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The Social Question
GA 328

12 February 1919, Zürich

IV. The evolution of social thinking and willing and life's circumstances for current humanity.

Perhaps the lectures which I have been able to give here during this week and last week, proves from a certain point of view that it is justified to say that the situation of current humanity is deeply influenced by the developments which social thinking and social will have been adapting in the course of more recent times up to the present. More perhaps than most people suspect, the social impulse will penetrate directly into the life of single people—this penetration will happen more and more. It will become the determining factor towards the powers of the most individual behaviour. People are hardly able to understand their position within the human community which heaves and pulses with social impulses under examination, how its origins actually developed out of two different human shifts in the course of recent times—into social thinking and social willing. As a result, the continuation of these origins works into the present, works in such a way that it actually gives a social form to our current life.

I have mentioned in my lectures that solutions are not to be found towards understanding such things by doing what one usually does, by taking history as a straight line and regarding it as cause and effect in order to always reach a conclusion by what had gone just before. I have tried to draw attention to this: the historical life of humanity in its essence or foundations in relation to certain crises in the course of events, or rather better said: of the presence of crises during the course of events—are similar to what happens in the life of individual people. In the life of individual human beings there is no straight line of development; results arrive without a leap out of what went before. It is necessary to take the comfortable but often misunderstood conception that nature makes no leaps in a corresponding way by observing time and again how in the course of an individual life, crises appear, like the crisis in the sixth or seventh year of life with the change of teeth, how these crises arrive out of elementary organic foundations, just as it similarly rises to puberty. Whoever has knowledge of the course of human life can show how such critical changes also appear later in life even if they are not taken in as decisive a way by superficial observation as the first two. To observe such critical changes in the course of life is necessary in order to really understand the history of life. As much as current humanity is averse to such observation and listening, just as necessary is it right now to promote the social understanding of life and to point out such things with radical intensity. One of the last big changes—this I explored in the previous lectures—in the course of evolution of mankind we can point out as having taken place at the turn of the 15th, 16th Centuries. Only if one does not enter deeply enough into the historical course of things will one not know how radically different everything is which happens in the human soul as demands, as desires demanding certain satisfaction; how that changes in relation to what had arrived before that moment.

Now at the same time, as if followed by this elementary change in the later times of man's evolution, something appears which can be expressed as follows: the social impulse lived within the human soul in earlier times; this social impulse led to the structure of the social impulse. In earlier times, this social impulse was experienced instinctively. People lived together socially, ordered their affairs socially within their community. At that time, in the place of instinctive thinking and willing, a change started to take place towards a more conscious social impulse. This conscious impulse came to the fore gradually and slowly but it distinguished itself by shifting modern humanity radically away from the situation of medieval and ancient humanity. Here we see immediately how with the taking up of the social impulse out of the instinctive and into the conscious life, clearly two streams are created, indicating two diverging movements of social thinking and willing.

The one stream is clear in those people who can still up to today be called the foremost, leading social class of humanity. The other stream appeared somewhat later but is clearly distinguishable from the former, which we today describe as the Proletarian world. The leading intellectual bourgeois circles with all their interests as modern time came along, are linked to all that was created as the newer state which had gradually developed out of the structures of medieval community life. These bourgeois leading circles are through their interests linked to what we have placed under the three members I have explored as the social organism, describable as the actual constitutional state, as actually politically constituted, whether instinctive or consciously based regarding the relationships of one person to another. As with ancient traditions and also with a certain reference to newer scientific relationships, the leading bourgeois circles linked their interests more or less to what many people held as the only social form, namely the state. As a result of them moving consciously from the old instinctive social life to the modern consciousness, they thought as a result of anything related to the state were to be in terms of the constitutional state. As modern economic life became ever more complicated which through the expansion of the human horizon of activities became ever more complicated right over the world, so the leading circles tried to establish it in the structure of the state. They wanted to make the state ever more into the economist. This endeavour took on a certain course and we see that within certain circles single economic sectors were gradually drawn into the state structure. I pointed out such economic sectors last time. The essential aspect from this view is that social thinking earned quite a particular form as a result, in these circles, because of it wanting to conquer the state's interests: the encroaching complicated economic life.

The social impulse developed in quite a different way in the Proletarians. Now with the awakening in newer times the modern Proletarians didn't involve themselves as much within the real state territory. Due to a lack of time I can't enter into this further through deeper examination—but in their relationship, they stood quite removed from the interests of the leading circles and their representation in the state's structure. Still, the Proletarians were driven into the structure of the economic life in the most radical way. Their entire thinking and feeling unfolded in such a way that it was like a mirror image of what was being experienced in the economic life. Thus, the social impulse of the Proletarians became determined by the social structure of the economy of humanity, the economic life, just like the social impulse of the leading bourgeois and intellectual circles became determined by impulses of the constitutional state, by the impulses of the actual political structures. With both streams, they developed more and more in such a way that even these days there appears what I referred to in my lecture the day before yesterday, a gap, an abyss between the specific configuration of social thinking and feeling of leading bourgeois and Proletarian circles. I consider this to be the most tragic arrangement of mankind's situation in present times, the existence of this abyss which makes it so difficult for an understanding, to find a mutual understanding between both the two mentioned social classes. So it must come about as we will see: how prepared both the classes are in their struggle for existence in confrontation. The essential fact in this fight, which has partly already happened, is partly still being prepared, and that which can make sense, even still today only grasp community life superficially, will take on gigantic forms which are essential in order for, on the one side the bourgeois leading circles want the economy to become gradually captured by the state, co-capturing the state economy in such an extraordinary way which is the productivity and labour of the Proletarians themselves, and on the other side that the Proletarians want to conquer from the state the element where their interests are experienced in an isolated economic life.

That is the essential basic principle of this struggle which plays with so much meaning into the current situation of humanity. Over and beyond all that, as is often the case in awareness, it has been forgotten to pay attention calmly—I would like to call it, to what has been pushed down into the subconscious which lies behind the two impulses I've mentioned—to what is actually hidden. What wants to work on the surface of human lives since the critical change in the 15th Century entered later mankind, while what sweeps and drifts and pulsates in human life frequently only takes place in disguise in the consciousness: this striving towards an affirmation of the human personality appears which had not been known in earlier times. Assertion of the human personality, experiencing human nature within, actually makes up the nerve of the social question and dresses itself only according to the various relationships already determined by the given forms. So it could happen that this struggle towards the achievement of the complete assertion of all individuals, can become a struggle for all people—a struggle having become one of differing mutual interests, a struggle of the classes, a struggle which throws its forces in a disastrous way into the present.

Because this indicates something hidden and masked in the newer development of humanity it has resulted in focus not being directed, or better said, that people up to now have not learnt to direct their focus on what matters. During the time when the social impulse worked instinctively, people could allow the social organism to form itself instinctively. Because the social impulse has entered consciousness, even if in masked form, it is necessary right there, necessary as the most important thing in relation to the social problem of the more newer times, that social understanding, an understanding for the expression of the social organism in each individual enters, but that this understanding brings no learned aspect with it but brings an experience which lives in feelings and expresses itself in individuals as this or that necessity to situate themselves in the human community. For this reason, it is so necessary to do what I'm trying to accomplish in these lectures: to turn our focus on to the totality of striving in newer humanity which can only now penetrate the surface in a particular relationship, to focus on really making the social organism into a living form, a form which will allow humanity in their current situation to understand it in a lively way, not just in theory. For this reason, I point out that the health of the social organism depends on not making a chaotic jumble but that the three members are as follows: spiritual life in the widest sense, legal- or political life which means state life in a narrower sense and lastly, the economic life. Only in this way can those within the three members experience their necessary liberation, so that one of the three forms are not engulfed by one of the others but that they unfold freely beside one another and already in a certain independence as I have depicted from different viewpoints, now work together side by side. Up to now certain preconditions directed actual tendencies of human evolution against this independence. By differentiating what had been interwoven previously has now become the most needed current question in relation to the social nature of current humanity.

By exploring certain sides of human thinking, you can feel what I mean, that even in the light of consciousness the social impulse starts according to spiritual presuppositions respectively and they think in this or that way about the relationships between the life of the state and that of the economy. So we see the so-called social or national economics—whatever you want to call it, it is the same thing—formed out of ways of thinking, habits of thinking. It is not my purpose to present the social thinking of the newer time. I only want to draw your attention to one thing—actually I would like to shed light on several things which must be addressed in these lectures. Among these various ways of thinking, ways of presenting the interweaving of economic with state- and spiritual life, there appears also in this newer time what was designated in the 18th Century as the so-called physiocratic national economic ideas. Earlier thinking had the intention of organizing economic life out of the state organism and this formed itself as by necessity in opposition against the physiocratic thinking. It was developing in such a way that there was a need to change economic life not being tyrannized by the state in a narrow sense, that economic life be responsible for its own natural laws, wanting it to be left to what it would fall into if humanity freely, simply out of his own interests guide the economic life. Experts had various revealing things to say which can be somewhat echoed. These people asked: What kind of system of laws should actually go into this form of political state which will regulate economic life? Either the laws are to be the same as those which economic life gives when it is left to freely play with the forces, or it will let others impose on it. If it is the first case, when it is the same, then it is not necessary, the others are not needed and economic life develops its own laws, particularly state laws do not need involvement in economic life. If, however, the state laws work against the economic life then it restricts it, it impairs it and can do damage to itself.

I would like to say that what is expressed in these two opposing statements still haunts many people's thoughts. It haunts them because modern humanity, even though they consider themselves very practical and have a sense for what is real, are still terribly consumed by a certain sense for abstraction, for theoretical one sidedness. Should one try to prove in how many people today what appears as practical life is none other than an actualized one-sidedness, realized one sided theory, then one will touch on some riddles of life and be able to find partial solutions. What sounds the most plausible, most independent for me is to say: Either state laws take on the same direction as the economic ones then they are not necessary, or you contradict them and by so doing, damage the economy. One thinks about these opposites only when one considers the social organism as something which allows itself to be regulated according to concepts, laws, principles and programs, when one does not face up to the social organism being something which has to have life, which must live through its own being. Whatever has come through its own content of life, through its own thriving and sprouting impulses of life, has in real life an opposition to it. The social organism, in order to be a reality, must have oppositions within itself.

For this reason it is necessary to express something which probably many theoretically orientated souls in current times will see as absurd: the state-, pure legal-, and pure political-life needs to be limited in a certain way, in its laws it needs to counteract the economic life in order for the community life of humanity not to be only an economic, not only a legal life situation but an economic, legal and spiritual one, so that it can unfold as we have seen in the example of the human organism. I will once again use this example—I don't want to play the game of analogy between physiology and sociology—the processes of the digestive system is in a certain way independent of those in the rhythmic system, breathing and heart system, both are limited and mutually restrained in their vital processes. So it is necessary that the placing beside one another within the real social organism is the economic life on the one side and in a narrower sense the state life on the other side, which must be joined by the relatively independent spiritual life, as I have illustrated last time from another point of view.

From the following we see what it's really all about. Economic life has quite different inner forces than the legal life, which have to work together if the totality of life is to prosper and this is different again with spiritual life. You could, if you wanted to bring something more or less concretely lively into abstract forms, even if from a one-sided view in order to make it understandable, say the following: in economic life, as in the production of goods, circulation and consumerism, it all comes down to a corresponding creation of value. This creation of value is accomplished essentially by value building itself if the social organism is to be healthy, under the influences and impulses, that the consumption for which the economic organism takes responsibility—call it market or something else—has it ready for consumption so that the consumer of the goods benefits as far as possible. Goods must be offered for consumption if the social organism is healthy, in such a way that it is completely used in an expedient way, that it lasts for as long as it is useful, or for as quickly as it can be consumed while it is useful, that in any case its entire content depends on consumption.

If human labour would be so totally engaged in economic life—and this economic life can only develop in the healthy way under the historical points of goods-price development according to the corresponding consumption—so what the Proletarians with Marxist viewpoints had hoped for, would be fulfilled, human labour being considered as goods. In this way human labour becomes tainted with the characteristics of goods in the social organism, because it is being considered in its ability to be fully utilised for its worth.

The economic member of the social organism also has, when looked at more closely, the tendency to use people and should the economic member of the social organism only follow its own rules, then human labour would be used up. Because the leading bourgeois circles do not take this into account, they have contributed to the situation that within economic life and the position of the Proletariat in economic life, the very nerve of the modern social question has developed, indicating that the life of the modern Proletariat shows, particularly for himself, he chose to undress his labour of the character of goods. As it is sometimes masked in the social question and much of it living unconsciously in the Proletariat, it is the important element which the Proletarian soul strives for, the liberation of human labour from the character of goods.

This can never happen if the economic processes follow their own laws and when the totality of state life is only made into a single economy as is the ideal of many modern socialists. This can also not happen when in a one-sided way the state out of itself is made into an economist. A healthy relationship can only come about if the economic organism can be allowed to unfold its relative processes by itself, when, as it happens in natural organic life as well, a system is allowed to gradually develop fully out of its own latent forces, is allowed to unfold in relative independence. Whatever arises out of this unfolding and is being limited, becomes changed by an adjacent relatively independent system, just like it happens in a natural organism having developed its system fully, which also only expresses its harm as these losses are continuously being paralyzed by the adjacent system. All organic processes are based on this. On this the healing of the social organism must also be based.

It really doesn't matter to me how the economic organism is defined, how one thinks about it. For me it matters that these two branches need to be side by side and that they each develop independently even with the predisposition of developing damage within, so that the other system adjacent to it develops and paralyzes that which arise as damage in the other system. That is the nature of what is alive; that is also what the nature of a living social organism need to be. Only when the economic body manages itself on its own terms and the legal and political bodies manage themselves, whether along their own terms which result from the regulation or the legal relationships between people; when these organisms regulate themselves independently because they are working side by side and on each other, then a healthy social life will be formed. The social question will not be solved through theories, not solved by laws but it will be solved through there being in actual life the forces, one kind being the economic, beside the others, the stately, the political, working directly in their own existence, that they both work adjacent to one another and develop in one another, but by developing in such a way that each one maintains its independence.

This has been missed, out of a certain historical necessity. What has happened has of course been necessary. No criticism but a formulation of relationships is to be presented here. This needs to be taken as essential today if human progress is to orientate itself now and towards the future. It is a given that for the sake of the recovery of the social organism, economic life will become an associate, and becomes divided in such a way that the cooperative societies, trade unions and so on are formed by stripping off what had been inherited from the prejudice of how a constitutional state should be formed. What still existed in state life within these associations has to be stripped off. They must become purely economic serving entities which are based on the relationship of the human being in the economic life, whether it is for the foundation of economic life, or whether it is for the necessity of adding value to raw materials, or to bring goods into circulation, the relationship of consumerism in the right relation to production and trade and so on. The complexity of human life makes it necessary today for the entire system of associations and coalitions which are created on the foundations of the economic life, to be formed through human beings; such associations and coalitions which essentially exist on the understanding of the exploitation of the foundations and the directing of goods towards appropriate consumption. Even the complexity demands the creation of an entire system of associations in this sphere. However, these associations would be designed out of the connection of people with economic powers themselves. The result could be something which again and again enters into real life which is the tendency of the economic life to use individuals.

Beside the economic life the political life must stand, which in contrast to the economic life, is founded on associations which must be based more on democracy because the state life encompasses relationships between people. It encompasses everything in which all people are equally interested in. As the economic life is based on the economic value of goods, so state life has to be based essentially on public law; based on law or with law as its foundation, which determines the relationships of one person to another. In a lively exchange in the economic life a restriction and limitation would have to take place. Approaches to this are available but a penetrating social insight must take place. Whatever is to be created must prioritise the protection of the human being from the economic orientation of consumption, also in relation to his labour being consumed.

Just as the creation of prices and values are the essentials within the economic body, so the arrangement of actual laws, of practical public laws regulating relations of one person to another, are essential in life of the political state. Can it not be said even today that in relation to the experience of public law, no particular clarity has been reached? Many questions can be raised to those who should know these things, who should have done research about these things which are actually to be understood under the essence of laws, laws which always appear in practical form. One only comes to an understanding of the difficulties when one looks for instance at the example of such questions raised in the doctoral dissertation of my friend who has passed away, Ludwig Laistner in his “The Right to Punish,” This in itself can become a question which considers the actual right of the human community in relation to punishment.

One can try all kinds of ways to come closer to the impulse of the law. Particularly in our time when so much is being discussed from the most various sides about the law, it is obvious that to come ever closer, is to essentially search for the being of Law. If you try and find what lies behind such real Law, ownership is also based on law; the relationship of ownership being a piece of land or anything exclusive to one person, for his use with the exclusion of others—you find it is the subject of the actual political member of the social body and so you find nothing other than that it finally comes back to power. Others discover it actually goes back to an original human experience. One arrives far too easily at empty forms if you try to tackle it. Without me getting entangled—and this could involve hours of time—in a complete substantiation, I would still like to say that the law bases a certain relationship of people to something, to a thing, a cause or something similar, or a collection of causes, with the exclusion of other people. What is its basis then actually, if one can develop the feeling that someone or other or a nation has the right to something they lay their eyes on? Still, when one takes the pains, you come to say nothing other than legal rights are based on public life enabling an evolution for the activity of something or its causes or collection of causes which most probably do more for general humanity than any other. The moment one has the experience that someone has a relationship to something, or to someone else, where the need to general humanity is obvious, one can apply the relevant law for it. This will also be essential which will bring about the decisive factor through human experience when the big legal questions of international life now steps into the real world. One would fully award rights over a certain territory, to those who have the intention that in the sense of wellbeing of general humanity this nation in particular will be the best at making the territory the most productive.

So one comes to the impulse which can weave and flow through the democratic common wealth which must orientate the exchanges of one person to another, be it in workers' insurance or be it in other insurance, instituted to give protection against damaging economic life; in all of this human life lies as the foundation of law which I've just been speaking about. An understanding, but not an understanding for some or other general abstract definition of law, but an understanding for the effectiveness of the law, in every single real case, needs to enter to make it a healthy social life for humanity. This legal life, this life of the political state in a narrower sense, of the second member of a healthy social organism, that it will also be; the real crossing point, I would say, of the modern social question only, would not be through some realization of theories, principles and programs, but through direct life, created in the world, namely the point which I have referred to as the demand of the modern Proletarians: disrobing the power of human labour from being dressed up as goods.

To that end it is necessary for people to also really understand, I could say, understand out of the very foundation, what is involved in the share of human labour in general life, in the structure of the community. Again, it will involve hours to take this into consideration if I would attempt establishing one basic social law for human labour: intuitively and instinctively, I believe, every person can do it if life is penetrated fairly and comprehended regarding what I now want to express.

In my Newspaper called “Lucifer Gnosis” I tried to point out this fundamental social law in my contribution about the social question, which was published already at the beginning of the century. However, people were sermonizing about many things on this subject and even today, it falls to deaf ears, unfortunately. This law implies that no one, in as far as he or she belongs to the social body, the social organism, actually works for himself or herself. Just think, insofar as a person belongs to the social organism, he does not work for himself. Each act of work which a person performs can never fall back on him, also not in his actual yield, because it can only be performed for others. What other people produce must be good for us. It is not merely an ethical form of altruism which lives in these things, but a simple social law. We can't do it any other way, just as we can't redirect our blood, so the circulation of the human manipulation will work in such a way that our activity towards everyone and all the activities of others are to our benefit; our own work never reverts back on us.

