The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[ 1 ] An idea such as the threefold social organism is constantly met with the following objection: “What the social movement is striving for is the elimination of economic inequalities. How will this end be attained through changes in the cultural life and the legal system when these are governed quite independently of the economic process?”

[ 2 ] This kind of objection is made by people who can see the existence of the economic inequalities, but do not see that these inequalities are produced by the human beings living together in the social body. They see that society's economic order finds expression in people's life conditions. They aim at making it possible for large numbers of people to enjoy what seems to them to be better life conditions. They believe that when the changes in the social order that they have in mind come about, this possibility will exist.

[ 3 ] For anyone who looks more deeply into the state of human affairs, the principal cause of today's social evils is seen in the very fact that such a way of thinking has become the prevalent one. In the eyes of many people, the economic system lies too far removed from any of their concepts of the cultural and the legal spheres for them possibly to perceive how the one can be connected with the others in the whole chain of human existence. People's economic conditions are an outcome of the positions they assume toward each other through their spiritual faculties and through the legal code that prevails among them. Anyone who perceives this will not imagine he could devise any system of economics that could, of itself, place people living under it in life conditions that will seem suitable to them. In any economic system, whether one's own services meet with the reciprocal services needed for a suitable life situation will depend on how the people in this economic system are spiritually attuned in their minds, and on how their sense of right and justice leads them to regulate their mutual affairs.

[ 4 ] During the last three or four centuries, the civilized portion of humanity has owed its evolution to impulses that make it exceedingly difficult for them to have any perception of the real relation existing between economics and culture. We have become entwined in a complex network of interrelationships; the achievements of industrial technology have made a mark upon it that no longer corresponds to the cultural and legal concepts we have developed historically. People have become accustomed to viewing the cultural progress of recent years with unalloyed appreciation; but in doing so they overlook one thing: this cultural progress has been achieved mainly in fields directly connected with industry. Science undoubtedly has tremendous achievements to record; but its achievements are greatest where they have been called forth in the economic field by the demands of industrial life.

[ 5 ] Under the influence of this particular kind of cultural progress the leading circles have developed a mental habit of basing their opinions in all life's affairs upon economic grounds. In most cases, they are not aware of forming their opinions this way. They employ this mode of judgement unconsciously. They believe that they act out of all sorts of ethical and aesthetic motives; but, unconsciously, they act upon opinions originating within the technical-industrial economy. They think in economic terms, but believe that their principles are ethical, religious, and aesthetic.

[ 6 ] This mental habit of the ruling classes has been made into a dogma in recent years by the socialists. They believe that all life is conditioned by economics because those from whom their notions are inherited had acquired, more or less unconsciously, this economic way of thinking. Thus these socialist thinkers want to change the system of economics according to the same viewpoint that led to what they believe so urgently needs changing. They fail to notice that they would call forth even more strongly the very thing they do not want if their actions were guided by ideas that have led to the very thing they wish to change. The reason for this is that men cling much more tenaciously to their ideas and their habits of mind than they do to external institutions.

[ 7 ] Today, however, a point has been reached in human evolution when the very character of this evolution demands progress not only in our institutions, but also in our thoughts and habits of mind. This is a demand of human history; and the fate of the social movement depends on whether this demand is heeded. Strange as it still may sound to many people, it is nevertheless true that modern life has assumed a shape which can no longer be mastered by the old kinds of ideas.

[ 8 ] Many say, correctly, that the social problem must be approached in a way different from that, for example, of St. Simon or Owen or Fourier; that spiritual impulses like theirs are of no use in effecting a change in economic life. Thus they conclude that spiritual impulses are entirely incapable of exerting a transforming effect on social life. The truth of the matter is that these thinkers drew their mental concepts from a form of spiritual life that, of its very nature, was no longer adequate to the economic life of modern times. Instead of then coming to the sound conclusion, “In that case, what is needed is a new form of spiritual and legal life,” people form the opinion that desired social conditions to rise up of themselves out of the economic sphere. But economic chaos will result unless the further progress of evolution is effected by a step forward in the spiritual-cultural and legal spheres such as the new age demands.

[ 9 ] All that must come about in the social sphere now and in the near future, depends on the courage to take this step forward in the cultivation of the spirit and the establishment of law. Whatever does not spring from this courage may be very well meant, but will not lead to a sustainable state of affairs. Therefore the greatest social need is to arouse far and wide a clear perception that the only basis upon which humanity can evolve in a healthy way is the cultivation of a new spiritual life. The fruits of this cultivation will be borne in the structuring of the economy. If economic life tries of itself to evolve a new form, it will only propagate—and intensify—its old evils. As long as economic life is expected to make of us what we may become, new evils will be added to the old. Not until humanity comes to understand that the human being—out of his own spirit—must give to the economic life what it needs, will men be able to pursue as a conscious aim what they are demanding unconsciously.

[ 1 ] In my book Toward Social Renewal, the comparison between the social organism and the natural human organism is used as an analogy; at the same time it is pointed out how misleading it is to suppose that concepts acquired from the one can simply be transferred to the other. Anyone who forms a picture of the function of the cells or of an organ of the human body, as natural science represents them, and who then proceeds to look for the social cell or the social organs in order to learn the construction and conditions of life in the social body will very soon fall into an empty game of analogies.

[ 2 ] It is a different matter to point out, as in Toward Social Renewal, that by an intelligent study of the human organism one can train oneself in the kind of thinking required for a real understanding of the working of social life. Through such a training, one acquires the ability to judge social facts not according to preconceived opinions, but to judge them according to their own laws of existence. This above all is necessary in our present times. People today are tied up tightly in their party opinions regarding social judgment; and party opinions are not formed on grounds that lie in the conditions of life and organic requirements of the entire social organism, but by the blind feelings of particular people or of particular groups. If the methods of judgment employed in party programs were transferred to the study of the human body, it would soon be seen that instead of assisting an understanding of it, these methods are only a hindrance.

[ 3 ] In an organic body, the air that is inhaled must constantly be converted into an unusable substance; oxygen must be converted into carbon dioxide. Accordingly, there must be arrangements by which the changed and no longer usable substance is replaced by a usable one. Anyone who now brings to bear a judgment schooled by study of the human organism, and applies it with common sense and without preconceptions to the study of the social organism, will find that there is one system within this social organism, the economic system, which, if functioning properly, is constantly bound to produce conditions that must be counteracted by other functions. Just as the organ system in the human body that is designed to consume inhaled oxygen cannot be expected to make the oxygen usable again, it should not be supposed that the economic circulation itself can give rise to the functions needed for making good what it is the business of this system to convert, out of life, into a life-restricting product.

