever makes the effort to penetrate the reality of life, the forces playing into communal human relationships, for them it appears far more important what happens within the awareness of people, one could call it, among those who want to consciously discuss the underlying impulses rather than see how they actually arise in consciousness. One can get various views according to middle class thinking circles. Reports on the views of proletarian personalities or proletarian rulers are available; not much of their actual view on life and their creation of criticism about social facts of the present day are to be found here, but more what lies to a certain extent behind these observations. Behind that lies far more social psychology and social soul wisdom than you actually realize, on both sides.

Whoever—I may say it about myself, by presenting these things here—whoever takes the trouble to penetrate from all sides into the thought habits of the bourgeois circle leaders on the one side and on the other the soul impulses of the up-and-coming Proletarians, know how big the cleft is between them, how difficult understanding is; this failure to understand is both a world historic and also a social fact of the present day. We can see this in Paris, in Bern. When one has an ear for such things, one could say that in both places various languages are spoken. At both places, such different languages are spoken that one could doubt that the one spoken at the one place also seems to be most remotely felt by the other, and vice versa. For this reason, it is also so difficult in the present to connect the bourgeois circles to those of the Proletarians and to those things which are the actual main driving forces related to the social question. All that has happened before in history is not quite important but among the historic events are those which point significantly to the actual effective, truly effective powers. Other phenomena which the superficial observer might value as equally important, can in true reality hardly be considered.

Whoever properly pursues the proletarian movement as it has developed over the last decades, a significant fact, one among many, will stand out, that the modern Proletarian, considered in a really, one could call it, in a scientific form which it has taken on, that the actual impulse of this modern proletariat, through their observations, know what to say about things introduced into the present where their solutions must be found just like economic- and community building in the old populace classes had been created and gradually had to disappear to make place for something new to come into existence.

A fact is presented here which has attracted some sceptics. Considering the sceptics will not be considered here, instead we will refer to the historical importance of this matter.

By exploring insightful representatives of the modern proletarian world view, perhaps particularly during the first years when this movement became known when it was examined more at that time than later, one felt more involved in these things, one felt more resigned, but the question still arose: ‘What form of community, of human community-living and human actions, what form of the social organism can actually be observed within this view of life as something which must emerge, as something which should be brought about?’—From their point of view the proper answer would be: ‘At the moment this is of no further interest to us. Of importance to us above all is to bring a solution to the modern social order which enables it to steer itself ad absurdum. What will happen then, will reveal itself soon enough.’—People are always preoccupied with representing their opinion; the modern proletariat must impress positions of power and control. The overpowering of the marching classes favours him so that when he has power in hand he doesn't need to think, provisionally.

That was programmatic. This is not actually properly thought through. It also invites agitation and is not thought through as a reality. Actually, for those who have a sense for evolutionary powers in history this is the question: ‘Yes, what does this modern proletarian point of view actually mean within the evolution of humanity at the present time?’—The result is we are repeatedly distracted, as we said; the point of view takes on less importance as we are distracted about what people have to say about their feelings, how they experience their own lives, how they think about other classes in humanity. Briefly, we are distracted from the proletarian question about the status of the proletarians' lives. To a certain extent not talk nor statements but the particular kind of existence of a class of people show what is important through the way it is expressed. The answer which represents actual reality, given by the actual living proletariat today, can be formulated in the following way. It can be said: ‘This modern proletariat with their opportunities in life, with their living conditions, with the manner in which they are positioned in the modern social order and how they feel within themselves, this modern proletarian experience themselves as the criticism of modern technology, capitalism and the economic order.’ This is, in my view, extraordinarily interesting, that if you have a sense for reality based observation, that the proletariat themselves have the answer and that it does not come from some or other theoretical analysis, but out of the Proletarians themselves. It is a criticism. That the modern proletarians have become this way is provided by the criticism in a way outside of the proletariat who now take it as payment developed in the modern economic order.

Because this is so the souls of these modern proletarians were particularly open to embark on an abstract teaching, one can call it a teaching on scientific stilts, a teaching permeated by an impulse as I've characterised it, which is actually an impulse out of the life of the modern proletariat: the teaching of Marxism, the teaching of Karl Marx. It is a unique example in the history of humanity that such an unused class, a class without decadence, with unused intellectuality, with so much heart and such an open soul, that such a class where there were active forces in their own life forces, that it could have accepted such a scientific theory as happened with the modern proletarians and the Marxist teaching.

One needs to study things in life in this kind of relation. One must have seen how even the most difficult, seen from other classes as respectfully difficult, this has entered into the elementary sensitive and sentient proletarian soul, how millions upon millions of the modern proletarians were gripped by an apparent theoretic teaching.

However, what lives in this theoretic teaching? Here is a strange thing—it does not live in what one could in the ordinary sense call a social ideal. What lives in it doesn't have any formulation that would resemble a future state or a future social structure, but in it exist a real criticism of the modern bourgeois social and economic order and it relates to some extent to the instinct of these Marxist teachings. This instinct can be considered as follows: If I point out to the proletarian what the criticism of the modern technical capitalistic economic order is, then I involve his very life forces, then I steer it towards this becoming his own reality. It is already in a certain sense a mirror image expressed by the direct proletarian life entering right into the Marxist teaching. Whoever believes that the Marxist teaching is dismissed by the proletarian, does not understand that the formulation, the specific point of view and thoughts on the one side, can be overcome. What remains, however, is a certain momentum of this specific impulse which is alive and that on the other side perhaps in a counter observation, is realised by those who have come out of Marxism; that in all kinds of revisionist attempts there is an evolution of the impulse in the modern proletarian introduced through Marxism. This characterization of the social facts in the present time is more important for me than going along with elementary discussions because they eventually lead towards social psychology. When a direct answer is not found—we will encounter this in the course of the lectures what possible answer could be given—then it points to the present question of viewpoints which in real life at present probably will be the first consideration. What kind of experience is had when these things are considered without bias, without prejudice? The result is an experience of a certain peculiarity of modern life. Modern life—as I have often stressed in the lectures I'm giving here in Zurich—has thought habits, has developed thought forms which prove extremely fruitful for a certain direction in science. These modern thoughts also want to penetrate the understanding and comprehensive reformation, reforming the understanding of the social life itself, the social phenomena and impulses of life. However, with this penetration one has the general feeling that humanity at present, standing within the thought forms and thought habits of today, are not able to grasp the reality of complicated phenomena in social life. To some extent their understanding is too closely meshed. They can't grasp the complicated phenomena of the social life by themselves. They remain abstract, they remain delineated and they don't allow events in the social sphere to enter into actual life itself. One could say tightly meshed thinking characterises modern humanity. This narrow thinking breaks in everywhere where one wants to enter into real life, this very thinking has infiltrated into the ambition of the modern proletarian. The result is that this kind of thinking becomes transformed into criticism and does not enable real impulses created out of human soul experiences to be established as directional forces able to lead into the future. Everywhere this thinking breaks in where there is a striving for such impulses.

This calls for something which is deeply decisive in life at present. Whoever is, in full earnestness, able to understand the need of life at present, may direct his focus from the point of view being considered here, just now within this world historic moments where there is little time for a mere theoretical trend in true discussions because the facts are urgent and burning. Just right now one sees how people are presented with these urgent and burning facts but how even in these thought images it shows that reality can't be penetrated. Many people are filled with good will but not in one of them has thinking processes grown out of these facts. It is obvious in these world historic moments that even for those who wish to penetrate earnestly into this moment in time, the rising up—often masked in a variety of forms, completely unconsciously—of this incline in people for who the true earnest direction in life, when burning and urgent questions appear, it becomes particularly disastrous: the rising up of a type of fanaticism, as I would like to call it. This fanaticism shows itself in the most varied masks in a variety of areas and this makes it so difficult to allow the present to be directed into the appropriate action. This fanaticism has been the result of the development I have indicated historically in my lectures of the previous week, which started at the turning point of the 14th, 15th and 16th Centuries. What is the essence of this fanaticism? The essence can be depicted through a certain unrealistic view of life, a view of life which omits what I called last week the thrust received from inner experiences, through a certain view of life of a soulful, thoughtful and scientific knowledge seeking inner life like searching for an island—or actually an abundance of islands—and failing to build bridges to actualities in everyday life. We find in the present time certainly many people—if I could use the expression—who inwardly find a distinguished manner of thinking, be it in a scholarly abstract way, of all kinds of ethic-religious problems in cloud cuckoo land. One can observe how people ponder about the manner and way in which people could acquire virtues, how they should relate through love with their fellow human beings, how they can become blessed. We notice how concepts of salvation, mercy and so on develop in which certain adherents of this view of life possibly only want to be in the soul spiritual heights. Simultaneously we see in those good people mentioned legally and morally, who are loving and full of goodwill the inability to establish the real bridge to outer reality, everyday circulation of capital, the cost of labour, consumption, production in relation to the circulation of goods, credit systems, banking and stock exchange systems. We see how two streams have developed side by side in the world, reflected also in thought habits: one world movement wants to remain in soul spiritual heights and does not want to build bridges between what is seen as a religious order and the management of ordinary trade. Life however is uniform. It can only unfold when the driving forces of all ethical religious aspects work from its basis into the everyday, profane situation of life, into life which appears even less distinguished. If we neglect to create these bridges we lapse, in relation to the religious and moral life, into mere fanaticism, remote from daily reality, then true everyday reality retaliates. Then people strive out of a certain religious impulse towards all possible ideals, everything which can be called “good,” but instincts which oppose daily satisfaction coming from everyday experiences of life which should arise from the national economy, these instincts are powerless in the face of insensitive people. No bridge can seemingly be built between the belief of godly grace and everyday life as it happens. Everyday life then takes revenge. Now everyday life takes on a form which has nothing to do with ethical impulses cherished in distinguished, soul spiritual heights. Revenge becomes such that the ethical religious life, while it distances itself from the everyday things, from direct practical life, that this ethical religious life actually turns surreptitiously—without one noticing it as it is masked—into an inner delusion.

We see how people go about out of a certain ethical religious dignity—they believe—and how they show only the best of will in relation to the community of fellow human beings, a display of the best will to do their utter best towards them, while they neglect actually doing anything, because they have acquired nothing socially in their life of feeling which relate to practical habits.

So we experience it—when I might use this expression yet again—in this world historic moment, how the social question so blatantly, so tangibly insistent, approach from all sides by fanatics who see themselves sometimes as good practical people, who claim: ‘We need people to back out of materialism, out of outer materialistic life to a certain spirituality, to a spiritual view of life.’ They do not tire from quoting or making statements about personalities who in the past—the past has to be the rule, the present has less authority—had expressed certain ideal ways towards spirituality. Yes, you can have the experience that when someone points to something as practical and necessary as daily bread, it is pointed out that the primary importance is for people to return to the spirit. This warning contains unbelievably much of what had led mankind into the present catastrophe, fanaticism, which appear behind the most varied masks today and play a role in the facts. Certainly, on the one side it is fanaticism when someone, without being cognisant of outer practical living conditions, draws up some social ideal, called Utopian, and out of this finely fits and crystallizes a prescriptive system for living in order to be happy or satisfied or something or other. Basically, even when such Utopia appears full of criticism, it neither comes down to the criticism nor to good will, but it comes down to how they place themselves in practical life. Today it does not involve people being directed to a return to the spirit but that spirit exists in those who think about the social organism today. Today the importance is on the How, the Manner and Way in which thinking is arrived at. For my sake people don't talk about spirit but about the manner and way one talks about practical life, be it spiritual. Present time will be better served this way than through fanaticism reminding people in every third sentence to return to spirituality because usually those who are addressed can't imagine this spiritually, precisely because those who make these statements can't actually use imagination with which to present spiritually. The idealist utopians who insist—and these days they are not low in numbers—on finely thought-out social ideals are not the worst, because as a rule they don't hold water. One soon finds out these things are impractical and do not originate out of circumstances in real life. Far worse are the masked fanatics in today's reality, who appear to be coming out of apparent practical life situations but these situations actually have to relation to reality but exist in lifeless abstraction. Still, we have fanaticism—one must always speak freely from the heart—we have experienced this in present events only too significantly. It is difficult to recognise it. It is difficult because we have not sharpened our gaze in this area.

Some people appear to have characteristics of fanatics—incidentally nothing at all should be said against the qualities of fanatics, they could be good people, they could be doing their duties in their field, could even be excellent people—but when the fact is stressed regarding the relationship some personalities have to fanaticism, then some people are quite astounded that these personalities can be associated with fanaticism because these fanatics appear to think with independent judgement, while these judgements are actually nothing other than wild superstition. I have for instance in the course of the last few years looked at some “life practitioners”—I say this in quotation marks—of fanaticism. With reference to this, if humanity wants to advance in knowledge it may experience some inner paradoxes. It will appear for example as a surprise, if I propose the most imminent Ludendorff, as a fanatic. The judgement of his supporters and his opponents go in quite different directions. The important thing about his personality is that with the exception of the field in which he is highly scholarly, namely strategy, he is in all the rest of his thinking adhered to abstraction, totally strange in life where his fanatical thoughts, which have no relation to reality, now take on power and result in unspeakable evil by his fanatical thoughts entering into reality. In this way, various personalities we know today and see as practical in life, could cause unending evil as typical representatives of fanaticism.

In the nineties of the nineteenth century fanatics appeared as if in an epidemic; coming from America they flooded Europe in the then so-called “Society for Ethic Culture.” Here was an attempt at something having nothing to do with life, which could only come out of an abstract sensing of a certain ethic impulse and be propagated as ethical culture. If someone who was asked to do this, pointed out that such things harboured fanaticism, such things imprisoned and limited thought and thus made it impossible to discover the actual truth, they were either not understood or misunderstood or ridiculed.

This fanaticism should contrast itself with real truthful thinking which I believe has been represented through many years in the true spiritual scientific point of view. What actually is this spiritual scientific world view?

Essentially the spiritual scientific world view means it is not defined as a mere mirror image of observation of outer sensory reality but that it addresses spirit as coming from a real super-sensory experienced world, as real as what our eyes can see, ears can hear or touched by our hands. This viewpoint is less concerned with singular theories uttered about the actual spiritual world but rather far more involves everything experienced as knowledge coming out of the spiritual knowledge of the world and takes on an inner soul understanding into itself, an inner state in life through which the human being feels enlivened by soul spiritual beings in a real spiritual world. It is not dependant on what is said about the spiritual world but comes down to how people feel while in this spiritual world. It may already be that some or other super-sensible belief exists. This belief however, can just as easily steer towards fanaticism, like with those who strive towards goodwill. It comes down to this feeling: through the way one thinks, the way one experiences it, is within thinking, it flashes like lightening through one's own soul as the vital active spirit is experienced flashing through the soul.

This living, active spirit is in us. It is there like things outside are in space and events outside happen in time. When you take this expression in order to really spiritually acknowledge it not merely by thinking about it but living into it, then out of this spiritual acknowledgement an inner impulse arises, which is an incentive to make spirit something real out of itself, in the world; an incentive to experience the spirit as a reality and to make it a reality in quite a different way than what it can be as a mere mirror image of ideas and concepts which deals with the spiritual. There is a big difference whether one says: I think about the spirit, I believe in the spirit—or whether one says: Within me thinks the spirit, I experience the spirit within me.—The concept of ordinary faith actually loses its meaning through this experience. Coming out of this experience a soul-spiritual power will enter into the evolution of mankind. This soul-spiritual power which should enter into humanity's experiences is of a far greater importance than can be imagined, because it is the healing medicine for the laming type of ideology characterised here last week, which the proletariat inherited as a depressing element from the bourgeoisie.

This is what lives as the first true form of the social question in reality, if one penetrates this question in order to understand it in depth, that the development of modern spiritual life since the turn of this newer time during the 14th Century gradually became so blunt, weakened and paralysed that people didn't know any more that within them the spirit is alive as something real, full of life, but that they believe they only have ideas and mirror images containing some or other reality. These images they have in the world and which exist in the modern proletarian view of life is such that they say: ‘The only thing that exists in the spiritual realm is ideology. Reality only exists in economy, in financial processes, in class conflicts—this is where reality exists.’ However, something steams up in the human soul, it takes on the form of images of revelation, images which express science, morality, religion, art. This gives a superstructure based on a solid, real foundation. If one also can't admit to sociology living as an ideology in this superstructure being able to work back into the economic life, then it remains an ideology. No healing element comes out of this ideology if real spiritual participation, like spiritual science wanting to enter into modern humanity, is not engaged through spiritual experiences. Healing the damage in this ideology is only possible through real deepening in the real spirit and its manifestations, through deepening the real supersensible world. Everything which worked as spiritual life within the modern proletarians and was introduced as culture appeared as mere ideology and because ideology was seen as nothing, the soul was unable to experience a certain impetus, a certain momentum within consciousness which can be sensed in the higher sense, and souls were left dissatisfied and empty. Out of this soul emptiness developed the hopeless mood of the proletarian world view, where one part of it grew into a member of the real social question. As long as people will not realize that the tendency towards ideology needs to be healed and therefore are unable to introduce any positive impulses into the modern proletarian souls, so long will mere criticism remain in the modern proletarian regarding the developing capitalism, economic order and their world view.

This will not be accomplished without the will to enter a real practical view of life, a view of life which is not made up of theories or mere religious ideas, but with someone who wants to live, who wants to be creative, with a will to create individual impulses in life. For this some things are necessary and this scares today's individuals away as if it is something quite radical. What is intended here is far less radical than what comes out of life, provoked by modern instincts confronting people when they are too comfortable to turn towards what is necessary.

What I have been aiming at from a certain angle involves one member of the social organism which needs to develop out of modern living conditions as one of the three members, just as I have been sketching here last week, Wednesday. On that occasion, I dealt with the misfortune, in a certain sense, of modern humanity, when it is not examined—and it is so indeed, it is not being examined—that what should consist in a threefold way and that the three individual members work together in a lively way, has been turned through their power into chaos and a random organism which they want to continue to make so.

Now to not make myself misunderstood, I'm mentioning almost in parenthesis, my intention is not to advocate a complete reversal to be accomplished in a day. I'm giving indications in a certain direction towards which single questions may be orientated, questions about the state, spiritual life and economic life and how these meet in people's lives. There is no need to believe in things right away, as I present them; what we call ‘the state’ today can be made into something quite different tomorrow. People only need the will forces to relate to these things, to actualize the Christian “change your way,” which means, the details, the individual measures presented need to be entered into if one wants to get their meaning, in order to orientate their configuration in a certain direction.