However paradoxical it sounds, when you examine the real circulatory process in human labour within the social organism you will find the following: it originates in people and benefits others. What one side receives out of the labour is the result of the labour of the other side. As I said, as paradoxical it might sound, it is true. One person can just as little live from his own labour in the social organism as one can eat oneself to get nourishment.

Even though basically this law is easy to understand, you could argue: ‘When I am a tailor and among the clothes I make for others, I also make myself a garment, then surely I'm directing my labour back on to myself!’—That is only an illusion as it is always a deception to believe that the result of labour falls back on oneself. By me making a skirt, pants or equivalent, I don't in truth work for myself but put myself into the position to work for others. This is the pure function human labour has in a social law within the social organism. Whoever dispels this law, works against the social organism. One works against the social organism when one implements the idea which has come about in the more recent history that the proletarian worker must live from the proceeds of his labour. That holds no truth, it is hidden through social relation means an achieved untruth, which penetrates and damages economic life. This can only be regulated in the economic life when the economic life has developed independently beside the relatively independent political-, narrower state life, which all the time snatches from the economic life, the possibility to link human labour back to itself. Within the legal system this is processed in the right social understanding where human labour retains the function it must get according to the truthful course of life in the social organism. The economic organism always has the tendency to use up the force of human labour. Judicial life must always refer to the natural altruistic position of labour and it is always, ever and again necessary, that through new concrete democratic legalization, what the economic life wants to accomplish in error, is to once again tear human labour out of the fangs of economic life on the way to public law. Just as the digestive system and the breathing-circulatory systems must work together, and the circulation of the blood absorb what the digestive system has absorbed, so there must be cooperation, a mutual interaction of what is taking place in the economic life and in the legal life, otherwise neither the one nor the other will thrive. The mere legal state, when it wants to become economic, paralyzes the economic life; the economic organism, when it wants to conquer the state, kills the system of public laws.

This is what I wanted to add to what had been said in previous lectures towards the foundation of the Threefoldness of the social organism. Because the bourgeois leading circles have had their gaze hypnotized by the state, it has become something like a god to them. Focus is not being orientated towards the necessary differentiation of the social organism into three members. So it has come about in our newer times that the state has absorbed political life and in a narrower sense spiritual life. Just like the circulation of goods depends on price and wealth creation, like life within the political social organism depends on the legal life, so everything which is the spiritual life comes out of the direct content of the produce. Just think how enormous the difference is between economic life and spiritual life. In economic life, everything depends on goods being brought to a goal orientated use. Anything generated out of the spirit, be it in the sphere of education, schooling, be it in the sphere of art, or in some or other spiritual sphere, placing spiritual creativity in relation to its usefulness is quite an absurdity. It can't be done. What is brought about spiritually can't be placed on the same line as the circulation of the economic process. This has resulted in the absorption of the school system by the state, the university system and whatever similar by the state, which in the modern development is becoming a limiting factor, even in the real sense it is becoming a limiting factor. People need to become aware once again of making spiritual life free, unharnessed. I have already pointed out that something else needs to be added to the spiritual member of the social organism even though it appears as a paradox, and that is the actual practice of private and criminal judgement. As extraordinary as it sounds, there are tendencies in modern life also which are not judged in the correct way. What is increasingly taken into account in court through misguided psychology is the tendency towards, not an acknowledged, but need for acknowledgement of the principle of incorporating private and criminal processes in the spiritual member which exists relatively independently, and relates relatively independently to all in life which develops as the closer political life, which was developed out of pubic rights legislation. Certainly in future it will happen in a healthy social organism that a criminal for instance will look for results in the second, political member. If it however is looked for then he would be brought to trial by a judge who he will confront in an individual human relationship.

Regarding this question perhaps only those can judge from history, those like me, who is speaking to you now, who during years and years of observing a region where it has become really difficult to actually govern, and where one could still, I may say, want to be ruled through constraint according to a uniform state: in a region such as Austria. Here one can see what happened if across purely language boundaries a free jurisdiction should have been there; when despite the language barriers of those bohemians living in a German region near neighbouring Czech or Bohemian residents with bohemian judges over there, the bohemian residents could turn and choose their judges from the German region. You can see how beneficial this principle could work which unfortunately was only in the beginning of the aspirations in various school associations. Here is something, I might say, like a difficult nightmare still today, for those who have participated in Austrian life, which presses on the soul that this egg of Columbus has not been found: the free choice of a judge and the lively cooperation of the plaintiffs, of the judges and of the defendants, instead of judges presented out of the centralised political state, who can only be authoritative, not for the jurisdiction but for the visiting and delivering of the criminal or then for the delivery of the judgement.

As paradoxical it might sound today, the relationship of people to their judge in connection with criminal and private law must be incorporated in the independent spiritual member. Already two days ago I made you aware how it doesn't depend on an outer management as to the choice of persons in the spiritual branch of the state. If you look into modern relationships then you will see this as well, that the innermost life of science, art and everything spiritual is above all becoming dependent on what they should not becoming dependent on if the spiritual member is to develop relative independence beside the other members. It still appears like a paradox today when I say in conclusion that each of these areas must have a certain sovereignty, its own system of representation, its own legislation, developed out of its relationships, developed out of relationships of associations in economic areas, and so have its management, its legislation as independent. In a democratic way, there will develop out of the whole of mankind a particular social sphere for the actual political state in which the relationship of one person to another is regulated, as will be the relationship to economy and the relationship to spiritual life; without these two being interfered with by the state laws and as a result the spiritual life's active forces will give the layout for the management of spiritual life as well. To an even higher degree, the spiritual life can be emancipated from modern life, to a higher degree than it had been in olden times when the only spiritual life, which applied to many people, came out of religious life, out of schools and universities.

Certainly the intervention of the modern state was necessary to rebuke the antiquated forms of religion and obsolete management which suited them no longer. Out of modern life itself an independent spiritual life is to be developed. This is exactly why a spiritual scientific direction, the very foundation of this, needs to be taken into consideration on this basis because it is known that the entire actual productive spiritual life also lives in, for instance, technical participation, technically experienced ideas which can only develop with healthy human impulses, when it is developed out of the vital, autonomous spirit, independent from both the other members of the social organism. The human spirit will only acquire impact of productivity in the right way if spiritual life is relatively autonomous. Brooding, theorizing, inventing thoughts, for my sake as well, can also be experienced as it takes a certain direction in more modern technology and science, observable in their admirable methods, but the real productive idea, which is so productive that true human progress and at the same time real human healing is served, these ideas can only be born within a self-supporting, self-determining spiritual life.

As much as people are still alienated from what I'm actually implying which must be understood in order to place the social question on a healthy basis, some people have responded to what I've explained by saying: ‘Yes, this is only a more modern meaning of the renewal of the old platonic idea of dividing the social body into three classes: the rulers/guardians, the fighters/auxiliaries and the producers/labourers/educational state.’ No, this is no renewal of old platonic ideas but is in a specific relationship as the extreme opposite, if it comes down to it—because between the platonic thoughts considered great in Greece and also later times, and the thoughts of today towards a healing of the Social organism, lies the big, critical historic incision of the fifteenth Century. At the time of Plato, the divisions of the social organism was one of the division of classes. The structure which I'm talking about here was not a division of people but was formed by members of the social organism; this social organism was so structured that in some cases one person could belong to all three divisions of members, it was not damaging to move from one to the other, not even when, as in modern parliaments it often happens, the same person is accounted for as a farmer and at the same time belong to a party of the state. Today it is still possible through some or other association inaugurating an advocacy group, that an economic protection of interest can be passed through into law. Last time I mentioned such an example where an entire state's life of law was penetrated by such a protection of interests. This becomes excluded. However, my presentation of the threefold healthy social organism, excludes people from the social organism. People just become independent through it; they are stripped of the character of being slaves of the organism, where not classes of people, layers of people exist as members but that the social organism finds its own divisions. This points at the same time to these thoughts which form the basis of it, which should be taken from true reality, distanced from everything which I indicated as fanatical the day before yesterday.

This fanaticism appears in the most varied parties. It is even present in bourgeois circles on the side of social democracy. This fanaticism gets a hold on people if they don't gradually get an inkling of what the social organism as such can actually aim for, when it is healthy. Again and again, the social thinking suffers under the influence of the feeling, the idea, as if the social order can be aimed for directly through some or other program in order to bring good fortune or satisfaction to humanity, or something of this sort. This cannot be sought for directly. What can be aimed for directly is a social organism capable of life, one which has vital forces of life within itself. Situated in such an organism, living in such an organism can out of quite different foundations bring happiness to people. That has other foundations. However, these foundations need to be freed from being restrained. They can only be freed if the social organism is based on life giving forces. Just like a really viable organism can be of help to develop the soul, so in a comparative way can a viable social organism develop happy, satisfied human beings who are willing to work and have an understanding about work. This is what a healthy social organism is all about.

An observation of what we have experienced during a catastrophic time, one might say, can also be considered from an international viewpoint and corroborated out of a larger historic viewpoint, how these ideas I have been exploring as three members, are really necessary for the present-day form of life for humanity and also a form of life for humanity in the foreseeable future. One could say that before this terrible catastrophe, called a war, which broke out over humanity, there was a culmination of the thorough tossing and complete turmoil of the three members which should have reached a differentiation. Precisely due to these three members not being able to reach relative independence beside one another, the result has been much penetrating into what in reality must be calculated as the point of origin and the causes of these tragedies of war. Only a few details need to be pointed out. The focus of humanity has been entirely directed toward the idea that the war has its point of origin in the relation of the Austrian state with the Balkan, namely the Serbian relationship. Whoever was initiated into the Austrian relationships of the last decades know how to judge the economic connections taking place between Austria and the south-eastern Europe, and how these were being convoluted in an unnatural way in the relationships which were to have developed independently with the purely political. As a result of this amalgamation suddenly the political relationship could for itself decide about something which was deeply rooted in economic relations and as a result actualize a falsehood and explode.

How different these things could have been—I can only indicate a few things in my lecture today, in conclusion—if the relationships of such neighbouring states could have been representing the Threefoldness, when across the border the relationship could have been purely politically, democratically based and separated from the other members, just as the form of government is as usual. When however, the corrected, harmonized independently economic and spiritual factors work on the other side of the border, then the system of the state, the so-called state, would be propagated through interests in harmony and amalgamation, where the one is always correcting the other, where no one single side by itself can circumvent an explosion. Healthy relationships across borders would develop in international relationship of nations through Threefoldness.

And then again, how global mankind turned their eyes on what was happening in Germany at least outwardly, at the declaration of war. Whoever is initiated in this area knows how the disaster happened. Often it has been said that during July and August, in those fatal days, politics, beside the actual warfare, alongside the army, had failed. Politics and armies are there where they both work, running simultaneously. They are not divisible anyhow. They could only unfold in a healthy way, if they worked within one of the state formed three-fold social organisms. Otherwise politics would necessarily, at least in one member, take on a uniformed characteristic. At a given moment it would either culminate into the military or non-military. What has to be uniform through its very nature, even when it has been amalgamated through human error with other systems, it cannot do externally so that the one goes over to correcting the other. During these terrifying fearful conditions which grew out of Berlin during the last days of July and the first days of August, the process of coagulation into one single system took place, a system which should have been split up. They all became concentrated and responsible to one system which no single system for the healing of mankind had ever dared take on. Actual relationships would then clearly teach us if these things are investigated without prejudice and bias. Oh, how much nonsense is being said in relation to politics and the army! So much nonsense has been uttered in the last four and a half years! I only want to say one thing: if within an inseparable member of the social organism the dormant policies and strategy could only work, then never, when the strategy is led to depend on itself, will the policies influence this strategy in a healthy way. There has been a tendency to time and again refer to the clause of (Major General Carl von) Clausewitz (1780-1831): "War is a mere continuation of politics by other means," (Die Kriegführung sei die Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln).

I don't want to offer criticism about this statement in as far as it relates to the entire war analysis. However, just like men have, again and again—and women have done so as well—referred to this saying, it has just about as much sense as if one would say: “Divorce is the continuation of marriage through other means.”

This kind of nonsense springs from unnatural thinking, which multiply and penetrate in an unnatural way into real relationships. When things are for once considered without prejudice then it will be apparent how differently things could have gone. Understandably what has happened is historically necessary and what must be said should be a valid impulse for the future, but hypothetically one could still say that everything could have happened differently if the structure of the international European relationships could have been under the influence of the social Threefoldness. One could then say: what has happened came through the relations of alliance. However, alliance relationships could never have entered under the influence of a Threefoldness. Such alliance training which these were and which led to the catastrophes of the last four and a half years, would be ended if people orientated themselves in the sense of the Threefoldness of a healthy social organism.

What I am opening up here has been thoroughly thought through with real meaning, it is brought out of thoughts from reality. I have also always said that if I had involved myself during these fearful years, an authoritative position corresponding to that time would have been to point out the Threefoldness: The only reality is that things change from one day to the next and understandably relationships could have changed regarding these things which need to be talked about. I say to people: ‘What is presented here is no program, it is not an ideal; it corresponds to observations which want to be realized in Central and Eastern Europe, above all in Europe. You have the choice to either apply good sense today or to go and encounter revolutions and cataclysms.’

They have started already and will show themselves in other ways. Today however I might repeat a consideration which can be said on this occasion. I have always said: ‘Whoever is a Utopian, a theorist, who does not think from the basis of reality, but out of abstract claims or party impulses, is interested in what a program or something similar can offer, and that this is actually executed according to specific details.’ These things do not matter in what I am presenting—I have mentioned this before. It could be said—and still is said today—that the formulation of what I am representing will leave no single stone standing on another. The important thing is not that some or other conjecture is realised but that reality is tackled at some point. If this is done it will be discovered that through tackling it, the way forward will become clear. It could become clear by carrying it out and then all formulations need to be adjusted. This is not important if one is no Utopian, no fanatic, to execute something word for word, but to start it at a certain point. At such a point as to where it must start I want to point out still today, before it becomes too late, before human instincts are so far unleashed that an understanding among people, perhaps decades from now, would not be possible any more.

In closing today, I still want to mention something—although in a narrower sense it doesn't belong to this lecture—I also think that if anyone feels within his soul that he is somehow connected to the social question, he has the task to not only speak up about it but need to apply all means to allow his understanding to be brought to his contemporaries. This is what we can do first: promoting mutual social understanding. Much has been corrupted, spoiled in the most varied areas throughout the world due to fragmented, mashed thinking, as I have characterised, resulting in disabling the right idea to come forward at the right time. As a result, I must greet the possibility with a certain satisfaction that out of the difficult relationships of the present it has become possible to accomplish practical results of ideas suggested here, in a relatively short time. Those individualities who have in a certain way, I could call it, been ignited regarding the social question with a view based on reality, have allowed themselves to work towards an understanding of these things, at least in these areas where today misfortune can be the biggest teacher. Anyway, I might regard it as particularly lucky that here within the Swiss region, where there is still relatively speaking the opportunity for peaceful objectivity, that precisely due to this possibility of peaceful objectivity a deeper understanding can enter as well and point out the necessity for the mutual social understanding of humanity indicated in these four lectures, and calling for action. After all, within the pain and suffering which come along during the course of events and in destiny which various members of humanity can experience these days, it can give a certain satisfaction that misfortune actually has taught some people a thing or two. So it could happen—if you allow me to bring this, as it is always meaningful not to remain abstract but be actual when relating to the social question—I have incorporated an appeal in my detailed presentation here in short sentences, a call which is actually dedicated towards processes in the whole world but which has found entry into the hearts of those who have been severely tested in Germany and German-Austria by tragedy and educated by tragedy. I have in this appeal tried to present how the founding of the German Reich took place at a time when the developmental possibilities of a newer humanity in such a reestablishment wanted to, in the most imminent sense, enter into the new social task.

Small things were presented in a comprehensive way; yet just what this empire should have done, to place corresponding content into its frames from the developmental forces of modern humanity and steer towards this Threefoldness, this they could not see. The result has been that the rest of the world turned towards Central Europe. How could the rest of the world understand the entitlement of this particular empire's establishment if this establishment did not create what undoubtedly pointed out its right within the international process of humanity?

Therefore I have believed that a right program, if I may call it that—but you know from the foregoing: this is no program but the reality—therefore I have believed that formulation may be done in the appeal to humanity for a task which could arise from the Europeans who are confronted with the necessity for renewal. After all one can be satisfied that up to yesterday afternoon this appeal had already been supported by more signatures in Germany than the one-time appeal of the ninety-nine intellectuals with unhappy memories, that over a hundred signatures for this appeal in Germany and up to yesterday over seventy signatures out of German-Austria has been made available for this appeal. I mention this because I want to speak from the basis of reality and as a result draw attention to what I believe is needed in the further process of social development, by it not standing alone when it comes down to making it valid for the mutual relationships of one person to another.

So we must first work on the way to a real social solution. This is the next step. Today humanity stands for once in relation to a large part of the civilized world confronting the necessity to look the social problem in the eye. To do so would mean solving a problem—let me say this to you in conclusion—that it is uncomfortable in the highest levels of thinking. Many people will still admit that for a transformation of the institutions, a transformation of the social structure is necessary. Didn't the entire spirit of the lectures, which I allow myself to present, hasn't the whole spirit been one of pointing out that something else is necessary? If Proletarian Marxist educated leaders repeatedly stress that the words of Marxism are the truth: The philosophers interpreted the world and declared: ‘It comes down to thoughts not only explaining the world but transforming it.’ Thus, it happens in today's critical demands of time that not only a half measure but perhaps not even a quarter is done. What is necessary is that thoughts are not only directed to some or other transformation of institutions, or social structures but that it is necessary for thoughts themselves to change. Only out of reformed thoughts will a healthy social organism be able to develop. Institutions hardly please people; to re-think is even less pleasing—but necessary. Unless a person accepts this, it will not be possible to orientate him- or herself, and then they can't cooperate towards the healing of the social organism.

For a long time, the most important considerations and decisions have knocked at the door of the social question. Now it has entered into the house of humanity. It can't be thrown out again because in a certain sense humanity's evolution comes up against an enchantress. It not only works on humanity's outer structure but makes humanity face the need to either re-think or to add tragedy to the already present tragedies, which multiply.

