The Reorganization of the Social Organism

GA 330 — 22 April 1919, Stuttgart

I. The Meeting of the Signatories of the Appeal “To the German People and the Cultural World»

In accordance with the program of today's meeting, my task this evening will be to say a few words about the appeal “An das deutsche Volk und an die Kulturwelt” (To the German People and to the Civilized World), which is in your hands. You will allow me to speak more aphoristically today, when I am addressing an assembly that is essentially familiar with the content of the appeal. I will speak about the social views that underlie the appeal and my book on the social question, which will be published in a few days, next Monday. What can lead a person with a compassionate impulse for humanity to make such an appeal, as has been presented to you today, is truly not some programmatic idea that one tends towards out of this or that interest. No, it is the facts that speak loudly and clearly, which have emerged from the terrible world catastrophe that we have been through in recent years. If we look at these facts with a watchful soul, we will come to a very definite conclusion above all. I would characterize this impression in the following way.

We have heard it said many times: During the terrible years that we have gone through in this world catastrophe that befell humanity, something happened that is unparalleled in the historical course of human development, which one usually surveys as such. There was a widespread feeling that something like this had never been seen in the whole of the great span of time that we call history. Should not the other thing also be evoked, which, it seems to me, has not yet been fully evoked, the feeling that now, for a reorganization of world conditions, things are also necessary that are, so to speak, brought forth from impulses of humanity that are radically new, that radically break, not only with old institutions, but that, above all, break with old habits of thought? Do we not have to say to ourselves, looking at the facts that speak loudly, that shadows are spreading over large parts of the civilized world, shadows that were actually left behind by pre-humanity in a chaotic manner for present-day humanity? In the face of this, can we say that out of the confusion, out of the chaos, such ideas, such thoughts, have already emerged that are equal to these facts? When we look at these facts soberly, do we not feel that we have to say: old party opinions are there, old social views are there, certain ideas of how it should be among people are there, but none of this is enough to somehow lead to a reorganization of what has been left behind from the most immediate past into our present.

This presents us with major, comprehensive tasks for the present. Perhaps we will best meet them if we ask ourselves openly and honestly – because openness and honesty will be the only things that can carry us into the future – if we ask ourselves openly and honestly: how did we actually end up in these circumstances? If I am to describe the most significant phenomenon of the present and want to ask: what has actually led to the present conditions, I cannot point out that they have arisen merely from the aberrations of one class or another of humanity. I would like to say: what is actually happening today is surging up as if from an abyss. What kind of abyss is that? It is an abyss that has opened up in the course of the last three to four centuries between the classes that have led humanity up to now and those who are emerging from being led and are now making their demands. It is not from one side or the other that the turmoil comes, but from what lies in between. This is not a pedantic remark, but something on which I believe a profound basis can be established and which at the same time throws light on what actually has to happen. On the one hand, we have the leading circles of humanity, who, basically, let's just admit it openly and honestly, have developed over the last few centuries and especially the last few years in such a way that they have shown little inclination to somehow look into the future, to have any idea of what may actually lie in the bosom of the social order within which they live.

When one looks at what has become of the influence of the thoughts, feelings, willpower and actions of these previously leading circles of humanity, then one recalls the degree of insight, the degree of power of thought, that was there, well, let us say, in the spring of 1914. It is necessary to point out such things today. In the spring of 1914, we could hear that at a meeting that was supposed to be enlightened at least with regard to political matters, at a meeting of those men to whom the leadership of the people was entrusted at that time, the then Foreign Minister said that he could inform the gentlemen of the German Reichstag that the general relaxation of Europe was making great progress. The relations between the German Reich and Russia are as satisfactory as can be imagined, because the government in St. Petersburg is not inclined to listen to the machinations of the press; the friendly neighborly relations between the German Reich and Russia promise the very best. Furthermore, he said that negotiations had been initiated with England, which had not yet been concluded, but which promised that the best relationship with England would ensue.