[ 4 ] The necessary counteraction can be supplied only by the separate working of two other systems alongside the economy: a body of laws that determines its own form out of its own proper nature, and a spiritual-cultural life growing freely from its own roots, completely independent of the economic system and the legal system. Only a superficial critic will say, “What, then! Is the cultural life not to be bound in its pursuits by existing legal relations?” Certainly it must be bound by them. However, it is one matter if the people, who pursue the cultural life, are dependent on the legal life; and quite another matter if the pursuit of the cultural life rises on its own from the institutions of this legal sphere. The idea of the threefold social order will be found to be one that makes it very easy for objections that abide by preconceived notions; but also that these objections fall to pieces when one thinks them through to the end.

[ 5 ] The life of the economy has a lawfulness of its own. In following this lawfulness, it creates conditions that destroy the social organism, if only this law is at work. If, however, one tries to abolish these conditions by means of economic measures, one then destroys the economic process itself. In the modern economic process, evils have arisen through control of the means of production by private capital. If one tries to exterminate these evils by an economic measure, such as the communal control of the means of production, one undermines modern industry. One can, however, work against these evils, by creating alongside the economy an independent legal system and a free life of the spirit. In this way, the evils that result—and result continually—from the economic life will be removed as they arise. It will not be a case of the evils arising first and people having to suffer under them before they disappear; rather, the other organic systems that exist alongside the economic institutions will, in each instance, turn aside the mischief.

[ 6 ] The party opinions of recent times have distracted men's judgment from the laws of life in the social organism and have diverted it into the currents of sectarian passion. It is urgently necessary that these party opinions should undergo correction from a quarter in which one can learn to be impartial. One can learn this through the study of conditions which of their own nature elicit impartial judgment, and in which thinking therefore becomes its own corrective. The human organism affords such conditions.

[ 7 ] Of course, if only the conventional scientific concepts are applied as correctives, they will not go far. In many respects, these concepts lack the kind of force necessary to strike deep into the facts of nature. Yet if one tries to keep to nature herself, and not merely to these concepts of nature, one will be in a better position to learn impartiality than one would be amid party views. Despite the good will of many natural scientists, who have endeavored to overcome materialist convictions, the usual concepts of natural science are today still strongly imbued with materialism. A spiritual contemplation of nature will shed this materialism; and spiritual contemplation of nature will provide means for the kind of training in thought which, among other things, makes it possible to comprehend the social organisms.

[ 8 ] The idea of the threefold social order does not simply borrow facts from natural science and transplant them into the field of social life. It uses the study of nature only as a way of gaining the ability to observe social facts impartially. This should be kept in mind by those who learn about the idea in a superficial fashion—the threefold idea talks of a threefold division of social life in much the same way as one might talk of a threefold division of the natural human organism. Anyone who studies seriously the characteristics of the human organism will be made aware that the one can-not be simply transferred to the other. However, the method of study one is obliged to use on the human organism will awaken the kind of thinking that will enable one to find his way among the social facts.

[ 9 ] Such a method will be thought to remove all social ideas to the far-off region of “gray theory.” It may perhaps be said that such an opinion can only be maintained as long as one regards this “removal” from outside. Then, certainly, everything that is seen indistinctly at a distance seems gray. On the other hand, those things that are born of more immediate passions will have color. Yet go nearer what seems gray and one will find that something begins to stir which is not unlike a sort of passion—but it speaks to all that is truly human, that of which one loses sight when looking from the standpoint of parties and group opinions.

[ 10 ] There is today a burning need to draw nearer to what is truly human. The polemical postures of rival camps have done enough. It is time that one comes to see that the damage cannot be undone with new rival camps, but rather only by observing what history itself demands at this present moment of humanity's evolution. It is easy to see evils and demand programs for their abolition, but what is necessary is to penetrate to the roots of social life. By healing these roots, healthy blossoms and fruits can be brought forth as well.

[ 1 ] The essence of the threefold social order is that it looks at social relations without party or class prejudice and poses the question: what must be done at this juncture of human evolution in order to create viable social forms? Anyone who strives earnestly and honestly to answer this question shall confront one fact he or she cannot possibly disregard: namely, that in modern times the economic and political spheres have come into devastating conflict with one another.

The class strata that are the basis of contemporary social life arose out of economic circumstances. In the course of economic evolution (and as a result of that evolution) one person became a worker and another an industrialist, while a third became engaged in some cultural activity. Socialist thinkers never tire of putting this fact in the forefront of their programs, thinking it will lend them an aura of necessity. However, they do not realize that the important point is to see why economics was able to exert such a tremendous influence upon the stratification of society. They do not see that this stratification came about because the industrial system was not opposed by a political and legal system that could have counteracted its influence. Each person was swept by the forces of the economy to a point where he stood alone. It was possible to live only within the conditions that economic life afforded. One person ceased to understand the other; he could only hope to outvote or overpower him with the help of those who stood upon the same ground. There has yet to arise from the depths of human evolution a political or legal form capable of bringing together the isolated groups of humanity. People did not see that the old currents of politics and law run counter to the new economic forces.

[ 2 ] One cannot carry on economic life in the way made necessary by the circumstances of the last two centuries, and at the same time put people into social positions evolved from political theories belonging to bygone times. Nor should one hope that the class structure, which arose apart from any new political aspirations, can represent a point of departure for the reconstruction of the social organism. Obviously, the classes who feel themselves oppressed will not acknowledge the justice of this statement. They say, “We have had new political aspirations for more than half a century.” In my Toward Social Renewal, I demonstrated that this is not the case as a first premise for all further consideration of social renewal. Karl Marx and his adherents have certainly summoned one class to battle; yet they have merely set forth the same thoughts learned from the adherents of those classes they are to oppose. Therefore, even if the battle could bring about what many desire, nothing new would come of it. It would lead to the same old end; there would merely be a different group at the helm.

[ 3 ] This realization does not, of course, lead directly to the idea of the threefold order; but it is a necessary step in that direction. Until this realization has dawned upon a sufficiently large number of people, they will go on trying to extract from old ideas of politics and law the impulses that are supposed to be equal to present economic conditions. Until they see this, they will be afraid of a threefold articulation of the social organism because it clashes with their accustomed thinking.

[ 4 ] It is understandable that, in times that have brought so many disasters, people should shrink from any call for original thinking—thinking born of the depths of human life. Many feel themselves crushed by the weight of the times, and despair of the power of ideas as creative forces. They are “waiting” until “circumstances” produce a more favorable state of affairs. However, circumstances will never produce anything but what has been implanted in them by human ideas.

[ 5 ] “Yet, after all,” many say, “the very best ideas are powerless in actual practice if the circumstances of life reject them!” This is precisely the point of the threefold social order. The threefold idea begins with a recognition that neither praxis without theory nor impractical ideas can ever lead to a viable social organism. Accordingly, it does not promote an old-fashioned program. There are enough of such programs to teach one that they may be very “excellent” or “high-minded” or “inspiring” in the abstract, but that reality rejects them. In the field of economics, the threefold idea works with the natural and social realities of modern life; it works with the sense of right and justice that has evolved over the last few centuries; it works with a cultural life that provides the social organism with men and women who understand its organic laws and promote them to the benefit of society. It believes that, within a threefold order of the social organism, human beings will find it possible to work together in such a way that out of this cooperation, they shall create what cannot be brought about by any programmatic theory.