Thus, I have set out what people want to muddle together into a uniformed state just like one would try to do with the human organism—and make a Homunculus as a result—botched together to centralize the three systems in chaos so that the attempt at consolidating everything into a combined state enterprise forces the three living members apart rather than allowing a healthy social organism to develop. In one independent member within the social organism, all that relates to spiritual culture must develop; as a second independent member in the social organism everything related in the narrower sense to the political state life, not consolidated but in a lively exchange with spiritual life, need develop; and as a third independent member the economic organism. A spiritual organism, state organism, economic organism—of this people should be saying: in the next ten to twenty years evolutionary forces of humanity will be striving towards this. Whoever opposes this development is opposing the possibilities for progress in modern humanity.

The first point I want to touch on is from this view I'm considering today comprises the following: the life of so-called spiritual culture, all inclusive of what could be termed school and educational impulses, all that could be included in religious life, all that is artistic, literary and also all that relates to private and criminal law. These things I will still characterise more precisely. Everything decided in life regarding spiritual culture, positioned on a communal but independent basis, must be placed alongside the rest of the social organism. It must be placed by itself, it must be placed on such a basis that one can say: the vital element of this member of the social organism must have its centre in the free unfolding of the physical and spiritual arrangement of the human being. Everything needs to be based on this sphere of the individuality. Everything flowing into this must come from the centre of the human individuality and the physical and spiritual faculties must have free evolutionary possibilities but must however be withheld from influencing the remaining cultural life in some or other damaging or limiting or unreasonable way.

In this particular sphere, something can be achieved. I would like to offer a grotesque example. Please excuse me if this example appears grotesque but it will conceivably illustrate what I want to say. Let us take some or other young student, in other words a person budding within spiritual development, who has to deliver his doctorate. He obtains advice from authoritative personalities to edit some theme which has hardy or never been done before—let's take for example, dealing with the swear words of an old Roman writer. Such things really exist as those who are implicated with it, already know. Now the young man works for a whole year with these swear words of some ancient writer. Today one says: ‘This is scientifically important.’—Well yes, from the side of this observation which exists in certain areas, it is certainly important, but now something else comes into consideration. It is the positioning of such a thing in the totality of the social organism. One needs to look away from the fact that it may well be interesting to write about swear words of some old writer. I know a dissertation where a young man was terribly plagued by the subject of parenthesis used by an old Greek writer.

I don't have anything that can be said against a pure scientific viewpoint presenting these things. Philistine details will not be made relevant here. However, in relation to it finding its position within the social organism the following is valid: the young man needs true diligence for possibly a year and so he needs to eat, drink and clothe himself. In order to do so he needs some income, capital. What does it mean to say: ‘He consumes a certain amount of capital?’ It means nothing other in the real life than: Many, many people must work for him.

What he eats, drinks, where he finds clothing, engages a whole army of people during these years. A small army is involved in his food, drink and clothing and this comes into consideration in relation to the social effects of the case. Today one mostly has the view that things can simply be taken thus, without a social understanding, out of a certain inclination to purely place these interests scientifically in the world. Our life in the present demands however that every branch in its relationship, in its vital connection to all the other of life's branches should be conceived with social understanding, with a feeling for the social aspect.

As I said, I've asked you to excuse me with this grotesque example; it could have been less grotesque but I chose this one in order to show you how necessary it is to develop a feeling for the social sphere, how spiritual life, the entire activity of the spiritual life need to stand within the social organism, in order to be justified in the general interest of humanity. The general interest of humanity may be asked whether the determination of swear words of some ancient writer has such worth that it requires a small army or workers to be appointed for an entire year. The question can of course be made less grotesque by working around it from other sides. One could then realize that spiritual culture can also include, for instance, the experience belonging to technical ideas and work in a lively way in other structures, in the rule of law for instance, because these things have a relative independence in life. Against this works centralization which steers everything into chaos.

Spiritual life must exist in a relative independent way, must not submit only to one's inner freedom but must stand within the social organism of one's spiritual life in order to position itself completely free of competition, resting on no state monopoly. That which is justified as a spiritual life—what this means for single individuals—is another thing. We are talking here about the social organism. Spiritual life is to be completely free of competition, completely free to meet singular needs of the community as they may reveal themselves. Someone might create poems, as many as he wants; may find friends for these poems, as many as he likes; what validates spiritual life is only what he, as a single individual, shares with other people. This is however only presented on a healthy basis when everything considered as spiritual life, everything from school to university life, everything from educational to artistic life need to be disrobed of any state monopolising characteristics and be contained by itself as independent—but as we said, not from one day to the next. Direction is thus indicated for people placed on their own—this is how the bridge can be created towards something different. Due to a request, I have been occupied for some years during the nineties with my book “The Philosophy of Freedom” (later translation: ‘The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity’) which has just been newly reprinted, perhaps in a favourable time, to show that a true experience of freedom cannot be said to be anything other than the actual play of the spiritual life into the human soul.

At that time, I called it the enactment of intuition in the human soul, the play of something totally spiritual. This real spiritual element must be born in the human soul in the light of freedom—free from competition—then it will live in a right way in the social organism. It may not—and this is important—be placed under some or other regulatory law of some or other branch of the social organism. It must be able to reveal itself in full freedom, as a result of general needs.

I know—and I will present this again in the following lectures—that many people think that if schools would be a free choice then we will be surrounded by illiterate people. I would like to show this will not be the case. Of importance today for me is to point out how, out of the inner nature of the thing, the necessity for a free spiritual life will be shown in the social organism. There are states where natural science, like nearly everywhere, is the monopoly; their enterprise is monopolised through the state which proclaims a law: ‘Science and its education is free.’ This however remains merely a phrase and will remain only a phrase if spiritual life does not persist in being held by itself. Not only may spiritual life, in relation to its activity in personalities, in relation to what is publicly said or dare not be said, depending on another member of the social organism when these other members instruct schools and universities, when I only mention it; not only, as said, the outer operation, the appointment of personalities, the limitations which may not be mentioned, become determined as a result, but that it also determines the inner content of spiritual life itself. Our whole scientific life has characteristics of political life, since in the more modern time the spheres of political life have spread over spiritual life. Spiritual life may however not be the affair of some or other member of the social organism; it can only uphold its self-contained content when this develops freely out of the human individuality.

Spiritual life stands opposite pure economic life just like the digestive system stands opposite the head system in the natural human organism. Economics has its own laws. The character of modern economic life has been identified through the proletarian science in an experiential, vital manner, not as a theoretical science preached from the rostrum but in order for it to become clear how proletarian science, just like economic life, relates to humanity in general.

Now one could refer once again to a certain point. I have mentioned this point in previous lectures. What is striking in economic life today, or with reference to the proletarian scientific consideration of economic life, is, and also in relation to it, the proletariat has been taken over by the inheritance from other classes. Whether it is through modern technology, whether through modern capitalism—as explored in previous weeks here—the human focus is as if hypnotized on economic life as the actual and only reality which can be linked to, in the social organism. People believe, when one talks about human evolution that only economic life needs to be referred to. We have seen how this economic life has become quite committed, how through economic life a particular active impulse in the bright light of the sun of human experience has moved the modern Proletariat's feeling of becoming human—this must be considered precisely, against economic life. The result of this is Karl Marx's inflaming of millions upon millions of Proletarians that people believed he primarily, in clear language, pointed out to the Proletarians the worth of humanity in his entire statement: he, Karl Marx, first pointed out to the Proletariat that labour equals goods, labour could circulate as goods on the market and stand under the law of supply and demand.

Karl Marx used various erroneous ways to point out basic facts. That he referred to the innermost nerve of the modern social question anyhow, made his merits appear sufficient in the feelings of proletarian souls. Also here social psychology has a far more reality based meaning than theories, observations and discussions which are linked to some scientific and social life impulses. Out of this a vital question arises. How could the experience of human worth be conquered? That human labour is dealt with like goods?—This is what Marx had to say next. As we said, in many ways there are errors but this is not relevant now when an erroneous fact became so powerful in millions of human souls that it became a social fact. This is what Karl Marx said and this is how they understood the modern Proletariat. This understanding, while it has altered in some relationships, still work today, work particularly strongly in feelings. This is what he said: ‘Within the economic organism goods are brought to the market and sold. There are owners of goods, prospective owners and buyers of goods. Between these exists the circulation of goods. The modern Proletarian has nothing other than his own labour. For each unit of goods, a certain production cost is necessary. The production of this or that product, until it is consumed, has this or that value. The modern Proletarian only has the power of his body, the only power he possesses is that of labour. In order to determine the production cost of labour all his needs to be included: his acquisition of nourishment, clothing and so on, and so the spent labour becomes replaced in turn. That is the production cost of his labour.’—Now, Karl Marx said, and in his inner being this also means the modern proletariat: ‘Naturally the employer gives the employee no more than the so-called wages, without compulsion, for the work as the production cost for his labour. If however, the job continues for five hours and all the production costs are covered, the modern entrepreneur is not satisfied. He demands longer working hours. So the worker labours for free because he only earns as much as his “goods”—his labour—amounts to. What work he does additionally is added value. This is what he brings to the altar—if one could call it an altar—of capitalism, which collects as capital but actually originates from his labour, and as a result, because he is only paid the production costs, he is forced to offer his wares on the labour market, according to economic relationships, with all he has: his goods called “labour.”’

You can with the greatest human ingenuity, applying the deepest national economic knowledge, discuss what can be done in the social organism that the worker should not carry his labour to the market as goods, that he can rid the world of this last result of slavery and you will, even by employing the greatest intelligence, the most profound national economic knowledge regarding many human lives, arrive at no solution. You will find no outcome to this question because the imminent sense of this question can't be discussed, can't be answered theoretically, but can only be answered through life itself, through creating something in life which strips away the characteristic of goods from labour.

If I might offer a comparison I would like to point to this little man in Goethe's Faust which Wagner produces as a test tube baby: Homunculus. It is made out of what human thoughts can imagine are ingredients from nature, but he does not become a person but remains a little manikin, a Homunculus. In the same way, you may combine something out of ingredients of understanding or out of national economic created ingredients—and your result will be a social Homunculus! Just as we need certain conditions in order to create a living human being, so in the same way, conditions need to be created towards a vital social organism which works progressively in life, not through theories, not through arguments. Human labour needs to be separated from the mere circulation of goods and may not be realized as such.

This will not be accomplished in any other way, if you look into it, in order for a social organism to be lively; it must have independent members, with the spiritual member beside the legal-state member, in a narrower sense the political-state member, and relatively independent beside that, the economic organism which lives under its own laws. Just as little as the stomach can breathe or direct the heartbeat, so little can the economic organism develop law out of its own forces. Economics will never develop its own laws when it works only from its own actual basis. Out of this actual basis the social organism will only be driven from production and commerce to consumption.

Just like the circulation of goods stand opposite nature itself, this foundation of all production, all consumption, all human events and so on, of profession and trade, so must on the other side stand in opposition, not determined by the economic organisation but that the economy determines, the existence of politics in the state's laws. This must be independent of the economic organism just like the lung-heart system is relatively independent of the head and nerve system.

Just because they work independently yet together, they have the right relationship in life. Only by the lungs and heart being isolated from the stomach, do they function relatively independently in the correct way together.

Only by there being in the lively social organism an independent member which does not determine on some or other economic grounds that labour becomes goods, but allows, out of the vitality of life for labour to be positioned in the social structure so that it becomes a right in the social structure, only through this, on the other side, can the economic life be allowed to be determined through the life or rights, the political life of the state in a narrower sense, as is determined by the natural foundation of economic life. Only then, when these three members exists side by side, when you have an independent spiritual member, an independent legal system member or actually state life plus an independent economic life and these members work in relative independence with one another, when each of these members out of its own foundation finds its representatives, its administrative body, we can say, its kingdom, its federal day, its ministry, and the single members are as sovereign among one another like single states who only trade through delegations, only then does the social organism really becomes healthy. Then the foundation of interest develops in the area of economics which is the only impulse crucial to the economic life. Then the question can be raised from life according to events taking place in other members of the social organism, in the legal organism: if out of the impulses of the legal body limitations are placed on human labour which from then on does not have the character of goods but the characteristics of rights, when labour flows into a specific economic branch where it does not pay, then this economic branch in relation to non-payment need be looked at, like when through a too expensive raw material it is not paid. This means that human labour becomes the dominant element in relation to economic life, not dominated, not enslaved. This is not accomplished by making certain laws but by creating a living body which must simply be something different than human impulses in a separated body, continuing from epoch to epoch snatching labour from the character of goods, because this character of goods must be torn out otherwise it will ever and again be absorbed because the economic body has the tendency to always suck up the capacity for work and make it goods only. The state body must be ever awake and remove the labour force from the stamp of goods.

Everywhere in life it appears that this muddling along—if I may use this trivial expression—makes the three social spheres a disaster. The social catastrophe which has taken place in the last four and a half years only needs to be considered. You can study the actual events. It is a lovely study for instance in the area in Austria which appears to have fallen apart into atoms: How has the inner structure actually held up, how has it wanted to hold since more than half a century? Here we have the so-called empire state. In this empire state a certain representation of nations exist, only in certain layers. This representation collapsed—not recently but where events prepared it, in the second half of the 19th Century—into four councils, the council of large landowners, of rural communities, of cities and markets and industrial areas, chambers of commerce; in other words, the rural communities, the cities, the industrial areas and the chambers of commerce. You see nothing about basic economic impulses existing in this representation. This representation was the representation of the state. This representation had laws. It only came from there because people were powerless under the influence of modern developments, as I've indicated under our consideration today, to penetrate economic life itself with their own organisation because their thoughts were too tightly meshed, too limiting because they could not plunge into them. People took the economic life as a frame for the rising state and bungled economic and state life with one another. Before people will not see that this bungling of innumerable causes has led to our present catastrophe, the sooner they will not go to ruin but towards a true cure.

Today I could once again only give a few indications. The day after tomorrow I will allow myself to expand the remarks. I want to still make another observation. Even in relation to the mighty world politics can what I said be substantiated, if you only want to go into the substrate of life. Whoever studies the Genesis of this terrible war, which is no war in the old sense but various ingredients of human catastrophes cooked up together which have not appeared at its end but entered at its crisis, whoever studies the Genesis of this catastrophe will find for instance that the importance of the starting point was totally directed towards the preparation and the expansion of modern economic life in a specific way and that this modern economic life, as a result, cannot be understood as being separated in the right way from a naturally and really vitally formed social organism, or in an organism found all over the world, because this economic life has been connected with the bare seven state laws which should have remained independent. As a result, essential economic factors and economic elements were there and they served the state power forces during the last decades, the economic powers which work in disharmony against one another. Were they held to develop merely on the foundation of their economic life and on the foundation of their common consensus it would never have led to this catastrophe. Towards this catastrophe they approached as purely economic forces while these economic forces had to serve as a false political entity of political powers of state whose armies were sent into the fields on their behalf.

These things need to be examined in a relevant way, not only theoretically. Some people do this of course. Still, one needs to know how to lift the actual impulse of the real social question, urgent and burning, into the light in a relative way into the present, in order to discover the real symptoms. Then you exit fanaticism as a mere warning and discover the reality within it, which makes it possible to allow the three members of the social organism to work together. What no discussion, no national economic judgement is able to do for economic and political life to exist side by side and so solve the labour force question, could continue to get rid of the most essential and difficult points in the modern proletarian's experience in the right way.

Now, the day after tomorrow I will continue with these observations, entering into detail in some of them which must remain as questions today, which will then be cleared up in a proper way. I just want to point out one thing. It has been and will be for a long time still, the comfortable thinking habits of people to find it radical, perhaps too academic in some or other way, what in truth is not some abstract idealism, but is actually everyday practical life. Some will say: ‘Indeed, here comes a spiritual scientist who wants to by means of an imminent question, through a world historically important question, involve the social question.’ Precisely not for something extraordinary for me or for the representatives of some conviction is what I'm validating here, so to say, but in relation to such people who take these things as impractical, a lost cause, while they don't look over the possibilities, can't envisage the perspectives. For these people, not for me, I would like to use a comparison at the closing today.

I would like to refer to some poor chap, Stephenson, who was condemned to sit at a ‘Newcomenschen’ steam engine (by Thomas Newcomen) and open and close the taps alternately, allowing steam out the one side and the entry of condensation water on the other. Now this little chap noticed up above, a balance swinging up and down and he thought: How would it be if I tied one tap to the other tap with a string, to the balance? Then at one moment the one tap will be opened and the other closed, and the next instance the one will close and the other open. The balance will do my work for me, I can only sit and look—so the little chap thought. And he actually did this. Now something could well happen as it is with many such things, when something quite new enters into life, for some quite clever person to then exclaim: ‘You stupid young man, you must do as you are supposed to do! What kind of string have you tied to the balance? Remove it quickly or otherwise I'll tie you to it!’

It didn't happen quite like this but it is one the most important discoveries if the modern time, the automatic control of the steam engine which sprung out of the experience of this little chap. To have developed more insight towards only the self-control of a social organism which leads toward a vital interactive cooperation of the three members—its self-manipulation of spiritual members, legal-political member, economic member—to be more raised than this, spiritual science has no claim. It depends on whether all the clever people will say of this spiritual science: ‘You stupid young man! Do your duty’ or if you will look into what is actually happening. This must often be done if one is to be involved in all humility and without insolence. The belief in fanatics who label themselves as practical might soon give way to knowledge that the real practical people can be notorious idealists who could enter into the realities of life, that it could be them who may research the real evolutionary conditions of mankind and only through knowledge and the evolutionary process modern humanity could find the way which could lead to the solution of the social question—we will speak about this next time—that it is even possible in real life at all. Not via the route of presumptions by which many practitioners lay the law today, but probably the real-life practitioners, the clever idealists who can really penetrate the realities of life, have to prove it.