Yes, especially if one wants to openly and honestly consider what the intellectual power of the leading circles and those selected from these leading circles was in that decisive time, then one must point out such things. What has been hinted at could have been said in the weeks immediately preceding that terrible time, in which, within Europe, a mere ten to twelve million people were killed and three times as many were maimed! These things must be looked at, because today it is important to finally break away from what in recent times has usually been called the practice of life and to gain confidence in what real insight into the facts can achieve. If we do not decide to look courageously and without pretence at what, let us admit, we have been led to by our thoughtlessness regarding what the present is bearing for the future, we cannot move forward. That is what must be faced today. I really don't want to talk to you about anything personal this evening, but perhaps I may point out one thing by way of introduction.

At the same time that leading people were talking about “general relaxation” and the like, as I have just mentioned, I had to summarize in a small gathering in Vienna what I had formed over decades as a vision of the future possibilities of European, modern, civilized life in general. At that time I had to say it in front of a small group – a larger one would probably have laughed at me, because all those who held the leadership of humanity at that time were only inclined to regard such things as fantasies. I put what I had to say at the time into the following words, only repeating what I had already said in one form or another over the past decades:

The prevailing trends in today's world will become ever stronger until they ultimately destroy themselves. Those who have a spiritual understanding of social life see how terrible tendencies are sprouting everywhere, leading to the formation of social ulcers. This is the great cultural concern that arises for those who see through existence. This is the terrible thing that has such a depressing effect and that, even if one could suppress all enthusiasm for recognizing the processes of life through the means of a science that recognizes the spirit, would lead one to speak of the remedy, to cry out to the world for the remedy, so to speak, for what is already so strongly on the rise and will become ever stronger and stronger. What must be the case in a field, in a sphere, as nature creates through abundance in free competition - in the spreading of spiritual truths - that becomes a cancerous formation when it enters social culture in the way described.

It seems to me that these arguments more accurately describe what followed the spring of 1914, when these words were spoken, than all the words spoken by those who at the time considered themselves practitioners of life, who believed that they drew from reality, while they only drew from their political and other life illusions.

If I am to give a brief description of what has led to such things, well, it is precisely the lack of any foresight, the lack of a will to foresee what lies in the bosom of the present as the seeds of the future. Not to be accused – merely characterized!