[ 6 ] Anyone who is unwilling to see the distinction in principle between the threefold idea and the usual programs will refuse to be convinced that it could bear fruit. The idea is one attuned to reality; it does not try to tyrannize life with a program, but aims at creating a basis that allows the life from which social impulses spring to develop freely. The questions of the present and the near future are not of the kind that can be solved by the intellect; they must be solved in a life-process, and that life-process must first be created. Modern humanity has only a first inkling of the real nature of the social question. It will assume its real form when the structure of the social organism is such that the three life forces underlying all human existence can rise in their true form from a vague instinct into conscious thought. Much that is said today about the social question, when measured against a real understanding of life, gives the impression of immaturity. It is said that people are too immature to shape their lives by ideas. That is not the case: people will be mature enough for answers as soon as they are presented with questions that are divested of ancient prejudices.

[ 7 ] Such is the present situation perceived by one who, out of a living experience of the full reality, has struggled through to the idea of the threefold order. He would like to see this perception translated into action. However, words enough will have been exchanged only when deeds are born of them.

[ 1 ] An ever-increasing number of people are beginning to declare that no way out of the social chaos of our time will be found unless our minds and hearts take a new turn toward the spirit. It is a confession to which many are led by disappointment with the results of a political economy that tried to base its ideas merely on the production and distribution of material wealth.

[ 2 ] It is also quite clear how few are the fruits of this profession of the spirit in our times. If expected to produce ideas for political economy, this profession is a failure; more is wanted than mere reference to the spirit. This does no more than give expression to a need; when it comes to the satisfaction of the need, it is helpless. One should recognize in this fact one of the problems of the present day and ask oneself, “How is it that even those who today regard this turning toward the spirit as necessary for social life do not get beyond talking about the necessity of it? Why do they never quite manage actually to suffuse our political-economic thought with spirituality?”

[ 3 ] The answer to this question will be found by observing the form the evolution of thought has taken in modern times among the civilized portion of humanity. Those representatives of modern civilization who have found their way to a world-conception, consider it a mark of their superior “cultivation” to speak of “the unknowable” behind all things. It has gradually become a widespread belief that only a very unenlightened person still talks about the inherent “essence of things” or “the invisible causes of the visible.” Now this thinking can be maintained for a time regarding the study of nature. The phenomena of nature lie before our eyes, and even those who will not hear of inquiring into their causes can describe them, and so arrive at a certain substantiality of thought.

[ 4 ] In matters of political economy, however, such a mode of thinking is bound to break down. For here the phenomena proceed ultimately from human beings; demands arise from human wants and preferences. Within us there lives as substance that to which people shut their eyes when they accustom themselves to talk about “the unknowable” (as do many disciples of the newer schools of thought). So it has come about that the age just passed has continued to evolve its habits of thought into the present—habits of thought which break down completely in matters of political economy. One can observe the freezing of water or the development of the embryo, and talk in a very “distinguished” manner of “the unknowable” in the world, cautioning one's contemporaries not to be led into fantastic speculations about this unknowable realm. But one cannot master economic matters with a way of thinking based on such a disposition, for economic affairs require that one should enter into the fullness of human life. Here one finds spirit and soul at work, even though they are revealed only in the demand for the satisfaction of material needs.

[ 5 ] We shall not develop the science of political economy that modern times require until people cease to be content with merely “referring” to the spirit and the soul, and cease to stigmatize all endeavors to arrive at an actual knowledge of the spirit as “unscientific” and unworthy of any enlightened person. The human soul will remain beyond their understanding until they recognize its connection with what they desire to avoid in their study of nature.

[ 6 ] If one speaks today from one's own perception of the supersensible, and argues that the only way to overcome the prevailing materialism is through research into the supersensible, one is met with the reply that materialism has been overcome “scientifically.” There have, it is claimed, been ample discussions on the subject which prove, on “genuinely” scientific grounds, that materialism is insufficient to explain the processes of nature. To this assertion it must be replied that such discussions may be very interesting theoretically, but they cannot overcome materialism. Materialism will be overcome only when it is not merely proven theoretically that there are more facts in the world than are perceived by our senses, but when living spirit inspires our study of the world and its processes. Only this spirit, directing human vision, can survey the many mingling currents at work in the material life of human communities. One can go on forever proving that “life” is not merely a chemical process; materialism will in no way suffer. One will combat materialism effectively only when one has the courage not only to say, “Our views of the world must be suffused with spirit,” but really to make this spirit the focus of their consciousness.

[ 7 ] The idea of the threefold social order addresses itself to people who have this courage. Courage of this kind does not stop short at the externalities of life, but seeks to penetrate its inner being. It grasps the necessity of the cultivation of a free, independent spiritual-cultural life because it perceives that a spiritual-cultural life in bondage can, at most, “refer” to the spirit, but it cannot live in the spirit. It also grasps the necessity of a self-subsistent legal life, because it has learned that our sense of right and justice has its roots in regions of the human soul that must remain independent of both the spiritual-cultural and the economic spheres. One perceives this only by recognizing the human soul. World-views inculcated by the theory of the unknowable (this is the line of much modern thought) will always tend to the fallacy that one can devise a social framework determined solely by the material facts of economic life.

[ 8 ] This courage will not be daunted by the theory that men are not mature enough for such a radical change of thought and feeling. Their “immaturity” will last only as long as science expounds to them that recognition of the spirit is an unwarranted assumption. Immaturity is not causing the present chaos; the chaos is caused by the belief that recognition of the spirit is a mark of unenlightenment. All attempts at shaping social life that proceed from this spiritless enlightenment are doomed to failure because they exclude the spirit. The moment one banishes the spirit from one's conscious mind, it asserts its claims in the unconscious regions. The spiritual forces can further human aims only when we do not work against the spirit. Only those who take the spirit into their conscious mind work with the spirit. There must he an overcoming of the false enlightenment that has arisen from a mistaken view of nature, and has become a sort of lay-gospel among widespread masses of people. Only then will the ground be prepared for a genuine social science that can have a fruitful influence upon real life.

[ 1 ] “Well meant thoughts don't make bread.” Such is the wisdom heard today the moment one speaks of ideas like those underlying the threefold social order. In view of the gravity of the times, this piece of wisdom may rank with another frequently heard today: “The social question will look different only when people return to work.”

[ 2 ] Whoever does not hear these two truths constantly repeated has no ears for the language of public discourse in widespread circles. And even if they are not expressly spoken, one hears these words behind much that is said publicly.

