The Rudolf Steiner Archive

When it comes to ideas that are intended to be realized in practical life, complete fallacies are basically less harmful than half-truths and three-quarters truths. For complete fallacies can be refuted relatively easily and are unlikely to last long in public life. Half-truths and three-quarters truths are extraordinarily strong temptations in view of the complexity of life. They are carried through life by various passions, by the emotions of the mind, until perhaps, after severe struggles or perhaps after severe suffering, one comes to the conclusion that such half-truths and quarter-truths are just that and cannot be applied to life as they are conceived.

Anyone who looks at modern life with an unbiased eye, especially after the hard years of trial that civilized humanity has now gone through, will have to make such a confession, as I have just made, especially to what has long been called the social question in the present day. For basically, a whole bunch of half-truths and quarter-truths are being bundled together in this social question from all sides.

Now, the attempt has been made in my book “The Key Points of the social question in the necessities of life of the present and the future”, to look at what this modern social work, this modern social question, actually contains, apart from the half-truths and quarter-truths of the programs, and what it can realistically steer towards. What is set out in these “key issues” should then be further developed for Switzerland, for example in the “Social Future” published by Dr. Boos.

Before I go into my actual task for this evening, please allow me to make a very brief personal comment that is, however, related to the topic. What I have attempted is a conscious attempt that is aware of its imperfections. What I have attempted in my book “The Crux of the Social Question” did not arise from any given political direction, does not want to take any given political position, and does not want to directly interfere in the given political life of the present. It has arisen out of a very long observation of life and does not want to be any kind of program, any kind of abstract social idea, but wants to be a result of practical life itself, as it has presented itself to me since I had the opportunity - through the fate of my life it has come about that I have had the opportunity to really get to know, I may say, all, may I say, classes and categories of people in the contemporary world, to get to know them in their mutual demands, in their mutual misunderstandings, in their cooperation and non-cooperation. And since in my earlier years, whenever I had the opportunity to touch on subjects such as today's, I basically had to deal mainly with spiritual science as such, I may say that nothing whatever is influenced by any party affiliation in what I will have to express before you. My life has led me through many things, but in any case never through any party. And what has been the result of decades of social observation, always undertaken from the point of view of spiritual science, will, ladies and gentlemen, also prevent me from ever being able to participate in any given party program.

So it is suggestions for real practical implementation that are at issue. It is only natural that such proposals, when discussed, must be couched in more or less seemingly abstract sentences; but these abstract sentences are only intended to express what is life experience, which can certainly serve as a basis for practical life organization.

If we look at social life from such a non-programmatic but practical point of view, as it has developed for more for more than half a century, especially in the civilized world as it concerns us, we look at this social life, we will find that the perception of this social life is fundamentally different, and has been fundamentally different for decades, for more than half a century, between the leading classes of humanity on the one hand and the broad, broad masses of the proletarian people on the other.

From living together – I was a teacher at a Berlin workers' education school for many years – I was able to get to know the way of thinking of the broad proletarian masses, and not only the way of thinking, but also the way of feeling and emotion, as it expresses itself in what then crystallizes into the social demands of the present and also of the near future.

What then emerged in my “Key Points of the Social Question” is a condensation of what is based on the insights that I believed I always had to gain from observation and from the insights that showed me that, with what underlies the demands of the broad proletarian masses as a conscious idea, as a conscious party program, we cannot make any progress in the social question, , that this proletarian mass has surrendered itself to half-truths and quarter-truths in a fateful sense, and that precisely the one who is serious and honest in the social question cannot stop at what is formulated under the influence of the work of Karl Marx and his followers, more than half a century ago – the beginning was more than half a century ago. As I said, my “Key Points of the Social Question” were written under the impression of this realization, at a moment when one might believe that such truths, such insights, can be understood through the confirmation they have received from the world of facts. They were written when the disaster that had been brought about by the war, the so-called World War, had been raging for years. I do not mean the outcome of the war, I mean the fact that this disaster, this terrible killing, could happen to modern civilized humanity at all.

In the early spring of 1914, I had to express in Vienna that who, from the spiritual-scientific point of view, looks at the development of modern humanity, has the idea that modern social development resembles an illness, a kind of ulcer formation, which could break out in a terrible way in the near future. This book was written at a time when a current that had developed out of programmatic Marxism should have led to a practical result in Russia. What must be called the terrible failure of Marxism in Russia, which is obvious to anyone who is not biased, could have been the first confirmation of the ideas expressed in The Essential Points of the Social Question. Since then, further confirmations have occurred. I need only point to the failure of the Hungarian Revolution, which had to crush so many hopes. And finally, I need only point out that the German Revolution of November 9, 1918, has not yet been completed, but is certainly in prospect.

Those who are familiar with the circumstances can know today that this German Revolution is a terribly loudly proclaimed experiment in world history, an experiment which shows, as never before, how incapable the ideas are, which the 19th century produced in many circles in the social field, of bringing about any practical organization of life. Let us look at these ideas from one side. Let us look at them as they are felt by the modern proletariat under the influence of those impulses that stem from so-called Marxism, as founded by Karl Marx and Engels, which is truly not a mere theory, but is alive in the feelings and perceptions of the broad masses.

This Marxism was the first to create in wide circles of the proletarian population what might be called disbelief in a spiritual world. To the discerning, this disbelief in the spiritual world on the part of the proletariat appears more important than anything else. Ideology is the word that one encounters when one is accustomed not to think about the proletariat, but to feel and live with it. Ideology means, or at least should mean, the whole spiritual life. Law, custom, morality, art, science, religion, all this is basically only like a smoke that rises as something merely imagined from the economy, imagined, that rises from the only true reality, which consists in the economic relations of production, in the economic processes.

Under the influence of the personalities mentioned, this proletariat saw the true reality in what the economic system is. The way people organize their economic lives, the way they participate in economic life, and the way they relate to the means of production in economic life – as they are taught – comes from mere material labor. What arises in them as ideas, what arises in them as moral ideals, what is ultimately religion, what is science, what is art: none of this has any inner spiritual reality, so they say, but all of it is like a mirror image of pure economic reality.