With this, necessities become clear, what needs to be realised if it will not be too late in the relationship that instincts, as I've mentioned, takes on form in order that the understanding between the various classes would no longer be possible. Only then do we approach a healing of the social organism when renewal, what we are waiting for, when health, for which we hope, are not based on old thinking, but that when we make the bold and powerful decision towards the progress of mankind by orientating our forces towards new thinking; because only out of new thoughts will the possibility of life blossom for new generations. This is how you must think the social question has come about, that it has grown out of the conditions of modern life. It will be false to think one can believe in somehow finding a current solution. Socialism isn't a solution or an attempt at a solution, no, modern life and the life of mankind into the future has brought about the social question. It will always be there. In a living, social organism solutions will always be needed. In this a part, a piece of the life of future humanity will have to exist, that in each generation these questions need to be solved out of new forms; this social question which, once it has come up, admonishes and upsets the entire structure of human thoughts and feelings. If we turn to it with our whole heart, with our entire soul, then it will turn to us, not however for our salvation but for our harm.

Vierter Vortrag

Die Entwickelung des sozialen Denkens und Wollens und die Lebenslage der gegenwärtigen Menschheit

Vielleicht haben die Vorträge, die ich nun hier halten durfte im Laufe der vorigen und dieser Woche, von einem gewissen Gesichtspunkte her bezeugt, daß es gerechtfertigt ist zu sagen: Die Lebenslage der gegenwärtigen Menschheit ist tief beeinflußt von der Entwickelung, welche das soziale Denken und Wollen im Laufe der neueren Zeit bis zu unserer Gegenwart herein angenommen hat. Mehr vielleicht, als heute mancher ahnt, greift herein der soziale Impuls in das unmittelbare Leben des Einzelmenschen; aber er wird immer mehr und mehr noch hereingreifen. Er wird bestimmend werden geradezu für die Kräfte des allerindividuellsten Verhaltens. Und man wird kaum richtig verstehen können, wie man heute drinnensteht im gesellschaftlichen Leben der Menschheit, welches durchwellt und durchpulst ist von den sozialen Impulsen, wenn man nicht ins Auge faßt, wie aus zwei Ursprüngen eigentlich im Laufe des neueren Lebens der Menschheit das soziale Denken und Wollen verschiedener Menschenschichten entstanden ist. Denn das Fortleben der Ursprünge bis in die Gegenwart herein, das wirkt auf diesem Gebiete eigentlich so, daß es sozial diesem gegenwärtigen Leben die Gestaltung gibt.

Ich habe in einem der Vorträge darauf hingewiesen, daß man nicht auskommt, wenn man zum Verständnis einer solchen Sache einfach in der Weise, wie man das gewohnt worden ist, das geschichtliche Leben geradlinig nach dem Verlaufe von Ursache und Wirkung betrachtet, so daß man immer mit Bezug auf das Folgende auf das Vorhergehende hinweist. Ich habe versucht, darauf aufmerksam zu machen, daß dieses geschichtliche Leben der Menschheit in seinem Wesen oder Grund mit Bezug auf gewisse Krisen des Verlaufs, besser gesagt, auf das Vorhandensein von Krisen des Verlaufs, ähnlich ist dem Leben des einzelnen Menschen. Im Leben des einzelnen Menschen gibt es auch nicht eine geradlinige Fortentwickelung, so daß immer das Folgende ohne einen Sprung die Wirkung des Vorhergehenden ist. Man muß, um den bequemen, oft mißverstandenen Gedanken, die Natur mache keine Sprünge, in der entsprechenden Weise in seine Grenzen zurückzuweisen, immer wieder und wiederum darauf aufmerksam machen, wie in dem geradlinigen Fortschreiten des individuellen Lebens Krisen eintreten, wie die Krise des sechsten, siebenten Jahres mit dem Zahnwechsel auftritt, wie die Krisis eintritt, die aus den elementaren Untergründen des Organischen wie heraufzuquellen scheint in dem Geschlechtsleben. Und wer kundig ist des Verlaufes des menschlichen Lebens, dem zeigen sich solche krisenhaften Umschwünge auch in den späteren Lebensaltern, wenn sie auch für eine oberflächliche Betrachtung nicht in einer so entschiedenen Weise wie die zwei ersten auftreten.

Solche krisenhaften Umschwünge zu beobachten im geschichtlichen Leben der Menschheit ist notwendig, um dieses geschichtliche Leben wirklich zu verstehen. So sehr auch die heutige Menschheit noch abgeneigt ist, aufsolche Dinge hinzuschauen und hinzuhorchen, so notwendig ist es gerade in der Gegenwart, in der soziales Verständnis des Lebens gefordert wird, auf solche Dinge radikal stark hinzuweisen. Einen der letzten großen Umschwünge - so habe ich in den vorhergehenden Vorträgen ausgeführt - im Entwickelungsgange der Menschheit haben wir zu verzeichnen etwa um die Wende des 15., 16. Jahrhunderts. Und nur weil man nicht tiefgehend genug den geschichtlichen Hergang der Dinge beobachtet, weiß man nicht, wie radikal verschieden namentlich alles das, was in der menschlichen Seele vorgeht, was in der menschlichen Seele als Forderung, was als Sehnsucht nach gewissen Befriedigungen herrscht, wie das sich verändert hat gegenüber dem, was vor diesem Zeitpunkt vorhanden war.

Nun tritt zu gleicher Zeit wie im Gefolge dieses elementarischen Umschwunges der neueren Menschheitsentwickelung das ein, was man so bezeichnen könnte, daß man sagt: Was früher in der Menschenseele selbst gelebt hat als soziale Impulse, die dann zu der sozialen Struktur der menschlichen Gesellschaft geführt haben, das hat sich vor diesem Zeitraum mehr instinktiv ausgelebt. Die Menschen lebten gesellschaftlich zusammen, ordneten ihre Angelegenheiten gesellschaftlich aus gewissen Instinkten heraus. Um die angedeutete Zeit tritt an die Stelle des instinktiven sozialen Denkens und Wollens das bewußte Ergreifen sozialer Impulse. Es tritt langsam und allmählich auf; aber es unterscheidet sich die Lebenslage, in die sich dadurch die moderne Menschheit versetzt, in radikaler Weise von der Lebenslage der mittelalterlichen und alten Menschheit. Da aber sehen wir dann sogleich, wie mit dem Heraufnehmen der sozialen Impulse aus dem instinktiven in das bewußte Leben deutlich sich zwei Strömungen, zwei Ausgangsströmungen des sozialen Denkens und Wollens zeigen.

Die eine tritt ein bei denjenigen Menschen, die bis zum heutigen Tage genannt werden können die führende, die leitende Gesellschaftsschicht der Menschheit. Die andere Strömung tritt etwas später, aber deutlich von der anderen unterschieden bei dem ein, was wir heute als die proletarische Welt bezeichnen. Die leitenden intellektuellen bürgerlichen Kreise sind mit allen ihren Lebensinteressen, als die neuere Zeit heraufrückt, verbunden mit dem, was als die neueren Staatsgebilde sich allmählich herausgebildet hat aus den Formen des mittelalterlichen Zusammenlebens der Menschen. Diese bürgerlich leitenden Kreise sind durch ihre Interessen namentlich mit dem verbunden, was wir unter den drei Gliedern, die ich angeführt habe für den sozialen Organismus, bezeichnen können als den eigentlichen Rechtsstaat, als das eigentliche politische Gebilde, welches entweder instinktiv oder bewußt auf Ordnung alles dessen ausgeht, was sich auf das Verhältnis von Mensch zu Mensch bezieht. Mehr oder weniger so, wie die Traditionen der Vergangenheit und auch wie in gewisser Beziehung die neueren wirtschaftlichen Verhältnisse sich ergeben, verbinden die leitenden bürgerlichen Kreise ihre Interessen mit dem, was von vielen Leuten als das einzige soziale Gebilde heute noch gehalten wird, eben mit dem Staate. Und indem sie bewußt übergehen von dem alten instinktiven sozialen Leben zu dem modernen bewußten, denken sie zunächst staatlich im Sinne des Rechtsstaates. Und das immer komplizierter werdende moderne Wirtschaftsleben, das namentlich durch die Ausbreitung des menschlichen Betätigungshorizontes über die ganze Welt immer komplizierter wird, das versuchen diese leitenden Kreise hereinzugestalten in das Staatsgebilde. Den Staat wollen sie gewissermaßen immer mehr und mehr zum Wirtschafter machen. Diese Bestrebung nimmt einen gewissen Fortgang, und wir sehen, daß innerhalb gewisser Kreise einzelne Wirtschaftszweige immer mehr und mehr dem staatlichen Gebilde einverleibt werden. Ich habe auf solche Wirtschaftszweige das letzte Mal hingewiesen. Was wesentlich ist von dieser Seite, ist, daß das soziale Denken bei diesen Kreisen seine ganz bestimmte Gestaltung dadurch gewinnt, daß sie erobern wollen für den Staat, für den sie interessiert sind, das hereinbrechende komplizierte Wirtschaftsleben.

Ganz anders entwickelt sich innerhalb des Proletariats der soziale Impuls. Dieses moderne Proletariat ist in der Heraufentwickelung der neueren Zeit nicht in gleicher Weise mit seinen Interessen engagiert innerhalb des eigentlichen staatlichen Gebietes. Es steht in einer gewissen Beziehung, die ich hier nicht weiter ausführen kann wegen Mangel an Zeit — die Sache ist leicht zu durchschauen -, abseits von dem, was die bürgerlich leitenden Kreise als ihre Interessen vertreten innerhalb des Staatsgebildes. Aber es wird gerade in der radikalsten Weise dieses Proletariat hineingetrieben in die Gestaltung des Wirtschaftslebens. Sein ganzes Denken und Wollen verläuft in der Weise, daß es ist wie eine Abspiegelung dessen, was im Wirtschaftsleben durchgemacht wird. Und so werden die sozialen Impulse des Proletariats ebenso bestimmt von den sozialen Gebilden der Ökonomie der Menschheit, des Wirtschaftslebens, wie die sozialen Impulse der bürgerlich leitenden und auch der intellektuellen Kreise bestimmt werden von den Impulsen des Rechtsstaates, von den Impulsen des eigentlichen politischen Gebildes. Und beide Strömungen entwickeln sich immer mehr und mehr so, daß eben das zutage tritt, auf das ich in der Einleitung zum vorgestrigen Vortrage hingewiesen habe, daß eine Kluft, ein Abgrund besteht zwischen der besonderen Konfiguration des sozialen Denkens und Fühlens der leitenden bürgerlichen und der proletarischen Kreise. Denn das, sagte ich, sei das Tragischeste der neueren Entwickelung in der gegenwärtigen Ausgestaltung der Lebenslage der Menschheit, daß dieser Abgrund besteht, daß so schwer ein Verständnis, ein gegenseitiges Verständnis der beiden charakterisierten Bevölkerungsschichten zu finden ist. So mußte eintreten, was wir nun kommen sehen: daß wie gerüstet zu einem Lebenskampfe die beiden Bevölkerungsschichten sich gegenüberstehen. Und das Wesentliche in diesem Kampfe, der zum Teil sich schon auslebt, zum Teil aber erst sich vorbereitet, und der, wie es einleuchten kann, selbst noch heute nur oberflächlich das gesellschaftliche Leben ergreift, der gigantische Formen annehmen wird, das Wesentliche ist, daß auf der einen Seite die bürgerlich leitenden Kreise das Wirtschaftsleben mehr und mehr erobern wollen für den Staat, miterobern wollen für den Staat mit diesem Wirtschaftsleben in einer eigentümlichen Weise die Arbeitsleistung und Arbeitskraft des Proletariats selbst, und daß auf der anderen Seite das Proletariat den Staat erobern will für das, was es für sich an Interessen im abgesonderten Wirtschaftsleben erlebt.

Das ist im wesentlichen das Grundprinzip des Kampfes, der da so bedeutungsvoll hereinspielt in die Lebenslage der gegenwärtigen Menschheit. Und man hat über alldem, was offen im Bewußtsein vorgeht, vergessen, außer Aufmerksamkeit gelassen, ich möchte sagen, ins Unterbewußte der menschlichen Seele hinuntergedrängt das, was sich hinter diesen zwei Impulsen, die ich angeführt habe, eigentlich verbirgt. Das, was sich heraufarbeiten will an die Oberfläche des menschlichen Lebens, seitdem der krisenhafte Umschwung im 15. Jahrhundert in der Entwikkelung der neueren Menschheit eingetreten ist, das zeigt erst, während das andere vielfach eben nur im Bewußtsein maskiert sich abspielt, was wühlt und treibt und pulst im menschlichen Leben: das ist das Streben nach einer vollen Geltendmachung der menschlichen Persönlichkeit, so wie es die früheren Zeiten nicht gekannt haben. Geltendmachung der menschlichen Persönlichkeit, Fühlen des Menschenwesens in sich, das ist eigentlich der Grundnerv der sozialen Frage, und das kleidet sich nur nach diesen verschiedenen Lebensverhältnissen, die ja gerade mit dem Angegebenen bestimmt sind, in die gegebenen Formen. Und so konnte es kommen, daß ein Kampf, der im Grunde genommen ein Kampf ist um die Erringung der vollen Menschenwürde bei allen Menschen, ein Kampf gegenseitiger verschiedener Interessen selbst geworden ist, ein Kampf der Klassen, ein Kampf, der in die Gegenwart herein in einer so verhängnisvollen Weise seine Kräfte wirft.

Daß sich etwas verbirgt und maskiert offenbart in dieser neueren Entwickelung der Menschheit, das hat verursacht, daß man den Blick nicht richtete, oder besser gesagt, daß man bis jetzt nicht lernte, den Blick zu richten auf das, worauf es ankommt. Innerhalb der Zeit, in der die sozialen Impulse instinktiv gewirkt haben, konnte man den sozialen Organismus auch instinktiv sich ausgestalten lassen. Nunmehr, da die sozialen Impulse in das Bewußtsein der Menschen eingetreten sind, wenn auch in maskierter Gestalt, da ist es notwendig, da ist es das Wichtigste in bezug auf das soziale Problem der neueren Zeit, daß soziales Verständnis, Verständnis für die Gestaltung des sozialen Organismus in jede einzelne Menschenseele einzieht, wenn dieses Verständnis auch kein gelehrtenhaftes zu sein braucht, sondern ein solches, das in der Empfindung, im Gefühle lebt und das sich auslebt in dem, was der einzelne Mensch als diese oder jene Notwendigkeit empfindet, sich hineinzustellen in die menschliche Gesellschaft. Deshalb ist es heute so notwendig, das zu tun, was ich versuchte, in diesen Vorträgen zu tun: den Blick hinzuwenden auf das, worauf alles in dem Streben der neueren Menschheit tendiert, was aber eigentlich erst heute sich durch die besonderen Verhältnisse an die Oberfläche drängen kann; den Blick darauf hinzuwenden, daß der soziale Organismus wirklich ein lebendiges Gebilde werden muß, ein solches Gebilde, das man in seinen Lebensbedingungen versteht, allerdings lebendig versteht, nicht theoretisch. Deshalb wies ich darauf hin, daß die Gesundheit des sozialen Organismus davon abhängt, daß nicht chaotisch durcheinandergewürfelt werde das, was die drei Glieder des sozialen Organismus sind: geistiges Leben im weitesten Umfange, Rechts- oder politisches Leben, also das Staatsleben im engeren Sinne, ‚und das Wirtschaftsleben. Erst dadurch werden die in den drei Gliedern wirksamen Kräfte ihre notwendige Ausbildung und ihre notwendige Befreiung erfahren, so daß diese drei Gebilde nicht je eines von den anderen aufgesogen werden, sondern daß sie sich frei nebeneinander entfalten und gerade in gewisser Selbständigkeit, wie ich von verschiedenen Gesichtspunkten aus schon ausgeführt habe, nebeneinander- und zusammenwirken. Gegen diese Selbständigkeit war bisher aus gewissen Voraussetzungen heraus die eigentliche Tendenz der menschlichen Entwickelung gerichtet. Differenzierung dessen, was durcheinandergewirrt worden ist, das ist nun die notwendigste Lebensfrage mit Bezug auf das soziale Wesen der gegenwärtigen Menschheit.

Empfunden hat man von gewissen Seiten des menschlichen Denkens und Empfindens das, was ich hier meine, schon immer, als eben im Lichte der Bewußtheit der sozialen Impulse die Menschen anfingen, je nach ihren geistigen Voraussetzungen so oder so zu denken über die Verhältnisse von Staatsleben und Wirtschaftsleben. Da sehen wir sogenannte soziale oder nationalökonomische - wie man es nun nennen will, das ist gleichgültig - Denkweisen, Denkgewohnheiten sich herausbilden. Es kann nicht meine Aufgabe sein, die Entwickelung des sozialen Denkens in der neueren Zeit hier darzustellen. Nur auf eines will ich aufmerksam machen, das, ich möchte sagen, stark beleuchtet manches, auf das es gerade hier in diesen Vorträgen ankommen muß.

Unter den mancherlei Denkweisen, Vorstellungsarten in bezug auf die Verflechtung des wirtschaftlichen mit dem staatlichen und dem geistigen Leben der Menschheit trat auch dasjenige auf in der neueren Zeit, was man im 18. Jahrhundert als das sogenannte physiokratische nationalökonomische Denken bezeichnete. Aus einem früheren Denken, das innerhalb des Staatsorganismus das Wirtschaftsleben mehr organisieren wollte, bildete sich wie durch einen notwendigen Gegensatz dieses physiokratische Denken aus. So bildete es sich aus, daß man dazu übergehen wollte, das Wirtschaftsleben nicht zu tyrannisieren durch das Rechtsleben des Staates, durch das politische Leben des Staatsgebildes im engeren Sinne, daß man das wirtschaftliche Leben seinen eigenen natürlichen Gesetzen überlassen wollte, es überlassen wollte den Impulsen, denen es verfällt, wenn einfach der Mensch frei heraus aus seinen Interessen das Spiel des Wirtschaftslebens einleitet. Da haben manche Bekenner dieses Systems eigentlich diese Dinge sehr beleuchtende Worte gesprochen, was etwa so nachgesprochen werden kann. Die Leute sagten: Wozu soll eigentlich innerhalb des politischen Staatsgebildes ein System von Gesetzen ausgebildet werden, welche das Wirtschaftsleben regeln? Entweder werden diese Gesetze die gleichen sein wie diejenigen, die sich das Wirtschaftsleben selbst gibt, wenn es dem freien Spiel der Kräfte überlassen ist, oder aber sie werden andere und ihm entgegengesetzte sein. Im ersteren Falle, wenn es dieselben sind, dann sind sie ja unnötig, dann braucht man sie nicht, dann gibt sich das Wirtschaftsleben seine eigenen Gesetze, dann braucht man nicht erst das Wirtschaftsleben einzuspannen in besondere Staatsgesetze. Wirken aber die Staatsgesetze entgegen dem Wirtschaftsleben, dann hemmen sie es, dann beeinträchtigen sie es, dann sind sie demselben schädlich.