[ 3 ] It is hard for the ideas that the age requires to compete against such founts of wisdom because these objections are so incomparably “insightful.” A person need only say, “Show that they are wrong!” for the keenest thinker to recognize his powerlessness. Of course they cannot be refuted; they are obviously perfectly true.

[ 4 ] Is this all that is important in life—to say something that is perfectly true? Is not the all-important task to find thoughts that can set the facts of the matter into motion? It is a feature of modern public life (and one which does it great harm) that people will not combine their thinking with
a sense of reality.

[ 5 ] It is only this lack of a sense of reality that stands in the way when one tries to bring fruitful ideas to bear upon modern social troubles. People have long been accustomed to such deficient thinking; however, now it is truly time for a radical change of habits, especially in this aspect of human life.

[ 6 ] First, one must perceive how people came to slip into this kind of thinking. One must look at the kind of thought valued by our age.

[ 7 ] One such cherished train of social thought goes back to the life and customs of primitive times. People burrow into “primeval ages” to find communistic customs and such things, and draw from this certain conclusions about what should be done today. This train of thought has become very fashionable in pamphlets on the social question, and has thus spread throughout large circles. It may be found today in a great many ideas about “the social question,” especially among the masses.

[ 8 ] People might actually have arrived at this particular train of thought with far less effort than has been devoted to it in many quarters. They might have compared human social life with the lives and habits of various wild animals. They would have found that the animals have instinctive functions which lead them to satisfy their needs, and that these instinctive functions are adapted to acquiring in the best way the things nature provides.

[ 9 ] The essential point is that in the human being this instinctive functioning must be replaced by conscious, intentional thought. We must build upon the foundation of nature, just like every other creature that must eat to survive. The “bread question” touches the natural foundation of our very existence. But this question exists for every creature that needs food; one cannot possibly talk of “social thinking” in this regard. Social thinking begins only when the human being works upon nature by means of his intellect. Through thinking he makes himself master of the forces of nature; through thinking he brings himself into association with other human beings in a labor process through which the “bread” won from nature becomes a part of general social life. For this life, the “bread question” is an intellectual one. It can mean only, “Which are the fruitful thoughts that can, when realized, guide human labor to the satisfaction of our needs?”

[ 10 ] One can readily agree with anyone who, after hearing such an argument, replies, “Really, that is a very primitive piece of wisdom! What is the use of expounding anything that is so self-evident?” Indeed, one would very gladly stop expounding it, if only those who believe it is so superfluous were not the very people who cast it to the winds and destroy all sound social thinking with these words of wisdom: “Bread is not made by thoughts.”

[ 11 ] It is the same with that other wise saying, through which people seek to evade the gravity of the social question: “First of all, people should get back to work.” We work when a thought stirs in our soul and sets us working. If one is to work as a member of society as a whole, and at the same time feel one's existence to be one worthy of a human being, social life must be shaped by thoughts that reveal our contribution in the light of human dignity. Certain circles, it is true (socialist ones, moreover), would like to replace this incentive to work with compulsory labor. That is their particular way of avoiding recognition of the need for fruitful social ideas.

[ 12 ] The world has been brought to its present pass by those who make it impossible for ideas to effect anything because they run away from them. Salvation is possible only if a strong body of people, who are still able to rouse themselves to sufficient consciousness of the true state of affairs, join together. These people must not grow faint-hearted at this critical time, for they will be buffeted with the scornful words: “Impractical idealist! Utopian dreamer!” These people will do their duty and build, while the scoffers tear down. For everything that the others, with their “magnificent accomplishments,” have built or still wish to build, will fall into ruin because with their dread of ideas and their “practical life” they have built upon a quagmire of false “realities.” Such people are merely weaving delusions around their own routines, and procuring themselves a cheap complacency by scoffing at life's real work. To the open-minded, it is as clear as day; to look at such things clearly is the urgent duty of all who are unafraid to change their way of thinking. The age longs for creative thoughts. This longing will not be silenced, however noisily the foes of thinking may try to drown it out by thoughtlessness and grandiose gestures.

[ 1 ] A complex of ideas such as that of the threefold social order is often accused of having no “practical recommendations” on this or that specific issue. [ 2 ] “Now there is the collapse of the currency! What does the proponent of the threefold order suggest as a remedy?” The only reply he can give is, “The whole recent course of world economy has been one that meant competition between the different nations, and thus it led to the depreciation of money in one particular case. Improvement can begin only when, instead of instituting specific measures with a view to remedying this or that, the whole course of economic life is transformed by means of the threefold system. Specific measures may of course improve particular aspects for a while; but so long as the character of economic methods remains essentially the same, isolated ‘improvements’ can do no good. In fact, an ‘improvement’ in one quarter is bound to make matters worse in another.”

[ 3 ] The only really practical means to rebuild what has been destroyed is the threefold social order itself. For example, if people would make comprehensive changes consistent with the threefold order within a part of the economy suffering under depreciation, the actual course of events would remedy the evil. Only someone who is for one reason or another afraid of practical work in the sense of the threefold social order could ask the question mentioned above. Such a person wants the proponents of the threefold idea to tell him how to cure particular symptoms without applying the three-fold cure to the disease itself.

[ 4 ] In this point lies the variance between the representatives of the threefold idea and all those who fancy it possible to retain the old form of social life with its unified state, and to succeed in building up a new structure within it. The whole idea of the threefold social organism rests on a perception that the old social orientation of the unified state is what has brought the world into its present catastrophic situation; and that one must therefore decide to rebuild from the ground up in keeping with the threefold idea.

[ 5 ] Until the courage for such a thoroughgoing measure is aroused in a sufficiently large number of people, our diseased social life will never be restored to health. Without this thoroughgoing change, the only thing that can possibly take place is a hoarding of economic and political power by the victorious nations and the oppression of the vanquished. The victors can, for a while, continue with the old system; the evils that result from it at home can be balanced through their domination of the vanquished. However, the vanquished are at this very moment in a plight that necessitates the instant, thoroughgoing action proposed here. It would, of course, be better if the victors, too, acquired insight. The conditions they are bringing about at home must, as time goes on, lead to a recognition of the intolerable situation in the vanquished country—and thus to new catastrophes. The vanquished, however, cannot afford to wait, for each delay makes their life situation more and more impossible.

[ 6 ] The threefold idea is certainly one that runs counter to the habits of thought and feeling of those who favor a unified national state. To admit to themselves candidly that the evils they now see around them are the result of this idea is, for many today, like being asked to stand with no ground beneath their feet. The ground these people want to stand on is the unified state. They want to take it as given, and build upon it institutions they hope will lead to an improved state of affairs. However, what is necessary is to create new ground; for this, the courage is lacking.

[ 7 ] The main thing that is necessary in order for the three-fold idea to take effect is to see that as many people as possible realize nothing but a radical change can do any good. Far too many people have already allowed the narrowest range of life to shape their judgment in public affairs. This is especially true of the very people who are active in the large industrial concerns. They credit themselves with an all-embracing faculty of judgment in large affairs; actually, they are capable only of what their own narrow range of life has taught them.