If we survey the developments that have gradually emerged in the last few centuries in those leading classes that have ultimately entered the so-called bourgeois class of society, we must say that there have been many extraordinarily praiseworthy endeavors. There is no other way to describe them than to say that tremendous progress has been made in general human culture up to the present day. But what has this progress necessitated? It has necessitated that one has become entangled in a terrible contradiction of life. With the emergence of modern technology, with its necessary accessory of modern capitalism, on the one hand, and the modern world view, which goes hand in hand with capitalist and technical development, on the other, there was a need for a certain broadening of education. I will have to say something very paradoxical, but the truths that are necessary for us today may still sound somewhat paradoxical to the habits of thought of the time. Among those who have spoken out in an outstanding way, I actually know of only one man who has said in the right way how the world should actually be treated if things are to continue as they have been done in these leading, guiding circles for centuries; I know of one man who has said what, if they were consistent, these guiding, leading circles should actually do. And this man, and herein lies the paradox, is the head of the Holy Synod, as it is called in Russia; he is the Chief Procurator Pobjedonoszew. There is a writing of this man, which in an extraordinarily forceful and spirited way radically condemns all parliamentarism of recent times, radically condemns democracy, but above all the press of the Western world. Pobjedonoszew was far-sighted enough to know that either these things must be done away with, parliamentarism, the press, democracy, or that one would come to the destruction of that which the leading, guiding circles believe to be the right thing for modern times. Of course, only such a chairman of the Holy Synod had the courage to speak in such a radical way. There was an inner contradiction in the souls of the most progressive thinkers in the leading circles. It was fundamentally a contradiction even to the invention of the printing press. It was impossible, through all the newer institutions, to call upon the wider circles to make their own judgments and to think for themselves, and at the same time to continue to manage things in the same way as they had been managed. This was bound to lead to the result it has produced, namely, the self-destruction of this culture. That is one side of the matter. If the conclusion of the Senior Procurator Pobjedonoszew had been drawn in the widest circles, then people would have said, long since said: something else, something radically different is needed from what we have allowed to develop in the last few centuries. That is one side of the matter. I say this without accusation, just for the sake of characterization. From the statements of the Senior Procurator, one could see that a radical change was necessary, even if it was nonsense in more recent times. For actually one could only have held one's own if one had thought like him. That is the paradox that can be said on one side. That stands on one side of the abyss. Then comes the abyss, and on the other side stand the proletarians who have come of age, those who have been called from other walks of life over the past few centuries to the machine, to the factories; they have been called in such a way that their lives have been placed in modern capitalism, which is desolate for them. From their soul arose those demands that today are truly not just questions of bread; they are that too – but the important thing today is not the question of bread, because basically in Central Europe it is justified for all people – but, as we shall see in a moment, it is a comprehensive economic, legal and intellectual question. But let us now look at the other side of the abyss from the point of view that I want to take here, with regard to the characteristics of this side. Let us look at what is emerging in the proletarian world. It was truly something significant to witness what developed there. While on the one hand the bourgeois circles formed the upper class and developed a certain culture, which could only develop on the substructure of the proletariat, while the upper class of the bourgeoisie developed its own culture, one could see how, for decades, the little time that the proletarian had left over and above his work was filled with the striving for a social world and life view. This arose from completely different foundations than bourgeois culture. What this means is only known to those who have learned to think not only about the proletariat, but with the proletariat, through the vicissitudes of life. This is what is needed today to assess this side. And what do we see on this side? Well, there are already areas of the previously civilized world today where the proletariat is called upon to create order out of chaos. We have seen it develop, truly through all the ingenuity that corresponds to the fresh intellect of the proletariat, in which I believe – we have seen it, the idea, the idea of the social world outlook of the proletariat, endowed with tremendous momentum. We have seen it develop until the outbreak of the world catastrophe. We know how comprehensive views have arisen within the proletariat about what is to happen. Now, many of those who have formed these ideas in their own way, who believe that they have struggled to a proletarian world view, now stand in a position where they could carry out this world view, now they have inherited certain institutions over large parts of Europe. Do we see that they can do it? We see that from this side, too, the thoughts are much too short for these facts.

We see how on the one hand a worldview is alive that is driving the world into decline, and on the other hand a certain world-humanity current has not been able to find the social impulses at the decisive moment that can lead to a new form of organization. Between the two lies the abyss, and from this abyss surges that which already confronts us today and which will truly confront humanity, both bourgeois and proletarian, ever more strongly if this humanity does not find the inclination to grasp what the present and the near future demand out of the necessities of human development. These necessities of life can be seen by observing the proletarian movement as it is emerging, by seeing how it has gradually formed.

It can be said that what lives in the proletarian soul develops in three areas of life, but also develops what asserts itself as an inevitably satisfying demand of the present and the near future. In three areas of life. Those who have become somewhat familiar with the proletarian world view and outlook on life in recent decades, which has been summarized time and again by the insightful people of this movement in the words: It cannot go on as it has become, found above all how deeply the proletarian minds of recent times by an idea that emanated from the proletarian leader whose name has been alive in the European and American proletariat for seventy years, and who, despite all his successors, has not yet been surpassed, that emanated from Karl Marx. One has only to realize how, in the minds of modern workers, exhausted by toil, who in their evening meetings wanted to educate themselves about what should happen, everything that is connected with the word 'surplus value' has struck a chord. This touched the deepest feelings of the proletariat. But it not only touched the deepest feelings of the proletariat, no, it touched at the same time the most intense demands of the modern development of humanity. Only if you really want to understand such things, you have to look deeper than just into what people say with their minds, with their head consciousness. In the depths of the human soul often rests something quite, quite different from what people consciously realize. Endless meaning was stirred up in the proletarian soul when surplus value was mentioned. Infinitely much was stirred up by what the proletarian has no clear conscious ideas about, but what lives in him and what now erupts with elemental force and must be understood if one wants to find any way out of the confusion. Whether the doctrine of “surplus value” can stand up to the judgment of economic science in the sense of Karl Marx is not important for what is meant. Even if this idea was based on error, its social, its social-agitational effect in the working class as a historical phenomenon would have to be considered.