Ich möchte sagen: Was sich in diesen beiden gegenteiligen Sätzen ausspricht, es spukt heute noch in vielen Köpfen. Es spukt deshalb in vielen Köpfen, weil die moderne Menschheit, so sehr sie auch glaubt, praktisch zu sein, Sinn zu haben für das Reale, doch furchtbar angefressen ist von einem gewissen Sinn für abstrakte, für theoretische Einseitigkeit. Und würde man prüfen, wie viel in dem, was sehr vielen Leuten heute als das eigentlich praktische Leben erscheint, nichts anderes ist als verwirklichte Einseitigkeit, verwirklichte einseitige Theorie, dann würde man aufso manches Lebensrätsel stoßen und eine teilweise Lösung desselben herbeiführen können. Was klingt plausibler, was klingt selbstverständlicher, als wenn ich sage: Entweder laufen die staatlichen Gesetze in derselben Richtung wie die wirtschaftlichen, dann braucht man sie nicht, oder sie widersprechen ihnen, dann müssen sie dem Wirtschaftsleben schaden. Man denkt aber in diesen Gegensätzen nur, wenn man den sozialen Organismus ansieht wie etwas, das sich durch Begriffe, durch Gesetze, durch Prinzipien, durch Programme regeln lasse, wenn man nicht sich zu der Ansicht aufschwingen kann, daß der soziale Organismus etwas ist, was Leben in sich haben muß, was durch seine eigene Wesenheit leben muß. Was aber durch seinen eigenen Lebensinhalt, durch seine eigenen Lebensimpulse gedeiht und sprießt, das hat im wirklichen Leben Gegensätze in sich. Und der soziale Organismus muß, soll er ein realer, ein wirklicher sein, Gegensätze in sich haben.

Daher ist das richtig, was vielleicht gerade vielen theoretisch gestimmten Seelen der Gegenwart wie eine Absurdität erscheint: das staatliche, rein rechtliche, rein politische Leben muß gerade in einer gewissen Weise beschränken, in seinen Gesetzen entgegenwirken dem wirtschaftlichen Leben, damit das Gesamtleben der Menschheit, das nicht bloß ein wirtschaftliches, nicht bloß ein rechtliches ist, sondern das ein wirtschaftliches, rechtliches und geistiges ist, damit sich das entfalten kann, so wie im einzelnen menschlichen Organismus - ich gebrauche den Vergleich noch einmal, indem ich darauf hinweise, nicht als ob ich ein Analogiespiel aus der Physiologie und der Soziologie treiben wollte — das Verdauungssystem in einer gewissen Weise relativ selbständig für sich verläuft und neben sich das rhythmische System, das Atmungs-, Herzsystem hat, und beide sich in ihren Vorgängen in dem lebendigen Prozesse beschränken und gegenseitig begrenzen. So ist es notwendig, daß nebeneinandergestellt werden im wirklichen sozialen Organismus das Wirtschaftsleben auf der einen Seite und im engeren Sinne politisches Staatsleben auf der anderen Seite, und dem sich beigesellen muß mit relativer Selbständigkeit das geistige Leben, wie ich dies das letzte Mal wiederum von einem anderen Gesichtspunkt aus gezeigt habe.

Denn auf Folgendem beruht das, auf was es ankommt: Das wirtschaftliche Leben hat in sich ganz andere innere Kräfte als das Rechtsleben, mit dem es zusammenwirken muß, damit das Gesamtleben der Menschheit gedeihen kann, und wieder andere als das geistige Leben. Man könnte, wenn man mehr oder weniger etwas konkret Lebendiges in abstrakte Formen bringen wollte, die aber doch vielleicht von einer Seite her, wenn auch einseitig, eben die Dinge verständlich machen, das Folgende sagen: Im Wirtschaftsleben, so wie es besteht in der Warenproduktion, Warenzirkulation und im Warenkonsum, kommt alles darauf an, daß die dem Leben entsprechende Wertbildung entsteht. Und diese Wertbildung vollzieht sich im wesentlichen so, daß der Wert sich bilden muß, wenn der soziale Organismus gesund sein soll, unter dem Einflusse des Impulses, daß der Verbrauch dessen, was der wirtschaftliche Organismus für sich in Anspruch nimmt — nenne man es Markt oder anderswie — und für den Konsum bereit hält, daß der Verbrauch der Ware ein möglichst zweckmäßiger, ein möglichst vorteilhafter ist. Eine Ware muß so dem Konsum dargeboten werden, wenn der soziale Organismus gesund ist, daß sie sich in der zweckmäßigsten Weise ganz verbrauchen läßt, daß sie so lange dauert, als es zweckmäßig ist, oder so schnell verbraucht werden kann, als es zweckmäßig ist, daß aber jedenfalls ihr ganzer Inhalt auf den Verbrauch hintendiert.

Würde die menschliche Arbeitskraft voll eingespannt in das Wirtschaftsleben - und dieses Wirtschaftsleben kann sich allein gesund entwickeln unter dem Gesichtspunkte der Waren-Preisbildung nach dem entsprechenden Verbrauche -, so wäre erfüllt, was die marxistische Anschauung des Proletariats behauptet, daß die menschliche Arbeitskraft selber Ware wäre, und so würde ja diese Arbeitskraft als mit dem Charakter der Ware behaftet im sozialen Organismus ihren Wert erhalten müssen, indem sie in der zweckmäßigsten Weise voll verbraucht würde. Das wirtschaftliche Glied des sozialen Organismus hat auch, wenn man es genauer betrachtet, die Tendenz in sich, den Menschen zu verbrauchen, und würde das wirtschaftliche Glied des sozialen Organismus nur seinen eigenen Gesetzen folgen, so würde eben innerhalb dieses Gliedes die menschliche Arbeitskraft verbraucht werden. Indem die bürgerlich leitenden Kreise dieses nicht beachteten, haben sie gerade dazu beigetragen, daß innerhalb des Wirtschaftslebens und der Stellung des Proletariats im Wirtschaftsleben sich der Nerv der modernen sozialen Frage herausgebildet hat, der sein Leben darin zeigt, daß gerade der moderne Proletarier es ganz besonders für sich in Anspruch nimmt, seine Arbeitskraft des Charakters der Ware zu entkleiden. Wie sich auch sonst manches in der sozialen Frage maskiert und vieles davon im Unterbewußten des modernen Proletariers lebt, das ist ein wesentlicher Faktor, daß die proletarische Seele nach der Befreiung der menschlichen Arbeitskraft von dem Charakter der Ware hinstrebt.

Das aber kann niemals geschehen, wenn der Wirtschaftsprozeß nach seinen Gesetzen verläuft, und wenn man das gesamte Staatsleben nur zu einer einzigen Wirtschaft macht, wie es das Ideal vieler moderner Sozialisten ist. Das kann auch nicht dann geschehen, wenn man in einseitiger Weise den Staat von sich aus zum Wirtschafter machen will. Ein gesundes Verhältnis ergibt sich nur dann, wenn man den wirtschaftlichen Organismus in sich selber seine relative Wirksamkeit entfalten läßt, wenn man, wie es im natürlichen organischen Leben auch geschieht, ein System gewissermaßen darum, daß es seine in ihm liegenden Kräfte voll ausbildet, in relativer Selbständigkeit sich entfalten läßt und dann dasjenige, was sich ergibt, begrenzt, verbessert durch ein danebenliegendes, relativ selbständiges System, wie im natürlichen Organismus ein System sich voll entwickelt, auch seine Schäden zum Ausdruck bringt, diese Schäden aber fortwährend paralysiert werden durch das danebenliegende System. Darauf beruht alle organische Wirksamkeit. Darauf muß auch beruhen die Gesundung des sozialen Organismus.

Es kommt mir wahrhaftig nicht darauf an, wie man den Wirtschaftsorganismus, wie man den Staatsorganismus definiert, wie man über sie denke, sondern darauf kommt es mir an, daß diese zwei Glieder nebeneinander da sein müssen, und das eine sich relativ selbständig entwickeln muß, sogar die Veranlagung seiner Schäden aus sich heraus entwickeln muß, daß das andere System daneben sich entwickeln muß und paralysieren muß das, was sich sonst als Schäden ergeben würde im anderen System. Das ist das Wesen des Lebendigen; das muß auch das Wesen des lebendigen sozialen Organismus sein. Nur dann, wenn der wirtschaftliche Körper sich selbst verwaltet, verwaltet aus seinen eigenen Bedingungen heraus, der rechtliche, der politische Körper sich selbst verwaltet, wiederum aus seinen eigenen Bedingungen heraus, die sich ergeben durch die Regelung der Rechtsverhältnisse von Mensch zu Mensch, und wenn dann ein jeder dieser Organismen sich selbständig regelt, indem sie nebeneinander und aufeinander wirken, dann entsteht ein gesundes soziales Leben. Die soziale Frage ist nicht zu lösen durch eine Theorie, nicht zu lösen durch Gesetze, sondern sie ist nur dadurch zu lösen, daß im lebendigen Leben die eine Kräfteart, die wirtschaftliche, neben der anderen, der staatlichen, der politischen, im unmittelbaren, im eigenen Dasein wirkt, daß sich die beiden nebeneinander und ineinander entwikkeln, aber so entwickeln, daß eine jede in ihrer Selbständigkeit dasteht.

Das ist es, was aus einer gewissen historischen Notwendigkeit heraus versäumt worden ist. Denn was geschehen ist, ist natürlich notwendig. Es soll keine Kritik, sondern eine Darstellung der Verhältnisse hier gegeben werden. Das ist es aber, was sich als eine Notwendigkeit im Menschenfortschritte für das Leben der Gegenwart und der nächsten Zukunft einstellen muß. Ergeben wird sich, daß um der Gesundung des sozialen Organismus willen das Wirtschaftsleben ein assoziatives wird, daß es sich so gliedert, daß ja die veranlagten Genossenschaften, Gewerkschaften und so weiter sich so ausbilden, daß sie abstreifen, was sie noch übernommen haben aus dem Vorurteil, daß alles sich nach dem Muster des alten Rechtsstaates bilden müsse. Was noch an Staatsleben lebt in diesen dem Wirtschaftsleben dienenden Assoziationen, das muß abgestreift werden. Sie müssen rein dem Wirtschaftsleben dienende Körperschaften werden, solche Körperschaften, die beruhen auf dem Verhältnis, das innerhalb des Wirtschaftslebens der Mensch haben muß, sei es zu der Naturgrundlage des Wirtschaftslebens, sei es zu der Notwendigkeit, auf diese oder jene Art die Rohstoffe zu verwerten, die Waren in Zirkulation zu bringen, das Konsumverhältnis in das richtige Verhältnis zur Produktion und zum Handel zu bringen und so weiter. Die Kompliziertheit des menschlichen Lebens macht es heute notwendig, daß ein ganzes System von Assoziationen und Koalitionen, die herausgefordert werden durch die Naturgrundlage des Wirtschaftslebens, sich unter den Menschen bilden, solche Assoziationen und Koalitionen, welche im wesentlichen auf dem Verständnis der Verwertung der Naturgrundlage und der Hinleitung der Ware zur zweckmäßigen Konsumtion bestehen. Eben die Kompliziertheit erfordert, daß auf diesem Gebiete ein ganzes System von Assoziationen sich ausbildet. Aber diese Assoziationen werden herausgestaltet sein aus dem Zusammenhange des Menschen mit den wirtschaftlichen Kräften selber. Da wird sich ergeben, daß eben das eintritt, immer wieder und wiederum im wirklichen Leben eintritt, daß das Wirtschaftsleben dazu tendiert, den Menschen zu verbrauchen.

Neben dem Wirtschaftsleben muß stehen das politische Leben, das im Gegensatze zum Wirtschaftsleben, das auf Assoziationen zu beruhen hat, mehr auf der Demokratie ruhen muß, denn das staatliche Leben umfaßt das Verhältnis von Mensch zu Mensch. Es umfaßt alles das, woran alle Menschen in gleicher Weise ihr Interesse haben. Wie das Wirtschaftsleben beruht auf dem wirtschaftlichen Wert der Güter, so wird das Staatsleben zu beruhen haben im wesentlichen auf dem öffentlichen Recht, das im Gesetze gründet oder das das Gesetz begründet, das da bestimmt das Verhältnis des Menschen unter Menschen. Und in lebendiger Wechselwirkung wird dasjenige, was sich aus dem Wirtschaftsleben heraus entwickelt, begrenzt, beschränkt werden müssen. Ansätze dazu sind ja vorhanden, aber eine durchgreifende soziale Einsicht muß Platz greifen. Dasjenige wird sich herausbilden müssen, was vor allen Dingen den Menschen davor schützt, von dem Wirtschaftsleben, das auf den Verbrauch hin orientiert ist, selber mit Bezug auf seine Arbeitskraft verbraucht zu werden.

Ebenso wie Preisbildung, Wertbildung das Wesentliche ist innerhalb des Wirtschaftskörpers, ebenso ist die Ausgestaltung des konkreten Rechtes, des konkreten öffentlichen Rechtes, das reguliert das Leben des Menschen neben dem Menschen, das Wesentliche im Leben des politischen Staates. Kann man in bezug auf die Empfindung, die gegenüber dem öffentlichen Rechte besteht, nicht eigentlich auch heute noch sagen, daß sie zu keiner ganz besonderen Klarheit sich durchgerungen hat? Man kann viel, viel bei denjenigen, die die Sache wissen sollten, die viel nachgedacht und nachgeforscht haben sollten über die Sache, man kann viel bei diesen nachfragen, was eigentlich unter dem Wesen des Rechtes zu verstehen ist, des Rechtes, das ja immer in konkreten Formen auftritt. Man bekommt erst einen Begriff von den Schwierigkeiten, die da vorliegen, wenn man zum Beispiel sich einläßt auf eine solche Frage, wie diejenige war, die in seiner Doktordissertation mein verstorbener Freund Ludwig Laistner zugrunde gelegt hat, «das Recht zur Strafe». Das kann selbst eine Frage werden, worinnen im Konkreten das Recht der menschlichen Gesellschaft zur Strafe besteht.

Man kann vieles versuchen, um nahezukommen dem Impuls des Rechtes. Insbesondere in unserer heutigen Zeit, wo von den verschiedensten Seiten her so viel vom Recht gesprochen wird, liegt es ja auf der Hand, sich immer wieder und wiederum dem nähern zu wollen, was eigentlich das Wesen des Rechtes ist. Wenn man versucht, dahinter zu kommen, worauf ein solches konkretes Recht beruht - auch das Besitzrecht ist auf ein Recht begründet; das Besitzverhältnis gründet auf dem Recht, ein Grundstück oder irgend etwas ausschließlich für sich, zu seiner Betätigung zu benützen mit Hinwegweisung der anderen -, das Gegenstand des eigentlichen politischen Gliedes des sozialen Körpers ist, so finden die einen überhaupt nichts anderes, als daß es zuletzt doch auf Macht zurückgeht. Die anderen finden, daß es auf ein ursprüngliches menschliches Empfinden zurückgehe. Man kommt ja allzuleicht, wenn man der Sache zu Leibe rücken will, auf leere Formen. Ohne daß ich mich - was ja Stunden in Anspruch nehmen würde - einlassen kann auf eine volle Begründung, möchte ich doch dieses sagen, daß das Recht ja begründet ein gewisses Verhältnis des Menschen zu irgend etwas, einer Sache oder einem Vorgang oder dergleichen oder einer Summe von Vorgängen, mit Ausschluß von anderen Menschen. Worauf beruht es denn nun eigentlich, daß man die Empfindung, das Gefühl entwickeln kann: Irgendein Mensch oder ein Volk habe ein Recht auf das, was man im Auge hat? Und man bekommt da doch, wenn man noch so sehr sich abmüht, nichts anderes heraus, als daß man sich sagen kann: Im öffentlichen Leben begründet den Rechtsanspruch das, daß die Voraussetzung bestehen darf, daß der, der seine Betätigung einer Sache oder einem Vorgange oder einer Reihe von Vorgängen zuwenden darf, dies mit der größeren Wahrscheinlichkeit mehr im Sinne der allgemeinen Menschheit tut als irgendein anderer. In dem Augenblick, wo man die Empfindung hat, daß irgend jemandes Verhältnis zu einer Sache oder zu etwas anderem mehr zum Ausdrucke bringt den Nutzen der allgemeinen Menschheit, als wenn ein anderer diese Sache benützt oder in dieses Verhältnis eingeht, so kann man dem Betreffenden das Recht auf diese Sache zusprechen. Das wird es ja auch im wesentlichen sein, was in der Empfindung der Menschheit den Ausschlag geben wird, wenn jetzt die großen Rechtsfragen des internationalen Lebens ins Dasein, ins wirkliche Dasein treten. Man wird demjenigen voll zusprechen das Recht über ein gewisses Territorium, bei dem die Aussicht besteht, daß im Sinne des Wohles der allgemeinen Menschheit gerade dieses Volk das Territorium am fruchtbarsten, am sichersten verwalten kann.

So kommt man zu dem, was im demokratischen Staatswesen durchweben und durchfluten kann die Impulse, die orientieren müssen das Leben von Mensch zu Mensch, die, sei esin der Arbeiterversicherung, sei es irgendwie in anderen Versicherungen, die da sind zum Schutze gegen die Schäden des Wirtschaftslebens, in alledem muß das leben als das Fundament des Rechtes, von dem ich eben gesprochen habe. Und ein Verständnis, aber jetzt nicht ein Verständnis für irgendeine allgemeine abstrakte Definition des Rechtes, sondern ein Veständnis für die Wirksamkeit des Rechtes im einzelnen konkreten Fall, das ist es, was behufs eines gesunden sozialen Lebens der Menschheit eintreten muß. Dieses Rechtsleben, dieses Leben des politischen Staates im engeren Sinn, des zweiten Gliedes eines gesunden sozialen Organismus, das wird es auch sein, welches den eigentlichen Kreuzpunkt, möchte ich sagen, der modernen sozialen Frage allein, nicht durch irgendwelche Verwirklichungen von theoretischen Ansichten und Prinzipien und Programmen, sondern durch das unmittelbare Leben aus der Welt schaffen wird, nämlich den Punkt, den ich vorhin bezeichnet habe als die Forderung des modernen Proletariats: die Arbeitskraft des Menschen des Warencharakters zu entkleiden.

Dazu ist allerdings notwendig, daß man auch verstehe, ich möchte sagen, aus dem Fundament heraus verstehe, worauf es ankommt bei dem Anteil, den menschliche Arbeit im allgemeinen menschlichen Leben, in der Struktur der menschlichen Gesellschaft hat. Wiederum würde es Stunden in Anspruch nehmen, wenn ich ein soziales Grundgesetz der menschlichen Arbeit hier im einzelnen begründen wollte; intuitiv, glaube ich, und instinktiv kann jeder Mensch, der das Leben nur einigermaßen durchschaut, begreifen, was ich jetzt aussprechen werde. Ich habe versucht, bereits im Beginne des Jahrhunderts in einem Aufsatz, der dazumal in meiner damals erscheinenden Zeitschrift «LuziferGnosis» über die soziale Frage erschienen ist, gerade auf dieses fundamentale soziale Gesetz aufmerksam zu machen. Aber man predigte damals und predigt über viele Dinge auf diesem Gebiet auch heute noch tauben Ohren, leider. Dieses Gesetz besteht darin, daß niemand, insofern er dem sozialen Körper, dem sozialen Organismus angehört, für sich selber in Wirklichkeit arbeitet. Wohlgemerkt, insoferne der Mensch dem sozialen Organismus angehört, arbeitet er nicht für sich selbst. Jegliche Arbeit, die der Mensch leistet, kann niemals auf ihn zurückfallen, auch nicht in ihrem wirklichen Erträgnis, sondern sie kann nur für die anderen Menschen geleistet sein. Und das, was die anderen Menschen leisten, das muß uns selbst zugute kommen. Es ist nicht bloß ein ethisch zu fordernder Altruismus, der in diesen Dingen lebt, sondern es ist einfach ein soziales Gesetz. Wir können gar nicht anders, ebensowenig wie wir unser Blut anders leiten können, als in der Zirkulation der menschlichen Betätigung so wirken, daß unsere Tätigkeit allen anderen, und aller anderer Tätigkeit uns zugute kommt, daß niemals unsere eigene Tätigkeit auf uns selbst zurückfällt.