Dritter Vortrag

Schwarmgeisterei und reale Lebensauffassung im sozialen Denken und Wollen

In den Vorträgen der vorigen Woche habe ich bereits darauf aufmerksam gemacht, daß die gegenwärtige soziale Lage mit Bezug auf ihre Entwickelung besonders dadurch Hemmnisse erfährt, Schwierigkeiten erlebt, daß eine Verständigung der verschiedenen Klassen der gegenwärtigen Menschheit in einer verhältnismäßig weiten Ferne liegt. Die führende Bevölkerungsklasse, wie sie sich heraufentwickelt hat in den letzten Jahrhunderten, Jahrzehnten bis zur Gegenwart, sie hat gewisse Denkgewohnheiten, gewisse innere Impulse, aus denen heraus sie empfindet, denkt und will. Und man möchte sagen: Ein Abgrund ist zwischen diesen Denkgewohnheiten und zwischen dem, was in der Art, wie ich es die vorige Woche charakterisierte, sich entwickelt hat als die ganz spezifische Eigenart in den Denkgewohnheiten des modernen Proletariats, in dem doch eigentlich der Ursprung dessen liegt, was man heute die soziale Frage nennt.

Wer sich bemüht, in das wirkliche Leben einzudringen, in die Kräfte, die spielen im gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhange der Menschen, für den erscheint es viel wichtiger, diese, man möchte sagen, unter dem Bewußtsein der Menschen, unter dem, worüber sie bewußt diskutieren, liegenden Impulse zu beobachten als das, was eben im Bewußtsein selbst auftritt. Man kann innerhalb der über diese Dinge denkenden Kreise des Bürgertums heute mancherlei Ansichten hören. Man kann auch vernehmen die Anschauungen der Persönlichkeiten des Proletariats oder Führer dieses Proletariats; man wird nicht so viel für eine reale Lebensanschauung und für die Bildung eines Urteiles mit Bezug auf die soziale Tatsache der Gegenwart gewinnen aus der Beobachtung dieser Anschauung, als gewissermaßen aus dem, was hinter diesen Anschauungen liegt. Und da liegt viel mehr soziale Psychologie, soziale Seelenlehre, als man auf beiden Seiten eigentlich denkt.

Wer — ich darf das von mir wohl sagen, der ich versuche, diese Dinge hier darzustellen —, wer sich bemüht hat, nach allen Seiten hin einzudringen sowohl in die Denkgewohnheiten der bürgerlich leitenden Kreise auf der einen Seite wie in die Seelenimpulse des aufstrebenden Proletariats, der weiß, wie groß die Kluft ist zwischen beiden und wie schwierig das Verständnis ist; und dieses Nichtverstehen ist einmal eine welthistorische, ist selber eine soziale Tatsache der Gegenwart. Wir sehen ja jetzt wiederum Paris- Bern. Wenn man einen Sinn hat für das Hören solcher Dinge, dann wird man sagen: An beiden Orten wird eine ganz verschiedene Sprache gesprochen. An beiden Orten wird eine so verschiedene Sprache gesprochen, daß man zunächst daran verzweifeln könnte, daß das, was an dem einen Ort gesprochen wird, an dem anderen auch nur im entferntesten empfunden wird, und umgekehrt. Deshalb ist es auch so schwierig, in der Gegenwart den Blick hinzulenken sowohl in bürgerlichen Kreisen als auch in Kreisen des Proletariats auf diejenigen Dinge, auf die es eigentlich als hauptsächlich treibende Kräfte in der sozialen Frage ankommt. Denn in dem, was geschichtlich vorgeht, ist ja nicht alles gleich wichtig, sondern unter den geschichtlichen Ereignissen sind solche, welche in signifikanter Weise das andeuten, was eigentlich die wirksamen, die wahrhaft wirksamen Kräfte sind. Andere Erscheinungen, die der oberflächliche Beobachter vielleicht für ebenso wichtig hält, kommen für die wahre Wirklichkeit gar nicht in Betracht.

Wer die proletarische Bewegung, wie sie sich herausgebildet hat in den letzten Jahrzehnten, sachgemäß zu verfolgen in der Lage war, dem wird sich als eine solche signifikante Tatsache wohl unter vielem anderen die aufdrängen, daß das moderne Proletariat, das ja wirklich in einer, man möchte sagen, wissenschaftlichen Form das in sich aufgenommen hat, was seine Impulse sind, daß dieses moderne Proletariat aus seinen Anschauungen heraus zu sagen verstand, wie die Dinge, die es in die gegenwärtige Lage hineingebracht haben, ihre Auflösung finden müssen, wie das, was als eine Wirtschafts- und Gesellschaftsordnung die alten Bevölkerungsklassen heraufgebracht haben, nach und nach verschwinden und wie etwas anderes an dessen Stelle treten müsse.

Es liegt da eine Tatsache vor, für die sich manche Spötter gefunden haben. Allein unter die Spötter soll hier nicht gegangen werden, sondern es soll auf das historisch Ernste dieser Angelegenheit hingewiesen werden. Wenn man gerade mit einsichtigen Vertretern der modernen proletarischen Lebensauffassung sich auseinandergesetzt hat - vielleicht hat man es besonders in den ersten Jahren, in denen man bekanntgeworden ist mit dieser Bewegung, mehr getan als später, wo man sich in diese Dinge schon mehr hineingefunden, wo man sich mit ihnen mehr abgefunden hatte, wo man doch wohl die Frage aufwarf: Welche Gestaltung der Gesellschaft, des menschlichen Zusammenlebens und menschlichen Wirkens, welche Gestaltung des sozialen Organismus betrachtet man innerhalb dieser Lebensauffassung eigentlich als das, was da kommen soll, als das, was herbeigeführt werden soll? - man bekam immer die aus dieser Lebensauffassung heraus ganz sachgemäße Antwort: Das interessiert uns weiter jetzt noch nicht. Für uns handelt es sich vor allen Dingen darum, die gegenwärtige Gesellschaftsordnung zu ihrer Auflösung zu bringen, sie dahin zu bringen, daß sie sich selber ad absurdum führt. Was dann an die Stelle tritt, das wird sich schon ergeben. - Immer handelte es sich den Leuten darum, die Ansicht zu vertreten, das moderne Proletariat müsse in die Macht- und Herrschaftsstellungen einrücken. Gelingt ihm das nach der Überwindung der vor ihm her marschierenden Klasse, so wird es dann, wenn es die Macht in den Händen hat, das finden, woran es vorläufig nicht zu denken braucht.

Das war programmatisch. Das ist aber nicht im eigentlichen Sinne sachgemäß gedacht. Es ist auch agitatorisch, allein es ist nicht wirklichkeitsgemäß gedacht. Wirklichkeitsgemäß ist aber für den, der einen Sinn hat für die Entwickelungskräfte der Geschichte, die Frage: Ja, was bedeutet denn eigentlich dann diese moderne proletarische Weltanschauung innerhalb der Entwickelung der Menschheit in die Gegenwart herein überhaupt? — Und da wird man immer wieder und wiederum abgelenkt, weil, wie gesagt, die Anschauungen selbst weniger in Betracht kommen, abgelenkt von dem, was die Leute sagen zu dem, wie sie fühlen, wie sie über ihr eigenes Leben empfinden, wie sie denken über die anderen Klassen der menschlichen Gesellschaft. Kurz, man wird abgelenkt von der proletarischen Frage auf den Lebensstatus des Proletariats selbst. Es tritt einem gewissermaßen aus dem Leben entgegen nicht Rede, nicht Aussage, sondern das bestimmt geartete Dasein einer Menschenklasse, die durch die Art, wie sie da ist, sagt, um was es sich handelt. Und die Antwort, die nun die Realität gibt, die das wirkliche lebendige Proletariat, wie es heute ist, selbst gibt, diese Antwort, sie könnte etwa so formuliert werden. Es könnte gesagt werden: Dieses moderne Proletariat mit seinen Lebensmöglichkeiten und Lebensbedingungen, mit der Art und Weise, wie es drinnensteht in der modernen Gesellschaftsordnung und sich selber in ihr fühlt, dieses moderne Proletariat fühlt sich, erlebt sich als die Kritik dieser modernen, aus Technik und Kapitalismus hervorgegangenen Wirtschaftsordnung.

Das ist, wie ich meine, außerordentlich interessant, daß man, wenn man Sinn für wirklichkeitsgemäße Anschauung hat, gewissermaßen in dem Proletariat selber die Antwort hat in dem, was da ist, nicht in einer Theorie, nicht in irgendwelcher theoretischen Auseinandersetzung, sondern in dem Proletariat selber. Eine Kritik ist es. Daß dieses moderne Proletariat so geworden ist, das liefert gewissermaßen die Kritik dessen, was sich außerhalb dieses Proletariats und dieses Proletariat für sich in Lohn nehmend als moderne Wirtschaftsordnung herausgebildet hat.

Weil dies so ist, hat insbesondere eingeschlagen in die Seele dieses modernen Proletariats eine an sich abstrakte, man möchte sagen auf wissenschaftlichen Stelzen gehende Lehre, aber eine Lehre, die durchdrungen ist gerade von dem Impuls, der, wie ich es eben charakterisiert habe, als der eigentliche Lebensimpuls im modernen Proletariat selber vorhanden ist: die Lehre des Marxismus, die Lehre des Kar/ Marx. Es ist ein einzigartiges Beispiel in der Geistesgeschichte der Menschheit, daß eine unverbrauchte Menschenklasse, eine Menschenklasse mit noch nicht dekadenter, mit unverbrauchter Intellektualität, mit so vollem Herzen, mit so offener Seele und so, wie wenn die darin wirksamen Kräfte die eigenen Lebenskräfte wären, eine wissenschaftliche Theorie aufgenommen hat, wie das von seiten des modernen Proletariats mit der marxistischen Lehre geschehen ist.

In dieser Beziehung muß man die Dinge am Leben studiert haben. Man muß gesehen haben, wie selbst Schwierigstes, von den anderen Klassen als schwierig Angesehenes sich hineingefunden hat in die elementar fühlende und empfindende Proletarierseele, wie das moderne Proletariat in Millionen und Millionen ergriffen worden ist von einer scheinbar theoretischen Lehre. Aber was lebt in dieser theoretischen Lehre? Das ist wiederum das Eigentümliche, daß in ihr auch nicht das lebt, was man im gewöhnlichen Sinne ein soziales Ideal nennt. Was in ihr lebt, hat nicht irgendeine Formulierung, wie ein Zukunftsstaat oder eine zukünftige soziale Struktur aussehen soll, sondern in ihr lebt im wesentlichen eine Kritik der modernen bürgerlichen Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsordnung, und es liegt gewissermaßen der Instinkt in diesem marxistischen Werke, der Instinkt: Weise ich das Proletariat hin auf das, was Kritik der modernen technischen kapitalistischen Wirtschaftsordnung ist, dann weise ich es auf seine eigenen Lebenskräfte hin, dann führe ich es zu seiner eigenen Wirklichkeit. Es ist schon in einem gewissen Sinne das Spiegelbild ausgedrückt des unmittelbaren proletarischen Lebens gerade in der marxistischen Lehre. Und diejenigen, welche glauben, daß die marxistische Lehre für das Proletariat abgetan ist, die begreifen auf der einen Seite nicht, daß äußere Formulierungen, bestimmte Anschauungen und Gedanken längst überwunden sein können, daß aber geblieben ist der spezifische Elan, der spezifische Impuls, der in einer solchen Sache lebt, und daß auf der anderen Seite gerade vielleicht in den entgegengesetzten Anschauungen, zu denen man gekommen ist aus dem Marxismus heraus, daß in allerlei revisionistischen Versuchen nur wiederum eine Fortentwickelung dessen lebt, was als Impulse in die Seele des modernen Proletariats durch den Marxismus hineingezogen ist.

Das ist nur, um zu charakterisieren eine soziale Tatsache der Gegenwart, die mir wichtiger scheint als elementare Diskussionen, die gepflogen werden, denn sie weist gewissermaßen in die soziale Psychologie hinein. Und wenn sie auch nicht direkt eine Antwort gibt — wir werden im Laufe der Vorträge noch sehen, was als Antwort zu geben ist -, so weist sie auf die vorhandenen Fragen von Gesichtspunkten aus hin, die für das reale Leben der Gegenwart wohl wahrscheinlich als erste in Betracht kommen. Und welche Empfindung bekommt man, wenn man sich dieser Tatsache unbefangen, vorurteilslos gegenüberstellt? Da bekommt man die Empfindung einer gewissen Eigentümlichkeit des modernen Lebens überhaupt. Dieses moderne Leben - wie ich ja oftmals in meinen Vorträgen, die ich hier in Zürich gehalten habe, betonte - hat Denkgewohnheiten, hat Denkformen herausgebildet, die sich für eine gewisse Richtung der Naturwissenschaft außerordentlich fruchtbar erweisen. Es hat dann dieses moderne Denken auch eindringen wollen in das Begreifen und begreifende Reformieren, reformierende Begreifen des sozialen Lebens selbst, der sozialen Erscheinungen und Impulse des Lebens. Aber bei diesem Eindringen hat man überall das Gefühl: Die Menschen der Gegenwart, die gerade rein in den Denkformen und Denkgewohnheiten der Gegenwart drinnenstehen, haben nicht Begriffe, welche in Wirklichkeit die komplizierten Erscheinungen des sozialen Lebens erfassen können. Gewissermaßen sind die Begriffe zu engmaschig. Sie können nicht in sich fassen die komplizierten Erscheinungen des sozialen Lebens selbst. Sie bleiben abstrakt, sie bleiben konturenhaft, aber sie dringen nicht ein in das wirkliche Leben selbst, das sich im sozialen Körper abspielt. Man möchte sagen: Ein kurzmaschiges Denken zeichnet diese moderne Menschheit aus. Und dieses kurzmaschige Denken, dieses Denken, das überall abreißt, wenn man ins wirkliche Leben untertauchen will, dieses Denken, das ist auch übergegangen in das Bestreben des modernen Proletariats. Und so kommt es, daß dieses Denken hinreicht zur Kritik, nicht aber hinreicht dazu, wirkliche Impulse herauszugestalten aus dem menschlichen Seelenerleben, die dastehen könnten wie Richtungskräfte, die in die Zukunft hineinführen. Überall reißt das Denken ab, wenn es nach solchen Impulsen hinstreben will.

Und damit bezeichnet man etwas, was tief einschneidend ist in das ganze Leben der Gegenwart. Wer mit vollem Ernst imstande ist, das aufzufassen, was diesem Leben der Gegenwart not tut, der muß gerade von dem Gesichtspunkte aus seinen Blick darauf richten, der hier berührt wird, gerade jetzt in diesem weltgeschichtlichen Augenblicke, wo wahrhaftig für Diskussionen, die bloß theoretisch verlaufen, wenig Zeit ist, weil die Tatsachen drängend und brennend sind. Gerade jetzt in diesem Augenblicke sieht man, wie die Menschen vor diese drängenden und brennenden Tatsachen gestellt sind, und wie sie überall eben diese Erscheinung des Denkens zeigen, das in die Wirklichkeit nicht eindringen kann. Von gutem Willen sind die Menschen vielfach durchdrungen, von einem den Tatsachen gewachsenen Denken aber nicht. Es zeigt sich gerade in diesem weltgeschichtlichen Augenblicke für den, der eben im Ernst in die Zeitlage einzudringen vermag, das Heraufkommen - oftmals zeigt es sich maskiert in allerlei anderen Formen, ganz unbewußt dem Menschen — desjenigen Hanges der Menschen, der für die wirkliche ernste Lebensführung, wenn brennende und drängende Fragen vorhanden sind, ganz besonders verhängnisvoll wird: das Heraufkommen einer gewissen Schwarmgeisterei, wie ich es nennen möchte. Diese Schwarmgeisterei, die sich in den verschiedensten Masken auf den verschiedensten Gebieten zeigt, die ist es, was uns so schwer in ein sachgemäßes Wirken in der Gegenwart hineinkommen läßt. Und diese Schwarmgeisterei, sie hat sich ergeben aus der Entwickelung, die ich als die historische angedeutet habe in den Vorträgen der vorigen Woche, und die etwa begonnen hat um die Zeitenwende des 14., 15., 16. Jahrhunderts.

Worinnen liegt das Wesentliche dieser Schwarmgeisterei? Das Wesentliche liegt eben gerade darinnen, daß durch eine gewisse unwirkliche Lebensauffassung, durch eine Lebensauffassung, welche das vermissen läßt, was ich in der vorigen Woche die Stoßkraft des inneren Erlebens genannt habe, daß durch eine gewisse Lebensauffassung ein seelisches, ein denkerisches, ein wissenschaftlich Erkenntnis suchendes inneres Leben gewissermaßen eine Insel oder fortwährend eine Fülle von Inseln sucht, und nicht die Brücke bauen will zu demjenigen, was das Leben in der Alltäglichkeit ist. Wir finden, wie zahlreiche Menschen der Gegenwart es gewissermaßen — wenn ich den Ausdruck gebrauchen darf - innerlich vornehm finden, in einer gewissen, sei es auch schulmäBigen Abstraktheit nachzudenken über allerlei ethisch-religiöse Probleme in Wolkenkuckucksheimhöhen. Wir sehen, wie die Menschen nachdenken über die Art- und Weise, wie sich der Mensch Tugenden aneignen könne, wie er in Liebe zu seinen Mitmenschen sich verhalten soll, wie er begnadet werden kann. Wir sehen Begriffe von Erlösung, Gnade und so weiter sich entwickeln, die gewisse Träger von Lebensanschauungen möglichst nur in geistig-seelischen Höhen halten wollen. Wir sehen aber zugleich das Unvermögen, die echte Brücke zu schlagen von demjenigen, was die Leute gut und liebevoll und wohlwollend und rechtlich und sittlich nennen, zu dem, was in der äußeren Wirklichkeit, im Alltag uns umgibt als Kapital, als Arbeitsentlöhnung, als Konsum, als Produktion in bezug auf die Warenzirkulation, als Kreditwesen, als Bank- und Börsenwesen. Wir sehen, wie zwei Weltenströmungen nebeneinandergesteilt werden auch in den Denkgewohnheiten der Menschen: die eine Weltenströmung, die sich gewissermaßen in göttlich-geistiger Höhe halten will, die keine Brücke bauen will zwischen dem, was ein religiöses Gebot ist, und was eine Usance des gewöhnlichen Handels ist. Das Leben aber ist ein einheitliches. Das Leben kann nur gedeihen, wenn die es treibenden Kräfte von allem ethisch-religiösen Leben herunterwirken in das alleralltäglichste, profanste Leben, in dasjenige Leben, das eben weniger vornehm erscheint. Denn vernachlässigen wir es, diese Brücke zu schlagen, verfallen wir in bezug auf religiöses, sittliches Leben in bloße Schwarmgeisterei, die fernsteht der alltäglichen wahren Wirklichkeit, dann rächt sich diese alltäglich wahre Wirklichkeit. Dann strebt der Mensch aus einem gewissen religiösen Impuls alles möglich Ideale an, alles mögliche, was er «gut» nennt, aber den Instinkten, die als gewöhnliche alltägliche Lebensbedürfnisse gegenüberstehen den Befriedigungen, die aus der Volkswirtschaft heraus kommen müssen, diesen Instinkten steht der Mensch ohne Empfindung machtlos gegenüber. Er weiß keine Brücke zu bauen von dem Begriff der göttlichen Gnade zu dem, was im alltäglichen Leben vor sich geht. Dann rächt sich dieses alltägliche Leben. Dann nimmt dieses alltägliche Leben eine Gestalt an, die nichts zu tun haben will mit dem, was als ethische Impulse in vornehmeren, seelisch-geistigen Höhen gehalten werden will. Dann aber wird die Rache eine solche, daß das ethisch-religiöse Leben, weil es sich fernhält von der alltäglichen, von der unmittelbaren Lebenspraxis, daß dieses ethisch-religiöse Leben, ohne daß man es merkt, weil die Sache maskiert auftritt im Leben, eigentlich zu einer innerlichen Lebenslüge des Menschen wird.