[ 8 ] What must be done is to promote a clear understanding (of which there is so little today) of the circumstances of public life. The more people there are who know how the forces of public life have operated until now, and how they have inevitably led to the present catastrophe, the fewer will be the obstacles to the threefold social order. Everything that can help to spread such clear perceptions prepares the soil on which the threefold idea can take practical effect.

[ 9 ] Accordingly, one must not expect much to come of discussions with members of one or another party; for in the end, as long as they choose to remain within their party, they will still tend to interpret every thought put forward by supporters of the threefold idea according to the party's convenience. Once one has recognized the value of this impulse, one should make it understood far and wide. One can do nothing with people who do not want the threefold social organism, but only with those who are filled with the idea. Only with these people is it possible to discuss the details of public affairs. One really ought to see that one simply cannot speak with Mr. Erzberger about public affairs as long as Mr. Erzberger is Mr. Erzberger!

[ 10 ] I write this because I see that, in this respect, not all those who have embarked upon the threefold idea are sailing on the right tack. The threefold social order is an idea one must serve unreservedly if one wants to serve it at all. It affords a basis for mutual discussions with each and every one; but the idea must lose nothing of its radicality in discussion. People will take this course of action once they perceive the real causes of the downfall. Such a perception will give the needed courage for thoroughgoing measures. For the prevailing helplessness is, after all, simply the consequence of a lack of insight.

by Joseph Weizenbaum

History often provides insight into the present. Consider the American South one hundred and fifty years ago, for example. There human rights and economic servitude were compressed into a single domain for black Americans. They became a means of production that could be bought and sold as a commodity. In many parts of the South it was forbidden to teach blacks to read. Control by law of education, part of culture, was found necessary to subordinate human rights to economics. The domain of rights and economics thus also engulfed culture.

Today we recognize rights which are independent from economic power, at least in principle. Modern workers must accept the authority of their superiors but only in matters directly related to their employment. Human beings no longer can be treated as mere means of production. We have separated economic power from civil rights at least to the extent of making slavery illegal.

If we can perceive how law, economics, and culture grew independent of one another relative to their nearly complete interdependence one hundred and fifty years ago in the South, then we can imagine the possibility of their even greater separation. This greater separation of the three domains - economics, law, and culture-forms the core of Steiner's social thought. Written in 1919, the essays contained in this volume address the reconstruction of a shattered Germany. They call for a proper separation of these three spheres of activity arguing that only this would allow each to express its essential nature and thereby enable human society to revitalize itself.

To understand this separation we must understand the component activities. For law the essential characteristic is human equality. Law both guarantees and limits rights, and it does this equally for each person. It governs the democratic political process in which each person's vote carries equal weight. Inasmuch as rights must be protected and the law enforced, it encompasses both the police and the military. The state is its administrative body. The modern national state, however, oversteps its essential boundaries, creating a kind of social indigestion in its attempts to legislate both in the domains of economics and of culture. Economic interests, in turn, influence legal judgments, often making a sham of human equality.

In the United States an important barrier to this overstepping is the constitutional doctrine of the separation of Church and State. The reasoning behind this doctrine has received considerable interpretation by legal experts and by the Supreme Court. Part of the discussion revolves around the ways in which people are considered equal. Thomas Emerson¹ argues that we are equal in one way through our need for self-fulfIllment or self-development, a fundamental aspect of which is belief formation. Consequently each individual has the right to form his or her beliefs without government interference. From this follows the separation of Church and State.

Religion is one pan of cultural life; another part is education. The separation of the three activities of society implies that education should be as independent of the state as is religion. In “The Separation of School and State” Stephen Arons presents a legal argument for this separation in the context of U.S. Constitutional law. He states that the case would have “for its central principle the preservation of individual conscience from government coercion. The specific application of this principle to education is that any state-constructed school system must maintain a neutral position toward parents' educational choices whenever values or beliefs are at stake. If schools generally are value-inculcating agencies, that fact raises serious constitutional questions about how a state can maintain a sufficiently neutral posture toward values while supporting a system of public education:”² In other words public schools as a matter of course tend to transmit those values deemed appropriate by the majority of the public. This implies choices among such conflicting values as competitiveness and cooperation, intellect and wisdom, and the status of manual work vis-a-vis intellectual work. Parents not accepting the majority view have the right to alternatives.

Current rulings protect the existence of private schools and their right to determine their own curricula with minimal state interference. These rulings exclude “any general power of the state to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only.”³ Arons feels that their implications go further than is generally accepted. First, they can be interpreted as prohibiting state financing systems from favoring those who are in agreement with public school values. In effect every child has the right to the same educational support at the school of his or her parents' choice, whether public or private. Otherwise constitutional rights are reserved for the rich. Second, state regulation of private schools cannot effect value transmission unless there is legally compelling justification given by the state. Putting these implications into effect would increase the separation of school and state.

Steiner argues for separation of culture and state in order that the essential nature of each can find a healthy form. To understand the essential nature of the state we must recognize that people may differ among themselves with respect to musical and other talents, but that the same people are equal with respect to voting rights. The state will be healthy when it concerns itself strictly with those matters wherein people are equal. This human equality is fundamental to the state.

Freedom is the quality fundamental to the life of culture. It is interesting that freedom is often thought to be the characteristic of the political system. On reflection, however, it becomes clear that what is usually meant by freedom is equality under the law. Indeed, by majority consensus absolute freedom is limited. For example, a person is not free to murder or steal. A little reflection also reveals that people are not equal culturally. Few would deny the cultural superiority of Mozart, Hilbert, Schweitzer, or Emerson. Thus superiority does not effect the essential equality of all before the law. It does suggest that the highly gifted ought to be given more space and time than the merely moderately gifted to unfold their capacities for the benefit of society.

To understand Steiner's thinking consider briefly what is involved in a cultural creation, be it KeKule discovering the benzene ring, Saul Bellow writing a novel, or Joan of Arc planning a battle. Each of these activities originated in the creative depths of a unique individual. It issued forth from soul and spirit under the guidance of his or her own volition and intentionality. No external compulsion can bring forth inner creative activity. The individual does it freely or not at all.

Steiner's thinking about cultural life was directed more toward this inner activity than to its result or product. For him culture is that realm of society in which people acquire inner activity and mobility through interaction with others who have developed this mobility. In the essay “Cultivation of the Spirit and Economic Life” he says that cultural life

“aims at a form of cooperation among men to be based entirely on the free intercourse and free association of individualty with individuality. Here human individuality will not be forced into an institutional mold. How one person assists another, how one helps another advance will simply arise from what one, through his own abilities and accomplishments, is able to be for the other. It is no great wonder that presently many people are still able to imagine nothing but a state of anarchy as a result of such a free form of human relations in the social order's spiritual-cultural branch. Those who think so simply do not know what powers of man's innermost nature are hindered from expanding when man is forced to develop in the pattern into which the state and economic system mold him. Such powers, deep within human nature, cannot be developed by institutions, but only through what one being calls forth in perfect freedom from another being.”