So paradox es klingt, wenn Sie untersuchen, welchen wirklichen Zirkulationsprozeß menschliche Arbeit im sozialen Organismus macht, Sie werden finden: sie geht aus dem Menschen heraus, sie kommt den anderen zugute, und das, was die einen von der Arbeitskraft haben, das ist das Ergebnis der Arbeitskraft anderer. Wie gesagt, so paradox es klingt, wahr ist es. Man kann ebensowenig leben von seiner eigenen Arbeit im sozialen Organismus, als man sich selber aufessen kann, um sich zu ernähren.

Obschon im Grunde genommen das Gesetz sehr leicht zu verstehen ist, können Sie einwenden: Wenn ich nun aber ein Schneider bin und unter den Kleidern, die ich für andere herstelle, auch einmal mir selber einen Anzug mache, dann habe ich doch meine Arbeitskraft auf mich selber angewendet! — Das ist nur eine Täuschung, wie es überhaupt immer eine Täuschung ist, wenn ich glaube, daß das Ergebnis eigener Arbeit auf mich zurückfällt. Indem ich mir einen Rock, eine Hose oder dergleichen mache, arbeite ich in Wahrheit nicht für mich, sondern ich setze mich in die Lage, weiter für andere zu arbeiten. Das ist das, was die menschliche Arbeit als Funktion rein durch ein soziales Gesetz innerhalb des sozialen Organismus hat. Wer gegen dieses Gesetz verstößt, der arbeitet gegen den sozialen Organismus. Deshalb arbeitet man gegen den sozialen Organismus, wenn man weiter verwirklicht dasjenige, was sich im neueren geschichtlichen Leben ergeben hat, daß man den proletarischen Arbeiter von dem Erträgnis seiner Arbeitskraft leben läßt. Denn das ist keine Wahrheit, das ist eine durch die sozialen Verhältnismittel kaschierte, realisierte Unwahrheit, die sich hereindrängt als zerstörend in das Wirtschaftsleben. Das ist dasjenige, was aber indem Wirtschaftsleben nur geregelt werden kann, wenn dieses Wirtschaftsleben sich selbständig entwickelt und neben ihm relativ selbständig das politische, das engere Staatsleben sich entwickelt, das immerzu entreißt dem wirtschaftlichen Leben die Möglichkeit, die menschliche Arbeit auf sich selber zu lenken. Innerhalb des Rechtssystems wird das bewirkt im richtigen sozialen Verständnis, daß die menschliche Arbeit diejenige Funktion erhalte, welche sie erhalten muß gemäß dem wahrhaftigen Verlaufe des Lebens im sozialen Organismus. Der wirtschaftliche Organismus für sich hat immer die Tendenz, die Arbeitskraft des Menschen zu verbrauchen. Das Rechtsleben muß immer der Arbeitskraft ihre naturgemäße altruistische Stellung anweisen, und immer ist es von neuem notwendig, durch neue konkrete demokratische Gesetzgebung das, was das Wirtschaftsleben in Unwahrheit realisieren will, diesem Wirtschaftsleben immer aufs neue zu entreißen, und immer aufs neue die menschliche Arbeitskraft aus den Fängen des Wirtschaftslebens auf dem Wege des öffentlichen Rechtes herauszureißen. Geradeso wie zusammenwirken müssen das bloße Verdauungssystem mit dem Atmungs-Zirkulationsleben, indem aufgenommen wird von dem zirkulierenden Blute das, was dem Verdauungssystem einverleibt wird, so muß nebeneinanderwirken, aufeinanderwirken das, was im Wirtschaftsleben vorgeht und das, was im Rechtsleben vorgeht, sonst gedeiht das eine und das andere nicht. Der bloße Rechtsstaat, wenn er Wirtschafter werden will, lähmt das Wirtschaftsleben; der Wirtschaftsorganismus, wenn er sich den Staat erobern will, tötet das System, das Leben des öffentlichen Rechtes.

Das ist es, was ich zu dem in den vorigen Vorträgen Gesagten noch hinzufügen möchte zur Begründung der Dreigliedrigkeit des sozialen Organismus. Indem die bürgerlich leitenden Kreise gewissermaßen den Blick wie hypnotisiert nur auf den Staat gerichtet hatten, wurde ihnen der Staat etwas wie ein Götze. Es wurde die Aufmerksamkeit nicht hingelenkt auf die notwendige Differenzierung des sozialen Organismus in die drei Glieder. Und so kam es, daß in der neueren Zeit auch aufgesogen, absorbiert wurde von dem Staate, von dem politischen Leben im engeren Sinne das geistige Leben. So wie die Warenzirkulation im Wirtschaftsleben auf der Preis- und Wertbildung beruht, so wie das Leben innerhalb des politischen sozialen Organismus auf dem Rechtsleben beruht, so beruht alles geistige Leben auf dem unmittelbaren Inhalt des Produzierten. Und bedenken Sie nur, was für ein gewaltiger Unterschied ist zwischen dem Wirtschaftsleben und dem geistigen Leben. Im Wirtschaftsleben kommt alles darauf an, daß die Ware zum zweckmäBigsten Verbrauch getrieben wird. Geistige Hervorbringung, sei es auf dem Gebiete des Erziehungs-, des Schulwesens, sei es auf dem Gebiete der Kunst, sei es auf irgendeinem anderen eben geistigen Gebiete, geistige Hervorbringung mit dem Begriff des Verbrauches in Zusammenhang zu stellen ist geradezu eine Absurdität. Man kann es nicht. Man kann nicht das, was geistig hervorgebracht ist, in dieselbe Linie stellen wie das, was im Wirtschaftsprozeß zirkuliert. Das ist es, was auch bewirkt hat, daß die Aufsaugung zum Beispiel des Schulwesens durch den Staat, des Universitätswesens durch den Staat und ähnliches, in der modernen Entwickelung zu einem hemmenden, auch jetzt im realen Sinne hemmenden Faktor geworden ist. Und das ist es, was die Menschheit aufmerksam machen muß, daß dieses Geistesleben wiederum befreit, entfesselt werden muß. Und ich habe schon aufmerksam darauf gemacht, daß zu diesem geistigen Gliede des sozialen Organismus nun auch gerechnet werden muß, was heute noch manchem nun auch paradox erscheinen wird, die wirkliche Praxis des privaten und des strafrechtlichen Urteilens. So sonderbar das klingt, auch da gibt es schon eine Tendenz im modernen Leben, die nur nicht in der richtigen Weise beurteilt wird. Was immer mehr und mehr von einer eben verfehlten Psychologie in Anspruch genommen worden ist für die Rechtsprechung, das ist es, was tendiert nach einem noch nicht erkannten, aber notwendigerweise zu erkennenden Prinzip der Einverleibung des privat- und strafrechtlichen Wirkens in das geistige Glied, das wiederum mit relativer Selbständigkeit dasteht, auch mit relativer Selbständigkeit dasteht gegenüber all dem Leben, das sich als das engere politische Leben entwikkelt, das sich als das Leben des öffentlichen Rechtes, der Gesetzgebung entwickelt. Gewiß, es wird in Zukunft in einem gesunden sozialen Organismus der Verbrecher zum Beispiel zu suchen sein von dem, was sich im zweiten Gliede, im politischen Gliede ergibt. Wenn er aber gesucht ist, dann wird er abgeurteilt von dem Richter, dem er in einem individuellen menschlichen Verhältnis gegenübersteht.

Über diese Frage kann auch nur der vielleicht aus der Geschichte heraus urteilen, der wie ich, der zu Ihnen jetzt spricht, Jahre, jahrelang beobachten konnte auf einem Territorium, wo es wahrhaftig schwer wurde, einheitlich zu regieren, und wo man doch, ich möchte sagen, zwangsmäßig einheitlich staatlich regieren wollte: auf einem Territorium wie in Österreich. Da konnte man beobachten, was es ergeben hätte, wenn über die reinen Sprachgrenzen hinüber freie Gerichtsbarkeit dagewesen wäre; wenn sich trotz der Sprachgrenzen der in einem deutschen Gebiete wohnende Böhme den benachbarten tschechischen oder böhmischen Richter drüben, der böhmische Bewohner wiederum seinen Richter in dem deutschen Gebiete hätte wählen können. Man hat gesehen, wie segensreich dieses Prinzip gewirkt hat in dem leider Anfang gebliebenen Bestreben der verschiedenen Schulvereine. Darinnen liegt etwas, was, ich möchte sagen, wie ein schwerer Alpdruck heute noch immer dem, der dieses österreichische Leben miterlebt hat, auf der Seele ruht, daß dieses Ei des Kolumbus nicht gefunden worden ist: die freie Wahl des Richters und das lebendige Zusammenwirken des Klägers, des Richters und des Angeklagten, statt des Richters aus dem zentralisierten politischen Staate heraus, der nur maßgebend sein kann nicht für die Rechtsprechung, sondern für das Aufsuchen und Abliefern des Verbrechers oder dann für die Ausführung des Urteils.

So paradox das heute noch der Menschheit klingt, es muß einverleibt werden das Verhältnis des Menschen zu seinem Richter in straf- und privatrechtlicher Beziehung dem geistig selbständigen Gliede. Schon vorgestern habe ich darauf aufmerksam gemacht, daß nicht abhängen wird die äußere Verwaltung, die Wahl der Personen in dem geistigen Gliede vom Staate. Wer hineinschauen kann in die modernen Verhältnisse, dem offenbart sich das auch, daß das innerste Leben von Wissenschaft und Kunst und allem Geistigen abhängig wird von dem, von dem es nicht abhängig werden darf, wenn sich dieses geistige Glied neben den anderen beiden Gliedern nicht in relativer Selbständigkeit entwickeln kann. Es erscheint heute noch vielen als etwas Paradoxes, wenn ich nun zusammenfassend sage, jedes dieser Gebiete müsse eine gewisse Souveränität haben, sein eigenes Repräsentativsystem, seine eigene Gesetzgebung, die aus seinen Verhältnissen herausgewachsen ist, die aus den Assoziationsverhältnissen im wirtschaftlichen Gebiete herauswachsen, also seine Verwaltung, seine Gesetzgebung selbständig haben. In demokratischer Weise wird herauswachsen aus der Gesamtmenschheit eines bestimmten sozialen Gebietes für den eigentlichen politischen Staat, in dem geregelt wird das Verhältnis des Menschen zum Menschen, das Verhältnis zur Wirtschaft, das Verhältnis zum geistigen Leben; ohne daß in die beiden aber eingegriffen wird aus den Gesetzen des Staates heraus, und aus den im geistigen Leben selbst tätigen Kräften wird sich die Gliederung ergeben auch der Verwaltung für das geistige Leben. In einem noch viel höheren Grade kann aus wirklich modernem Leben heraus das geistige Leben emanzipiert werden, in einem höheren Grad als es in alten Zeiten der Fall war, als das einzige geistige Leben, das für viele Menschen in Betracht kam, im religiösen Leben bestand, aus dem heraus sich jaauch das Schulwesen, das Universitätswesen gebildet hat.

Gewiß war das Eingreifen des modernen Staatswesens notwendig, um veralteten Religionsformen und veralteten Verwaltungen das zu verweisen, was ihnen nicht mehr zukam. Aber aus dem modernen Leben selber heraus muß sich wiederum das selbständige Geistesleben entwikkeln. Das ist es ja gerade, was eine geisteswissenschaftliche Richtung, wie sie diesen sozialen Betrachtungen hier zugrunde liegt, für sich in Anspruch nehmen muß, was sie in Anspruch nehmen muß aus dem Grunde, weil sie weiß, daß das gesamte wirkliche produktive Geistesleben, auch das, was sich zum Beispiel in technischen Erfindungen, technischen Ideen auslebt, daß sich das nur mit wirklich der Menschheit heilsamen Impulsen entwickeln kann, wenn es sich aus dem lebendigen, selbständigen Geistigen entwickelt, unabhängig von den anderen beiden Gliedern des sozialen Organismus. Der Geist wird im Menschen nur in der rechten Weise zur Produktivität die Stoßkraft haben, wenn dieses geistige Leben relativ selbständig ist. Spintisieren, theoretisieren, Dinge ausdenken, meinetwillen auch so, wie es von einer gewissen Richtung her in moderner Technik und Naturwissenschaft, namentlich in ihren Methoden bewundernswert geschehen ist, auch erfinden kann man, aber die wirkliche produktive Idee, die so produktiv ist, daß sie dem wahren Menschheitsfortschritte und zugleich dem wahren Menschheitsheile dient, diese Idee kann nur geboren werden innerhalb eines auf sich selbst gestellten Geisteslebens.

So weit ist man heute noch entfernt von dem, was ich hier eigentlich meine und was notwendig verstanden werden muß, wenn die soziale Frage auf eine heilsame Grundlage gestellt werden soll, daß manche Leute mir erwidert haben, wenn ich ihnen das auseinandergesetzt habe: Ja, das ist ja nur in einem modernen Sinne eine Wiedererneuerung der alten platonischen Idee von der Dreiteilung des sozialen Körpers in die drei Stände: Nährstand, Wehrstand, Lehrstand. - Nein, das ist keine Erneuerung dieser alten platonischen Idee, sondern das ist in gewisser Beziehung das radikale Gegenteil davon, und darauf kommt es an. Denn zwischen dem, was platonisch gedacht werden konnte als etwas Großes in Griechenland und noch für spätere Zeiten, und demjenigen, was heute gedacht werden muß zum Heile und zur Gesundung des sozialen Organismus, liegt der große, krisenhafte Menschheitseinschnitt um das 15. Jahrhundert. Dazumal, zu platonischen Zeiten, war die Gliederung des sozialen Organismus eine solche, daß man die Menschen nach Ständen einteilte. Die Gliederung, von der ich hier sprach, die gliedert nicht die Menschen, die gliedert den sozialen Organismus; die gliedert diesen sozialen Organismus so, daß unter Umständen ein Mensch in allen drei Gliedern drinnen sein kann, das Entsprechende tun kann, aber dadurch, daß der soziale Organismus gegliedert ist, ist er nicht in der Lage, irgendwie schädlich von dem einen Gliede in das andere hineinzuwirken, nicht einmal dann, wenn, wie es in modernen Parlamenten vielfach geschehen ist, derselbe Mensch meinetwillen als Landwirt zugleich in einer staatlichen Partei drinnensteht. Heute ist es noch möglich, daß er durch irgendwelche Assoziationen eine Interessenvertretung inauguriert, daß in das Rechtsleben hinein eine wirtschaftliche Interessenvertretung kommt. Ich habe das letzte Mal ein Beispiel angeführt, wo ein ganzer Staat in seinem Rechtsleben von einer solchen Interessenvertretung durchsetzt wurde. Das wird ausgeschlossen. Aber was ich als dreigliederig bezeichne im gesunden sozialen Organismus, das ist der vom Menschen abgesonderte soziale Organismus. Der Mensch wird gerade dadurch selbständig, wird gerade dadurch entkleidet des Charakters eines Sklaven des sozialen Organismus, daß nicht Menschenklassen, Menschenschichten als Glieder dastehen, sondern daß der soziale Organismus selber gegliedert wird. Das weist zu gleicher Zeit darauf hin, daß dieses Denken, das hier zugrunde liegt, ein wahrhaft wirklichkeitsgemäBes ist, entfernt ist von alldem, was ich vorgestern als Schwarmgeisterei bezeichnet habe.

Diese Schwarmgeisterei tritt ja auf bei den verschiedensten Parteien. Sie ist ebenso in bürgerlichen Kreisen vorhanden wie auf seiten der Sozialdemokratie. Und diese Schwarmgeisterei ergreift dann die Menschen, wenn sie immer wieder und wiederum keine Ahnung davon entwickeln, was der soziale Organismus als solcher eigentlich anstreben kann, wenn er gesund ist. Immer wieder und wiederum leidet das soziale Denken unter dem Einfluß der Empfindung, der Idee, als ob angestrebt werden könne unmittelbar, durch irgendwelche Programme, ein sozialer Organismus, der das Glück der Menschheit oder die Zufriedenheit der Menschheit oder dergleichen bedingt. Das kann nicht unmittelbar angestrebt werden. Was unmittelbar angestrebt werden kann, das ist ein lebensfähiger sozialer Organismus, ein solcher, der lebendige Kräfte des Lebens eben in sich hat. Hineingestellt in einen solchen Organismus, lebend in einem solchen Organismus, kann erst aus ganz anderen Untergründen heraus der Mensch sein Glück begründen. Das hat ganz andere Untergründe. Aber diese Untergründe, die müssen befreit werden von ihrer Fesselung. Und sie werden nur befreit, wenn ein lebensfähiger Organismus zugrunde liegt. So wie in einem wirklich lebensfähigen Organismus die Seele sich entwickeln kann, in ihm in entsprechender Weise sein kann, so in einem lebensfähigen sozialen Organismus eine glückliche, zufriedene, arbeitswillige und arbeitsverständige Menschheit. Das ist es, worauf es ankommt zur Gesundung des sozialen Organismus.

Ein Blick auf das, was wir in einer katastrophalen Zeit erlebt haben, kann auch, ich möchte sagen, von einem internationalen Gesichtspunkteher und von einem größeren historischen Gesichtspunkte her erhärten, wie das, was ich hier als diese drei Glieder anführe, eine wirkliche Notwendigkeit für die gegenwärtige Lebensform der Menschheit und die Lebensform der Menschheit für die nächste Zukunft ist. Man möchte sagen, bevor diese schreckliche Katastrophe, die man einen Krieg nennt, über die Menschheit hereingebrochen ist, war die Kulmination des Durcheinanderwürfelns und Durcheinanderwirrens der drei Glieder, die sich differenzieren müssen, erreicht. Und gerade dadurch, daß diese drei Glieder nicht in relativer Selbständigkeit nebeneinander wirken konnten, dadurch ist vieles von dem eingetreten, was in wahrhaftigem Sinne zu dem Ausgangspunkt und den Ursachen dieser kriegetischen Katastrophe gerechnet werden muß. Man braucht ja nur auf Weniges hinzuweisen. Der Blick aller Menschen war darauf gerichtet, wie von der Beziehung des österreichischen Staates zu dem Balkanverhältnis, namentlich zu Serbien, der Krieg seinen Ausgangspunkt genommen hat. Wer eingeweiht war in die österreichischen Verhältnisse seit Jahrzehnten, der wußte zu beurteilen, wie die wirtschaftlichen Verhältnisse, die zwischen Österreich und dem europäischen Südosten spielten, in unnatürlicher Weise mit den Verhältnissen verschlungen waren, die relativ selbständig neben ihnen sich hätten entwickeln sollen, mit den rein politischen, und wie durch diese Verquickung, dadurch, daß nun die politischen Verhältnisse plötzlich für sich entscheiden sollten über etwas, was in wirtschaftlichen Verhältnissen tief begründet war, eine realisierte Unwahrheit entstand und explodierte.