Wie sehen wir heute die Menschen vielfach herumgehen, die aus gewisser ethisch-religiöser Vornehmheit heraus — wie sie meinen - den besten Willen zeigen mit Bezug auf ein richtiges Zusammenleben mit ihren Mitmenschen, die den besten Willen zeigen, ihren Mitmenschen nur das Allerallergütigste zu tun, die aber alles versäumen, dies wirklich zu tun, weil sie sich kein soziales, in den praktischen Lebensgewohnheiten drinnenstehendes Gefühlsleben aneignen.

Und so erleben wir es— wenn ich den Ausdruck noch einmal gebrauchen darf- in diesem welthistorischen Augenblick, wo die sozialen Fragen so sichtbarlich, so fühlbar drängen, daß von allen Seiten die Schwarmgeister, die manchmal sich für sehr starke Lebenspraktiker halten, kommen und sagen: Wir haben nötig, daß die Menschen wiederum zurückkehren aus dem Materialismus, aus dem äußerlich materiellen Leben, das uns in die Katastrophe und in das Unglück hineingetrieben hat, zu einer gewissen Geistigkeit, zu einer geistigen Auffassung des Lebens. — Und man wird nicht müde, zu zitieren oder anzuführen die Persönlichkeiten, die in der Vergangenheit -— Vergangenheit muß es in der Regel sein, dem Gegenwärtigen wird man weniger gerecht - sich für eine gewisse ideale Weise, für eine gewisse Geistigkeit ausgesprochen haben. Ja, man kann es erleben, daß, wenn jemand versucht, gerade auf das hinzuweisen, was heute für das praktische Leben so notwendig ist wie das tägliche Brot, daß er darauf aufmerksam gemacht wird, daß es ja in erster Linie daraufankomme, die Menschen wiederum zum Geiste zu bringen. In dieser Mahnung steckt ungeheuer viel von dem, was gerade die Menschen in die heutige Katastrophe hineingeführt hat, steckt Schwarmgeisterei, die in den mannigfaltigsten Masken heute auftritt und in den Tatsachen wirkt. Gewiß, es ist auf der einen Seite Schwarmgeisterei, wenn jemand, ohne die äußeren praktischen Lebensbedingungen zu kennen, irgendwelche soziale Ideale aufstellt, die man Utopien nennt, in denen er recht fein herausstaffiert und herauskristallisiert das System zeigt, wie die Menschen leben sollten, damit sie glücklich oder zufrieden oder sonst irgendwie seien. Im Grunde genommen, selbst wenn solche Utopien sehr scharfsinnig sind, es kommt nicht auf den Scharfsinn an, es kommt auch nicht auf den guten Willen an, es kommt auf das an, wie sie sich zur Lebenspraxis stellen. Es kommt heute nicht darauf an, daß man die Menschen darauf hinweist, zum Geiste zurückzukehren, sondern es kommt darauf an, daß Geist in dem ist, wie man heute über den sozialen Organismus denkt. Auf die Art und Weise, auf das Wie des Denkens kommt es an. Meinetwillen rede man gar nicht vom Geist, aber in der Art und Weise, wie man über die Lebenspraxis redet, sei Geist. Dann wird man der heutigen Zeit viel besser dienen, als wenn man aus Schwarmgeisterei in jedem dritten Satz heute die Menschen darauf hinweist, sie sollen wiederum zum Geiste zurückkehren, denn gewöhnlich können sich diejenigen nichts unter Geist vorstellen, zu denen man so spricht, gerade weil sich auch diejenigen nichts Rechtes vorstellen unter Geist, die so sprechen. Die Utopien selber aber, die aufgestellt werden — und auch heute sind sie ja nicht einmal so sehr gering an Zahl -, die sozialen Ideale, die fein ausgedacht sind, die sind noch nicht einmal das Schlimmste, denn in der Regel hält man nicht viel von diesen Dingen. Man kommt bald dahinter, daß diese Dinge unpraktisch sind, daß sie nicht aus den wahren Lebensbedingungen heraus gedacht sind. Viel schlimmer sind in der heutigen Lebenswirklichkeit die maskierten Schwarmgeistereien, welche aus scheinbarer Lebenspraxis herausgehen, aber diese Lebenspraxis nicht in Wirklichkeit in sich haben, sondern die eigentlich leben in wesenlosen Abstraktionen. Diese Schwarmgeister, wir haben sie - man muß in solchen Dingen immer frei von der Leber weg sprechen - in den Ereignissen der Gegenwart nur zu bedeutungsvoll erlebt. Und sie werden schwer erkannt. Sie werden schwer erkannt, weil man gerade auf diesen Gebieten den Blick nicht geschärft hat.

Wenn man heute in bezug auf einen Menschen, der im wesentlichsten gerade die Eigenschaft des Schwarmgeistes an sich hat - es soll im übrigen gar nichts gegen manche sonstigen Qualitäten solcher Schwartmgeister gesagt werden, es können auch gute Leute sein, sie können ihre Pflichttun auf ihrem Gebiete, können sogar hervorragende Leute sein, aber wenn man in bezug auf manche Persönlichkeit die Tatsache betont, daß er ein Schwarmgeist ist, dann sind die Menschen heute recht erstaunt, weil sie in dieser Beziehung, wie ihnen dünkt, selbstverständliche Urteile haben, aber weil in Wirklichkeit diese selbstverständlichen Urteile nichts anderes sind als ein wüster Aberglaube. Ich habe mir zum Beispiel im Verlauf der letzten Jahre auch manche «Lebenspraktiker» — das sage ich jetzt in Gänsefüßchen - angeschaut auf die Schwarmgeisterei hin. In dieser Beziehung wird die Menschheit, wenn sie zu wirklicher Erkenntnis vorrücken will, manches innerlich Paradoxe erleben müssen. Man wird zum Beispiel erstaunt sein, wenn ich als einen Schwarmgeist im eminentesten Sinne Ludendorff hinstelle. Das Urteil seiner Anhänger und seiner Gegner geht nach ganz anderer Richtung. Das Wesentlichste seiner Persönlichkeit ist, daß er mit Ausnahme desjenigen Gebietes, in dem er schulmäßig groß war, der Strategie, in bezug auf alles übrige Denken im eminentesten Sinne ein Abstraktling war, ein dem Leben völlig fremder Mensch, der sich schwarmgeistige Gedanken, die mit der Wirklichkeit nichts zu tun haben, über die Dinge machte, und der dadurch unsägliches Unheil bewirkt hat, daß er seine Schwarmgeistideen in die Wirklichkeit einführen wollte. Und so könnte man gerade manche von den Persönlichkeiten, die heute, weil man sie für Praktiker hält im Leben, unendliches Unheil anrichten, als die typischen Repräsentanten der Schwarmgeisterei hinstellen.

In den neunziger Jahren des 19. Jahrhunderts trat diese Schwarmgeisterei geradezu epidemisch auf, kam von Amerika herüber und überflutete Europa in Form der damals sogenannten «Gesellschaft für ethische Kultur». Da versuchte man irgend etwas, was lebensfremd war, was nur aus diesem vornehmen, abstrakten Erfühlen gewisser ethischer Impulse herausströmen sollte, als ethische Kultur auszubreiten. Und wenn jemand, wie ich es damals tun mußte, darauf hinwies, daß man mit solchen Dingen eben in Schwarmgeisterei drinnen lebt, daß man mit solchen Dingen gerade das menschliche Denken einsperrt, einschränkt, so daß es nicht untertauchen kann in die wahre Wirklichkeit, so wurde man entweder nicht verstanden oder mißverstanden oder verhöhnt.

Dieser Schwarmgeisterei soll sich eben das wirklichkeitsgemäße Denken gegenüberstellen, das, wie ich glaube, aus der hier ja auch durch viele Jahre hindurch vertretenen, wirklich geisteswissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung heraus sich ergibt. Was ist das Wesentliche dieser geisteswissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung? Das Wesentliche ist, daß sie nicht vom Geiste spricht als demjenigen, was sich als ein bloßes Spiegelbild aus der Anschauung der äußeren sinnlichen Wirklichkeit ergibt, sondern daß sie vom Geiste spricht aus einem wirklichen übersinnlichen Erleben einer Welt, die ebenso real ist, wie die durch Augen gesehene und durch Ohren gehörte und mit Händen getastete. Weniger kommt es darauf an, was man im einzelnen theoretisch über diese geistig wirkliche Welt sagt, sondern viel mehr kommt es darauf an, daß man durch alles das, was einem als Erkenntnis wird aus dieser Geisteserkenntnis der Welt, eine innere Seelenverfassung sich aneignet, einen inneren Lebensstatus, durch den der Mensch sich lebendig weiß als seelisch-geistiges Wesen in einer wirklichen geistigen Welt. Nicht darauf kommt es an, was man sagt über diese geistige Welt, sondern darauf kommt es an, wie man sich drinnenstehend fühlt in dieser geistigen Welt. Es mag schön sein, zu glauben an das oder jenes Übersinnliche. Das kann aber ebensogut zur Schwarmgeisterei führen, wie zu einem in gewisser Beziehung guten Wollen. Darauf aber kommt es an, daß man fühlt: Indem man denkt, indem man empfindet, ist in den Gedanken, die die eigene Seele durchblitzen, in den Empfindungen, die die eigene Seele durchzucken, der lebendig wirksame Geist.

Dieser lebendig wirksame Geist ist in uns. Er ist da, wie die Dinge draußen im Raume sind und die Vorgänge draußen in der Zeit sind. Und wenn man sich in diese Stellung zum wirklichen geistigen Erkennen nun nicht bloß hineindenkt, sondern hineinlebt, dann sprießt aus diesem geistigen Erkennen ein innerlicher Impuls, der ein Antrieb ist, den Geist in der Welt real zu machen durch sich selber, der ein Antrieb ist, den Geist als Realität zu erleben und zu verwirklichen in einer ganz anderen Weise, als das sein kann durch das, was ein bloßes Spiegelbild ist an Ideen, an Begriffen, die von einem Geistigen handeln. Es ist ein großer Unterschied, ob man sagt: Ich denke über den Geist, ich glaube an den Geist -, oder ob man sagt: In mir denkt der Geist, in mir empfindet der Geist. — Der gewöhnliche Glaubensbegriff verliert eigentlich gegenüber diesem Erleben sogar seinen Sinn. Etwas von seelisch-geistiger Stärke muß in die Menschheitsentwickelung hineinkommen aus diesem geistigen Erleben heraus. Und dieses Etwas von seelisch-geistiger Stärke, was in die Menschheitsempfindung hineinkommen soll, es ist von größerer sozialer Wichtigkeit als man denken kann, denn es ist das, was das Heilmittel ist für die lähmende, in der vorigen Woche hier charakterisierte Ideologie, welche das Proletariat von dem Bürgertum als ein bedrückendes Erbe übernommen hat.

Das ist es, was in der ersten wahren Gestalt der sozialen Frage in Wirklichkeit lebt, wenn man in die Tiefen dieser Frage einzudringen versteht, daß die Entwickelung des modernen Geisteslebens um die Wende der neueren Zeit oder seit dieser Wende der neueren Zeit im 14. Jahrhunderte allmählich sich so abgestumpft, abgeschwächt, abgelähmt hat, daß die Menschen nicht mehr wußten: in ihnen lebt der Geist als ein realer, lebendiger, sondern daß sie glaubten, nur Ideen, nur Spiegelbilder irgendeiner Wirklichkeit leben in ihnen — was dann in der Welt- und Lebensanschauung des modernen Proletariats dazu geworden ist, daß dieses Proletariat sagt: Es gibt auf geistigem Gebiete nur eine Ideologie. Die Wirklichkeit ist nur indem ökonomischen, in dem wirtschaftlichen Prozesse, in dem Klassenkampfe; da spielt sich die Realität ab. - Aber daraus dampft in irgendeiner Weise etwas herauf in die Seelen der Menschen; das kommt in Form von Bildern zur Offenbarung, von Bildern, die sich ausleben in der Wissenschaft, in der Sitte, in der Religion, in der Kunst. Das gibt einen Überbau für den einzig wirklich realen Unterbau. Und wenn man auch nicht umhin kann zuzugeben in der Soziologie, daß das, was in diesem Überbau als eine Ideologie lebt, wiederum real zurückwirkt auf das wirtschaftliche Leben, es bleibt doch Ideologie. Es gibt kein Heilmittel aus dieser Ideologie heraus, wenn man nicht zum wirklichen geistigen Erleben, wie es die geistige Wissenschaft in die moderne Menschheit hineinführen will, wenn man nicht zu diesem geistigen Erleben greift. Heilung von den Schäden der Ideologie ist nur zu erreichen durch wirkliche Vertiefung in den wahrhaftigen Geist und seine Erscheinungen, durch Vertiefung in die wirkliche übersinnliche Welt. Das, was bewirkt hat, daß innerhalb des modernen Proletariats alles geistige Leben, in das der Mensch durch die Kultur hineingeführt ist, als bloße Ideologie erscheint, das läßt, weil Ideologie nichts ist, was die Seele mit einem gewissen Elan, mit einer gewissen Schwungkraft, mit einem gewissen Bewußtsein, was sie eigentlich ist im höheren Sinne, erfüllen kann, die Seele unbefriedigt und leer. Aus dieser Leerheit der Seele ist die Stimmung, ist die trostlose Stimmung in der proletarischen Weltanschauung, die einen Teil, ein Glied der wirklichen sozialen Frage bildet, erwachsen. Und so lange man nicht einsehen wird, daß die Neigung der Menschen zur Ideologie geheilt werden muß, so lange wird man in die moderne proletarische Seele nicht das hineinbringen können, was positive Impulse sind, so lange wird bleiben in der modernen Proletarierseele eine bloße Kritik der heraufgekommenen technisch-kapitalistischen Wirtschaftsordnung und Weltanschauung.

Das aber wird man nicht erreichen, wenn man nicht wird den Willen haben, in eine wirklich praktische Lebensanschauung einzutreten, in eine Lebensanschauung, die nicht aus Theorien, auch nicht bloß religiösen Theorien besteht, sondern die leben will, lebenschaffend sein will, die selber Lebensimpulse gebären will. Dazu ist manches notwendig, wovor der heutige Mensch wie vor etwas ganz Radikalem zurückschreckt. Aber das, was hier gemeint ist, ist viel weniger radikal, als was aus dem Leben, das in den modernen Zeitinstinkten entfesselt wird, an die Menschen herantreten wird, wenn sie zu bequem sind, sich an das Notwendige zu wenden.

Was ich hier von einer gewissen Seite her ausgeführt habe, bezieht sich auf das eine Glied des sozialen Organismus, der entstehen muß aus den Lebensbedingungen der modernen Menschheit heraus, auf das eine der drei Glieder, wie ich sie in der vorigen Woche, am Mittwoch, hier skizzenhaft auseinandergesetzt habe. Ich habe damals auseinandergesetzt, daß in einem gewissen Sinne das Unglück der modernen Menschheit, wenn es auch nicht durchschaut wird - es ist so, daß es nicht durchschaut wird -, darinnen besteht, daß man das, was dreigliedrig sein soll und dessen drei Glieder in einer gewissen Selbständigkeit lebendig ineinanderwirken sollten, zu einem in seinen Kräften chaotisch wirr wirkenden Organismus gemacht hat und noch fernerhin machen will.

Nur um nicht mißverstanden zu werden, bemerke ich gleichsam noch einmal in Parenthese, daß es sich mir wahrhaftig nicht darum handelt, irgendeinen gewaltigen Umschwung zu befürworten, der sich von heute auf morgen vollziehen soll. Was ich angebe, soll eine Richtlinie, eine gewisse Strömung sein, nach der orientiert werden kann jede einzelne Frage, die im Staate, im geistigen Leben, im wirtschaftlichen Leben dem Menschen entgegentreten kann. Man braucht nicht etwa gleich zu glauben, wie manche Leute, denen ich diese Dinge auseinandersetzte, man müsse gleich das, was man heute «Staat» nennt, morgen zu etwas anderem machen. Man braucht nur den Willen zu haben in bezug auf diese Dinge, das christliche «Ändert den Sinn» zu verwirklichen, das heißt, die Einzelheiten, die Einzelmaßnahmen, vor die man gestellt ist, wenn man bei ihnen eingreifen soll, mit Bezug auf ihre Gestaltung nach einer gewissen Richtung hin zu orientieren.