And if you look at what this view has been formed from, you have to say: This view is the legacy of the world view that has emerged over the last three to four centuries under the influence of the leading, guiding circles of humanity. It is not true that modern social life has come about solely through capitalism and through what has been associated with this capitalism in modern times through modern technology. No, it is the case that, at the same time as modern capitalism and modern technology emerged, a certain world view emerged that only wants to deal with chemical, mechanical, and physical facts and does not want to rise to an independent understanding of spiritual life. The technical complexity of modern economic life has succeeded in flooding everything, as it were, with the influences and impulses of this economic life. Just as economic life was separated from technology, and technology from modern science, so a purely scientific worldview emerged, a worldview that consisted only of ideas, concepts, and thoughts related to the external mechanical, chemical, and physical life. This modern life had no power to grasp any other ideas, other world-view thoughts, than those that broadly relate to the inauguration of economic life, to the inauguration of modern technical operations. This scientific direction, this whole modern thinking, was incapable of other ideas. Through this modern thinking one could answer the question of how external mechanical processes take place and how to set them in motion in practical life; one could communicate chemically and physically through this science, but one thing remained absent from these ideas, from these thoughts of science, that which is closest to man: man himself. Rather, it was better said, one only understood the human being insofar as he was composed of material substances, mechanical, physical and chemical forces. But since the human being is also spirit and soul, one did not really understand the human being in this way. And one had a world view from which thoughts about the human being were actually excluded. No one answered in this modern way the question of how physical processes arise, as this modern science answered in an incomparably perfect way. No one answered this modern man in a modern way the question so perfectly: How do mental processes arise? What is man in his innermost being?

And you see, the leading and guiding circles kept as heirlooms, as traditions, what had been handed down from religion, from art, from old worldviews, from old customs. This filled the soul of the modern ruling circles. They cultivated this as something that meant something to them alongside the scientific world view, alongside what was incorporated into technology and economics as science. And so a dual trend arose in the inner life of the leading and guiding circles: one trend, which, so to speak, far removed from life, posed religious questions, formulated moral principles, and formed art and certain world views. Ask yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, how far removed from the practical side of life, for example, the modern merchant, or the modern industrialist or the modern civil servant, is from what he feels and experiences as a religious person, from what he his sense of goodness as a human being, his aesthetic feelings, how far removed that is from what happens in his life and is expressed in his office and in his bookkeeping. There are two very different currents of life. And the one, the spiritual current of life, which is basically an heirloom from ancient times, has no power to penetrate into the outer life. In what is the outer practice of life, the contingencies of the day live, that which, I might say, lives in the practice of life by itself. Then one likes to withdraw from life and regards the religious, the spiritual-moral, the artistic life as something that floats above life. But it was only by cultivating this inner spiritual life, separate from the practical outer life, that the leading and governing circles of modern civilization were able to give their souls any content at all.

The proletarian, who was removed from the old crafts and put at the machine, at the abstract machine, which has so little in common with in the human soul, the proletarian could not, because his feelings, which he could only develop while standing at the machine, did not correspond to them, he could not take over the old traditions, customs, law, art, religion, the world view that had been handed down from older times and in which the leading classes lived despite the modern soulless and spiritless technical economy. What emerged from this economy itself remained for him. And so he formed a world view, so his leaders formed a world view for him, which is spiritless and soulless, an ideology.

An ideology can be theoretically represented. An ideology can be thought up. With an ideology, one can even appear very clever. But you cannot live with an ideology, because it hollows out the soul. The human soul can only truly live when it does not believe that its thoughts are mere unreal thoughts; but when it can be aware that what lives in it connects to a living, real, spiritual world.

And so much is talked about in the socialist program; one does not even need to look at what is being said, because what happens in people's minds in this way is very different from what really lives in their souls. But what really lives in the souls of the broad masses of the intellectual population today is spiritual desolation. This is proof that one can think with what is modern world view, but one cannot live with it. That is the first part of the social question.

I know very well how many people, from their point of view, from their conscious point of view, rightly say: You are talking about the social question as a spiritual question. For us, it is about balancing social differences, social differentiations. For us, it is about ensuring that bread is distributed equally among people. Yes, that is a superficial view which only those can hold who do not penetrate beneath the surface of things. For the social question is present in the feelings, in the subconscious life of the modern proletariat. Try as much as you like to satisfy the purely material needs of this proletariat, if you could - you will not be able to - you would see: the social question will have to arise in a new form. It will not go away as long as intellectual life has the same relationship to the proletarian soul as I have just described. For people only believe that it comes from material interests. In truth, it comes from the hollowed-out souls, from the meaningless lives.

This must be recognized as the true basis of those social sentiments and of that widespread yearning which are found among the proletariat.

The second aspect is revealed to those who, as I said before, have not only learned to think and feel like the proletariat, but can actually think and feel with the proletariat. He comes to realize what it means for the modern proletarian when it is repeatedly made clear to him, with reference to Marxism, that he stands at the machine, he works, but he receives only wages for his work. You pay for his labor with his wages, just as you pay for goods on the market.

The modern proletarian feels that human labor cannot be a commodity, that it should not be sold and bought on the market like a commodity! From this arises what the modern proletarian calls his class consciousness. Out of this class consciousness he wants to create the possibility that human labor power will no longer be a commodity; for he has the feeling that what he works at not only produces the values that play a role in economic life as justified values, but that it produces surplus value, which is taken from him by those who are the leading, leading circles, as he believes, the capitalist circles.

And so the connection between surplus value and the inhumane buying and selling of human labor as a commodity is what moves the proletarian as a second point.

And the third point, what is it? You get to know it when you observe how, basically, the leading and guiding circles have developed a significantly different inclination for social issues than those that were imposed on them by the proletariat making demands. It must be said that few people in the leading and ruling circles are inclined, of their own accord, to really engage with the core issues of the social question, simply because those who are in a position are always much less inclined to think about the development of that position than those who are just trying to gain a position. But as a result, more in the subconscious, in the instinctive, than in the clear consciousness, in the broad circles of the proletariat, the view had to arise that it could expect nothing at all from the leading, guiding circles, that it had to rely on itself alone for a solution to the social question. And so something arose that is one of the most disastrous things in recent historical development. What I am about to say is based on a word that is often spoken and often heard, but whose deeper meaning is little understood. You probably know that the Communist Manifesto, which in 1848 initiated the Marxist social movement, concludes with the words: “Proletarians of all countries, unite!” It is understandable for those who get to know the modern proletarian movement that this word has come. And the effect of this word is fateful in the most terrible sense, for it points from the outset to what is to happen, to struggle. And this struggle is still to be relied upon today. It relies on struggle. It does not rely on the fact that people come together under the momentum and thrust of an idea that is to be realized in practical life; it does not rely on faith in the power of the spirit. This word, it relies on the external material connection of a class of people, on the unspiritual. And it expresses itself in this word clearly and unmistakably the disbelief in the spiritual in the most disastrous way, the more this word inculcates the souls. And it may also be said that the more thoughtlessly it is listened to, without grasping its fateful significance in world history, the more humanity must sail into unbelief in the spiritual, and cannot, because material interests unite, as they belong to a class, to what life must move in its inmost depths: to belief in the power of spiritual impulses.