As Steiner mentions above, real freedom in culture need not result in chaos. He provided an example of this in the Waldorf School, which he founded in Stuttgart in 1919. Based on that impulse the Waldorf Schools have grown in number to a worldwide confederation of over 350 independent private primary and secondary schools. The teachers in these schools retain complete control of the activities within their own classrooms, as well as of the operation of the school as a whole through a collegial administrative body. The heart of the pedagogy is a developmental picture of the child compatible with that of Piaget, whom Steiner predated. The developmental phases that are outlined in the essay “The Pedagogical Basis of the Waldorf School” provide a context for the Waldorf teacher's interaction with children of different ages. This interaction follows a structured curriculum, where subjects are chosen to assist the developmental process of each child. The curriculum and the concept of the developmental phases can be compared to an instrument that the teacher creatively plays in order to help the students actualize their potentials. In this way the schools provide an example of free creative activity within a structure. It is not chaos. Being personally acquairited with a number of Waldorf students, I can say that they come closer to realizing their own potentials than practically anyone I know.

This is in striking contrast to what one finds in the public primary and secondary schools in the United States. A recent study points to a catastrophic situation. The report titled A Nation at Risk⁴ literally states that if a foreign power had imposed our current educational system on us, we would have taken it as an act of war. Just how bad conditions are can be deduced from the results of an English proficiency exam, given this September to incoming freshmen at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), with a standard of passing which was embarrassingly low. Of 1131 students who took the exam, about 800 failed. Considering that MIT is among the highest quality institutions in the country, receiving applications only from top students and accepting only the best of them, it is clear that standards of mastery of their native language among average students in our secondary school system must be very low indeed.

The report goes on to urge that something must be done to improve this situation, giving two compelling reasons. The first is that without a better educated public the United States will be unable to compete with foreign economies in the struggle for markets. This is an economic reason. The second is a political one. Lacking an educated public America will not be able to keep up its military strength. In Steiner's terms the report suggests that we nurture the germ which is the underlying cause of the problem. It should be clear that if these two are the primary reasons for improving the educational system, then they will influence how it is “improved.” In reality it is exactly such influences from the state and from economics that have caused the current catastrophe.

Unhealthy connections and influences among the several activities of society have caused catastrophies in economic life as well. Two cases which illustrate this are developments in the American rail and steel industries since the second world war. At the beginning of the war the U.S. railroad system was quite superb. It covered the entire country and was fast and comfortable. But then companies like New York Central started examining themselves and decided the business they were really in was making money and providing dividends for their shareholders. On this basis they took their surplus funds and bought companies which were unrelated to railroading but which were judged more profitable than rail. Today we call this diversification. The deterioration of the railroads' infrastructure was the consequence. Within a decade the system was in disarray. Similar events took place in the U. S. steel industry. American steel became uncompetitive. Those foreign steel manufacturers who had decided that making steel was their business, and who consequently invested in renewal and improvement of their plant, became even more efficient while the American steel-making plant deteriorated.

The decline of American rail and steel can be traced to neglecting the essential nature of economic life: meeting human needs. They turned, instead, to the rights of owners, myopically pursuing shareholder profit and probably management compensation. This is the “pig principle.” The net impact on society can be found by adding the shareholder's gain to the external effects, such as the cost of finding and using alternatives to rail transportation, which are costs to society. The net, a big negative, is the logical outcome of economic activity losing its primary focus of meeting needs.

To be healthy economics must start from and keep this primary focus. Those at work in economic life concern themselves primarily with the production and circulation of commodities. What is produced is usually not consumed by those who produce it. The product serves the needs of others. For this reason Steiner used the term “brotherliness” (and we should add sisterliness) to characterize economic activity. He stressed that this applies only to economies in which the division of labor is the norm.

But to characterize actual economic life with the term “brotherliness” is to contradict much of modern economic thinking. Human economic activity is more usually characterized by terms like selfishness, personal gain, and survival. Steiner insists, however, that these ideas are inconsistent with fundamental economic realities. Since the division of labor, few individuals have really provided for themselves. We all rely on the efforts of thousands, indeed millions of others to produce the car we drive, the food we eat, and the clothes we wear. The reality of modern economic life is that we take care of one another, i.e., true brotherliness. Thinking that overlooks this fundamental reality is likely to misguide economic decisions, as in the two examples cited.

The proper separation of the three activities of society-economics, law, and culture-would make it possible for economic life to keep its focus on human needs and maintain its true brotherly character. Steiner envisioned this coming about through the working of motivational forces different from those to which we are accustomed. Self interest, profit, and personal gain could be replaced by the satisfaction of knowing one is working for the community good. Steiner argued that this is not a utopian dream; rather it is a motivation suitable to true human dignity. He also described new ways of working with wages, capital, and credit that would aid the advent of this new motivation. The key to its possibility and practicality is again the proper separation of the three activities.

He explains in the essay “Ability to Work, Will to Work, and the Threefold Social Order” that this socially responsible motivation would not arise from the economic life at all, because purely economic work has become inherently uninteresting since the division of labor became the norm. This was not the case for the medieval craftsman who produced his product in its entirety and then, taking pride in it, received thanks from his customer. The modern worker is confined to a task that, taken by itself, i.e., out of the macroeconomic context into which it fits, is meaningless. The existing economic motivation, money, leads people to do whatever is necessary to get paid. But it does not activate their interest in a task that is inherently uninteresting, with the consequence that absenteeism, alienation, and poor performance have reached alarming levels. Steiner recognized that socially responsible motivation could arise only from an independent cultural and political life. In the above mentioned essay he says that within the cultural life the individual

“learns in a living way to understand this human society for which one is called upon to work; a realm where one learns to see what each single piece of work means for the combined fabric of the social order, to see it in such a light that one will learn to love it because of its value for the whole. It aims at creating in this free life of spirit the profounder principles that can replace the motive of personal gain. Only in a free spiritual life can a love for the human social order spring up that is comparable to the love an artist has for the creation of his works.&rdquo

From a separate democratically ordered life of law there would also arise motives to work for society.