Und so habe ich auseinandergesetzt, daß das, was man heute zusammenmuddeln will in einen einheitlichen Staat, geradeso wie wenn man den menschlichen Organismus - zu einem Homunkulus würde man ihn dann machen — zusammenmuddeln wollte, so daß seine drei Systeme wirr zentralisiert wären, daß das, was man heute so zentralisieren will, zum gesamten Staatsbetriebe machen will, lebendig in drei Glieder auseinanderfallen muß, wenn sich ein gesunder sozialer Organismus entwickeln soll. Es muß als selbständiges Glied dieses sozialen Organismus alles dasjenige sich entwickeln, was geistige Kultur ist, als selbständiger Organismus sich entwickeln alles das, was man heute im engeren Sinne das politische Staatsleben nennt, das nicht durch Zentralisation, sondern nur durch eine lebendige Wechselwirkung mit dem geistigen Leben zusammenhängen soll, und es muß sich als drittes selbständiges Glied entwickeln der Wirtschaftsorganismus. Geistiger Organismus, Staatsorganismus, wirtschaftlicher Organismus, das ist es, wovon man sagen muß: in den nächsten zehn bis zwanzig Jahren streben die Entwickelungskräfte der Menschen dahin. Und wer sich dieser Entwickelung widersetzt, widersetzt sich dem, was die Lebensmöglichkeiten der modernen Menschheit sind.

Den ersten Punkt berührte ich von dem Gesichtspunkte aus, den ich heute auseinandergesetzt habe, zunächst: Das Leben der sogenannten geistigen Kultur, alles umfassend, was man Schul- und Erziehungs wesen, was man religiöses Leben nennen kann, alles das umfassend, was künstlerisches, literarisches Leben ist, aber auch alles das umfassend, was sich auf das Privat- und das Strafrecht bezieht. Diese Dinge werde ich noch genauer charakterisieren. Alles das, was innerhalb dieses Lebens der geistigen Kultur beschlossen ist, das muß auf eine gemeinschaftliche, aber selbständige Grundlage gegenüber den Grundlagen des übrigen sozialen Organismus gestellt werden. Das muß ganz auf sich gestellt werden, das muß auf eine solche Grundlage gestellt werden, daß man sagen kann: das Lebenselement innerhalb dieses Gliedes des sozialen Organismus muß die aus dem Zentrum des Menschen heraus wirkende freie Entfaltung seiner körperlichen und geistigen Anlagen sein. Alles muß auf diesem Gebiete auf Individualität gestellt werden. Denn was in dieses Gebiet einfließt, das muß aus dem Zentrum der menschlichen Individualität heraus kommen, und die körperlichen und geistigen Anlagen des Menschen müssen freie Entwickelungsmöglichkeit haben, müssen aber zu gleicher Zeit davon zurückgehalten werden, daß sie in irgendeiner Weise schädlich oder hemmend oder unberechtigt in das übrige Kulturleben eingreifen können.

Gerade auf diesem Gebiete könnte man mancherlei anführen. Ich möchte ein groteskes Beispiel anführen. Ich bitte'zu entschuldigen, daß das Beispiel etwas grotesk sein wird, aber es wird vielleicht zum Ausdruck bringen, was ich gerade mit Bezug auf dieses Gebiet sagen will. Nehmen wir an, irgendein junger Student, also ein Mensch, der als angehender Mensch drinnensteht in der geistigen Entwickelung, habe seine Doktorarbeit zu machen. Er bekommt den Rat von der maßgebenden Persönlichkeit, irgendein Thema zu bearbeiten, das noch wenig oder gar nicht bearbeitet ist — nun, sagen wir zum Beispiel, es soll über die Schimpfwörter eines alten römischen Schriftstellers handeln. Solche Dinge gibt es ja, wie diejenigen, die es angeht, ja wohl wissen werden. Nun arbeitet der junge Mann ein ganzes Jahr über die Schimpfwörter irgendeines alten Schriftstellers. Man sagt heute: Das ist wissenschaftlich wichtig. — Ja, von seiten derjenigen Vorstellungen, die man auf gewissen Gebieten hat, ist das ja gewiß wissenschaftlich wichtig; aber es kommt etwas anderes in Betracht. Das ist das Hineingestelltsein einer solchen Sache in den ganzen sozialen Organismus. Ablenken muß man den Blick von dieser Tatsache, daß es ja sehr interessant sein kann, über die Schimpfwörter irgendeines alten Schriftstellers zu schreiben. Ich kenne eine Dissertation, wo sich der junge Mann furchtbar geplagt hat, die handelte über die Parenthesen bei einem alten griechischen Schriftsteller. Ich will gar nichts gegen das, was vom rein wissenschaftlichen Standpunkt über solche Dinge vorgebracht werden kann, sagen. Banausische Dinge sollen hier nicht geltend gemacht werden. Aber mit Bezug auf das Hineingestelltsein in den sozialen Organismus liegt doch das Folgende vor: Der junge Mann braucht vielleicht ein Jahr regsten FleiBes. Da muß er essen, da muß er trinken, da muß er sich kleiden. Dazu braucht er ein gewisses Einkommen, ein gewisses Kapital. Was heißt das: er verzehrt ein gewisses Kapital? Das heißt ja nichts anderes im wirklichen Leben, als: Viele, viele Menschen müssen für ihn arbeiten. Das, was er ißt, was er trinkt, das, wovon er sich kleidet, das engagiert ein ganzes Heer von Menschen während dieses Jahres. Ein kleines Heer von Menschen engagiert er für sein Essen, Trinken und Sich-Kleiden, und das kommt in Betracht mit Bezug auf den sozialen Effekt der Sache. Heute ist man vielfach der Ansicht, man könne einfach die Dinge so ohne soziales Verständnis, aus einer gewissen Neigung, rein wissenschaftlichen Interessen zu dienen, in die Welt hineinstellen. Unser Leben in der Gegenwart fordert aber, daß ein jeglicher Zweig in seinem Verhältnis, in seiner lebendigen Beziehung zu allen anderen Lebenszweigen für das soziale Verständnis, für das soziale Gefühl aufgefaßt werde.

Wie gesagt, ich habe Sie um Entschuldigung gebeten, daß ich gerade ein groteskes Beispiel angeführt habe, es könnten weniger groteske angeführt werden, aber ich habe dieses Beispiel angeführt, um Ihnen zu zeigen, wie notwendig es ist, ein soziales Gefühl dafür zu entwickeln, wie das geistige Leben, der ganze Betrieb des geistigen Lebens im sozialen Organismus so drinnenstehen muß, daß er gerechtfertigt ist durch die allgemeinen Interessen der Menschheit. Das Allgemeininteresse der Menschheit muß gefragt werden, ob es auf die Feststellung der Schimpfwörter irgendeines alten römischen Schriftstellers einen so großen Wert legt, daß ein Jahr lang ein kleines Heer von Arbeitern für diese Arbeit angestellt werden muß. Die Frage könnte man natürlich weniger grotesk nach manchen anderen Seiten hin ausarbeiten. Dann würde man darauf kommen, daß das, was die geistige Kultur umfaßt, zu der zum Beispiel auch die Erfindung technischer Ideen gehört, lebendig wirkt gerade in das andere Gebilde, in den Rechtsstaat hinüber, wenn die Dinge mit einer relativen Selbständigkeit im Leben stehen. Dagegen bewirkt die Zentralisation, daß alles ins Chaos kommt.

Das, was geistiges Leben ist, muß mit einer relativen Selbständigkeit dastehen, muß nicht nur auf die innere Freiheit des Menschen gestellt sein, sondern es muß so innerhalb des sozialen Organismus dieses geistige Leben stehen, daß es auch in völlig freie Konkurrenz gestellt ist, daß es auf keinem Staatsmonopol beruht, daß dasjenige, was das geistige Leben als Geltung sich verschafft bei den Menschen — was es für den einzelnen individuellen Menschen für eine Geltung hat, das ist eine andere Sache, wir reden von der Gestaltung des sozialen Organismus -, daß das auf völlig freier Konkurrenz, auf völlig freiem Entgegenkommen den Bedürfnissen der Allgemeinheit einzig und allein sich offenbaren kann. Mag irgend jemand in seiner Freizeit dichten, so viel er will, mag er auch Freunde finden für diese Dichtung, so vieler will- das, was berechtigt ist im geistigen Leben, ist allein das, was die anderen Menschen miterleben wollen mit der einzelnen menschlichen Individualität. Das aber wird auf eine gesunde Basis nur gestellt, wenn man alles geistige Leben, alles Schul- und Universitätsleben, alles Erziehungsleben und alles Kunstleben des staatlichen Monopolisierungscharakters entkleidet und auf sich selbst stellt - wie gesagt, nicht von heute auf morgen. Die Richtung ist damit angegeben, wenn man den Menschen auf sich selbst stellt. Damit wird die Brücke geschlagen zu etwas anderem. Ich habe mich bereits im Anfange der neunziger Jahre bemüht, in meiner «Philosophie der Freiheit», die jetzt ihre Neuauflage erlebt hat, vielleicht gerade zur rechten Zeit, zu zeigen, wie das, was das wirkliche Freiheitserlebnis im Menschen ist, niemals beruhen kann auf etwas anderem als auf dem wirklichen, in die Seele des Menschen hereinspielenden Geistesleben. Ich nannte das dazumal das Hereinspielen der Intuition in die Menschenseele, das Hereinspielen des wirklichen Geistigen. Dieses wirkliche Geistige muß in der Menschenseele in dem Lichte der Freiheit und der freien Konkurrenz geboren werden, dann lebt es sich in der richtigen Weise in den sozialen Organismus hinein. Dann darf es aber auch nicht, und das ist wichtig, unter irgendeinem Aufsichtsrecht irgendeines anderen Gliedes des sozialen Organismus stehen, dann muß es in völliger Freiheit, nur herausgefordert durch die allgemeinen Bedürfnisse, sich offenbaren können.

Ich weiß- und ich werde in den nächsten Vorträgen auch das widerlegen -, daß viele Leute glauben: Nun ja, wenn die Schule frei ist, dann werden wir wiederum von lauter Analphabeten umgeben sein. — Ich werde zeigen, daß das nicht der Fall ist. Worauf es mir zunächst heute ankommt, das ist, aus der inneren Natur der Sache heraus die Notwendigkeit des freien Geisteslebens im sozialen Organismus zu zeigen. Es gibt Staaten, in denen ja die Wissenschaft, wie heute fast überall, Monopol ist, auch ihr Betrieb monopolisiert ist durch den Staat, und in denen sich das Gesetz findet: Die Wissenschaft und ihre Lehre ist frei. — Das bleibt aber eine bloße Phrase und muß eine bloße Phrase bleiben, wenn das geistige Leben nicht auf sich selbst gestellt ist. Nicht nur, daß dieses geistige Leben in bezug auf die Persönlichkeiten, die in ihm wirken, in bezug auf das, was öffentlich gesagt oder nicht gesagt werden darf, abhängig wird von einem anderen Gliede des sozialen Organismus, wenn dieses andere Glied Schulen, Universitäten einrichtet, wenn ich nur das erwähne; nicht nur, wie gesagt, der äußere Betrieb, die Anstellung der Persönlichkeiten, die Begrenzung dessen, was man sagen oder nicht sagen darf, wird dadurch bestimmt, sondern es wird auch der innere Inhalt des Geisteslebens selbst bestimmt. Unser gesamtes wissenschaftliches Leben trägt einen Charakter des politischen Lebens, seitdem sich in der neueren Zeit die Sphäre des politischen Lebens über das geistige Leben ausgedehnt hat. Das geistige Leben kann aber nicht die Angelegenheit irgendeines anderen Gliedes des sozialen Organismus sein; es kann seinen ihm selbst gemäßen Inhalt nur erhalten, wenn es aus der freien menschlichen Individualität heraus sich entwickelt.

Diesem geistigen Leben steht, wie dem Verdauungssystem das Kopfsystem im menschlichen natürlichen Organismus, das bloße Wirtschaftsleben gegenüber. Dieses Wirtschaftsleben hat seine eigenen Gesetze. Herausgearbeitet hat den Charakter des modernen Wirtschaftslebens gerade die proletarische Wissenschaft in einer empfindungsgemäßen, in einer lebensgemäßen Weise, nicht wie die Kathederwissenschaft nur theoretisch, so daß man merkt an dieser proletarischen Wissenschaft, wie das Wirtschaftsleben zum Menschen im allgemeinen steht.

Nun darf man da besonders auf einen Punkt immer wieder hinweisen. Ich habe auf diesen Punkt in diesen Vorträgen schon hingewiesen. Was an diesem Wirtschaftsleben heute besonders auffällt, beziehungsweise an der proletarischen wissenschaftlichen Betrachtung dieses Wirtschaftslebens, ist, daß auch mit Bezug darauf das Proletariat das Erbe der anderen Klassen übernommen hat. Indem sich die moderne Technik, indem sich der moderne Kapitalismus herausgebildet hat, ist — aus den schon in der vorigen Woche hier angeführten Gründen — der menschliche Blick wie hypnotisiert auf dieses Wirtschaftsleben als das eigentliche, im sozialen Organismus allein Wirkliche hingelenkt worden. Man glaubt, wenn man von menschlicher Entwickelung redet, nur auf dieses Wirtschaftsleben hindeuten zu müssen. Daß dieses Wirtschaftsleben, wie wir gesehen haben, ganz besonders engagiert worden ist, daß durch dieses Wirtschaftsleben ein besonders wirksamer Impuls des modernen Proletariats in das helle Licht der Sonne der Menschheitsempfindung, der Menschenwürdeempfindung gerückt worden ist, das muß gerade gegenüber dem Wirtschaftsleben ins Auge gefaßt werden. Dadurch hat ja Karl Marx in Millionen und aber Millionen von Proletariern so zündend gewirkt, daß die Leute glaubten, er habe zuerst mit klaren Worten auf dasjenige hingewiesen, was als ein Menschenunwürdiges lebt für den modernen Proletarier in seiner ganzen Stellung; er, Karl Marx, habe zuerst hingewiesen darauf, daß für den Proletarier seine Arbeitskraft Ware ist, wie andere Waren zirkulieren auf dem Warenmarkt und unter dem Gesetz von Angebot und Nachfrage stehen.

Karl Marx hat in vielfach irrtümlicher Weise auf die zugrunde liegenden Tatsachen hingewiesen. Allein, daß er überhaupt auf diesen innersten Nerv der modernen sozialen Frage hingewiesen hat, das wird ihm von dem Gefühle der proletarischen Seele zum besonderen Verdienste angerechnet. Auch hier ist das Sozialpsychologische von einer viel wirklichkeitsgemäßeren Bedeutung als die Theorien, Betrachtungen und Diskussionen, die an manches im wirtschaftlichen und sonstigen sozialen Leben angeknüpft werden. Aber daraus entsteht die Lebensfrage: Wie kann dieses als menschenunwürdig Empfundene überwunden werden: Arbeitskraft des Menschen ist Ware und wird als Ware behandelt? — So sagte ja zunächst Marx. Wie gesagt, die Sache ist in vieler Beziehung irrig, aber darauf kommt es jetzt nicht an, denn wenn eine irrige Tatsache so gewaltige Stoßkraft in den Seelen von Millionen von Menschen hat, so ist sie eben eine soziale Tatsache. So sagte Karl Marx und so verstanden ihn die modernen Proletarier. Dieses Verständnis, wenn es sich auch in mancher Beziehung geändert hat, wirkt heute noch nach, wirkt gerade heute ganz besonders lebendig in den Gefühlen. So sagte er: Innerhalb des Wirtschaftsorganismus werden Waren auf den Markt gebracht und verkauft. Es gibt Besitzer von Waren, Eigentümer von Waren, es gibt Käufer von Waren. Zwischen denen zirkulieren die Waren. Der moderne Proletarier besitzt nichts außer seiner eigenen Arbeitskraft. Für jede Ware sind gewisse Herstellungskosten notwendig. Die Herstellung dieser oder jener Ware, bis sie konsumfähig ist, ist so und so hoch. Der moderne Proletarier hat nur seine Körperkraft, er hat nur seine Arbeitskraft. Zur Herstellung dieser Arbeitskraft ist alles das notwendig, was er erwerben muß an Nahrungsmitteln, an Kleidern und so weiter. Durch das, was er an Nahrungsmitteln, an Kleidern sich erwerben muß, wird immerzu die verbrauchte Arbeitskraft wiederum ersetzt. Das sind die Herstellungskosten für seine Arbeitskraft. - Nun sagte Karl Marx, und in seinem innersten Wesen meint dies auch der moderne Proletarier: Ungezwungen, ohne Zwang gibt ihm der Arbeitgeber nicht mehr als sogenannten Lohn für die Arbeit, als diese Herstellungskosten für seine Arbeitskraft. Aber wenn zum Beispiel durch eine Arbeit, die fünf Stunden dauert, abgearbeitet wäre alles das, was die Herstellungskosten sind, so gibt sich der moderne Unternehmer damit nicht zufrieden. Er fordert längere Arbeitszeit. Da arbeitet dann der Arbeiter umsonst, denn er bekommt nur so viel, wie die Herstellungskosten seiner Ware «Arbeitskraft» betragen. Was er darüber hinaus arbeitet, ist der Mehrwert. Das ist das, was er darbringt auf dem Altar wenn man das Altar nennen darf - des Kapitalismus, was sich als Kapital ansammelt, was aber entstammt seiner Arbeitskraft, und deshalb dem entstammt, weil er nur die Herstellungskosten bekommt, weil er gezwungen ist dazu, auf dem Arbeitsmarkt das feilzubieten, feilzubieten unter den wirtschaftlichen Verhältnissen, was er allein hat: seine Ware «Arbeitskraft».

Sie können den größten menschlichen Scharfsinn, Sie können die tiefsten nationalökonomischen Erkenntnisse aufwenden, um darüber zu diskutieren, wie man das nun machen soll, daß im sozialen Organismus der Arbeiter nicht mehr seine Arbeitskraft als Ware zum Markte tragen soll, daß er diese letzte Konsequenz der Sklaverei aus der Welt schaffen könnte, und Sie werden, auch wenn Sie mit dem größten Scharfsinn, mit den tiefsten nationalökonomischen Erkenntnissen mehrere Menschenleben nachdenken könnten, Sie werden zu keinem Resultate kommen. Sie können zu keinem Resultate kommen, denn dies ist gerade im eminentesten Sinne eine Frage, welche nicht diskutiert werden kann, welche nicht theoretisch beantwortet werden kann, sondern welche nur vom Leben selbst beantwortet werden kann, nur dadurch beantwortet werden kann, daß man etwas schafft, was im Leben so wirkt, daß die Arbeitskraft des Warencharakters entkleidet wird.