This is how the so-called modern social question presents itself from the point of view of the proletariat. And this proletariat has seen that certain social ills, which it feels in its own body, have developed under the influence of capital and modern technology. What does it mean? It means that these damages will cease when private property is converted into common property, when what is now managed and administered by individuals is managed and administered by the community.

And so we see how the proletarian demand repeatedly sounds in the call that is already taking on a catastrophic form today: conversion of the means of production, conversion of private ownership of the means of production into common ownership and common administration of the means of production. Only then, the proletarian believes, will salvation come to him, when no longer the individual administers the means of production according to the profit interest, but when the human community, in which everyone can participate in a democratic way, administers these means of production. And because the proletariat believes itself betrayed by the people who belong to the leading, guiding circles, because it believes that these leading, guiding circles are not at all interested in what a shaping of social life is from their interests, so what has developed over the course of many decades is heard together in the call for a kind of dictatorship of the proletariat itself in the replacement of old administrative and social conditions with new ones.

But these things must be seen clearly, not from a party point of view, these things must be seen completely impartially. Perhaps one can only see clearly if one also considers the opposite point of view. Whether the proletarian demands, as they are formulated today in a large number of newspapers and books, and how they consciously live in the souls of the proletarians, whether they are right or not, that is the question. For real movements are not about ideas, but about what lives in the will of men. It must be borne in mind that millions of people believe these things, and that it is not a matter of refuting these things in the abstract, be it in this way or that, but rather of getting to the point where their practical application is really understood in terms of life and reality. Precisely because the leading and guiding circles, I might say, had as a by-product of their economic activity the fact that they did not have to struggle with life, or at least did not have to struggle in such a way as the proletariat, precisely for this reason, the social question has not developed to the same extent as it did for the proletariat, where all the questions I have mentioned now, I would say, merge into a kind of stomach or bread or money question. The social question has not developed in such a way as to become an immediate question of practical life, of the personal interest of each individual, because personal interests are promoted like a by-product under the influence of modern life. Therefore, the leading, guiding circles have not experienced in the same field what the proletarian world has had. You can take it however you like, the great tempter or seducer Karl Marx or the ingenious, pioneering Karl Marx, it depends on your point of view, but there was no similar Karl Marx for the leading, guiding circles. Therefore, it seems today that basically the right light is not falling on the proletarian demands. They can be proved, they can be refuted; but other views are also possible, which can be proved or refuted just as well, and which represent the opposite view.

You see, the proletarian interprets everything that develops as a human world of ideas in art, custom, science and so on as a kind of mirror image of the purely economic conditions, which only he can see. For him, human thoughts are only that which is triggered in man like a mirror image of economic interests, of the conditions of production. Everything that people think and feel arises from the economic conditions of production – so says the proletarian.

The opposite could easily be proven by the other side with exactly the same right to prove it. And let us take just one example: it is child's play, I might say, to prove that this whole modern economic life, as we have it especially in the civilization of the Occident and its offshoot, America, that this whole human economic life, as it dominates the modern world, is a result of human thoughts, which in turn are born out of the spiritual world. This can be proven quite concretely. There is no need to get stuck in abstract ideas. Take the following.

If we consider the conditions before the war, it can be said that in the Western world about four to five hundred million tons of coal are produced annually. For the mechanical work among people, through industry and other things, these four hundred to five hundred million tons of coal are processed in modern economic life. I am calculating by putting this number, four to five hundred million tons, in front of you, everything that is necessary for private property and so on. That which flows into modern life through these millions of tons of coal, which are processed in the machines, in the form of power and technology that then becomes economic power, can be calculated, one can calculate what it does for humanity. What matters is that the comparison must be made with horsepower and with human power. If we now assume that a person works about eight hours a day, a simple calculation shows how many people would have to apply how much manpower if they were to achieve the same thing by applying human power that is achieved in a technical way in the further technical processing by these millions of tons of coal. The strange thing is that the calculation shows that seven to eight hundred million people would have to work, would have to give their labor, if they wanted to achieve the same thing through human labor that is achieved with the energy derived from these coals.

You see, this possibility of incorporating coal energy into economic life comes solely from the thoughts that have developed under the influence of the spiritual development of the West. A comparison with the economic conditions of the Orient shows this. There are, let us say, 250 million people who have the strength to carry out the ideas that have arisen from their minds, and who have provided everything needed to set this modern economic life in motion; there remain about 1,250 million people who have not participated in this life. If we calculate what these people achieve in the same daily working hours, we get a figure that is far lower than that which indicates how much is achieved through coal mining and coal processing in the mechanical field. But that means nothing other than that what is specifically modern economic life is a result of human thoughts. And these human thoughts truly did not arise out of matter; they are the result of the development of Western culture. And it can be proved that through these thoughts, through this way of working, human forces of a further 700 to 800 million are added to our 1500 million people on earth. So that in reality we are working on the earth today as if not only 1500 million were working, but as if well over 2000 million people were working. It can easily be proved that all this, which is the actual structure, the actual character of this modern economic life, from which the social questions have arisen, that this is a result of the development of the mind, that this mind is by no means an ideology, but that this spirit is the creator of economic life.

That is, on the one hand, there is the proletarian view, and on the other hand, the usual opposing view, which can be proven just as well as the other view. And just as one can calculate in a Marxist way how people work to create added value, which is the value that prevails in legitimate economic life, one can prove, just as scientifically and rigorously as Marxism does, that all of modern economic life stems from the ideas of the leading, guiding circles of people, and that what is paid out as wages is worked out of what the guiding, leading circles achieve for humanity socially. Just as one can calculate the surplus value that accrues from labor on the one hand, one can just as easily calculate the total of all wages as that which accrues from what the leading, guiding circles, from the bearers of human thought, achieve .

But that has not happened, and I am convinced that it has not happened for the sole reason that, on the other side, out of carelessness, a “Karl Marx” did not work who would have proved this just as well as the real Karl Marx proved his theory for the proletariat. What I am going to tell you now is truly not some abstract invention. Just as I have demonstrated it from the extraction of coal, so you can demonstrate it from the facts of economic life that the opposite of what Marx demonstrated is true, only to a limited extent for surplus value.