“Real relationships will grow up between people united in a social organism where each adult has a voice in government and is co-equal with every other adult: it is relationships such as these that are able to enkindle the will to work ‘for community.’ One must reflect that a truly communal feeling can grow only from such relationships, and that from this feeling the will to work can grow. For in actual practice the consequence of such a state founded on democratic rights will be that each human being will take his place with vitality and full consciousness in the common field of work. Each will know what he is working for; and each will want to work within the working community, of which he knows himself a member through his will.&rdquo

If we attempt to fInd examples of this type of motivation operative in contemporary society, we often fInd negative instances. This is nowhere better exemplified than at the highest levels of computer research at MIT. This research is paid for almost entirely by the military. While it is possible to view it, if one wears just the right kind of glasses, as a pure science and as “value free,” it is, in fact, in the service of the military. Scientific results are swiftly converted to the improvement of implements of mass destruction and of death. Young men and women work in these fields trying to maintain the illusion that they are doing abstract science, a “value free” science. They ultimately have to come to believe that they are not in any way responsible for the end use of their labor. It is often said that the computer is a tool having no moral dimension. Clearly this position can be maintained only if one thinks of human society in abstract terms, i.e. if one denies the concrete historical and social circumstances in which one lives and works.”

The effect of this situation on the researcher needs emphasis. It takes enormous energy to shield one's eyes from seeing what one is actually doing. The expenditure of this energy on the part of individuals is expensive in emotional terms. Ultimately this is the real tragedy, for it reduces the person to a machine.

There is a sort of irony involved, a chilling irony. A fear is often expressed about computers, namely that we will create a machine that is very nearly like a human being. The irony is that we are making human beings, men and women, become more and more like machines. For it is human to find the motive for work, consciously and with conscience and compassion, in the concrete historical and social context in which one lives. When this is not possible human beings are robbed of essential humanity.

The quest for a motive to work befitting human dignity extends from research scientist to factory worker. One might think, for example, that the steel worker, if he were educated to picture the use of the product of his work, would find in the pictures the motivation to work for social good instead of merely for a living. This presumably could be measured in higher quality work and reduced absenteeism. On closer inspection, however, it is doubtful that a look at the actual American context could bring about such motivation. A large percentage of steel manufactured in America is used for nothing but trivia. For example, there are on the order of ten million new automobiles produced in this country every year. If we restricted ourselves to a replacement market without model changes and alterations that are purely cosmetic, then we might easily get by, building, say, half a million cars a year. It is difficult to believe that the steel worker could be proud of his contribution to society if underneath he knew that the car his neighbor bought was unnecessary and that it might have been better to put the resources it required into feeding the 600 million people on the planet who are malnourished.

In a volume to be published subsequently to this one Steiner's concept of “unnecessary production,” i.e., trivia, planned obsolescence, etc., is introduced. With that discussion and much of what is presented in this volume it should be evident that Steiner's ideas will be of interest to those who concern themselves with issues of ecology and stewardship of the earth. In the broader context ecology must also encompass a social dimension, making it a social ecology that considers questions such as right motivation to work. In this sense Steiner's work also relates to the efforts of E.F. Schumacher, who read Steiner, and who tried to introduce us to ideas of appropriate scale and healthy approaches to post industrial society. These connections should help dispel any thought that this volume is dated. Rather, Steiner was far ahead of his time.

Joseph Weizenbaum
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1984

• 1. Toward a General Theory of the First Amendment (New York: Random House, 1966).
• 2. “The Separation of School and State: Pierce Reconsidered,” Harvard Educational Review, 46 (February 1976):1, pp. 96–97.
• 3. United States Supreme Court, Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. at 535 (1925). 4. National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform; A Report to the Nation (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983).
• 4. National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform; A Report to the Nation (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983).

[ 1 ] In the beginning of March 1919, my Appeal to the German Nation and to the Civilized World ¹ was published. Its purpose was to state briefly what is necessary in order to bring healing forces into our declining life situation, one that revealed its symptoms of decay in the worldwide catastrophe of the war. Many Germans and Austrians, and a number of Swiss, signed their names to the Appeal. Thereby, they testified that the proposals it puts forward point to vital necessities for the present and the immediate future.

These proposals were further elaborated in my book, Toward Social Renewal.² To give them permanent representation and carry the movement into practical life, a League for The Threefold Order ³ was founded in Stuttgart and in Switzerland. Among other steps taken to bring about this practical realization was the founding of a weekly paper, The Threefold Order,⁴ which was published in Stuttgart. The following studies formed the lead articles I wrote for that paper during the summer and winter of 1919–1920. They can be treated as supplementary expositions of the principles established in Toward Social Renewal, or may serve equally well as an introduction to these principles.

[ 2 ] Everything I published both in Toward Social Renewal and in these studies is not merely the elaboration of theoretical premises. For over thirty years I have followed the most varied ramifications of European spiritual, political and economic life. In so doing, I believe I have gained insight into the tendencies this life has itself brought forth in trying to effect its own cure. I believe the thoughts expressed here are not merely the private thoughts of one individual: they voice the unconscious will of Europe as a whole. Owing to the special conditions of present-day life that I frequently mentioned both in Toward Social Renewal and in these studies, there have not been enough people who have manifested this will clearly, consciously, and with a desire to make it a reality. One could say the tragedy of the present is that countless people obstruct their insight into actual necessities with illusions as to what is worthy of this striving. Thoroughly outdated party lines shed a dense mental fog over these vital necessities. These views result in all manner of unrealistic and impracticable tendencies. What they actually undertake is hopelessly utopian, while they dismiss as utopian suggestions that come from actual life experience. This is what we have to contend with; in what follows, we will meet it with a fully conscious stance.

[ 3 ] Such impulses still govern foreign relations throughout the world today. Versailles and Spa are further steps in the same direction. Few recognize that such steps are leading more and more to the downfall of our civilization, which has already demonstrated through the catastrophe of the Great War its incapacity for further progress. To be sure there are individuals, among both the victors and the vanquished, who recognize this today. However, their number is not large enough; moreover, the majority of even these people view what is really necessary as utopian.

[ 4 ] If the League for the Threefold Order is regarded by many as an association of impractical people, it is, in my opinion, just because “the many” have lost touch with all reality and mistake their daily routines and party illusions for that reality. However, we shall never succeed in healing our civilization until the actual will of the age, so deeply hidden beneath the underbrush of impractical and illusory party schemes, is raised to full consciousness.

[ 5 ] For one who knows only too well that he is not suffering from foolish delusions it is hard to write what, among many today, will earn him the reputation: “He thinks himself wiser than all those actually engaged in practical life, who have therefore won the right to a voice in such matters.” Nevertheless, the author believes that the false reproach contained in such words should not prevent him from expressing what he holds to be necessary. This is especially so if one believes that one's inner vision has been guided to this necessity through more than three decades by a special relationship of one's life situation to present-day life.

[ 6 ] At any rate, it is my conviction (acquired through an observation of life that shuns all theory and keeps only the practical in view) that the will of the times is pressing toward this “threefold division of the social organism”; and that all the signs of decline and degeneracy now making themselves felt have arisen because public opinion in Europe has attempted to pursue old way of thinking that are no longer viable instead of turning to this new impulse.