Wenn ich mich eines Vergleiches bedienen darf, möchte ich hinweisen auf jenes Männlein, das im Goetheschen «Faust» der Wagner in der Retorte erzeugt: den Homunkulus. Der ist aus dem zusammengesetzt, was ein Mensch zusammendenken kann an Ingredienzien aus der Natur heraus; aber er wird kein Mensch, er wird bloß ein Menschlein, ein Homunkulus. Sie mögen so aus Verständnisingredienzien oder aus nationalökonomisch erzeugten Ingredienzien etwas zusammensetzen — Sie werden nur einen sozialen Homunkulus bekommen! So wie man die Bedingungen schaffen muß, daß ein lebendiger Mensch da ist, so muß man die Bedingungen schaffen, daß ein lebendiger sozialer Organismus so wirkt, daß fortwährend im Leben, nicht durch Theorien, durch Argumente, abgetrennt werden muß das, was in der bloßen Warenzirkulation sich ausleben soll, und das, was menschliche Arbeitskraft ist und sich nicht in der bloßen Warenzirkulation ausleben darf.

Dies erreichen Sie auf keine andere Weise, als wenn Sie darauf eingehen, daß der lebendige soziale Organismus als selbständige Glieder enthalten muß neben dem geistigen Glied das rechtlich-staatliche, das im engeren Sinne politisch-staatliche, und relativ selbständig daneben den Wirtschaftsorganismus, der nach seinen eigenen Gesetzen zu leben hat. So wenig als der Magen atmen oder Herzschläge vollführen kann, so wenig kann der wirtschaftliche Organismus aus seinen eigenen Kräften heraus Rechte entwickeln. Und er wird nie Rechte entwickeln, wenn er nur aus seiner eigenen realen Grundlage heraus wirkt. Aus dieser realen Grundlage heraus wird der soziale Organismus nur durch Produktion, durch Handel, zur Konsumtion treiben.

Geradeso aber wie gegenübersteht dieser Warenzirkulation diese Natur selbst, diese Naturgrundlage aller Produktion und aller Konsumtion und aller menschlichen Geschehnisse und so weiter des Handwerkes und Gewerbes, so muß auf der anderen Seite gegenüberstehen und nicht bestimmt werden durch die Wirtschaftsorganisation, sondern diese Wirtschaft bestimmend das, was im politischen, im Rechtsstaate lebt. Das mul} so selbständig sein dem Wirtschaftsorganismus gegenüber, wie das Lungen-Herzsystem relativ selbständig ist dem Kopfsystem, dem Nerven-Sinnessystem gegenüber. Gerade dadurch, daß diese Dinge selbständig wirken, zusammenwirken, gerade dadurch stellen sie sich im Leben in das rechte Verhältnis. Nur dadurch, daß die Lunge und das Herz im organischen Leben abgesondert sind von dem Magenleben, wirken sie, die relativ selbständig sind, in der rechten Weise zusammen. Nur dadurch, daß im lebendigen sozialen Organismus ein selbständiges Glied da ist, welches nun nicht bestimmt aus irgendwelchen wirtschaftlichen Untergründen heraus die Arbeitskraft zur Ware, sondern welches bewirkt, daß aus dem lebendigen Leben heraus die Arbeit nur in solcher Weise in der sozialen Struktur drinnensteht, daß sie als Recht in diese soziale Struktur eingefaßt ist, nur dadurch können Sie nach der anderen Seite hin bestimmt sein lassen das Wirtschaftsleben durch das, was das Rechtsleben, das politische Leben des Staates im engeren Sinne ist, wie bestimmt ist durch die Naturgrundlage das Wirtschaftsleben. Erst dann, wenn man diese drei Glieder relativ selbständig nebeneinander hat, wenn man ein selbständiges geistiges Glied, ein selbständiges Rechtssystemglied, eigentliches Staatsleben, und ein selbständiges Wirtschaftsleben hat und diese Glieder mit relativer Selbständigkeit nebeneinander wirken, wenn jedes dieser Glieder aus seinen eigenen Grundlagen heraus seinen Vertretungskörper, seinen Verwaltungskörper hat, sagen wir, seinen Reichstag, seinen Bundestag, sein Ministerium hat und die einzelnen Glieder fast so souverän zueinander stehen wie Einzelstaaten, nur durch Delegierte zueinander verhandeln, erst dann wird der soziale Organismus wirklich gesund. Dann entwickeln sich auf dem Gebiete des Wirtschaftslebens die Interessengrundlagen, die allein in diesem Wirtschaftsleben als Impulse ausschlaggebend sein können. Und dann wird die Frage aufgeworfen werden können vom Leben durch das, was im anderen Gliede des sozialen Organismus, im Rechtsorganismus geschieht: Wenn aus den Impulsen dieses Rechtsorganismus heraus die Begrenzung der menschlichen Arbeitskraft, die fortan nicht den Charakter der Ware hat, sondern den Charakter eines Rechts hat, wenn diese Arbeitskraft so in einen bestimmten Wirtschaftszweig hineinfließt, daß sich dieser Wirtschaftszweig nicht rentiert, dann wird dieser Wirtschaftszweig ebenso in bezug auf dieses Nichtrentieren angesehen werden müssen, wie wenn er sich durch das zu Teure eines Rohstoffes nicht rentiert. Das heißt: Die menschliche Arbeitskraft wird ein Beherrschendes werden mit Bezug auf das Wirtschaftsleben, nicht ein Unterdrücktes, nicht ein Versklavtes. Aber das wird nicht dadurch erreicht, daß man gewisse Gesetze gibt, sondern daß man im lebendigen Leben einen Körper schafft, der einfach dadurch, daß etwas anderes an menschlichen Impulsen in diesem abgetrennten Körper da sein muß, fortdauernd von Epoche zu Epoche die Arbeit dem Warencharakter entreißt, denn sie muß dem Warencharakter entrissen werden, sonst wird sie immer wiederum aufgesogen werden, weil der Wirtschaftskörper immer die Tendenz hat, die Arbeitskraft aufzusaugen und sie zur Ware zu machen. Immer muß der Staatskörper wachen, um wiederum die Arbeitskraft des Warencharakters zu entkleiden.

Überall zeigt einem das Leben, daß die Durcheinandermuddelung wenn ich mich des trivialen Ausdrucks bedienen darf - der drei sozialen Lebensgebiete von Unheil ist. Man studiere nur einmal das, was sich als diese soziale und sonstige Menschheitskatastrophe in den letzten viereinhalb Jahren herausgebildet hat. Man studiere es an den wirklichen Ereignissen. Es ist ein schönes Studium, zum Beispiel in dem Gebiet, das jetzt wie in Atome zerfallen ist, in Österreich zu studieren: Wie hat eigentlich das innere Gefüge sich. halten wollen, sich halten wollen seit mehr als einem halben Jahrhundert? Da hatte man einen sogenannten Reichsrat. In diesem Reichsrat war eine gewisse Vertretung des Volkes, nur gewisser Schichten. Diese Vertretung zerfiel — nicht in der letzten Zeit, sondern da, wo sich die Ereignisse aber schon vorbereitet haben, in “ der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts - in vier Kurien, in die Kurie der Großgrundbesitzer, der Landgemeinden, der Städte und Märkte und der Industrieorte, der Handelskammern; also der Landgemeinden, der Städte, der Großgrundbesitzer, der Handelskammern. Sie sehen, lauter im Grunde wirtschaftliche Impulse steckten in dieser Vertretung. Und diese Vertretung war nun die Staatsvertretung. Diese Vertretung gab Gesetze. Das kam nur davon her, weil man unter dem Einflusse der modernen Entwickelung, wie ich im Anfange meiner heutigen Betrachtungen andeutete, ohnmächtig war, das wirtschaftliche Leben selbst mit seiner eigenen Organisation zu durchdringen, weil das Denken zu kurzmaschig wurde, zu engmaschig und begrenzt wurde, weil man gar nicht untertauchen konnte. Man nahm als Rahmen für das Wirtschaftsleben den heraufgekommenen Staat und pfuschte Wirtschafts- und Staatsleben durcheinander. Und ehe man nicht einsehen wird, daß durch dieses Ineinanderpfuschen Unzähliges von den Ursachen gelegt worden ist, was zu unserer katastrophalen Gegenwart geführt hat, eher wird man nicht auf die wahren Heilmittel verfallen.

Ich konnte heute nur wiederum manche Andeutungen geben. Die weiteren Ausführungen werde ich mir erlauben, übermorgen zu bringen. Nur das möchte ich noch bemerken: Selbst mit Bezug auf die große Weltpolitik könnten Sie erhärtet finden, was ich gesagt habe, wenn Sie nur auf die Untergründe des Lebens gehen wollen. Wer die Genesis dieses furchtbaren Krieges studiert, der kein Krieg im alten Sinne ist, sondern eine aus mancherlei Ingredienzien zusammengebraute große Menschheitskatastrophe, die jetzt nicht in ihr Ende, sondern in ihre Krisis eingetreten ist, wer die Genesis dieser Katastrophe studiert, der wird zum Beispiel finden, daß eine wesentliche Gestalt in dem Ausgangspunkte, in der ganzen Vorbereitung dadurch gegeben worden ist, daß sich das moderne Wirtschaftsleben herausgebildet hat in einer bestimmten Weise, und daß dieses moderne Wirtschaftsleben dadurch, daß man es nicht in der rechten Weise abzutrennen verstand in einen naturgemäBen, in einen wirklich lebensfähigen sozialen Organismus oder in einen Organismus über die Welthin, daß sich dieses Wirtschaftsleben verbunden hat mit dem bloßen Rechtsstaatsleben, das in relativer Selbständigkeit hätte bleiben sollen. Und so waren im wesentlichen Wirtschaftsfaktoren, Wirtschaftselemente da, welche sich bedient haben der staatlichen Machtkräfte durch die letzten Jahrzehnte, Wirtschaftskräfte, die in disharmonischer Weise gegeneinander gewirkt haben. Wären sie daraufangehalten gewesen, bloß auf Grundlage ihres wirtschaftlichen Lebens und auf Grundlage ihrer gegenseitigen Zusammenklänge sich zu entfalten, niemals hätten sie zu dieser Katastrophe führen können. Zu dieser Katastrophe haben sie geführt als bloße Wirtschaftskräfte, weil diese Wirtschaftskräfte sich bedienen durften durch eine falsche politische Körperschaft der politischen Staatskräfte, die für sie ihre Heere ins Feld schickten.

Diese Sache muß man nur in der entsprechenden Weise, nicht nur theoretisch, sich vor Augen führen. Das tun ja gewiß heute manche Leute. Aber man muß sie in bezug auf das, was als der eigentliche Impuls der sozialen Frage durch die moderne Gegenwart drängend und brennend geht, in das rechte Licht als das wahre Symptom des gegenwärtigen Lebens zu heben wissen. Dann kommt man aus der Schwarmgeisterei heraus, aus der bloßen Ermahnung, und kommt hinein in das, was wirklich ist, was möglich macht, daß die drei Glieder des sozialen Organismus zusammenwirken im Leben. Was keine Diskussion, kein nationalökonomisches Urteil bewirken kann, das Nebeneinanderleben des Wirtschaftslebens und des politischen Lebens, wird die Arbeitskraftfrage lösen und wird einen der wesentlichsten, schwierigsten Punkte in der Empfindung des modernen Proletariats in der rechten Weise fortdauernd aus der Welt schaffen können.

Nun, ich werde übermorgen diese Betrachtungen hier fortsetzen, in Einzelheiten eingehen und manches von dem, was heute noch fraglich bleiben mußte, wird sich ja dann in sachgemäßer Weise aufklären können. Nur auf das eine darf ich wohl noch hinweisen. So ist es schon und so wird es noch lange sein, daß die Leute aus den bequemen Denkgewohnheiten der Gegenwart heraus das zu radikal, vielleicht auch zu akademisch oder sonst irgendwie finden, was in Wahrheit nicht ein abstrakter Idealismus, was in Wahrheit Lebenspraxis ist. Da werden manche sagen: Nun, da kommt so ein Geisteswissenschafter und will in der eminent praktischen Frage, in der welthistorisch wichtigen Frage, in der sozialen Frage mitreden. - Gerade nicht um irgend etwas Besonderes für mich oder für die Vertreter jener Richtung, die ich hier geltend mache, zu sprechen, sondern mit Bezug auf solche Leute, die derlei Dinge für unpraktisch, für aussichtslos finden, weil sie die Aussichten nicht überblicken, die Perspektiven nicht ins Auge fassen können, für diese Leute, nicht für mich, möchte ich einen Vergleich hier zum Schlusse heute gebrauchen. Ich möchte hinweisen auf jenen armen Knaben, Stephenson, der dazumal verurteilt war, an einer Newcomenschen Dampfmaschine zu sitzen und der die Hahnen abwechselnd zu öffnen und zu schließen hatte, durch die auf der einen Seite der Dampf, auf der anderen Seite das Kondensationswasser eingelassen wird. Da bemerkte der kleine Knabe, daß da oben ja der Balancier auf- und niederschwinge, und da fiel er auf den Gedanken: Wie wäre es denn, wenn ich nun den einen Hahnen und den anderen Hahnen mit einer Schnur an den Balancier anbinden würde? Der würde das eine Mal beim Hinaufgehen den einen Hahnen herausziehen und den anderen hineinstecken, das andere Mal den einen Hahnen hineinstecken und den anderen herausziehen. Der Balancier würde meine Arbeit ersetzen, ich kann zuschauen, dachte sich der kleine Knabe. Und er führte das wirklich aus. Nun hätte damals schon etwas geschehen können, was sich in solchen Dingen vielfach ergibt, wenn irgend etwas Neues ins Leben hineinkommen soll, ausgesprochen oder ausgesagt wird, daß von einem ganz Gescheiten gesagt worden wäre: Du dummer Junge, du hast das zu tun, was dir obliegt! Was hast du für Schnüre an den Balancier angebunden? Mach das rasch weg, sonst hau ich dich durch! - Nun, es ist nicht so geschehen, sondern es ist eine der wichtigsten Erfindungen der neueren Zeit, die Selbststeuerung der Dampfmaschine, aus dieser Erfahrung des kleinen Knaben erwachsen. Auf mehr als den richtigen Blick dafür entwickelt zu haben, was zur Selbststeuerung des sozialen Organismus, zu dem lebendigen Ineinander- und Zusammenwirken der drei Glieder führt - zu einer Selbstbetätigung des geistigen Gliedes, des rechtlich-politischen Gliedes, des wirtschaftlichen Gliedes -, auf mehr erhebt Geisteswissenschaft nicht Anspruch. Aber nun hängt es davon ab, ob die ganz gescheiten Leute sagen zu dieser Geisteswissenschaft: Du dummer Junge, tu deine Aufgabe -, oder ob sie darauf eingehen werden. Das muß man sich oftmals, wenn man in diesen Dingen drinnensteht, in aller Bescheidenheit und ohne Anmaßung sagen. Der Glaube an die Schwarmgeister, die sich für Praktiker halten, möge bald der Erkenntnis weichen, daß die wahren Lebenspraktiker die verschrienen Idealisten sind, die aber auf die Lebenswirklichkeit eingehen können, daß sie es sind, die die wahren Entwickelungsbedingungen der Menschheit erforschen müssen, und daß nur durch die Erkenntnis und Auswirkung der wahren Entwickelungsbedingungen und Entwickelungskräfte der modernen Menschheit der Weg gefunden werden kann, der zu jener Lösung der sozialen Frage führen kann — das nächste Mal wollen wir davon sprechen -, die eben überhaupt im wirklichen Leben möglich ist. Nicht auf dem Wege der Anmaßung der heute noch vielfach als Praktiker geltenden Menschen wird das Rechte liegen, sondern wahrscheinlich werden sich als die wahren Lebenspraktiker die verschrienen Idealisten, die aber auf die Lebenswirklichkeit wirklich eingehen können, erweisen müssen.

Third Lecture

Swarm mentality and realistic outlook on life in social thinking and willing

In last week's lectures, I already pointed out that the current social situation is experiencing particular obstacles and difficulties in its development because understanding between the different classes of contemporary humanity is still a relatively distant prospect. The leading class of the population, as it has developed over the last centuries and decades up to the present, has certain habits of thought, certain inner impulses from which it feels, thinks, and wills. And one might say: there is a gulf between these habits of thought and what has developed, as I characterized it last week, as the very specific peculiarity in the habits of thought of the modern proletariat, in which lies the origin of what is today called the social question.

For those who strive to penetrate real life, the forces at work in the social context of human beings, it seems much more important to observe these impulses, which lie, one might say, beneath people's consciousness, beneath what they consciously discuss, than what actually occurs in consciousness itself. One can hear many different views within the circles of the bourgeoisie who think about these things today. One can also hear the views of the personalities of the proletariat or the leaders of this proletariat; but one will not gain as much for a realistic view of life and for the formation of a judgment with regard to the social reality of the present from observing these views as from what lies behind them, so to speak. And there is much more social psychology, social psychology, than either side actually thinks.

Anyone who—and I can say this, since I am attempting to describe these things here—who has made an effort to penetrate all sides, both the habits of thought of the bourgeois ruling circles on the one hand and the impulses of the soul of the aspiring proletariat on the other, knows how great the gulf between the two is and how difficult understanding is; and this lack of understanding is, first of all, a world-historical phenomenon and, secondly, a social fact of the present. We are now seeing Paris and Bern again. If one has a sense for hearing such things, one will say: a completely different language is spoken in both places. In both places, the language spoken is so different that one might initially despair that what is spoken in one place is even remotely understood in the other, and vice versa. That is why it is so difficult in the present to direct attention, both in bourgeois circles and in proletarian circles, to those things that are actually the main driving forces in the social question. For not everything that happens historically is equally important; among historical events, there are those that significantly indicate what the effective, the truly effective forces are. Other phenomena, which the superficial observer may consider equally important, are not even considered in terms of true reality.