If we consider the structure that modern technology has economic life, it should be borne in mind that this modern technology arises from human thought and that this in turn arises from intellectual life, and that a certain concentration of the means of production is necessary for special times, which, simply because of advanced technology, must be concentrated and managed by individuals. If you put forward the abstract demand for surplus value, which can be gained from means of production that are to be managed communally, in opposition to what modern economic life and modern production conditions have developed – concentrations of the means of production that are now in the hands of individuals – then you will see what happens! Of course, one can raise the abstract demand that what has been achieved so far by the leading and guiding circles, who have provided the ideas for the structure of the modern economy, be taken from them and managed by the community. But to those who do not look into the workings of life from the point of view of human feeling and emotion, but observe them impartially, this appears as a threatening thought for the near future of humanity: If it could really happen that the takeover of what has been achieved so far by individuals [...] - even if it has caused damage in its wake - if that were to be achieved by the community, then it would probably happen to this community as it happened to the Japanese in the mid-seventies of the last century, who, out of a certain national pride, took over the first warships from the English. The English also offered them instructors for these warships, but they sent the English instructors away and wanted to do it themselves. And now one could see from the shore the beautiful spectacle of how the gunboats continually turned in circles; they could not move forward because the Japanese had not learned how to do it. It had been forgotten to show how to close and open the valve that releases the excess steam. And so they could do nothing but wait until the steam power was completely used up.

Thus, if we look at how things are really going in social life today, we fear that what the individuals in the leading and guiding circles achieve, albeit with damage, out of expertise and skill, could be taken over by the abstract community, which judges democratically, how what is to be produced, with the technical administrations and so on, is to be arranged.

These are all things that do not depend on party programs, that do not result from a party template, but that do result for the person who in a practical and unbiased way, and really has the will to respond to this life in a practical and unbiased way.

And the first thing that will result from this is also the first thing I had to conclude in my “Key Points of the Social Question in the Necessities of Life in the Present and Future”. What is needed above all for humanity is, in addition to knowledge of nature, which is truly the creator of modern technology and thus of modern economic life, a true knowledge of the human being, in addition to this natural knowledge.

You see, you are also told from many other sides about that complicated world view that is supposed to be incorporated into what is now being built in Dornach as a monumental building, a kind of “School of Spiritual Science, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science” is what the thing calls itself. You would do well to assume from the outset, as it were, as an axiom, that what I call anthroposophical spiritual science is the very opposite of what is usually said by those who do not know it in the world. For this spiritual science is about finding our way to natural science as the spiritual foundation of modern economic life, about finding our way to a real knowledge of human nature. That is why this spiritual science is called anthroposophy, human wisdom, a real knowledge of the human being. Modern natural science is quite right not to concern itself with the knowledge of nature and everything that is connected with mechanical, chemical, physical, technical life and economics, and not to concern itself with the human being, but to leave the human being in the background, so to speak, like a spectator. But that is the disastrous thing, that in recent times everything that is in the way of ideas in natural science is also applied to social thinking, that one believes that one can permeate social life with those thoughts that are extraordinarily useful for natural science, that have raised natural science to a pure height; but in social thinking, one must live in them. There must prevail a consciousness that truly penetrates to the human being.

This consciousness is what spiritual science wants to add to what in modern times is merely natural science thinking and, depending on it, social thinking. And this spiritual science wants to penetrate deeper into the human being than one can with anatomy, with physiology, with biology, through which one only gets to know the outer human being. This spiritual science wants to penetrate into the depths of human nature, where something takes place that is not mere thoughts, where realities take place that are the same as the realities of outer life, and the same as the realities of outer nature.

On the one hand, this spiritual science wants to truly rise to the knowledge of the spiritual. But on the other hand, it does not stop at the facts of the most practical everyday life. For this spiritual science, it is inconceivable that such a duality should exist in human consciousness as I have described for the modern merchant, for the modern astronomer, for the modern civil servant, who have their separate religious and aesthetic lives, far removed from everyday life, and also far removed from what everyday life is. This life, which develops as a spiritual life, appears to be very spiritual. In truth, however, it is alien to life. Therefore, it has also created a certain disbelief in life.

This is why it has never been possible for the broad masses of the people to develop a belief in this spiritual life, to look at this spiritual life as if something socially beneficial could come from it. Here serious and honest personalities have been at work. Those who are seriously concerned with social life look upon the spiritual life as utopian. Here Fourier and similar spirits have lived who have worked out such beautiful programs for themselves as to how they want to shape their lives. But from what kind of thinking, from what kind of soul-disposition have all these social and socialist ideas arisen? They have arisen out of a mental life which sets itself up as something alien to life, just as the religious life is to the merchant in his account book. It is natural that beautiful ideas, genuinely meant, well-meant ideas, can arise out of such a mental state, but not ideas that intervene in real practical life.

Spiritual science aims to reach the highest heights of the spirit. But by descending into the deepest inner being of the human being, where there are not thoughts that are alien to life, but thoughts that penetrate into the realities of the external world, these should be able, when they reach up to the highest spiritual heights on the one hand, to grasp at the same time what we encounter in the account book in the relationship between employer and employee, what lives everywhere in direct life. The thoughts of that intellectual life that has dominated human souls in the last three to four centuries were weak and impotent; for these thoughts were beautiful aesthetic, religious, scientific and secular thoughts, but they were not thoughts that reached down into reality and

Take something that works like a modern moral code, let's say, like an ethic. You see what it says about humanity, goodness, benevolence, charity, human brotherhood. This is foreign to life, it does not intervenes in this immediate life, any more than modern philosophy, which lives in abstract ideas, does so, nor does modern spiritual life in general.

Only spiritual science can actually reach down into what philosophy, what real, external real science, brings to light. Read about this subject in my numerous books. You will find that spiritual science has nothing to do with those abstractions, with what is handed down today as a philosophical worldview and the like, but you will see that this spiritual science relies on really delving into the spirit in which the human being his soul lives, in order to gain real insights into the human being; because the human being is most spiritual, a knowledge can be established that ascends to the highest level of the spirit and at the same time descends into the directly practical life. For if one only penetrates deeply enough into the knowledge, this life in knowledge proves to be a unity, not a duality.

This spiritual life will also be able to penetrate into the life that we call social. The abstract intellectualism and scientific method that the modern proletarian perceives as ideology is incapable of penetrating into the real social structure of life. Their thoughts and ideas are too weak to penetrate and descend; they are abstractions and remain in the unreal realm of thought. They are truly ideologies. But the spirit need not stop at ideology. The spirit can penetrate so deeply into ideas that these ideas are at the same time forces contained in reality. With such ideas alone is it possible to delve into social life.