Wie anders wäre diese Sache geworden - ich kann dies am Schluß des heutigen Vortrages nur andeuten —, wenn das Verhältnis solcher Nachbarstaaten entsprechend der Dreigliederung gewesen wäre, wenn über die Grenze hinüber das Verhältnis ein rein politisches, auf demokratischer Grundlage beruhend und abgesondert gewesen wäre von den anderen Gliedern, gleich wie sonst die Regierungsform ist. Wenn nun aber korrigierend, harmonisierend über die Grenze hinüber selbständig die wirtschaftlichen und geistigen Faktoren wirkten, da würde über das System der Staaten, der sogenannten Staaten so etwas an Interessenharmonie und an Interessenverquickung ausgebreitet, wo immer das eine das andere korrigiert, wo nicht das eine einseitig eine Explosion herbeiführen kann. Gesunde Verhältnisse über die Grenzen hinüber würden durch diese Dreiteilung im internationalen Verhältnis der Völker entstehen.

Und wiederum, wie hat die internationale Menschheit den Blick gerichtet auf Deutschland, das ja in den Kriegserklärungen, wenigstens äußerlich, vorangegangen ist. Wer auf diesem Gebiet eingeweiht ist, der weiß, wie das Unglück geschehen ist. Man hat vielfach gesagt, im Juli und August, in den verhängnisvollen Tagen, habe die Politik neben der eigentlichen Kriegsführung, neben dem Heerwesen, versagt. Aber Politik und Heerwesen sind da, wo beide wirken, gleichlaufende Dinge. Die sind nicht ohne weiteres zu trennen. Sie können nur in gesunder Weise sich entfalten, wenn sie wirken innerhalb des einen, des staatlichen Gebildes in einem dreigeteilten sozialen Organismus. Sonst wird notwendigerweise die Politik, wenigstens in dem einen Gliede, einen einheitlichen Charakter annehmen müssen. Sie wird zu einer bestimmten Zeit entweder im Militär oder im Nichtmilitär kulminieren. Denn was in seiner Natur, wenn es auch verquickt ist durch menschlichen Irrtum mit anderen Systemen, etwas Einheitliches sein muß, das kann sich nach außen nicht, das eine über das andere korrigierend, ergehen. In jenem furchtbaren Angst zustande, aus dem heraus in Berlin erwachsen ist das, was in den letzten Juli-, in den ersten Tagen des August erwachsen ist, da hat gewirkt die Zusammendrängung auf ein einziges System, was hätte verteilt sein sollen. Es drängte sich zusammen unter die Verantwortung eines einzigen Systems, was ein einziges System zum Heile der Menschheit niemals tragen darf. Die konkreten Verhältnisse werden es gerade dann lehren, wenn man diese Dinge einmal vorurteilslos und unbefangen untersuchen wird. Oh, wieviel Unsinn ist gerade mit Bezug auf Politik und Heeresverwaltung gesagt worden! Es ist ja soviel Unsinn gesagt worden in den letzten viereinhalb Jahren! Ich will nur das eine ausführen: Weil in einem untrennbaren Gliede des sozialen Organismus ruhend Politik und Strategie nur wirken können, so kann niemals, wenn die Strategie veranlaßt ist, nur auf sich selbst zu sehen, die Politik diese Strategie in gesunder Weise beeinflussen. Man hat gesagt, sich immer wieder und wiederum auf einen Clausewitzschen Satz berufend: Die Kriegführung sei die Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln. - Ich will nicht mich kritisierend ergehen über diesen Satz, insoferne er im Zusammenhang der ganzen kriegerischen Auseinandersetzung steht. Aber so, wie die Herren, die immer wieder und wiederum diesen Satz- es sind auch Damen gewesen -angewendet haben, da hat er ungefähr ebensoviel Sinn, als wenn man sagt: Die Scheidung ist die Fortsetzung der Ehe mit anderen Mitteln.

Unsinn dieser Art ist aus einem unnatürlichen Denken, das wiederum unnatürlich in die realen Verhältnisse eingegriffen hat, viel produziert worden. Wenn man einmal die Dinge unbefangen durchschaut, wird man sehen, wie alles anders verlaufen wäre. Selbstverständlich ist das, was geschehen ist, historisch notwendig, und das, was ausgesprochen werden soll, soll als der Impuls für die Zukunft gelten, aber hypothetisch kann man doch sagen, wie alles anders verlaufen wäre, wenn die Struktur der europäischen internationalen Verhältnisse aufgebaut gewesen wäre unter dem Einfluß der sozialen Dreigliederung. Man wird sagen: Das, was gekommen ist, ist durch die Bündnisverhältnisse gekommen. Aber diese Bündnisverhältnisse hätten unter dem Einfluß der sozialen Dreigliederung niemals eintreten können. Das Ende solcher Bündnisbildungen wie diejenigen waren, welche zu dem Unglücke der letzten viereinhalb Jahre geführt haben, ist dann da, wenn die Menschen sich orientieren im Sinne der Dreigliederung des gesunden sozialen Organismus.

Das, was ich hier auseinandersetze, es ist durchaus im realen Sinne gedacht, es ist aus der Wirklichkeit heraus gedacht. Deshalb habe ich auch immer gesagt, wenn ich mich damals bemüht habe während dieser Schreckensjahre, an autoritativer Stelle in entsprechender Weise für die damalige Zeit auf die Dreigliederung hinzuweisen: Dasjenige, was real ist, ändert sich von Tag zu Tag, und es könnte selbstverständlich sein, daß, wenn die Verhältnisse sich wieder geändert haben, ich über diese Dinge anders sprechen müßte. Ich sagte zu den Leuten: Was hier vorgelegt wird, ist nicht ein Programm, ist nicht ein Ideal, es entspringt der Beobachtung dessen, was sich in den nächsten zehn, zwanzig Jahren in Mittel- und Osteuropa verwirklichen will, überhaupt in Europa. Sie haben die Wahl, entweder Vernunft anzuwenden heute, oder entgegenzugehen Revolutionen und Kataklysmen.

Es hat schon begonnen und es wird sich in noch anderer Weise zeigen. Heute aber möchte ich wiederholen, was ich auch noch nach anderer Hinsicht bei diesen Gelegenheiten gesagt habe. Gesagt habe ich immer: Wer ein Utopist, ein Theoretiker ist, der nicht aus der Wirklichkeit heraus denkt, sondern aus gewissen abstrakten Forderungen oder aus Parteiimpulsen heraus, der hat ein Interesse daran, daß das, was er wie ein Programm oder dergleichen gibt, auch wirklich so ausgeführt werde, wie er es im einzelnen gibt. Mir kommt es bei diesen Dingen, die ich zu vertreten habe, darauf nicht an - so sprach ich dazumal. Es könnte sein sagte ich, und das sage ich auch heute noch -, daß von der Formulierung dessen, was ich vertrete, kein Stein auf dem anderen bleibt. Denn nicht darauf kommt es an, daß irgendwelche ausgedachten Dinge realisiert werden, sondern daß die Wirklichkeit an einem Punkte angepackt werde. Dann wird man finden, indem man sie anpackt, wie es weiterzugehen hat. Es könnte sich in weiteren Ausführungen herausstellen, daß alle Formulierungen anders werden müßten. Darauf kommt es nicht an, wenn man kein Utopist, kein Schwarmgeist ist, daß die Dinge wörtlich ausgeführt werden, sondern daß an einer Stelle wirklich angefangen werde. Und auf eine solche Stelle, wo angefangen werden muß, wollte ich hinweisen und will ich auch heute noch hinweisen, bevor es ganz zu spät wird, bevor die menschlichen Instinkte so weit entfesselt sind, daß eine Verständigung unter den Menschen, vielleicht auf Jahrzehnte hinaus, nicht mehr möglich sein würde.

Daher - lassen Sie mich das zum Schlusse noch aussprechen, obwohl es nicht im engeren Sinne zu meinem Vortrage gehört — denke ich auch, daß heute derjenige, der mit der sozialen Frage irgendwie mit seiner Seele verknüpft ist, nicht nur die Aufgabe hat, die Dinge auszusprechen, sondern alle Mittel anzuwenden, um sie zum Verständnis der Mitwelt zu bringen. Denn das ist ja das, was wir als erstes tun können: gegenseitiges soziales Verständnis hervorrufen, Vieles ist verdorben worden, verdorben worden auf den verschiedensten Gebieten der Welt dadurch, daß ein kurzmaschiges Denken, wie ich es hier neulich charakterisiert habe, hinausgerufen worden ist in die Welt, daß nicht zur rechten Zeit an das Rechte gedacht worden ist. Deshalb muß ich es mit einer gewissen Befriedigung begrüßen, daß es möglich geworden ist, immerhin aus den schwierigen Verhältnissen der Gegenwart heraus möglich geworden ist, auch mit Bezug auf praktische Auswirkung der hier vorgetragenen Ideen, in verhältnismäßig kurzer Zeit einiges zu erreichen. Solche Persönlichkeiten, bei denen in gewisser Weise, wenn ich so sagen darf, Feuer gefangen hat das, was hier als Wirklichkeitsansicht von der sozialen Frage entwickelt worden ist, sie haben sich darauf eingelassen, dahin zu wirken, daß wenigstens auf diesem Gebiete, auf dem heute das Unglück der große Lehrer sein kann, ein Verständnis für diese Dinge eintrete. Allerdings möchte ich es als ein besonderes Glück bezeichnen, wenn hier auf schweizerischem Gebiete, wo verhältnismäßig noch Gelegenheit zu ruhiger Objektivität ist, gerade wegen der Möglichkeit dieser ruhigen Objektivität auch tieferes Verständnis eintreten könnte, dahingehend, daß man die Notwendigkeit einsieht, daß zum gegenseitigen sozialen Verständnis der Menschheit in dem in diesen vier Vorträgen angedeuteten Sinne etwas getan werden soll. Immerhin, unter den Schmerzen und in die Schmerzen hinein, die man über den Verlauf so mancher Ereignisse und über das Schicksal so mancher Glieder der Menschheit heute haben kann, kann es mit einer gewissen Befriedigung erfüllen, daß das Unglück manche Menschen doch etwas gelehrt hat. So konnte es geschehen - gestatten Sie, daß ich das anführe, weil es immerhin doch bedeutsam sein kann, wenn man nicht bloß abstrakt, sondern konkret über die soziale Frage handeln will-, daß ein Aufruf, dem ich einverleibt habe das, was ich hier ausführlich vertreten habe, in kurzen Sätzen, daß ein Aufruf, der eigentlich bestimmt ist zur Wirkung in alle Welt, doch bis jetzt Eingang gefunden hat in die Herzen derjenigen, die in Deutschland und Deutsch-Österreich schwer geprüft sind durch das Unglück und durch das Unglück einigermaßen belehrt sind. Ich habe in diesem Aufruf gerade auseinanderzusetzen versucht, wie das Deutsche Reich, als es gegründet worden ist, mit seiner Gründung in diejenige Zeit hineinfiel, wo die Entwickelungsmöglichkeiten der neueren Menschheit von einer solchen Neugründung im eminentesten Sinne ein Hingehen zu neuen sozialen Aufgaben verlangt hätten. Kleinen Dingen hat man sich sogar in umfassender Weise hingegeben; allein gerade das, was diesem Reiche obgelegen hätte, seinem Rahmen einen entsprechenden Inhalt zu geben aus den Entwickelungskräften der modernen Menschheit heraus, die nun einmal nach dieser Dreigliederung hingehen, das hat man nicht sehen können. Und davon ist es gekommen, daß sich die übrige Welt so zu diesem Mitteleuropa stellte. Wie konnte die übrige Welt verstehen die Berechtigung dieser besonderen Reichsgründung, wenn nicht aus dieser Reichsgründung etwas hervorging, was unwiderstehlich sein Recht innerhalb des internationalen Menschheitsprozesses darwies!

Deshalb habe ich geglaubt, als ein rechtes, wenn ich jetzt sagen darf, Programm - aber Sie wissen aus dem Vorangegangenen: es ist kein Programm, es ist eine Wirklichkeit -, deshalb habe ich geglaubt, formulieren zu dürfen in einem Aufruf an die Menschheit eine Aufgabe, die nunmehr erwachsen könnte der europäischen Menschheit, die ja vor der Notwendigkeit eines Neuaufbaues steht. Und immerhin konnte man mit Befriedigung erleben, daß bis gestern Mittag dieser Aufruf schon mehr Unterschriften in Deutschland gefunden hat, als der einstige Aufruf der neunundneunzig Intellektuellen unglückseligen Angedenkens, daß über hundert Unterschriften für diesen Aufruf aus Deutschland und bis gestern Mittag über siebzig Unterschriften aus Deutsch-Österreich für diesen Aufruf vorhanden sind. Ich erwähne das, weil ich aus der Realität heraus reden möchte und dadurch aufmerksam darauf machen möchte, daß} ich nun mit dem, was ich glaube, daß notwendig ist im sozialen Fortentwickelungsprozeß, doch nicht mehr ganz allein dastehe, auch wenn es darauf ankommt, dies geltend zu machen für das gegenseitige soziale Verhältnis der Menschen untereinander.

Und so wird weiter gewirkt werden müssen zunächst auf dem Wege einer wirklichen sozialen Aufklärung. Denn die ist das nächste. Die Menschheit steht einmal heute in bezug auf einen großen Teil der zivilisierten Welt vor der Notwendigkeit, dem sozialen Problem sich Auge in Auge gegenüberzustellen. Sie wird dabei ein Problem lösen müssen — lassen Sie mich das zum Schlusse aussprechen -, das ihr im höchsten Grade den Denkgewohnheiten gegenüber unbequem ist. Viele Menschen wollen noch zugeben, daß man eine Umwandelung der Einrichtungen, eine Umwandelung auch der sozialen Struktur notwendig habe. Hat aber nicht der ganze Geist der Vorträge, von dem ich mir erlaubte hier zu sprechen, hat nicht dieser ganze Geist nachgewiesen, daß noch ein anderes notwendig ist? Wenn marxistisch gebildete proletarische Führer immer wieder und wiederum betonen, daß das marxistische Wort wahr ist: Die Philosophen haben die Welt interpretiert, erklärt; es handelt sich aber darum, die Welt nach Gedanken nicht nur zu erklären, sondern umzugestalten -, so ist das trotzdem den heutigen einschneidenden Zeitforderungen gegenüber nicht nur eine Halbheit, vielleicht nicht einmal eine Viertelheit. Das, was notwendig ist, das ist, daß man nicht nur die Gedanken anwenden soll auf irgendwelche Umwandelung von Einrichtungen, von sozialen Strukturen, sondern daß es sogar notwendig ist, die Gedanken selber umzuwandeln. Nur aus neuen, nur aus umgewandelten Gedanken wird ein gesunder sozialer Organismus sich entwickeln können. Einrichtungen, das lassen sich die Menschen noch leicht gefallen; umzudenken, das lassen sie sich weniger gefallen. Das aber ist notwendig. Und ehe man das nicht einsehen wird, wird man nicht sich orientieren und nicht mitwirken können an der Gesundung des sozialen Organismus.

Lange Zeit hat gepocht an das Tor der wichtigsten menschlichen Erwägungen und Entschlüsse die soziale Frage. Jetzt ist sie eingedrungen in das Haus der Menschheit. Sie kann nicht wieder hinausgeworfen werden, denn sie ist in gewisser Beziehung der Menschheitsentwickelung gegenüber eine Zauberin. Sie wirkt nicht nur auf das Äußere des Menschheitsgefüges, sie wirkt so, daß die Menschen vor der Notwendigkeit stehen, entweder umzudenken oder zu dem schon vorhandenen Unglück ein immer vermehrteres Unglück zu fügen.

Damit deutet man an, was notwendig ist, was notwendig realisiert werden muß, wenn es nicht zu spät werden soll in der Beziehung, daß die Instinkte, wie ich schon sagte, Formen annehmen, so daß eine Verständigung zwischen den verschiedenen Menschenklassen nicht mehr möglich sein werde. Nur dann gehen wir der Gesundung des sozialen Organismus entgegen, wenn wir das Neue, das wir erwarten, wenn wir das Gesundende, das wir erhoffen, nicht begründen wollen auf die alten Gedanken, sondern wenn wir uns kühn und kraftvoll entschließen, zur Fortentwickelung der Menschheit unsere Kraft zu wenden an neue Gedanken; denn aus neuen Gedanken wird allein erblühen die Lebensmöglichkeit von neuen Generationen. So wird man denken müssen, daß die soziale Frage heraufgekommen ist, daß sie entwachsen ist den Bedingungen des modernen Lebens. Aber man wird falsch denken, wenn man glauben wird, man könne sie irgendwie momentan lösen. Der Sozialismus ist nicht etwas, was eine Lösung oder ein Lösungsversuch ist, nein, das moderne Leben und das Leben der Menschheit in die Zukunft hinein hat die soziale Frage heraufgebracht. Sie wird immer da sein. Im lebenden sozialen Organismus wird sie immer gelöst werden müssen. Darin wird ein Teil, ein Stück des Lebens der zukünftigen Menschheit bestehen müssen, daß in jeder Generation aufs neue diese Frage gelöst werden muß, aus neuen Formen gelöst werden muß, diese Frage, die einmal heraufgezogen ist, mahnend und erschütternd das ganze Gefüge des menschlichen Denkens und Wollens, die soziale Frage. Wenden wir uns ihr zu mit unserem ganzen Herzen, mit unserer ganzen Seele, sonst wird sie sich uns zuwenden, dann aber allerdings nicht zu unserem Heil, sondern zu unserem Unheil.

Fourth Lecture

The Development of Social Thinking and Willing, and the Situation of Humanity Today

Perhaps the lectures I have been privileged to give here over the course of last week and this week have demonstrated, from a certain point of view, that it is justified to say: The situation of humanity today is deeply influenced by the development that social thinking and willing have undergone in recent times up to the present. Perhaps more than many people realize today, the social impulse is intervening in the immediate life of the individual; but it will intervene more and more. It will become decisive for the forces of the most individual behavior. And it will be difficult to understand how we are now involved in the social life of humanity, which is permeated and pulsated by social impulses, unless we consider how social thinking and willing of different strata of humanity have actually arisen from two sources in the course of modern human life. For the survival of these origins into the present day actually has the effect in this area of shaping social life today.