Anyone who has been able to follow the proletarian movement as it has developed over the last few decades will have noticed, among many other significant facts, that the modern proletariat, which has truly absorbed its impulses in a scientific form, was able to say from its own point of view how the things that brought it into its present situation one might say, scientific form, has absorbed what its impulses are, that this modern proletariat, based on its views, has been able to say how the things that have brought it into its present situation must be resolved, how the economic and social order that the old classes of the population have brought about must gradually disappear and how something else must take its place.

There is a fact here that has found many mockers. But we should not join the mockers here; rather, we should point out the historical seriousness of this matter. When one has just dealt with reasonable representatives of the modern proletarian view of life – perhaps one did so more in the early years, when one became acquainted with this movement, than later, when one had already become more familiar with these things, when one had come to terms with them more, when one nevertheless raised the question: What form of society, of human coexistence and human activity, what form of social organism is actually considered within this view of life to be what should come, what should be brought about? – one always received the answer that was entirely appropriate to this view of life: That does not interest us at this point. For us, the most important thing is to bring about the dissolution of the current social order, to bring it to the point where it reduces itself to absurdity. What will then take its place will become apparent. People were always concerned with the view that the modern proletariat must take over positions of power and authority. If it succeeds in doing so after overcoming the class marching ahead of it, then, once it has power in its hands, it will find what it does not need to think about for the time being.

That was programmatic. But it is not really appropriate in the true sense of the word. It is also agitational, but it is not realistic. For those who have a sense of the developmental forces of history, the realistic question is: Yes, what does this modern proletarian worldview actually mean within the development of humanity into the present? — And here one is repeatedly distracted because, as I said, the views themselves are less important than what people say about how they feel, how they feel about their own lives, how they think about the other classes of human society. In short, one is distracted from the proletarian question to the living conditions of the proletariat itself. In a sense, it confronts us not with words, not with statements, but with the specific existence of a class of people who, by the way they are, tell us what it is all about. And the answer that reality now gives, that the real living proletariat as it is today gives itself, this answer could be formulated something like this. It could be said: this modern proletariat, with its life opportunities and living conditions, with the way it stands within the modern social order and feels itself within it, this modern proletariat feels itself, experiences itself as the critique of this modern economic order that has emerged from technology and capitalism.

I find it extremely interesting that, if one has a sense of realistic observation, one finds the answer, as it were, in the proletariat itself, in what is there, not in a theory, not in some theoretical debate, but in the proletariat itself. It is a critique. The fact that this modern proletariat has become what it is provides, in a sense, a critique of what has developed outside this proletariat and this proletariat itself as a modern economic order.

Because this is so, a doctrine that is abstract in itself, one might say based on scientific stilts, but a doctrine that is permeated precisely by the impulse that, as I have just characterized it, is present as the actual life impulse in the modern proletariat itself, has struck a particular chord in the soul of this modern proletariat: the doctrine of Marxism, the doctrine of Kar/Marx. It is a unique example in the intellectual history of humanity that an unspoiled class of people, a class of people with an intellect that is not yet decadent, with such full hearts, such open souls, and as if the forces at work within them were their own life forces, has taken up a scientific theory, as has happened on the part of the modern proletariat with the Marxist doctrine.

In this regard, one must have studied things in real life. One must have seen how even the most difficult things, considered difficult by other classes, have found their way into the elementary feelings and sensibilities of the proletarian soul, how millions and millions of the modern proletariat have been gripped by a seemingly theoretical doctrine. But what lives in this theoretical doctrine? This is again the peculiar thing, that what lives in it is not what is commonly called a social ideal. What lives in it does not have any formulation of what a future state or a future social structure should look like, but what lives in it is essentially a critique of the modern bourgeois social and economic order, and there is, in a sense, an instinct in this Marxist work, the instinct: If I point out to the proletariat what is a critique of the modern technical capitalist economic order, then I point out to it its own life forces, then I lead it to its own reality. In a certain sense, it is already expressed as a reflection of immediate proletarian life in Marxist doctrine. And those who believe that Marxist doctrine is obsolete for the proletariat fail to understand, on the one hand, that external formulations, certain views and ideas may long since have been overcome, but that what remains is the specific élan, the specific impulse that lives in such a cause, and that, on the other hand, precisely in the opposing views that have emerged from Marxism, in all kinds of revisionist attempts, there lives on only a further development of what has been drawn into the soul of the modern proletariat as impulses through Marxism.

This is only to characterize a social fact of the present that seems to me more important than the elementary discussions that are being conducted, because it points, in a sense, to social psychology. And even if it does not provide a direct answer—we will see in the course of the lectures what the answer is—it points to the existing questions from perspectives that are probably the first to be considered in real life today. And what feeling does one get when one approaches this fact impartially, without prejudice? One gets the feeling of a certain peculiarity of modern life in general. This modern life—as I have often emphasized in my lectures here in Zurich—has developed habits of thought, forms of thinking that prove extremely fruitful for a certain direction of natural science. This modern thinking has also sought to penetrate the understanding and reformative understanding of social life itself, of the social phenomena and impulses of life. But with this penetration, one has the feeling everywhere that the people of the present, who are immersed in the forms and habits of thinking of the present, do not have concepts that can actually grasp the complex phenomena of social life. In a sense, the concepts are too narrow. They cannot grasp the complex phenomena of social life itself. They remain abstract, they remain vague, but they do not penetrate into real life itself, which takes place in the social body. One might say that narrow-minded thinking characterizes modern humanity. And this narrow-minded thinking, this thinking that breaks down everywhere when one wants to immerse oneself in real life, this thinking has also carried over into the aspirations of the modern proletariat. And so it happens that this thinking is sufficient for criticism, but not sufficient for shaping real impulses out of human experience that could stand as guiding forces leading into the future. Everywhere, thinking breaks off when it wants to strive for such impulses.

And this describes something that has a profound impact on the whole of contemporary life. Anyone who is capable of grasping in all seriousness what is necessary for this present life must focus their gaze precisely on the point of view that is touched upon here, precisely now, at this moment in world history, when there is truly little time for discussions that are merely theoretical, because the facts are urgent and pressing. Right now, at this moment, we can see how people are confronted with these urgent and burning facts, and how they everywhere display this very phenomenon of thinking that cannot penetrate reality. People are often imbued with good will, but not with thinking that is equal to the facts. At this moment in world history, for those who are able to seriously penetrate the situation, we see the emergence — often masked in all kinds of other forms, completely unconsciously to people — of a tendency in people that is particularly disastrous for a truly serious way of life when burning and pressing questions are at hand: the emergence of a certain fanaticism, as I would like to call it. This fanaticism, which manifests itself in various guises in various fields, is what makes it so difficult for us to engage in appropriate action in the present. And this fanaticism has arisen from the development that I referred to as historical in last week's lectures, which began around the turn of the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries.

What is the essence of this fanaticism? The essence lies precisely in the fact that, through a certain unrealistic view of life, through a view of life that lacks what I called last week the driving force of inner experience, that through a certain view of life, a spiritual, intellectual, scientifically seeking inner life seeks, as it were, an island or a multitude of islands, and does not want to build a bridge to what life is in everyday reality. We find that many people today, if I may use the expression, find it somehow intellectually superior to think about all kinds of ethical and religious problems in a certain, albeit schoolmarmish, abstractness, in the lofty heights of cloud cuckoo land. We see how people think about the ways in which humans can acquire virtues, how they should behave in love toward their fellow human beings, how they can be blessed. We see concepts of salvation, grace, and so on developing, which certain proponents of worldviews want to keep as high as possible in the spiritual and mental realms. At the same time, however, we see the inability to build a genuine bridge between what people call good, loving, benevolent, legal, and moral, and what surrounds us in external reality, in everyday life, as capital, as remuneration for work, as consumption, as production in relation to the circulation of goods, as credit, as banking and stock exchange. We see how two world currents are juxtaposed, even in people's habits of thought: one world current that wants to remain, as it were, at a divine-spiritual level, that does not want to build a bridge between what is a religious commandment and what is a customary practice of ordinary commerce. But life is a unified whole. Life can only flourish if the driving forces of all ethical and religious life work their way down into the most everyday, most profane life, into the life that appears less distinguished. For if we neglect to build this bridge, we fall into mere fanaticism with regard to religious and moral life, which is far removed from everyday true reality, and then this everyday true reality takes its revenge. Then, out of a certain religious impulse, man strives for all possible ideals, everything he calls “good,” but he is powerless and insensitive to the instincts that stand in opposition to the ordinary everyday needs of life, the satisfactions that must come from the economy. He does not know how to build a bridge from the concept of divine grace to what goes on in everyday life. Then this everyday life takes its revenge. Then this everyday life takes on a form that wants nothing to do with what is held to be ethical impulses in more noble, spiritual heights. But then the revenge becomes such that ethical-religious life, because it keeps its distance from everyday, immediate life practice, that this ethical-religious life, without one noticing it, because the matter appears masked in life, actually becomes an inner lie of human life.

How often do we see people today who, out of a certain ethical-religious nobility—as they believe—show the best of intentions with regard to living together harmoniously with their fellow human beings, who show the best of intentions to do only the very best for their fellow human beings, but who fail to to actually do so because they do not acquire a social emotional life that is embedded in practical habits of living.

And so we experience it — if I may use the expression again — at this moment in world history, when social issues are so visibly, so tangibly pressing that from all sides the swarm spirits, who sometimes consider themselves very strong practitioners of life, come and say: We need people to turn away from materialism, from the outwardly material life that has driven us into catastrophe and misfortune, and return to a certain spirituality, to a spiritual conception of life. — And people never tire of quoting or citing the personalities who in the past — it has to be the past, as the present is less fair — have spoken out in favor of a certain ideal way of life, a certain spirituality. Yes, one can experience that when someone tries to point out what is as necessary for practical life today as daily bread, they are made aware that what matters most is to bring people back to the spirit. This admonition contains a great deal of what has led people into today's catastrophe, namely fanaticism, which appears in the most diverse guises today and has an effect on reality. Certainly, on the one hand, it is fanaticism when someone, without knowing the external practical conditions of life, sets up social ideals, which are called utopias, in which he shows, in a very finely dressed-up and crystallized form, the system in which people should live in order to be happy or satisfied or otherwise. Basically, even if such utopias are very astute, it is not astuteness that matters, nor is it good will that matters; what matters is how they relate to the practice of life. Today, it is not important to point out to people that they should return to the spirit, but rather that spirit is present in how we think about the social organism today. It depends on the manner, on the how of thinking. For my part, let us not talk about spirit at all, but in the manner in which we talk about the practice of life, let there be spirit. Then we will serve the present age much better than if, out of fanaticism, we point out to people in every third sentence that they should return to the spirit, because usually those to whom we speak in this way cannot imagine what the spirit is, precisely because those who speak in this way cannot imagine what the spirit is either. But the utopias themselves that are put forward — and even today they are not so few in number — the social ideals that are finely thought out, are not even the worst thing, because as a rule people do not think much of these things. One soon realizes that these things are impractical, that they are not thought out from the true conditions of life. Much worse in today's reality are the masked swarm spirits, which appear to be based on practical experience, but do not actually embody this practical experience; rather, they live in insubstantial abstractions. We have experienced these swarm spirits — one must always speak freely in such matters — in the events of the present in a most significant way. And they are difficult to recognize. They are difficult to recognize because it is precisely in these areas that our gaze has not been sharpened.

When we consider a person today who essentially has the characteristic of a swarm spirit – and this is not to say anything against some other qualities of such swarm spirits, they can also be good people, they can do their duty in their field, they can even be outstanding people, but when one emphasizes the fact that a certain personality is a swarm spirit, people today are quite astonished because they think they have self-evident judgments in this regard, but in reality these self-evident judgments are nothing more than wild superstition. For example, over the course of the last few years, I have also looked at some “practitioners of life” — I say this now in quotation marks — in terms of their enthusiasm. In this regard, if humanity wants to advance to real knowledge, it will have to experience many internal paradoxes. For example, you will be astonished when I present Ludendorff as a swarm spirit in the most eminent sense. The judgment of his supporters and opponents goes in a completely different direction. The most essential aspect of his personality is that, with the exception of the field in which he was academically great, strategy, he was in the most eminent sense an abstract thinker in relation to all other thinking, a person completely alien to life, who formed enthusiastic ideas about things that had nothing to do with reality and who caused unspeakable harm by trying to put his fanciful ideas into practice. And so some of the personalities who today, because they are considered practical in life, cause endless harm, could be presented as typical representatives of fanciful thinking.

In the 1890s, this fanaticism became virtually epidemic, coming over from America and flooding Europe in the form of what was then called the “Society for Ethical Culture.” There, people tried to spread something that was alien to life, something that was supposed to flow only from this refined, abstract feeling of certain ethical impulses, as ethical culture. And if someone, as I had to do at the time, pointed out that such things lead to fanaticism, that they imprison and restrict human thinking so that it cannot submerge itself in true reality, then one was either not understood or misunderstood or ridiculed.

This fanaticism should be countered by realistic thinking, which, I believe, arises from the truly spiritual scientific worldview that has been represented here for many years. What is the essence of this spiritual scientific worldview? The essence is that it does not speak of the spirit as something that arises as a mere reflection of the perception of external sensory reality, but that it speaks of the spirit from a real supersensible experience of a world that is just as real as the one seen by the eyes, heard by the ears, and touched by the hands. It is less important what one says in detail about this spiritually real world in theory, but much more important that through everything that becomes known to one from this spiritual knowledge of the world, one acquires an inner state of mind, an inner state of life through which one knows oneself to be alive as a spiritual being in a real spiritual world. What matters is not what one says about this spiritual world, but how one feels when standing within this spiritual world. It may be nice to believe in this or that supernatural phenomenon. But that can just as easily lead to fanaticism as to good intentions in a certain sense. What matters is that one feels: in thinking, in feeling, in the thoughts that flash through one's own soul, in the feelings that flash through one's own soul, there is the living, active spirit.

This living, active spirit is within us. It is there, just as things are there outside in space and events are there outside in time. And when one not only thinks one's way into this position of real spiritual knowledge, but lives one's way into it, then this spiritual knowledge gives rise to an inner impulse that drives us to make the spirit real in the world through ourselves, that drives us to experience the spirit as reality and to realize it in a completely different way than is possible through what is merely a reflection of ideas and concepts that deal with the spiritual. There is a big difference between saying, “I think about the spirit, I believe in the spirit,” and saying, “The spirit thinks in me, the spirit feels in me.” The ordinary concept of belief actually loses its meaning in comparison to this experience. Something of soul-spiritual strength must enter into human development out of this spiritual experience. And this something of soul-spiritual strength that is to enter into human feeling is of greater social importance than one might think, for it is the remedy for the paralyzing ideology characterized here last week, which the proletariat has inherited from the bourgeoisie as an oppressive legacy.

This is what really lives in the first true form of the social question, if one understands how to penetrate the depths of this question, that the development of modern spiritual life at the turn of the modern era, or since this turn of the modern era in the 14th century, has gradually become so dulled and weakened, and become so dulled that people no longer knew that the spirit lives in them as something real and alive, but believed that only ideas, only reflections of some reality, live in them — which then became, in the worldview and outlook on life of the modern proletariat, that this proletariat says: There is only one ideology in the spiritual realm. Reality exists only in economic processes, in class struggle; that is where reality takes place. But from this, something rises up in some way into the souls of human beings; it comes to light in the form of images, images that are lived out in science, in customs, in religion, in art. This provides a superstructure for the only truly real substructure. And even if one cannot help but admit in sociology that what lives in this superstructure as an ideology has a real effect on economic life, it remains ideology. There is no remedy for this ideology unless one reaches for the real spiritual experience that spiritual science wants to introduce into modern humanity, unless one reaches for this spiritual experience. Healing from the damage caused by ideology can only be achieved through real immersion in the true spirit and its manifestations, through immersion in the real supersensible world. What has caused all spiritual life, into which man has been introduced through culture, to appear as mere ideology within the modern proletariat, leaves the soul unsatisfied and empty, because ideology is not something that can fill the soul with a certain élan, with a certain momentum, with a certain awareness of what it actually is in a higher sense. This emptiness of the soul has given rise to the mood, the bleak mood in the proletarian worldview, which forms part of the real social question. And as long as it is not recognized that people's inclination toward ideology must be cured, as long as it will not be possible to bring positive impulses into the modern proletarian soul, as long as a mere criticism of the emerging technical-capitalist economic order and worldview will remain in the modern proletarian soul. And as long as it is not recognized that people's inclination toward ideology must be cured, as long as it is not possible to bring positive impulses into the modern proletarian soul, as long as a mere criticism of the emerging technical-capitalist economic order and worldview remains in the modern proletarian soul.

But this will not be achieved unless there is a willingness to adopt a truly practical outlook on life, an outlook that does not consist of theories, not even merely religious theories, but one that wants to live, to create life, to give birth to life impulses itself. This requires many things that modern man shies away from as something quite radical. But what is meant here is much less radical than what will come upon people from the life that is unleashed in modern instincts if they are too comfortable to turn to what is necessary.

What I have outlined here from a certain perspective refers to one link in the social organism that must arise from the living conditions of modern humanity, one of the three links that I sketched out here last Wednesday. I explained then that, in a certain sense, the misfortune of modern humanity, even if it is not understood — and it is not understood — lies in the fact that what should be threefold, and whose three members should interact with each other in a certain independence, has been made into an organism whose forces appear chaotic and confused, and that there is still a desire to make it even more so.

Just so that I am not misunderstood, I would like to note once again, in parentheses, that I am certainly not advocating any kind of radical change that should take place overnight. What I am proposing is a guideline, a certain direction that can be used to orient every single question that may arise for people in the state, in intellectual life, and in economic life. There is no need to believe, as some people to whom I have explained these things do, that what we call “the state” today must be turned into something else tomorrow. One need only have the will to realize the Christian “change your mind” in relation to these things, that is, to orient the details, the individual measures that one is faced with when one has to intervene in them, in a certain direction with regard to their design.