But for that a certain social structure is necessary. And this social structure I have tried to indicate, to sketch out at least, in my “Gist of the Social Question.” I have tried to show how it is necessary that the administration of spiritual life should be separated from economic life and from the life of the state, to which the administration of justice must be left; from everything political and economic the spiritual must be separated. As long as economic life develops out of spiritual life, in that the economically powerful are also best able to advance with regard to their spiritual education, as long as there is any connection at all, an inner connection between spiritual life and economic life, it is impossible for spiritual life to develop completely freely.

But anyone who is familiar with the spiritual life I have just spoken of knows that it can only develop on completely free soil. For the spiritual life of which I have spoken is a product of the human soul. This human soul must be cultivated in complete freedom. Schools and education must be administered independently in their own administration, independently of economic life and of the rest of state life, of political and legal life.

It is quite a different matter when the teacher of the lowest school class does not have to conform to what is supplied to him by economic life, does not have to be guided by the demands that a state makes in order to fill its positions; but when it follows what is taking place in the spiritual life, in the most important part, in the educational and teaching system, when it follows purely from what people should experience in the spiritual realm. If I were to characterize it in concrete terms, I would have to say: in the future, the entire spiritual life, including the life of teaching and schooling, must be shaped in such a way that those who teach and educate, from the lowest to the highest levels, are only so burdened with teaching and education that they still have the possibility of administering this spiritual life in which they work and in which they are active. Spiritual life forms an independent link in the social organism. It is self-governing and placed in its own administration.

If this is the case, then one will not experience what comes so strongly before the soul's eye when one is in the following situation. We have tried to establish a school in Stuttgart that is at least so shaped in its inner spiritual constitution that it is taken from the spirit just characterized. First of all, the teachers were prepared in such a way that they could at least work in the spirit of a completely free spiritual life. This was the starting point, because many paths are blocked today and because what is meant here is truly meant in a very practical way and is only really understood when it is approached with an instinct for practical life, not with some kind of theoretical ideas and the like. It is an eight-class elementary school that, in a free educational setting, is intended to achieve the same in terms of teaching as ordinary elementary schools and as ordinary secondary modern schools and grammar schools do for boys and girls up to the age of fourteen or fifteen, but which at the same time at the same time develop human individuality in a completely free way, so that individuality is placed in social life and will shape it, in which social life, from its economic and state points of view, does not provide the templates according to which individualities must develop. But then you see that you get your hands on the decrees on how teaching should be carried out from class to class, and today the decrees already contain prescriptions as to what should be done. But for those who can think straight and look at life independently, it seems the only possibility that what underlies education, the teaching system, and what determines what happens day after day, hour after hour in school, is that the decisive factor is not some kind of democratic will - that would be tantamount to pedagogical short-sightedness - but the specialized and factual knowledge of those who work from within the spiritual life itself and are also able to administer the spiritual.

These things must be approached practically. Only in this way can much of what is called practical today, and which cannot be imagined in any other way, be transformed into something other than what it has become for today. Only in this way can we look at it with complete impartiality and see it as it should be, and then follow the real inner laws of human development.

The other thing that must be added to this free spiritual life, which has its own administration - I can only sketch this today - is the independent constitutional state, the independent state political element, which, on the one hand, has separated out the independence of all spiritual life, but on the other hand, has also separated out economic life. In the last few centuries, there has only really been a legal life to the extent that this legal life has developed out of the economic life. And this was most clearly evident in those states that were drawn into this terrible war by their state economies. It became most evident that their entire political constitution was a consequence of their economic life, that, so to speak, the state was also an economic community to such a high degree. It would be an act of supreme folly to develop a large cooperative out of the state, according to the Marxist program, where the means of production would be administered and worked in common. Nothing new would be created; only that which has already caused great damage would be exaggerated to an enormous extent. But in an independent legal life, legal creation can only arise from an independent sense of right and wrong. That is to say, an independent state or legal element of the social organism must develop alongside economic life. This link will embrace everything in which all mature people have become capable of judgment.

One will never be able to administer intellectual life democratically; intellectual life must be administered by individuals with expert knowledge and expertise. But that which economic life is as such cannot be administered democratically either. It must be administered in such a way that what corresponds to the economic sphere is the underlying basis. This economic life must be administered in such a way that the person who manages in a particular sphere is spiritually mature and firmly grounded in that economic sphere. This sense of belonging, of being grounded, of being firmly grounded, of being able to act independently within an economic area, is undermined when decisions about how work should be organized in individual companies, what should be produced in individual companies, and so on, are made in a democratic way.

If the forces that are there are to be made fruitful for the social community, this can only be achieved if the individual representative, on the basis of their expertise and professional ability, stands in their rightful position and produces for the community what they can produce according to their abilities. But there still remains that over which he is not the sole arbiter, but over which every mature person who represents the democratic element has the ability to judge, whereby every person is equal, stands equally, and in which every person should develop a relationship from person to person.

On socialist soil, the following is constantly emphasized today: the worker is separated from the product of his labor, he works for the product, which he hardly gets to know, or only gets to know part of it. That is certainly all true. The product goes to the market, he is separated from it, he is separated from his field of labor, he simply performs his work, his human labor, on something he does not even know. But this is only the case as long as we do not have an independent link, an independent life, alongside the economic life in which the individual is involved, where one develops from person to person because one is the same as another person. This independent life, in which decisions are made only on the basis of what is right, this actual political life, is the content of state life. This is where democracy can truly develop. But it must be cultivated in the concrete. You cannot say: those who have excelled in a particular area of economic life will also excel in the field of law, so that this field of law can best be cultivated by them. No, that is not the case, because a person can only cultivate and develop judgment in that which actually develops in life. The life of the law must not be linked in a chaotic way with economic life, but the life of the law must stand alongside economic life. And the human being must enter into a relationship, a concrete relationship on the basis of the law, with the other human being. Interests must develop in him for the other people with whom he lives together in economic life, when economic life develops needs that have to be satisfied. On the basis of the law, every person will know: you are a member of the rest of humanity, you take part in something that determines your relationship and no other thing your relationship among others. You stand in all of humanity, you now learn to recognize yourself as a member of the state built on the equality of people, on democracy. This state becomes a reality for you. Because it becomes a reality by dealing with your labor law before all things. Labor law will no longer be established in economic life; the worker will no longer be dependent on the economic power of the person with whom he can work and undertake work together, but rather what applies is that in which every person is equal. In the separate legal sphere, it will be necessary to decide what makes every person equal. And other relationships will have to be regulated in the corresponding sphere. Today I can only characterize all this in very general terms; you will find more details in my “Key Points of the Social Question”.