In one of the lectures, I pointed out that it is not enough to understand such a thing simply by looking at historical life in a linear way, according to the course of cause and effect, as we have become accustomed to doing, so that we always refer to what came before in relation to what follows. I have tried to point out that the historical life of humanity, in its essence or basis, is similar to the life of the individual human being in terms of certain crises in its course, or rather, the existence of crises in its course. In the life of the individual human being, there is also no linear development, so that what follows is always the effect of what has gone before without a leap. In order to refute the convenient, often misunderstood idea that nature does not make leaps, one must repeatedly point out how crises occur in the linear progression of individual life, how the crisis of the sixth seventh year with the change of teeth, how the crisis occurs that seems to well up from the elementary foundations of the organic in sexual life. And those who are knowledgeable about the course of human life will also see such crisis-like upheavals in later stages of life, even if they do not appear as decisively as the first two when viewed superficially.

It is necessary to observe such crisis-like upheavals in the historical life of humanity in order to truly understand this historical life. As much as today's humanity is still reluctant to look and listen to such things, it is precisely in the present, when social understanding of life is required, that it is necessary to point out such things in a radically strong manner. One of the last great upheavals in the course of human development, as I have explained in previous lectures, occurred around the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries. And it is only because we do not observe the historical course of events deeply enough that we do not know how radically different everything that goes on in the human soul, everything that prevails in the human soul as a demand, as a longing for certain satisfactions, has changed compared to what existed before that time.

Now, at the same time as this fundamental change in recent human development, something else is happening that could be described as follows: what used to live in the human soul as social impulses, which then led to the social structure of human society, was lived out more instinctively before this period. People lived together socially and organized their affairs socially out of certain instincts. Around the time indicated, conscious grasping of social impulses takes the place of instinctive social thinking and willing. This occurs slowly and gradually, but the situation in which modern humanity finds itself as a result differs radically from that of medieval and ancient humanity. However, we then immediately see how, with the emergence of social impulses from instinctive to conscious life, two currents, two initial currents of social thinking and willing, clearly emerge.

One emerges among those people who, to this day, can be called the leading, guiding social class of humanity. The other current emerges somewhat later, but clearly distinct from the other, in what we today call the proletarian world. As modern times dawn, the leading intellectual bourgeois circles, with all their interests in life, are connected with what has gradually emerged as the newer state structures from the forms of medieval human coexistence. These leading bourgeois circles are connected through their interests to what we can describe, among the three elements I have mentioned for the social organism, as the actual constitutional state, as the actual political entity which, either instinctively or consciously, aims at order in everything that relates to the relationship between people. More or less in line with the traditions of the past and, to a certain extent, with the newer economic conditions, the leading bourgeois circles link their interests with what many people still consider to be the only social structure today, namely the state. And in consciously transitioning from the old instinctive social life to the modern conscious one, they initially think in terms of the state in the sense of the constitutional state. And these leading circles are attempting to integrate modern economic life, which is becoming increasingly complex, particularly due to the expansion of human activity across the entire world, into the state structure. In a sense, they want to make the state more and more of an economic manager. This endeavor is making some progress, and we see that within certain circles, individual branches of the economy are increasingly being incorporated into the state structure. I referred to such economic sectors last time. What is essential from this point of view is that social thinking in these circles takes on a very specific form in that they want to conquer the emerging complex economic life for the state in which they are interested.

The social impulse develops quite differently within the proletariat. In the development of modern times, this modern proletariat is not engaged in the same way with its interests within the actual state territory. It stands in a certain relationship, which I cannot elaborate on here due to lack of time—the matter is easy to understand—apart from what the bourgeois leading circles represent as their interests within the state structure. But it is precisely this proletariat that is driven in the most radical way into the shaping of economic life. Its entire thinking and willing proceeds in such a way that it is like a reflection of what is going on in economic life. And so the social impulses of the proletariat are determined just as much by the social structures of the economy of humanity, of economic life, as the social impulses of the bourgeois ruling classes and also of the intellectual circles are determined by the impulses of the constitutional state, by the impulses of the actual political structure. And both currents are developing more and more in such a way that what I pointed out in the introduction to yesterday's lecture is becoming apparent, namely that there is a gulf, an abyss, between the particular configuration of social thinking and feeling of the leading bourgeois and proletarian circles. For, I said, the most tragic aspect of recent developments in the current configuration of humanity's situation is that this abyss exists, that it is so difficult to find understanding, mutual understanding, between the two characterized strata of the population. So what we now see coming had to happen: that the two strata of the population face each other as if prepared for a struggle for life. And the essential thing in this struggle, which is already partly being played out, but partly still only in preparation, and which, as can be understood, even today only superficially affects social life, but will take on gigantic forms, the essential point is that, on the one hand, the bourgeois ruling circles want to conquer economic life more and more for the state, and in a peculiar way want to conquer for the state, along with this economic life, the labor and labor power of the proletariat itself, and that, on the other hand, the proletariat wants to conquer the state for what it experiences as its own interests in separate economic life.

This is essentially the basic principle of the struggle that plays such a significant role in the life situation of contemporary humanity. And above all that which is openly going on in consciousness, one has forgotten, left out of attention, I would say, pushed down into the subconscious of the human soul, what is actually hidden behind these two impulses that I have mentioned. What has been striving to rise to the surface of human life since the crisis-ridden upheaval in the 15th century in the development of modern humanity only now reveals what stirs and drives and pulsates in human life, while the other often plays out masked in consciousness: the striving for the full assertion of the human personality, as was unknown in earlier times. The assertion of the human personality, the feeling of human nature within oneself, is actually the fundamental nerve of the social question, and it only takes on the given forms according to these different living conditions, which are precisely determined by what has been stated. And so it came to pass that a struggle which is basically a struggle for the attainment of full human dignity for all people has itself become a struggle between different interests, a class struggle, a struggle which is throwing its forces into the present in such a disastrous way.

The fact that something is hidden and masked in this recent development of humanity has meant that people have not focused their attention, or rather, that they have not yet learned to focus their attention on what is important. During the period in which social impulses acted instinctively, the social organism was also allowed to develop instinctively. Now that social impulses have entered human consciousness, albeit in a masked form, it is necessary, and indeed the most important thing in relation to the social problem of modern times, that social understanding, understanding for the formation of the social organism, should enter into every individual human soul, even if this understanding need not be scholarly, but rather one that lives in feeling, in feeling and lives itself out in what the individual human being feels as this or that necessity to place himself within human society. That is why it is so necessary today to do what I have tried to do in these lectures: to turn our gaze to that toward which everything in the striving of modern humanity tends, but which can only come to the surface today due to the special circumstances; to turn our gaze to the fact that the social organism must truly become a living entity, an entity that is understood in its living conditions, understood in a living way, not theoretically. That is why I pointed out that the health of the social organism depends on not chaotically mixing up the three members of the social organism: spiritual life in the broadest sense, legal or political life, i.e., state life in the narrower sense, 'and economic life. Only in this way will the forces at work in the three members undergo their necessary development and liberation, so that these three structures are not absorbed by one another, but develop freely alongside one another and, precisely in a certain independence, as I have already explained from various points of view, interact and cooperate with one another. Until now, the actual tendency of human development has been directed against this independence, based on certain assumptions. Differentiating what has become confused is now the most necessary question of life with regard to the social nature of contemporary humanity.

Certain aspects of human thought and feeling have always sensed what I mean here, precisely in the light of the awareness of social impulses, as people began to think in one way or another about the conditions of state life and economic life, depending on their intellectual prerequisites. We see so-called social or national economic ways of thinking, habits of thought, developing – whatever you want to call them, it doesn't matter. It cannot be my task here to describe the development of social thinking in modern times. I would just like to draw attention to one thing, which, I would say, strongly illuminates many things that are particularly important here in these lectures.

Among the various ways of thinking and imagining the interconnection between the economic, political, and spiritual life of humanity, one that emerged in modern times was what was known in the 18th century as physiocratic economic thinking. This physiocratic thinking developed as a necessary contrast to an earlier way of thinking that sought to organize economic life more within the state organism. Thus, it developed that people wanted to move away from tyrannizing economic life through the legal life of the state, through the political life of the state structure in the narrower sense, and instead wanted to leave economic life to its own natural laws, to the impulses to which it succumbs when people simply initiate the game of economic life freely out of their own interests. Some proponents of this system spoke very illuminating words on this subject, which can be paraphrased as follows. People said: Why should a system of laws be developed within the political structure of the state to regulate economic life? Either these laws will be the same as those that economic life gives itself when it is left to the free play of forces, or they will be different and opposed to it. In the former case, if they are the same, then they are unnecessary, then they are not needed, then economic life gives itself its own laws, then there is no need to first harness economic life to special state laws. But if state laws work against economic life, then they inhibit it, then they impair it, then they are harmful to it.

I would like to say that what is expressed in these two contradictory statements still haunts many minds today. It haunts many minds because modern humanity, as much as it believes itself to be practical and to have a sense of reality, is nevertheless terribly infected by a certain sense of abstract, theoretical one-sidedness. And if one were to examine how much of what appears to many people today as practical life is nothing more than realized one-sidedness, realized one-sided theory, then one would encounter many a mystery of life and be able to bring about a partial solution to it. What sounds more plausible, what sounds more obvious than when I say: Either the laws of the state run in the same direction as the laws of economics, in which case they are unnecessary, or they contradict them, in which case they must harm economic life. But one only thinks in these opposites if one views the social organism as something that can be regulated by concepts, by laws, by principles, by programs, if one cannot rise to the view that the social organism is something that must have life within itself, that must live through its own essence. But that which flourishes and sprouts through its own life content, through its own life impulses, has opposites within itself in real life. And the social organism, if it is to be a real one, must have opposites within itself.

Therefore, what may seem absurd to many theoretically minded souls of the present day is actually correct: state life, purely legal and purely political life, must in a certain way restrict and counteract economic life in its laws, so that the total life of humanity, which is not merely economic, not merely legal, but economic, legal, and spiritual, can unfold, just as in the individual human organism — I use the comparison again, pointing out that I do not wish to play with analogies from physiology and sociology — the digestive system functions in a certain way relatively independently, alongside the rhythmic system, the respiratory and cardiac systems, and both are restricted and mutually limited in their processes within the living organism. Thus, it is necessary that economic life on the one hand and political state life in the narrower sense on the other be juxtaposed in the real social organism, and that spiritual life must join them with relative independence, as I showed last time from a different point of view.

For what matters is based on the following: economic life has completely different internal forces than legal life, with which it must interact so that the overall life of humanity can flourish, and again different ones than spiritual life. If one wanted to express something more or less concrete and living in abstract forms, which, however, perhaps from one side, even if one-sided, make things understandable, one could say the following: In economic life, as it exists in the production, circulation, and consumption of goods, everything depends on the creation of value that corresponds to life. And this value formation essentially takes place in such a way that, if the social organism is to be healthy, value must be formed under the influence of the impulse that the consumption of what the economic organism claims for itself — call it the market or something else — and keeps ready for consumption, that the consumption of the commodity is as expedient and advantageous as possible. If the social organism is healthy, a commodity must be offered for consumption in such a way that it can be consumed in the most appropriate manner, that it lasts as long as is appropriate, or can be consumed as quickly as is appropriate, but in any case that its entire content is geared towards consumption.

If human labor were fully integrated into economic life—and this economic life can only develop healthily from the point of view of commodity pricing according to corresponding consumption— then the Marxist view of the proletariat would be fulfilled, namely that human labor power itself is a commodity, and thus this labor power, as a commodity in the social organism, would have to obtain its value by being fully consumed in the most expedient manner. On closer inspection, the economic limb of the social organism also has a tendency to consume human beings, and if the economic limb of the social organism were to follow only its own laws, human labor power would be consumed within this limb. By ignoring this, the bourgeois ruling circles have contributed to the emergence of the nerve center of the modern social question within economic life and the position of the proletariat in economic life, which shows its vitality in the fact that the modern proletarian in particular claims the right to strip his labor power of its commodity character. As many other aspects of the social question are masked and much of it lives in the subconscious of the modern proletarian, it is an essential factor that the proletarian soul strives for the liberation of human labor from the character of a commodity.

But this can never happen if the economic process proceeds according to its own laws and if the entire life of the state is turned into a single economy, as is the ideal of many modern socialists. Nor can it happen if one wants to make the state an economist in a one-sided manner. A healthy relationship can only be achieved if the economic organism is allowed to develop its relative effectiveness within itself, if, as happens in natural organic life, a system is allowed to develop in relative independence, so to speak, in order to fully develop its inherent powers, and then what results is limited and improved by a neighboring, relatively independent system, just as in the natural organism a system develops fully, also expresses its damage, but this damage is continuously paralyzed by the neighboring system. All organic effectiveness is based on this. The recovery of the social organism must also be based on this.

It really does not matter to me how one defines the economic organism or the state organism, or how one thinks about them, but what matters to me is that these two elements must exist side by side, and that one must develop relatively independently, even developing the predisposition for its damage from within itself, so that the other system must develop alongside it and paralyze what would otherwise result in damage to the other system. That is the essence of life; that must also be the essence of the living social organism. Only when the economic body administers itself, administers itself on the basis of its own conditions, and the legal and political body administers itself, again on the basis of its own conditions, which arise from the regulation of legal relationships between people, and when each of these organisms regulates itself independently, interacting with each other and influencing each other, can a healthy social life emerge. The social question cannot be solved by theory, cannot be solved by laws, but can only be solved by allowing one type of force, the economic force, to act alongside the other, the state, the political force, in immediate, independent existence, allowing the two to develop alongside and within each other, but in such a way that each remains independent.

This is what has been neglected out of a certain historical necessity. For what has happened is, of course, necessary. This is not meant to be a criticism, but rather a description of the circumstances. However, this is what must become a necessity in human progress for life in the present and the near future. It will turn out that, for the sake of the recovery of the social organism, economic life will become associative, that it will be structured in such a way that the predisposed cooperatives, trade unions, and so on will develop in such a way that they will shed what they have still taken on from the prejudice that everything must be formed according to the model of the old constitutional state. Whatever remains of state life in these associations serving economic life must be discarded. They must become bodies that serve purely economic life, bodies that are based on the relationship that people must have within economic life, whether it be to the natural basis of economic life, to the necessity of utilizing raw materials in this or that way, of bringing goods into circulation, of bringing the consumption ratio into the right relationship to production and trade, and so on. The complexity of human life today makes it necessary for a whole system of associations and coalitions to form among people, associations and coalitions that are essentially based on an understanding of how to utilize the natural basis of economic life and how to direct goods toward appropriate consumption. It is precisely this complexity that requires the formation of a whole system of associations in this area. But these associations will be shaped by the connection between humans and the economic forces themselves. It will turn out that what happens again and again in real life is that economic life tends to consume humans.

Economic life must be accompanied by political life, which, in contrast to economic life, which must be based on associations, must be based more on democracy, because state life encompasses the relationship between people. It encompasses everything in which all people have an equal interest. Just as economic life is based on the economic value of goods, so public life must be based essentially on public law, which is founded in the law or which establishes the law that determines the relationship between people. And in a lively interaction, what develops out of economic life will have to be limited and restricted. Approaches to this already exist, but a thoroughgoing social understanding must take hold. What will have to develop is, above all, something that protects people from being consumed by economic life, which is oriented toward consumption, in relation to their own labor.

Just as price formation and value formation are essential within the economic sphere, so too is the formulation of concrete law, concrete public law, which regulates the life of people alongside other people, essential in the life of the political state. With regard to the perception that exists towards public law, can one not still say today that it has not achieved any particular clarity? One can ask those who should know about the matter, who should have thought and researched it a great deal, one can ask them a great deal about what is actually meant by the essence of law, of law that always appears in concrete forms. One only begins to grasp the difficulties involved when, for example, one engages with a question such as the one that my late friend Ludwig Laistner based his doctoral dissertation on, “the right to punish.” This in itself can become a question of what, in concrete terms, constitutes the right of human society to punish.

One can try many things to get closer to the impulse of law. Especially in our time, when so much is said about law from so many different sides, it is obvious to want to approach again and again what the essence of law actually is. If one tries to get to the bottom of what such a concrete right is based on—even the right of ownership is based on a right; the relationship of ownership is based on the right to use a piece of land or anything else exclusively for oneself, for one's own activities, with the exclusion of others—which is the subject of the actual political limb of the social body—some find that it ultimately boils down to nothing other than power. Others find that it goes back to a primal human feeling. When one wants to get to the bottom of the matter, it is all too easy to resort to empty forms. Without going into a full explanation, which would take hours, I would like to say that the right establishes a certain relationship between a person and something, a thing or a process or the like, or a sum of processes, to the exclusion of other people. What is it, then, that enables us to develop the feeling, the sense, that a particular person or a particular people has a right to what we have in mind? And no matter how hard one tries, one can come up with nothing other than to say: in public life, the legal claim is based on the assumption that the person who is allowed to devote his activities to a thing or a process or a series of processes is more likely to do so in the interests of humanity in general than anyone else. The moment one has the feeling that someone's relationship to a cause or to something else expresses the benefit to humanity in general more than if someone else were to use this cause or enter into this relationship, then one can grant the person concerned the right to this cause. This will essentially be what tips the balance in the perception of humanity when the major legal issues of international life now come into existence, into real existence. The right to a certain territory will be fully granted to those who are likely to administer that territory in the most fruitful and secure manner for the good of humanity as a whole.

This brings us to what can permeate and flood a democratic state system: the impulses that must guide life from person to person, whether in workers' insurance or in other types of insurance that exist to protect against the damage caused by economic life. In all of this, life must be the foundation of the law that I have just spoken about. And an understanding, but not an understanding of some general abstract definition of law, but an understanding of the effectiveness of law in individual concrete cases, that is what must be achieved for the sake of a healthy social life for humanity. This legal life, this life of the political state in the narrower sense, the second link in a healthy social organism, will also be what will eliminate the actual crux, I would say, of the modern social question, not through any realization of theoretical views and principles and programs, but through immediate life, namely the point I described earlier as the demand of the modern proletariat: to strip human labor of its commodity character.

To this end, however, it is necessary to understand, I would say, to understand from the ground up, what is important in the share that human labor has in general human life, in the structure of human society. Again, it would take hours if I wanted to justify a basic social law of human labor here in detail; Intuitively, I believe, and instinctively, anyone who has even a moderate understanding of life can comprehend what I am about to say. At the beginning of the century, I attempted to draw attention to this fundamental social law in an essay on the social question that appeared in my magazine LuziferGnosis. But at that time, and unfortunately still today, many things in this area were preached to deaf ears. This law consists in the fact that no one, insofar as he belongs to the social body, the social organism, actually works for himself. Mind you, insofar as man belongs to the social organism, he does not work for himself. Any work that a person does can never fall back on him, not even in its actual yield, but can only be done for other people. And what other people do must benefit us ourselves. It is not merely an ethically demanded altruism that lives in these things, but simply a social law. We cannot do otherwise, just as we cannot make our blood flow differently, than to act in the circulation of human activity in such a way that our activity benefits all others, and all other activity benefits us, so that our own activity never falls back on ourselves.