[ 7 ] One group of people (from which the leaders came before the war, and from which many of them still come) continue to hold the same views that have led to the downfall; they do not want to see the connection between this downfall and their views. They attempt to fashion new life from the same forces that have led to death.

[ 8 ] The other group pursues a mode of thought born of negative criticism. They refuse to see that all this can do is cobble together an illusion of a social order out of the ruins of the past. Its existence can be only transitory, and is thus necessarily destructive. This group keeps to the old by contraries, but has no seeds of a new.

[ 9 ] Midway between these two groups lie the forces that are striving to bring forth this “threefold order of the social organism,” buried under the rubble of the past, out of the real and present will of this age. The bearers of this impulse feel they possess what the present hour needs.

Rudolf Steiner
Mid-July, 1920

• 1. See Appendix.
• 2. Towards Social Renewal, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1977
• 3. Bund für Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus
• 4. Dreigliedernng des Sozialen Organismus

Flyer, February 1919

Term:

[ 1 ] 1. The essence of the socialization of the economy is that the organization of production and sales are regulated in accordance with the economic laws inherent in them, and that no "rights" or powers of authority are involved in the resulting economic organism. All "rights" are exercised by the political organism, which is equal to the economic organization and is based on the equality of all men before the law. All intellectual achievements, including technical ideas, are to be placed under the free, individual administration of a third, equal intellectual organism.

[ 2 ] 2. The representatives of the economic organism shall be the elected members of the associations established on the basis of the classification of occupations and the distribution of labor. Representatives of the political organization may be elected on the basis of universal, equal (secret) suffrage. Representatives of the spiritual organization shall be the personalities placed by circumstances at the head of the individual spiritual branches. Delegations elected from the representatives of each of the three bodies serve to connect them. (The three bodies stand side by side like three relatively independent states that organize their common affairs through envoys.)

Practical implementation:

[ 3 ] 3. The transfer of branches of the economy from the present to the future state shall be effected with due regard to the present economic condition, in such a manner that all factors (employers and employees in every form) shall participate in the fundamental (constituent) reorganization, and that the present possible economic organization shall be established on opportunistic conditions.

[ 4 ] 4. The new economic order thus sought must under no circumstances lead to an interruption of consumption by breaking off economic continuity.

[ 5 ] 5. Everything that intervenes in the economic organism as a law that is the same for all people (such as accident prevention, damage through usury and so on) is subject to the powers of the political organization. The general taxes shall be expenditure taxes (which is in no way to be confused with indirect taxes). Revenues as such do not become taxable; they become so at the moment when the public has an interest in them, i.e. when they are transferred into circulation.

Branches of the economy:

[ 6 ] The following can be considered as the most necessary economic sectors to which point 3 should be applied immediately:

1. Mining
2. Iron
3. Electricity
4. Hydropower and its land
5. Gas and water supply
6. Aeronautics
7. Trams; all types of roads
8. Canalization and canal shipping
9. Chemical industry
10. Grain growing and grain processing
11. Sugar industry, brandy and so on
12. Tobacco industry
13. Everything relating to the cultivation of land (whereas the ownership of land belongs to the political body)
14. Insurance
15. Money institutions

The peace treaty

[ 7 ] It is to be effected in such a way that representatives of the three corporations negotiate with foreign countries from the German side with independent mandates emanating entirely from their corporation. A unilateral socialization based on aspects other than those mentioned is also impracticable for Germany for reasons of foreign policy. On the other hand, a justification of foreign policy for the establishment of the three corporations is quite promising.

[ 1 ] The call for a reorganization of social coexistence and cooperation between people is going around the world. The economic, legal-political and spiritual conditions of life that prevailed at the beginning of the twentieth century led to the horror-filled world catastrophe of that time. An economic system that was unsocial, a legal-political life that was incapable of overcoming the class antagonisms perceived as unjust by the consciousness of the great majority of contemporary humanity, a spiritual culture that, despite its "progress", has proved incapable of being a leader out of an unsocial economic life and a state based on class antagonisms: they must make way for a new one.

[ 2 ] Whether one person today understands socialization to mean this, another that: all those who do not want to live through our time spiritually blind could agree that socialization must call upon all those who have hitherto seen these conditions imposed on them by the power of classes superior to them spiritually, legally or economically to shape their own social conditions. Class struggles can only disappear with the cessation of the intellectual, legal and economic class antagonisms themselves.

[ 3 ] The fact that this is the call of the times is shown by the movement of the proletariat, but also by the correctly understood development of history itself.

[ 4 ] The goal is felt.

[ 5 ] The impulse wants to show the way towards the tripartite social organism.

[ 6 ] This impulse calls for the complete independence of intellectual life, including the educational and school system. It sees the causes of the intellectual inability of our time in the absorption of intellectual culture by the state. He demands the complete self-administration of this culture from a purely objective and general human point of view. It will only be properly educated when no one has any say in the question of how to educate all people to become true people capable of living, except those who can only judge from the depths of human nature itself.

[ 7 ] This impulse demands the restriction of state life to all those living conditions for which all people are equal before one another. On this ground, in a strictly democratic way, with the transformation of the present private capitalist property and forced labor relations, above all such a general human right is to be achieved that confronts the worker as a completely free personality with the labor leader (who is only a spiritual worker).

[ 8 ] This impulse demands an economic life in which the worker confronts the labor manager in such a way that a free social relationship can be established between the two by contract, so that the wage relationship ceases completely. This requires the complete socialization of economic life. Only from the proper participation of all people in appropriate cooperatives, which arise from the professions on the one hand, and from the needs of consumers and producers on the other, can a regulation of the value of goods emerge that ensures a decent existence for all people. Such a regulation of the value of goods can only realize the principle: people must not produce in order to profit, but only in order to consume. It is only possible if, after the detachment of intellectual and state life in the economy, we are dealing with nothing other than the production, distribution and consumption of goods. Any interest in the unobjective, mere utilization of capital, any wage system based on competing economic interests and acting out of such interests, hinders a correct reciprocal pricing of goods and therefore a just distribution of goods.

[ 9 ] In all details of social life, the impulse wants to follow the tripartite social organism:

[ 10 ] 1. development of man in all his faculties through independent spiritual life;

[ 11 ] 2. the establishment of human rights through the exclusion of all non-general human interests from the legal sphere;

[ 12 ] 3. equitable distribution of goods in a correct relation of value of goods (commodities) by reorganizing the present capital and wage system;

[ 13 ] The German people can only hope to be integrated into the international world conditions if it removes the inhibitions that have arisen in its economic, legal and intellectual life as a result of their inorganic fusion in the previous state system through the organic threefolding of the social organism. In this way it can be brought about that through the free development of each of the three members and the higher unity arising from it, the highest economic productivity compatible with the healthy body and soul of man, the true satisfaction of a genuine folkish sense of justice and the all-round revelation of the forces inherent in the German spirit become possible.