Then there remains economic life, the actual, unified economic life. And then, in this economic life, we will not have what is in it today, but we will have associations in this economic life that are formed from consumers and producers together. And these associations will have to deal with matters closely connected with the ascertainment of economic needs, with the determination of prices, the value of goods, with everything that depends only on the human labor that goes into the goods. Economic life will not have to decide on the raising of human labor; the legal life decides on that. In the sphere of economic life, the corporations will have to deal only with fair prices. Such that, based on real expertise and professional skill, such prices will result from being in the economic life that the individual actually receives on average, for what he contributes, so many corresponding goods that serve his needs, until he has produced something has produced the same as that which he exchanges.

I will soon arrive at the primal cell of economic life; when it is presented as I must now present it, it looks somewhat paradoxical, yet in the last analysis everything is based on it. Above all, it is the basis for the emergence of fair prices; for it is not through some kind of joint administration, not through some kind of transfer of the areas into the administration of the whole, or into the ownership of the whole, that social balance can be achieved , but only through the value of the goods, which is determined not by the accident of the market, but by the value of the goods, which is determined by human reason, so that it flows from the actual management of economic life as such.

To put it dryly and paradoxically, and actually trivially: if I have made a pair of boots today, then in the social organism this pair of boots must be worth so much that I can exchange goods for it until I have again fabricated a pair of boots, including everything that has to be provided for the unemployed, the sick, the disabled, and so on. This is the original cell of economic life.

This can actually be achieved if economic life is completely detached from the other two elements of social life: from independent spiritual life and independent legal life

As I said, I could only sketch these things for you, but they have been developed from a real life practice, from a conception of life as it is, as it wants to shape itself. That was also the reason why I said to many a person during the raging of that terrible world war: The only way to cope with this raging is through ideas that have grown on spiritual soil. You have the choice, I said to many, either to speak now of such ideas to humanity that this humanity can take as a starting point for a real improvement on earth, or you will experience social cataclysms and revolutions.

People did not agree to accept reason. So the revolution came. But these revolutions have their peculiarities. Revolutions have been taking place in the world since the emergence of Christianity. What kind of revolution was that? It was a spiritual revolution. What was transformed was the conditions in spiritual life. What can truly arise in humanity in this way, through a metamorphosis in development, can only be spiritual impulses in the first instance.

The Christian revolution was a spiritual one. And the legal and economic life that it brought in its wake was a consequence of the spiritual revolution that took place through Christianity. That is why it was a great upheaval, and anyone who is familiar with the development of Christianity knows how profoundly Christianity has affected the world as a spiritual upheaval.

But if we now consider a revolution in legal and political relations, We find such upheavals in the French Revolution or in the continental revolution of 1848. Study these revolutions and you will find that They have achieved something, they have replaced something of the old order; but much has been left behind that was not at all a solution to previously raised demands, but a solution to previously raised demands, leftovers that were left behind by these political revolutions, by the three elements of human life. One can trace them, the upheavals in the spiritual realm, in the political-legal realm; an upheaval in the spiritual realm, that brought Christianity; an upheaval in the political-legal realm, the upheaval of the French Revolution and the revolution of 1848. Now they want an upheaval in the economic realm. Economic life cannot mechanize or transform itself out of itself. Those who are familiar with world-historical interrelations know that there can be intellectual revolutions because everything else in life can be fertilized by the spirit. But if the external itself, formed purely out of itself, is to be transformed, then this is an illusion. It is simply a law of world-historical development that where a purely economic revolution is to be carried out, as in present-day Russia, this economic revolution must be the gravedigger of modern civilization before it does not take up something truly spiritual.

It is true that Lenin and Trotsky are the last consistent educators of what has been living in the Darwinism of the masses for decades. But in trying to realize what could be developed in the ideas as mere economic ideas, and in what one could believe as long as it did not become practical, one becomes the gravedigger of civilization at the same moment as one wants to introduce it into life. And death could only spread in the European East under the influence of such ideas if it were not realized that we need something completely different in our time: a renewal of spiritual life.

That is what I wanted to emphasize particularly strongly today, that we need to develop a free spiritual life in an independent spiritual part of the social organism, which in turn is based on real spirit. From this spirit a real social future will arise. One must not hope for a new revolution. This new revolution should be an economic one. An economic revolution can only destroy, it cannot build up. Today the world is ripe for a new spirituality, so that it can be rebuilt.

That is what must be said by someone who does not base their views on party demands or party programs, but who looks at life impartially and honestly, and is serious and sincere about what is usually, but poorly understood, called the social question. This is what must be done first in the course of human development: to spread enlightenment about it, to educate the broad masses, on the part of those who have been able to develop this enlightenment through their previous education, which they have inherited, to educate the broad masses about what is necessary. Otherwise, the broad masses know what they demand out of their passions, but they cannot see through what can really be demanded in the interest of humanity and in the interest of a social future.

What has been attempted in my “Key Points of the Social Question” does not follow some party line, it follows what has been attempted to be recognized from the world-historical development of humanity itself, what has been attempted to be recognized from the world-historical moment. Anyone who assumes a commonality of the means of production is already unaware of development. Because even if it were possible for the common ownership of the means of production to occur today, to be introduced today, which cannot be, because it is of course impossible, because it would destroy all initiative of the individual, but even if it were possible to assume the common ownership of the means of production, then the current generation would have these means of production at a certain age, and the next generation would not have them again until later. And the protest of the next generation would once again result in what is to be made good today.

Only a thought like this, which is taken from full reality, not from one-sided reality, only such a thought is really from the outset today. And the thought that I have presented to you about the threefold social organism also takes into account the development over time, not just the coexistence of people in space. This thought can therefore much more likely shape spiritual life in its most important parts, in its most essential areas, in the school and educational system, and also with regard to the social organism, so that it can supply the social organism with forces in an appropriate way. Today, the Socialist side keeps telling us: if we introduce a common distribution of the means of production, if we introduce compulsory labor and so on, then we will educate people through these social structures so that they will work by themselves and so on. Yes, that is to say, humanity will achieve nothing, it will achieve nothing, and will only be willing and eager to work if a spiritual life really kindles the individual abilities of the human being, as they can only be kindled if we educate the human being during his upbringing in such a way that we take full account of his individuality.

Just as in this field, so in all fields the social idea of the threefold social organism is that which most comprehensively underlies the practical; it can only underlie the practical because it is built on the ground of a real spiritual science, where not only nature must be recognized, but where man must be recognized, but thereby also man man into consciousness.