And so I have argued that what people today want to muddle together into a unified state, just as if they wanted to turn the human organism into a homunculus — so that its three systems would be confusedly centralized, that what people want to centralize today, to make into the entire state enterprise, must fall apart into three living parts if a healthy social organism is to develop. Everything that is spiritual culture must develop as an independent member of this social organism, everything that is today called political state life in the narrower sense must develop as an independent organism, connected not through centralization but only through a living interaction with spiritual life, and the economic organism must develop as a third independent member. Spiritual organism, state organism, economic organism—that is what we must say: in the next ten to twenty years, the forces of human development will strive toward this. And whoever resists this development resists what are the possibilities of life for modern humanity.

I touched on the first point from the perspective I have discussed today, first of all: the life of so-called spiritual culture, encompassing everything that can be called school and education, everything that can be called religious life, everything that is artistic and literary life, but also everything that relates to private and criminal law. I will characterize these things in more detail. Everything that is contained within this life of spiritual culture must be placed on a communal but independent basis in relation to the foundations of the rest of the social organism. It must be placed entirely on its own, it must be placed on such a foundation that one can say: the element of life within this limb of the social organism must be the free development of its physical and spiritual faculties, acting out from the center of the human being. Everything in this area must be based on individuality. For what flows into this area must come from the center of human individuality, and the physical and spiritual faculties of the human being must have the opportunity to develop freely, but at the same time must be restrained so that they cannot in any way harm or inhibit or unjustifiably interfere with the rest of cultural life.

There are many examples that could be cited in this area. I would like to give a grotesque example. I apologize that the example will be somewhat grotesque, but it will perhaps express what I want to say in relation to this area. Let us assume that a young student, a person who is in the early stages of intellectual development, has to write his doctoral thesis. He is advised by an authoritative figure to work on a topic that has been little or not at all researched — let us say, for example, the swear words of an ancient Roman writer. Such things do exist, as those who are involved will know. Now the young man spends a whole year working on the swear words of some ancient writer. Today we say: that is scientifically important. Yes, from the point of view of the ideas that people have in certain fields, it is certainly scientifically important; but there is something else to consider. That is the insertion of such a thing into the whole social organism. One must divert one's gaze from the fact that it can be very interesting to write about the swear words of some ancient writer. I know of a dissertation in which the young man struggled terribly; it dealt with the parentheses in an ancient Greek writer. I have nothing against what can be said about such things from a purely scientific point of view. Philistine arguments should not be made here. But with regard to its place in the social organism, the following is true: the young man may need a year of hard work. He has to eat, he has to drink, he has to clothe himself. To do this, he needs a certain income, a certain amount of capital. What does it mean that he consumes a certain amount of capital? In real life, this means nothing other than that many, many people have to work for him. What he eats, what he drinks, what he wears, engages an entire army of people during this year. He engages a small army of people for his food, drink, and clothing, and this must be taken into account in relation to the social effect of the matter. Today, many people believe that one can simply put things into the world without social understanding, out of a certain inclination to serve purely scientific interests. However, our life in the present demands that every branch, in its relationship, in its living connection to all other branches of life, be understood in terms of social understanding, in terms of social feeling.

As I said, I apologized for giving a grotesque example; less grotesque examples could be given, but I gave this example to show you how necessary it is to develop a social feeling for how intellectual life, the whole functioning of intellectual life in the social organism, must be integrated in such a way that it is justified by the general interests of humanity. The general interest of humanity must be asked whether it attaches such great importance to the identification of swear words used by some ancient Roman writer that a small army of workers must be employed for a year to do this work. The question could, of course, be elaborated in a less grotesque way in many other ways. Then one would come to the conclusion that what intellectual culture encompasses, which also includes, for example, the invention of technical ideas, has a lively effect precisely on the other structure, the constitutional state, when things have a relative independence in life. Centralization, on the other hand, causes everything to descend into chaos.

Intellectual life must exist with relative independence; it must not only be based on the inner freedom of human beings, but it must also exist within the social organism in such a way that it is subject to completely free competition, that it is not based on any state monopoly, that what intellectual life achieves in terms of validity among human beings — what it means for the individual human being is another matter; we are talking about the structure of the social organism — can only reveal itself in completely free competition, in completely free accommodation to the needs of the general public. Let anyone write poetry in their spare time as much as they want, let them find friends for this poetry, as many as they want — what is justified in intellectual life is solely what other people want to experience with the individual human personality. But this can only be placed on a healthy basis if all intellectual life, all school and university life, all educational life, and all artistic life is stripped of its state monopoly character and placed on its own feet—as I said, not overnight. The direction is thus indicated when people are placed on their own feet. This builds a bridge to something else. At the beginning of the 1990s, in my Philosophy of Freedom, which has now been republished, perhaps at just the right time, I endeavored to show how the real experience of freedom in human beings can never be based on anything other than the real spiritual life that plays into the human soul. At that time, I called this the influence of intuition on the human soul, the influence of the real spiritual. This real spiritual must be born in the human soul in the light of freedom and free competition, then it will live its way into the social organism in the right way. But then, and this is important, it must not be subject to any supervisory authority of any other member of the social organism; it must be able to reveal itself in complete freedom, challenged only by general needs.

I know — and I will refute this in the next lectures — that many people believe: Well, if the school is free, then we will again be surrounded by illiterates. — I will show that this is not the case. What is important to me today is to show, from the inner nature of the matter, the necessity of free spiritual life in the social organism. There are states in which science, as is the case almost everywhere today, is a monopoly, its operation is also monopolized by the state, and in which the law states: Science and its teaching are free. — But that remains a mere phrase and must remain a mere phrase if spiritual life is not left to its own devices. Not only does this spiritual life become dependent on another member of the social organism in terms of the personalities who work within it and in terms of what may or may not be said publicly, if this other member establishes schools and universities, to mention just one example; Not only, as I said, are the external operations, the employment of personalities, and the limitations on what may or may not be said determined by this, but the inner content of intellectual life itself is also determined. Our entire scientific life has taken on the character of political life since the sphere of political life has expanded over intellectual life in recent times. But spiritual life cannot be the concern of any other member of the social organism; it can only obtain its proper content if it develops out of free human individuality.

This spiritual life is opposed, as the digestive system is opposed to the head system in the human natural organism, by mere economic life. This economic life has its own laws. It is precisely proletarian science that has worked out the character of modern economic life in a sensitive, life-oriented way, not just theoretically as academic science does, so that one can see from this proletarian science how economic life relates to human beings in general.

Now, one point in particular should be emphasized again and again. I have already pointed this out in these lectures. What is particularly striking about economic life today, or rather about the proletarian scientific view of economic life, is that the proletariat has also taken over the legacy of the other classes in this regard. With the development of modern technology and modern capitalism, human attention has been hypnotically directed toward this economic life as the only real thing in the social organism, for the reasons already mentioned here last week. When talking about human development, people believe that they only need to refer to this economic life. The fact that this economic life, as we have seen, has been particularly engaged, that through this economic life a particularly effective impulse of the modern proletariat has been brought into the bright light of the sun of human feeling, of human dignity, must be taken into account precisely in relation to economic life. This is why Karl Marx had such an inspiring effect on millions and millions of proletarians, who believed that he was the first to point out in clear terms what was inhumane for the modern proletarian in his entire position; that he, Karl Marx, was the first to point out that for the proletarian, his labor power is a commodity, like other commodities circulating on the commodity market and subject to the law of supply and demand.

Karl Marx pointed out the underlying facts in many erroneous ways. However, the fact that he pointed out this innermost nerve of the modern social question is credited to him as a special merit by the proletarian soul. Here, too, social psychology is of much more realistic significance than the theories, considerations, and discussions that are linked to many aspects of economic and other social life. But this raises the vital question: How can this perception of human dignity being violated be overcome: that human labor is a commodity and is treated as such? — That is what Marx said at first. As I said, this is erroneous in many respects, but that is not the point now, because when an erroneous fact has such a powerful impact on the souls of millions of people, it is simply a social fact. That is what Karl Marx said, and that is how modern proletarians understood him. This understanding, even if it has changed in some respects, still has an impact today, and is particularly alive in people's feelings today. He said: Within the economic organism, goods are brought to market and sold. There are owners of goods, proprietors of goods, and there are buyers of goods. Goods circulate between them. The modern proletarian owns nothing but his own labor power. Certain production costs are necessary for every commodity. The production of this or that commodity, until it is ready for consumption, costs this much or that much. The modern proletarian has only his physical strength, he has only his labor power. To produce this labor power, he needs everything he has to acquire in terms of food, clothing, and so on. Through what he has to acquire in terms of food and clothing, the labor power he has expended is constantly replaced. These are the production costs for his labor power. Now, Karl Marx said, and in his innermost being this is also what the modern proletarian means: without coercion, without compulsion, the employer gives him no more than the so-called wage for his work, than these production costs for his labor power. But if, for example, five hours of work were to cover all the production costs, the modern entrepreneur would not be satisfied with that. He demands longer working hours. The worker then works for free, because he only receives as much as the production costs of his commodity “labor power.” What he works beyond that is surplus value. That is what he offers up on the altar—if one may call it an altar—of capitalism, which accumulates as capital, but which comes from his labor power, and therefore comes from him, because he only receives the production costs, because he is forced to offer for sale on the labor market, to offer for sale under the economic conditions, what he alone has: his commodity “labor power.”

You can apply the greatest human acumen, you can apply the deepest insights of political economy to discuss how to ensure that workers no longer have to offer their labor power as a commodity on the market, that they can eliminate this ultimate consequence of slavery, and even if you could ponder this for several lifetimes with the greatest acumen and the deepest insights of political economy, you will not come to any conclusion. You cannot come to any conclusion, because this is, in the most eminent sense, a question that cannot be discussed, that cannot be answered theoretically, but that can only be answered by life itself, can only be answered by creating something that has such an effect in life that labor is stripped of its commodity character.

If I may use a comparison, I would like to refer to the little man that Wagner creates in a retort in Goethe's “Faust”: the homunculus. He is composed of what a human being can conceive of as ingredients from nature; but he does not become a human being, he merely becomes a little man, a homunculus. You may compose something from ingredients of understanding or from ingredients produced by national economy—you will only get a social homunculus! Just as conditions must be created for a living human being to exist, so conditions must be created for a living social organism to function in such a way that, in life, not through theories or arguments, a distinction must be made between what is to be lived out in the mere circulation of goods and what is human labor and must not be lived out in the mere circulation of goods.

You can only achieve this by accepting that the living social organism must contain, as independent members, not only the intellectual member, but also the legal-state member, which is political-state in the narrower sense, and, relatively independently alongside it, the economic organism, which must live according to its own laws. Just as little as the stomach can breathe or the heart can beat, the economic organism cannot develop rights from its own powers. And it will never develop rights if it acts solely on the basis of its own real foundation. From this real foundation, the social organism will only drive consumption through production and trade.

Just as this circulation of goods is opposed by nature itself, the natural basis of all production and consumption and all human events, including crafts and trades, so too must what lives in the political, constitutional state be opposed on the other side and not be determined by the economic organization, but rather determine that economy. It must be as independent of the economic organism as the lung-heart system is relatively independent of the head system, the nerve-sense system. It is precisely because these things act independently and interact that they establish the right relationship in life. It is only because the lungs and the heart are separated from the stomach in organic life that they, being relatively independent, interact in the right way. Only because there is an independent member in the living social organism, which does not determine the labor force as a commodity on the basis of economic considerations, but which ensures that labor is integrated into the social structure in such a way that it is embedded in this social structure as a right, only in this way can you allow economic life to be determined on the other side by what is the legal life, the political life of the state in the narrower sense, just as economic life is determined by its natural basis. Only when these three members exist relatively independently side by side, when there is an independent spiritual member, an independent legal system member, actual state life, and an independent economic life, and these elements work alongside each other with relative independence, when each of these elements has its own representative body, its administrative body, let us say, its Reichstag, its Bundestag, its ministry, and the individual elements are almost as sovereign in relation to each other as individual states, negotiating with each other only through delegates, only then does the social organism become truly healthy. Then, in the field of economic life, the bases of interest develop which alone can be decisive as impulses in this economic life. And then the question will be raised by life itself, based on what happens in the other member of the social organism, in the legal organism: if, as a result of the impulses of this legal organism, the limitation of human labor, which henceforth has not the character of a commodity but the character of a right, if this labor flows into a particular branch of the economy in such a way that this branch of the economy is not profitable, then this branch of the economy will have to be regarded in the same way with regard to this unprofitability as if it were unprofitable because of the high cost of a raw material. This means that human labor will become a dominant factor in economic life, not an oppressed or enslaved one. But this will not be achieved by enacting certain laws, but by creating a body in living life which, simply because something else in terms of human impulses must be present in this separate body, continually, from epoch to epoch, wrest labour from its commodity character, for it must be wrest from its commodity character, otherwise it will always be absorbed again, because the economic body always has the tendency to absorb labor power and turn it into a commodity. The state body must always be vigilant in order to strip labor power of its commodity character.

Everywhere, life shows us that the muddling together – if I may use the trivial expression – of the three social spheres of life is disastrous. One need only study what has emerged as this social and other human catastrophe over the last four and a half years. Study it in terms of actual events. It is a fascinating study, for example, to study Austria, which has now disintegrated like atoms: How has the internal structure actually managed to hold together for more than half a century? There was a so-called Imperial Council. This Imperial Council represented the people to a certain extent, but only certain classes. This representation disintegrated — not recently, but when events were already in preparation, in the second half of the 19th century — into four curias: the curia of large landowners, rural communities, towns and markets, and industrial centers, chambers of commerce; in other words, rural communities, towns, large landowners, and chambers of commerce. You see, this representation was essentially driven by economic impulses. And this representation was now the state representation. This representation made laws. This came about only because, under the influence of modern developments, as I indicated at the beginning of my remarks today, people were powerless to permeate economic life itself with their own organization, because their thinking had become too short-sighted, too narrow-minded and limited, because they could not immerse themselves in it at all. The emerging state was taken as the framework for economic life, and economic and state life were botched together. And until it is understood that this botching together has laid countless causes that have led to our catastrophic present, the true remedies will not be found.

Today, I could only give a few hints. I will take the liberty of providing further explanations the day after tomorrow. I would just like to note that even with regard to global politics, you could find confirmation of what I have said if you are willing to look at the underlying causes of life. Anyone who studies the genesis of this terrible war, which is not a war in the old sense, but a great human catastrophe brewed from many ingredients, which has now entered not its end but its crisis, anyone who studies the genesis of this catastrophe will find, for example, that an essential factor in the starting point in the whole preparation was the fact that modern economic life developed in a certain way, and that this modern economic life, because people did not know how to separate it in the right way into a natural, truly viable social organism or into an organism above the world, became connected with the mere life of the constitutional state, which should have remained relatively independent. And so, essentially, there were economic factors, economic elements, which have made use of the powers of the state over the last few decades, economic forces that have worked against each other in a disharmonious way. Had they been encouraged to develop solely on the basis of their economic life and on the basis of their mutual harmony, they could never have led to this catastrophe. They led to this catastrophe as mere economic forces because these economic forces were allowed to make use of a false political body of political state forces, which sent their armies into the field for them.

This matter must be considered in the appropriate manner, not just theoretically. Certainly, some people do that today. But it must be understood in relation to what is the real impulse of the social question that is pressing and burning in the modern present, in order to be seen in the right light as the true symptom of contemporary life. Then one emerges from swarm mentality, from mere admonition, and enters into what is real, what makes it possible for the three members of the social organism to work together in life. What no discussion, no economic judgment can achieve, the coexistence of economic life and political life, will solve the labor force question and will be able to permanently eliminate one of the most essential and difficult points in the perception of the modern proletariat in the right way.

Well, I will continue these reflections here the day after tomorrow, going into detail, and some of what must remain questionable today will then be clarified in an appropriate manner. There is just one thing I would like to point out. It is already the case, and will remain so for a long time to come, that people, out of their comfortable habits of thinking in the present, find what is in truth not abstract idealism but practical life too radical, perhaps too academic or otherwise objectionable. There is just one thing I would like to point out. It is already the case, and will remain so for a long time to come, that people, out of their comfortable habits of thinking in the present, will find what is in truth not abstract idealism, but practical life, to be too radical, perhaps too academic, or otherwise objectionable. Some will say: Well, here comes a humanities scholar who wants to have a say in an eminently practical question, in a question of world historical importance, in a social question. It is not to say anything special for myself or for the representatives of the direction I am advocating here, but with reference to those people who find such things impractical, hopeless, because they cannot see the prospects, cannot envisage the perspectives, for these people, not for myself, I would like to use a comparison here at the end today. I would like to refer to that poor boy, Stephenson, who was condemned at the time to sit at a Newcomen steam engine and had to alternately open and close the valves through which the steam was let in on one side and the condensed water on the other. Then the little boy noticed that the balance wheel was swinging up and down, and it occurred to him: What if I tied one valve and the other valve to the balance wheel with a string? One time, as it swung up, it would pull out one tap and insert the other, and the next time, it would insert one tap and pull out the other. The balance beam would do my work for me, and I could just watch, thought the little boy. And he actually did it. Now, something could have happened back then that often happens in such matters when something new is brought into life, spoken or said, that a very clever person might have said: You stupid boy, you have to do what you are supposed to do! What kind of strings have you tied to the balance wheel? Take them away quickly, or I'll beat you! Well, that didn't happen, but one of the most important inventions of modern times, the self-control of the steam engine, grew out of this experience of the little boy. Spiritual science does not claim to have developed more than the right view of what leads to the self-regulation of the social organism, to the living interaction and cooperation of the three members – to the self-activity of the spiritual member, the legal-political member, and the economic member. But now it depends on whether the very clever people say to this spiritual science: You stupid boy, do your job — or whether they will respond to it. One must often say this, when one is involved in these matters, in all modesty and without presumption. The belief in the swarm spirits who consider themselves practitioners may soon give way to the realization that the true practitioners of life are the notorious idealists who can respond to the realities of life, that it is they who must investigate the true conditions of human development, and that only through the recognition and application of the true conditions and forces of development of modern humanity can the path be found that can lead to that solution to the social question — we will talk about this next time — which is actually possible in real life. The right path will not be found through the presumption of those who are still widely regarded as practitioners today, but rather it will probably be the notorious idealists, who are nevertheless able to respond to the realities of life, who will prove to be the true practitioners of life.