As paradoxical as it may sound, if you examine the actual circulation process of human labor in the social organism, you will find that it emanates from human beings, benefits others, and that what some people gain from labor is the result of the labor of others. As I said, as paradoxical as it sounds, it is true. One can no more live from one's own labor in the social organism than one can eat oneself in order to feed oneself.

Although the law is basically very easy to understand, you may object: But if I am a tailor and, among the clothes I make for others, I also make a suit for myself, then I have applied my labor to myself! — That is only an illusion, as it is always an illusion when I believe that the result of my own work falls back on me. By making myself a skirt, pants, or the like, I am not really working for myself, but rather putting myself in a position to continue working for others. That is the function of human labor as a purely social law within the social organism. Anyone who violates this law works against the social organism. Therefore, one works against the social organism if one continues to implement what has emerged in recent historical life, namely, allowing the proletarian worker to live off the proceeds of his labor. For that is not truth; it is a falsehood realized and concealed by social circumstances, which intrudes destructively into economic life. But this is what can only be regulated in economic life if this economic life develops independently and, alongside it, the political, the narrower life of the state develops relatively independently, which constantly deprives economic life of the possibility of directing human labor toward itself. Within the legal system, this is achieved through a correct social understanding that human labor should be given the function it must have in accordance with the true course of life in the social organism. The economic organism in itself always has a tendency to consume human labor. Legal life must always assign labor its natural altruistic position, and it is always necessary anew to wrest from economic life, through new concrete democratic legislation, what economic life wants to realize in untruth, and to wrest human labor anew from the clutches of economic life by means of public law. Just as the digestive system must work together with the respiratory and circulatory systems, absorbing from the circulating blood what is incorporated into the digestive system, so too must what goes on in economic life and what goes on in legal life work together and interact with each other, otherwise neither will flourish. The mere constitutional state, if it wants to become an economist, paralyzes economic life; the economic organism, if it wants to conquer the state, kills the system, the life of public law.

This is what I would like to add to what I said in my previous lectures to justify the threefold structure of the social organism. Because the bourgeois ruling circles had, as it were, fixed their gaze hypnotically on the state, the state became something of an idol to them. Attention was not directed to the necessary differentiation of the social organism into three members. And so it came about that in recent times, spiritual life was also absorbed by the state, by political life in the narrower sense. Just as the circulation of goods in economic life is based on the formation of prices and values, just as life within the political social organism is based on legal life, so all intellectual life is based on the immediate content of what is produced. And just consider what an enormous difference there is between economic life and intellectual life. In economic life, everything depends on goods being driven to the most expedient consumption. Intellectual production, whether in the field of education, schooling, art, or any other intellectual field, is completely absurd to relate to the concept of consumption. It cannot be done. One cannot place intellectual production on the same level as that which circulates in the economic process. This is what has also caused the absorption of, for example, the school system by the state, the university system by the state, and the like, to become an inhibiting factor in modern development, even now in a real sense. And this is what humanity must be made aware of, that this spiritual life must be liberated, unleashed again. And I have already pointed out that this spiritual member of the social organism must now also include what may still seem paradoxical to some today, namely the actual practice of private and criminal judgment. Strange as it may sound, there is already a tendency in modern life that is simply not being judged in the right way. What has been increasingly claimed by a misguided psychology for the administration of justice is what tends toward a principle that has not yet been recognized, but necessarily recognizable principle of incorporating private and criminal law into the spiritual sphere, which in turn stands with relative independence, also with relative independence from all of life that develops as narrower political life, that develops as the life of public law and legislation. Certainly, in the future, in a healthy social organism, the criminal, for example, will have to be sought from what emerges in the second member, the political member. But once he is sought, he will be judged by the judge, whom he faces in an individual human relationship.

This question can only be judged by someone who, like me, who is speaking to you now, has been able to observe for years and years a territory where it was truly difficult to govern uniformly, and where, I would say, there was a compulsion to govern uniformly: a territory such as Austria. There, one could observe what would have happened if there had been free jurisdiction across pure language boundaries; if, despite the language barriers, the Bohemian living in a German area could have chosen the neighboring Czech or Bohemian judge across the border, and the Bohemian resident could in turn have chosen his judge in the German area. We have seen how beneficial this principle has been in the efforts of the various school associations, which unfortunately never got off the ground. There is something in this which, I would say, still weighs heavily on the minds of those who experienced this Austrian life, that this egg of Columbus has not been found: the free choice of judge and the lively interaction between the plaintiff, the judge, and the defendant, instead of the judge from the centralized political state, who can only be authoritative not for the administration of justice, but for the search for and delivery of the criminal or then for the execution of the sentence.

As paradoxical as it still sounds to humanity today, the relationship between the individual and his judge in criminal and civil law must be incorporated into the spiritually independent member. The day before yesterday, I pointed out that the external administration and the election of persons in the spiritual member will not depend on the state. Anyone who can look into modern conditions will also see that the innermost life of science and art and everything spiritual becomes dependent on that from which it must not become dependent if this spiritual member cannot develop in relative independence alongside the other two members. It still seems paradoxical to many today when I say, in summary, that each of these areas must have a certain sovereignty, its own representative system, its own legislation that has grown out of its circumstances, that has grown out of the associative relationships in the economic sphere, i.e., its own administration and legislation. In a democratic way, the actual political state will grow out of the total humanity of a particular social sphere, in which the relationship of human beings to one another, the relationship to the economy, and the relationship to spiritual life are regulated; without, however, the laws of the state interfering in either of these, and from the forces active in spiritual life itself, the structure of the administration of spiritual life will also emerge. To an even greater degree than was the case in ancient times, spiritual life can be emancipated from truly modern life, when the only spiritual life that was considered for many people consisted of religious life, from which the school system and the university system were also formed.

Certainly, the intervention of the modern state was necessary in order to remove from outdated forms of religion and outdated administrations what no longer belonged to them. But independent spiritual life must develop again from modern life itself. This is precisely what a spiritual scientific approach, such as that underlying these social considerations, must claim for itself, because it knows that the entire real productive spiritual life, including that which finds expression, for example, in technical inventions and technical ideas, can only develop with impulses that are truly beneficial to humanity if it develops from the living, independent spiritual realm, independent of the other two members of the social organism. The spirit will only have the right kind of productive force in human beings if this spiritual life is relatively independent. One can speculate, theorize, think things up, and, for my part, also invent, as has been done admirably in modern technology and natural science, particularly in their methods, but the truly productive idea, which is so productive that it serves true human progress and at the same time true human welfare, this idea can only be born within a spiritual life that is self-reliant.

Today, we are still so far removed from what I actually mean here and what must be understood if the social question is to be placed on a healthy foundation that some people have replied to me when I have explained this to them: Yes, but that is only a modern reinterpretation of the old Platonic idea of the tripartite division of society into three estates: the productive, the military, and the scholarly. No, this is not a reinterpretation of this old Platonic idea, but in a certain sense the radical opposite of it, and that is what matters. For between what could be thought of as something great in Greece and even in later times, and what must be thought of today for the salvation and recovery of the social organism, lies the great, crisis-ridden turning point in human history around the 15th century. At that time, in Platonic times, the structure of the social organism was such that people were divided into classes. The structure I am talking about here does not divide people, it divides the social organism; it divides this social organism in such a way that, under certain circumstances, a person can be in all three parts and do the corresponding work, but because the social organism is structured, he is not in a position to exert any harmful influence from one branch to another, not even when, as has often happened in modern parliaments, the same person is a farmer and at the same time a member of a state party. Today, it is still possible for him to inaugurate a representation of interests through some kind of association, for an economic representation of interests to enter into legal life. Last time, I gave an example where an entire state was permeated by such a representation of interests in its legal life. That is ruled out. But what I call threefold in a healthy social organism is the social organism separated from the human being. The human being becomes independent precisely because of this, is stripped of the character of a slave to the social organism precisely because of this, because it is not human classes or strata that stand as members, but because the social organism itself is structured. This indicates at the same time that the thinking underlying this is truly realistic, far removed from everything I described the day before yesterday as swarm mentality.

This swarm mentality occurs in a wide variety of parties. It is just as prevalent in bourgeois circles as it is on the part of social democracy. And this swarm mentality takes hold of people when they repeatedly fail to develop any idea of what the social organism as such can actually strive for when it is healthy. Time and again, social thinking suffers from the influence of the feeling, the idea, that it is possible to strive directly, through some program or other, for a social organism that will bring about the happiness of humanity or the satisfaction of humanity or the like. This cannot be striven for directly. What can be strived for directly is a viable social organism, one that has the living forces of life within it. Placed within such an organism, living in such an organism, human beings can establish their happiness on entirely different foundations. These foundations are entirely different. But these foundations must be freed from their shackles. And they can only be freed if there is a viable organism as a basis. Just as in a truly viable organism the soul can develop and be present in an appropriate way, so in a viable social organism a happy, contented, willing and capable workforce can develop. That is what is important for the recovery of the social organism.

A look at what we have experienced in a catastrophic time can also, I would say, confirm from an international perspective and from a broader historical perspective how what I am presenting here as these three elements is a real necessity for the current way of life of humanity and the way of life of humanity for the near future. One might say that before this terrible catastrophe, which we call war, befell humanity, the culmination of the confusion and disorder of the three elements that must be differentiated had been reached. And precisely because these three elements could not function alongside each other in relative independence, much of what must truly be counted among the starting points and causes of this warlike catastrophe has come to pass. One need only point to a few things. Everyone's attention was focused on how the war had started from the relationship between the Austrian state and the Balkans, particularly Serbia. Anyone who had been familiar with Austrian affairs for decades knew how the economic relations between Austria and southeastern Europe were unnaturally intertwined with the purely political relations that should have developed relatively independently alongside them, and how this amalgamation by the fact that political conditions were now suddenly to decide on something that was deeply rooted in economic conditions, a realized untruth arose and exploded.

How different this situation would have been – I can only hint at this at the end of today's lecture – if the relationship between such neighboring states had been in accordance with the threefold structure, if the relationship across the border had been a purely political one, based on democratic principles and separate from the other elements, as is usually the case with the form of government. But if economic and spiritual factors were to act independently across the border in a corrective and harmonizing way, then something like a harmony of interests and a merging of interests would spread across the system of states, the so-called states, where one corrects the other, where one cannot unilaterally cause an explosion. Healthy conditions across borders would arise through this tripartite division in international relations between nations.

And again, how did the international community view Germany, which, at least outwardly, took the lead in declaring war? Those who are knowledgeable in this area know how the misfortune came about. It has often been said that in July and August, during those fateful days, politics failed alongside the actual warfare and the military. But politics and the military are, where both are at work, parallel entities. They cannot be easily separated. They can only develop in a healthy way if they operate within the one, the state structure in a tripartite social organism. Otherwise, politics will necessarily have to take on a uniform character, at least in one branch. At a certain point in time, it will culminate either in the military or in the non-military sphere. For what is by its nature, even if it is intertwined with other systems through human error, something uniform, cannot manifest itself externally, with one correcting the other. In that terrible state of fear from which arose in Berlin what arose in the last days of July and the first days of August, the crowding together into a single system of what should have been distributed had an effect. It was forced together under the responsibility of a single system, which a single system must never bear for the good of humanity. The concrete circumstances will teach this, once these things are examined without prejudice and with an open mind. Oh, how much nonsense has been said, especially with regard to politics and military administration! So much nonsense has been said in the last four and a half years! I will just explain one thing: because politics and strategy can only function as an inseparable part of the social organism, politics can never influence strategy in a healthy way if strategy is caused to look only at itself. People have said, repeatedly invoking a Clausewitzian phrase, that warfare is the continuation of politics by other means. I do not wish to criticize this statement insofar as it relates to the context of the entire war. But the way in which the gentlemen—and ladies, too—have repeatedly applied this statement, it makes about as much sense as saying: Divorce is the continuation of marriage by other means.

A great deal of nonsense of this kind has been produced by unnatural thinking, which in turn has intervened unnaturally in real circumstances. Once you look at things impartially, you will see how everything would have turned out differently. Of course, what has happened is historically necessary, and what is to be said should be taken as an impulse for the future, but hypothetically one can still say how everything would have turned out differently if the structure of European international relations had been built up under the influence of social threefolding. One might say that what has come about has come about through alliances. But these alliances could never have come about under the influence of social threefolding. The end of alliances such as those that led to the misfortune of the last four and a half years will come when people orient themselves in the sense of the threefolding of a healthy social organism.

What I am discussing here is meant in a very real sense; it is based on reality. That is why I always said, when I tried during those terrible years to point out the threefold social order in an authoritative manner appropriate to the times: What is real changes from day to day, and it could be self-evident that when circumstances have changed again, I would have to speak differently about these things. I said to people: What is presented here is not a program, it is not an ideal, it arises from the observation of what will become reality in the next ten, twenty years in Central and Eastern Europe, in Europe as a whole. You have the choice of either applying reason today or facing revolutions and cataclysms.

It has already begun and will manifest itself in other ways. But today I would like to repeat what I have said on other occasions. I have always said: anyone who is a utopian, a theorist, who does not think in terms of reality but in terms of certain abstract demands or party impulses, has an interest in ensuring that what he presents as a program or the like is actually implemented in the way he specifies in detail. In the case of the things I have to represent, that is not important to me – that is what I said at the time. It could be, I said, and I still say today, that nothing will remain of the formulation of what I represent. For what matters is not that some imagined things be realized, but that reality be tackled at a certain point. Then, by tackling it, we will find out how to proceed. It may turn out in further discussions that all formulations will have to be changed. If one is not a utopian, not an idealist, it does not matter that things are carried out literally, but that a real start is made at some point. And I wanted to point out such a place where we must begin, and I still want to point it out today, before it is too late, before human instincts are unleashed to such an extent that understanding among people would no longer be possible, perhaps for decades to come.

Therefore—let me say this in conclusion, although it is not strictly part of my lecture—I also think that today, anyone who is somehow connected to the social question with their soul has not only the task of speaking out, but also of using all means to bring it to the understanding of their fellow human beings. For that is the first thing we can do: foster mutual social understanding. Much has been corrupted, corrupted in various areas of the world, because a narrow-minded way of thinking, as I characterized it here recently, has been propagated throughout the world, because the right things were not thought of at the right time. That is why I must welcome with a certain satisfaction the fact that it has become possible, despite the difficult circumstances of the present, to achieve something in a relatively short time, also with regard to the practical effects of the ideas presented here. Those personalities who, in a certain sense, if I may say so, have caught fire with what has been developed here as a realistic view of the social question, have committed themselves to working toward a understanding of these things, at least in this area, where misfortune can be the great teacher today. However, I would consider it particularly fortunate if here in Switzerland, where there is still relatively ample opportunity for calm objectivity, precisely because of the possibility of this calm objectivity, a deeper understanding could emerge, to the effect that people recognize the necessity of doing something to promote mutual social understanding among humanity in the sense indicated in these four lectures. After all, amid the pain and suffering that one may feel today about the course of so many events and the fate of so many members of humanity, it can be a source of some satisfaction that misfortune has taught some people something. Thus it could happen—allow me to mention this, because it may be significant after all, if one wants to deal with the social question not merely in the abstract but in concrete terms—that an appeal, into which I have incorporated what I have presented here in detail in short sentences, that an appeal, which is actually intended to have an effect throughout the world, has so far found its way into the hearts of those in Germany and German Austria who have been severely tested by misfortune and have learned something from it. In this appeal, I have attempted to explain how the German Empire, when it was founded, fell into a period in which the development possibilities of modern humanity would have required such a new foundation, in the most eminent sense, to move toward new social tasks. People devoted themselves comprehensively to small things; but they failed to see what this empire should have done, namely, to give its framework a content corresponding to the developmental forces of modern humanity, which are now moving toward this threefold structure. And this is why the rest of the world took this attitude toward Central Europe. How could the rest of the world understand the justification for this particular founding of an empire if nothing emerged from this founding that irresistibly proved its right within the international human process!

That is why I believed, as a right program, if I may say so now—but you know from what has gone before that it is not a program, it is a reality—that is why I believed I could formulate in an appeal to humanity a task that could now become adult for European humanity, which is, after all, faced with the necessity of rebuilding. And after all, it was satisfying to see that by yesterday noon this appeal had already received more signatures in Germany than the former appeal of the ninety-nine intellectuals of ill-fated memory, that there are over a hundred signatures for this appeal from Germany and, as of yesterday noon, over seventy signatures from German Austria for this appeal. I mention this because I want to speak from reality and thereby draw attention to the fact that I am no longer completely alone in what I believe is necessary in the process of social development, even if it is important to assert this for the mutual social relationship between people.

And so we must continue to work, first of all, by means of genuine social education. For that is the next step. Humanity today, in relation to a large part of the civilized world, is faced with the necessity of confronting the social problem head-on. In doing so, it will have to solve a problem—let me say this in conclusion—that is extremely uncomfortable for its habitual ways of thinking. Many people are still willing to admit that a transformation of institutions, a transformation of the social structure, is necessary. But has not the whole spirit of the lectures I have taken the liberty of discussing here, has not this whole spirit proven that something else is also necessary? When Marxist-educated proletarian leaders repeatedly emphasize that the Marxist saying is true: “Philosophers have interpreted the world, but the point is to change it,” this is nevertheless only half a measure, perhaps not even a quarter of a measure, in view of today's drastic demands. What is necessary is not only to apply ideas to some kind of transformation of institutions and social structures, but also to transform the ideas themselves. Only from new, transformed ideas can a healthy social organism develop. People are still willing to put up with institutions; they are less willing to put up with rethinking. But this is necessary. And until this is understood, it will not be possible to orient oneself and participate in the healing of the social organism.

For a long time, the social question has been knocking at the door of the most important human considerations and decisions. Now it has penetrated the house of humanity. It cannot be thrown out again, for in a certain sense it is a sorceress in relation to human development. It affects not only the exterior of the human structure, but also forces people to face the necessity of either rethinking their attitudes or adding ever-increasing misfortune to the misfortune that already exists.

This indicates what is necessary, what must be realized if it is not to be too late in the sense that, as I have already said, instincts take on forms that make understanding between different classes of people no longer possible. We can only move toward the healing of the social organism if we do not want to base the new things we expect, the healing we hope for, on old ideas, but if we boldly and powerfully decide to turn our energy toward new ideas for the further development of humanity; for it is only from new ideas that the possibility of life for new generations will blossom. So we will have to think that the social question has arisen, that it has outgrown the conditions of modern life. But it would be wrong to believe that it can somehow be solved at the moment. Socialism is not something that is a solution or an attempt at a solution; no, modern life and the life of humanity into the future have brought up the social question. It will always be there. In the living social organism, it will always have to be resolved. Part of the life of future humanity will have to consist of resolving this question anew in each generation, resolving it in new forms, this question that has once arisen, warning and shaking the whole structure of human thought and will, the social question. Let us turn to it with all our hearts, with all our souls, otherwise it will turn to us, but then certainly not for our good, but for our harm.