I would just like to emphasize in conclusion that what you can read in detail about capital formation, labor organization, economic organization and so on in the future, is explained in more detail in my “Key Points of the Social Question”, as already mentioned, is still a weak attempt today. It is only a weak attempt because it is not some kind of contrived program, but because it is derived from practical life. Those people who today say that they cannot understand what is written in the “Key Points of the Social Question” lack the instinct for reality that is necessary today if one is to really understand practical matters in their fundamentals. It is not merely a matter of professing one's faith in a sociological doctrine; it is a matter of professing one's faith in those doctrines that can be supported by an instinct for the things to be realized. In attempting to present such thoughts, one will not claim that they should be perfect from the outset. One will emphasize again and again that they are an attempt. And so everything that is presented on the basis of the threefold social order should be seen as an experiment. For what it should ultimately be will become clear as it is transformed and introduced into practice.

I have often said to people: It is possible that not a single one of the details that I have given will be carried out, but the ideas that I have put forward are conceived in such a way that they can be applied to reality at one of its many points of contact. If you take hold of it there, then something completely different may result, but you will really be working. That is what matters, not programs, not preconceived ideas, no matter how clever they are, not to work from them, no matter how old they are, but to work from the reality of practical life! But not working from the randomness of everyday life, but from the great, overarching ideas from which all great, including social, designs have actually emerged. I believe that everyone who talks about such questions in this way thinks that way. I would like to express how I mean it by means of a comparison. Recently, in a studio where they usually work only with three-dimensional objects, a chair model was developed. The idea was that this chair should, on the one hand, satisfy our sense of beauty, which we apply to the Dornach building; on the other hand, however, it should be as inexpensive as possible. The most economical price is necessary in addition to the appropriate design in the overall treatment. Now we had made a model. When we handed this model over to the worker, we said to ourselves: There is the model, but now the practical design begins, and possibly what comes out as a chair at the end will look quite different from the model. But what comes out will be practical because the model was thought of practically.

This is how I would like to see the matter of the 'key points of the social question' understood. Everything that you will find as suggestions for the social question, for example in “Social Future” here for Switzerland, this book and our other ideas are only meant to be a kind of model, so to speak; but it should be a practically conceived model. If you take up the work with this in mind, the result will be practice. Perhaps it will look quite different, but it will only be truly practical if it is approached on the basis of a practical impulse.

Such a threefold social organism could, I think, most easily - pardon me for saying all these things, especially for those who are not completely familiar with these things, but I would still like to express it - it could be realized particularly strongly here in this country, which is justly proud of its old democracy. Because the democratic element has been developed here, it is easiest to see here how the path should be found to replace the spiritual and economic life on both sides in a corresponding way. In a further development, the idea of threefold social order emerged. If one is serious about these ideas, then I believe that, especially if one lives in a democratic community, one will understand and find it easier to understand what can necessarily be done for the threefold social order. Otherwise, this threefold social order will be attacked from left and right, from all sides. And while it is precisely the intention to be serious and honest about the social question, it has come about that I, for example, am personally attacked in the most obscene way by the leaders of socialist parties of all shades. But the point at issue is precisely that three great ideas, which should only be meant seriously and honestly, have emerged in the development of humanity. One is that of liberalism, the other that of democracy, and the third is that of socialism. If one is sincere about these three ideas, one will not be able to mix all three up or have one eliminate the other. Rather, one will have to say: something must radiate from the independent intellectual life, flowing into capitalism and into the whole organism. That is the free human development, that is the liberal element. In the political state, in the legal life, something must live in which all people are equal. That is the democratic element. And in economic life, the fraternal element must prevail. That must provide the true basis for a social structure. That is what it is about. We should not fight one-sidedly against and also not represent one-sidedly that which has emerged beneficially in the course of the newer development of humanity as the consequence of liberalism, democracy, socialism; we should see how in the independent spiritual life, liberalism grows, illuminating all the rest of social life ; how in the actual state under the rule of law democracy is growing, again overshadowing all other areas of life; how in that economic life, which is concerned only with the production, circulation, and consumption of goods and the determination of fair prices, socialism is again prevailing, permeating everything. Then, when one sees through this, one will correctly penetrate one's view of life today with the realization that complete errors in external life are less harmful because they can be more easily seen through than half or quarter truths.

But what exists today in many people as a social movement is flooded with quarter and third truths. And by adhering to a partial truth, people believe that they have grasped life in its entirety. But one should only want to embrace life in its entirety with a living interaction of truths. The whole full truth cannot be revealed in an abstract idea or in an abstract reality. It can only be grasped in the living interaction of ideas. Then, from half-truths and quarter-truths, the whole truth of life will be able to emerge, including in the social sphere, and the necessary social order will be established. And it will be recognized that it is less necessary to fight against complete errors than to correct half-truths and quarter-truths.

This is what I wanted to emphasize today with regard to the ideas of the necessities of life in the social question in the present of humanity and its immediate future.

Dr. Dr. Roman Boos points out that here in Switzerland, too, the danger is enormous in the economic field, and that we should therefore be able to extract something creative, which will be absolutely necessary, and that what Dr. Steiner could only hint at in his remarks today must be fully understood. (No discussion seems to have taken place.)

Rudolf Steiner: Regarding the closing remarks, I will be able to be very brief. I would like to emphasize that someone might say that in this lecture a great deal has been said about every link of the social organism: the spiritual, the legal and the economic life. But all this is not at all what matters to a large proportion of those who speak of the social question today , but that the social question is above all an economic question.

Now consider the whole attitude of both the lecture and what is meant by the impulse for the threefold order of the social organism. You can see this at least to some extent from the lecture: it does not present a finished program, but rather it starts from the premise that the social organism itself, that is, human social life, should be structured in a certain way, structured in such a way that separate administrations exist for economic life , for democratic, political or legal life and an independent administration for spiritual life.

Now, of course, it is easy to say: You are actually separating what must be a unity, the whole of human society, the human social organization into three areas. But it is precisely through the independent administration of the three areas that it becomes possible to achieve the proper unity of these areas. It is not a matter of renewing, as some have believed, what was demanded in the pre-Christian, in the Platonic world view, as the teaching, military and nutritional estates. No, in those days humanity as such was divided into three estates; so that one belonged to one, the other to the second, the third to the third estate. It is precisely this that is to be avoided, that people cannot be people as a whole, but are divided into estates. It is not humanity as such that is divided, but human life. And the person who is in life, in a certain way, stands on all three grounds: in the spiritual life, insofar as he has a living part in the spiritual life in one way or another; he stands in it in the legal life, in the entire legal issues, because he is a mature person in this part, either directly through some referendum or indirectly through representation and the like and he stands in that, in which he has credit through his person, or has factual and specialized knowledge in a certain economic area, in which he is incorporated through an association; the whole economic life is incorporated in itself.

And now it is precisely the various objections that have been raised that show how little the basic idea has been understood today. For example, a long review of this threefold social order appeared in a magazine, and it was said: Yes, he wants to replace the one parliament with three parliaments - a spiritual parliament, a legal parliament and an economic parliament. What matters, however, is that in a democratic parliament only that can be decided on which every human being has become capable of judging, which does not require any knowledge of the subject or field, and that precisely that should be eliminated which requires knowledge of the subject and field. Therefore, if there must be no parliament in the realm of intellectual life and in the realm of economic life, it is because the situation is precisely the opposite there. It is therefore a matter of honestly applying parliamentarianism by limiting it to the area in which it can truly flourish.

From this, however, it can be seen that the nerve has actually been little understood to date. But if one understands the nerve of the matter, then one will see how this idea is actually conceived out of the fundamentals. Anyone who believes that they can organize economic life, for example, according to a certain structure by means of some program, no matter how beautifully conceived, may think very cleverly of themselves, but they are not thinking from reality. But the person who says: Humanity must live in a social organism that is administered from three sides; then what is social structure will come. People will shape this through what they will experience through this threefolding of social life. That is what matters, not saying: Now there is a social question that needs to be solved. Today it cannot be solved, tomorrow it will be possible - one says it in one way, the other in another, but very many think that way.

No, he who believes that is thinking unrealistically. The point is this: the social question has come to the surface in humanity, and now a social structure must be brought about in such a way that this social question must be solved continuously. Today the conditions are there, today it will be solved one way or another, not tomorrow will it be solved. And if other questions arise tomorrow, the conditions for tomorrow will have to be solved again; then other things will arise again, and people must be included in the social structure. It will be an ongoing process. The solution is to be tackled anew from day to day. It is not the case that one can say, today it is there and will continue to be there, but one must ask: How must society be shaped so that what is shaped by society can be shaped in a social sense. Those who do not take human matters in this sense, who do not think in real terms, cannot see what is really going on.

Today people think they are thinking, but they think in a highly unrealistic way. For example, they think that social life will acquire a social structure through a certain reorganization of economic life. Well, that would be just as if one wanted to believe that the individual human organism acquires its structure from what it eats and drinks. No, the human organism has an inner lawfulness. It has such a lawfulness that it undergoes a very definite transformation at the age of changing teeth, and another transformation at the age of sexual maturity. The processes in the human organism come from transformations within the human organization; but ideas also arise in the course of historical development. Today this has reached a point where it is necessary to tackle the threefold social order!

Now, in conclusion, I just want to say the following to show you how things are meant. Those who really follow my writings know that when I experience something like this, I am not at all concerned with ridiculing anyone. I know best how worthy of consideration the simplest mind can be. But let us take the following example. In a discussion, I was replied to – actually, the replies are often where one believes today to be particularly revolutionary, according to a certain template, one does not need to go into the reply itself – but such a responder said something that did not directly have to do with the matter, he said: “Look here, esteemed attendees, we certainly do not want – he spoke from the standpoint of the most most radical orator of the Socialist Party – we certainly don't want, he said, to abolish intellectual labor, we want to keep it; because, you see, he said, I'm a cobbler, for example, I know very well that I can't do the work of a registrar; so we have to hire people who can take over this office once we have gained leadership. A glorious thought! The good man believed that he could not do the work of a registrar, but what he did believe was that he could be a minister who then determined the whole structure. That was a matter of course for him.

Such simple errors, in which one lives, are the essence of real life today, they are absolutely fundamental. These are things that show where approaches are that cannot lead to anything fruitful.

On the other hand, I had recently learned the following from a different angle. After writing an article that roundly condemned the entire threefold social order, an American came to me during one of my lectures a few weeks ago and said: I read this article; it is written in such a way that it insults everything. Yes, there must be something in it! And so I got hold of the matter, he said. You see, sometimes the abusive articles also have their good effects. The man was now, when he came to me, completely absorbed in the idea of threefolding. He said to me: Do you believe that with this idea of threefolding there will now be something that can apply to the whole of human future in the most absolute sense? I said, “No.” We have gone through a phase of historical development which has led to the fact that we have concluded everything in this unitary state. In this unitary state, we have concluded, let us say in Austria, economic life, legal life, spiritual life, namely in the form of cultural life. I have often spoken about this. In the 20th century, nothing else was possible than what led to the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was the subject of the negotiations. What emerged from that was linked to the construction of the Thessaloniki railway, which was a purely economic matter. And out of that arose a chaotic mixture, to which was added a purely spiritual element, namely the antagonism between the Slavs and the Magyars. And out of the terrible tangle of nations in the East, something was brewing from the three areas being mixed together. But they were so constituted that they were drawn to the unified state. Now it is ripe to disintegrate into the three elements. And in turn, a completely different necessity will arise in a relatively not too distant time. Life is vibrant, it is not something closed. We want something that applies forever and everywhere!

The inconvenience of such ideas is that they cannot be conceived out of abstract ideas, like programs; you introduce the programs and then that's it. No, it is not like that; but such ideas, spiritual ideas, take into account the spiritual life, the legal life and the economic life in the threefold social organism. And therefore they can only ever find that which is valid for a particular epoch. And they are aware that, in turn, this must be replaced by something else in a certain period of time. They also take evolution seriously by seeking in evolution what they themselves can find for their age.

So, I just wanted to show a practical result in this sense and say that it is not about something something absolute, as in other contemporary programs, but something that is thought out of the present in the most eminent sense.

Thus, that which wants to enter the world today is judged in the most diverse ways. It may meet with the most diverse judgments, if only these judgments, this judging, finally comes to the point of studying things in a way that is full of life. What matters in such matters is not that what is indicated on one side or another is pedantically carried out, but rather that reality is grasped in a practical way. In such a case no stone may be left unturned in the details, but out of such a life-filled approach that which can serve the common good will be effective and will come into being.

In this sense, these things are meant to be said out of reality for reality. The threefold social order is not meant to be a one-sided political development, nor is it meant to be a one-sided development at all. And so it should be taken up without any emotional attitude.

On the other hand, it should be viewed in such a way that it is understood without prejudice, as it is meant without prejudice. From many sides today we hear: Yes, this threefold social order would be all very well, but it must come into being at the very end; before that everything must go haywire, before that there must be dictatorship and so on. If one thinks in this way, then in reality one does not want the practical, but rather that which arises only from abstract demands, which arise directly only from this or that mood of the soul. In that case, one does not want the social threefolding as it is meant here, but rather one wants that which one has fallen in love with.

But if one seriously wants to achieve something in life, one must struggle to the point of view that sees through and overviews this life impartially.