What was it that lived in the deepest depths of the proletarian soul when the subject of surplus value was raised? Well, the leading, managerial circles spoke of the evolution of humanity; they felt themselves in this evolution of humanity. Yes, when they wanted to express what actually underlies this evolution of humanity, then they said, depending on their need, divine world government, moral world order, historical ideas or the like. The proletarian, who, with the dawn of the new era, had inherited this bourgeois world view as a legacy, was offered certain concepts that had developed over time. But when he looked at the leading circles, he could see nothing of the revelation of what these leading circles spoke of as divine world guidance, moral world order and historical ideas. Why could he see nothing? Well, he was harnessed – that is only in recent times and truly has not improved much through the merits of the leading circles – he was harnessed not to a moral world order or divine world order, but to the yoke of the newer economic order. And he looked at what developed as spiritual life among the leading classes. What did he feel there? He sensed the only relationship he truly had – for he could not have the other – to this cultural view, to this cultural heritage of the leading, guiding circles. What was his relationship to it? He produced what this cultural heritage cost; he produced surplus value for others, that alone he understood.

And what they wanted to give him of this cultural heritage, in the form of all kinds of popular entertainment, popular theater performances, in popular courses, in artistic popular performances of other kinds, was something to which he could not develop an inner relationship. For one can only gain an inner relationship to it if one is socially and vitally immersed in the corresponding intellectual life. But the abyss between the two classes had opened up, and basically it was an untruth when the proletarian felt something in what had been thrown at him as a piece of cultural property. And so it came about — I will only briefly describe it today, on Monday I will say a little more about it — that something came about that cut deeply into the hearts of those who understood culture when, like the one who is allowed to speak before you today, they took part in proletarian life and proletarian striving. It came up that within the proletariat the soul-destroying view took hold that all intellectual life, art, religion, customs, law, all science are basically nothing but the reflection of economic life. Among the insightful proletarians, one could repeatedly hear a word used to describe all intellectual life: the word 'ideology'. What the proletarian felt when he looked at art, at science of modern times, at religion, customs and law, was for him nothing more than something that rises like a smoke from the only real thing, the material economic life - ideology. And the view arose, that view which cut deep into the heart, that view which understood all spiritual life, the entire content of the human spirit as ideology. One can, and the modern proletarians did so, especially their leaders, have this view: All spiritual life is basically only the product of unreal human thoughts that arise from the conditions of economic life. Oh, there is so much that can be proved in a strictly scientific way! We have learned a lot about it in recent times. Of course, this view can be scientifically proven as rigorously as possible, but one thing cannot be done with this view: it cannot be lived with. And that is the great tragic fate of the modern age, that the proletariat has placed one last great trust in the bourgeois class by taking over what has become of intellectual life within the bourgeois social order in modern times. What has become of it has been taken over by the proletariat and perceived as an empty fabric of thoughts, like smoke, one might say, rising from the economic conditions. But one can only live with the spiritual life if one experiences it in such a way that one is strongly supported by it in one's deepest soul. Otherwise the soul becomes desolate, otherwise the soul becomes empty.

And no one understands the terrible damage of modern culture who cannot point to this subconscious, who does not have insight into this subconscious, who does not know that precisely under this seemingly so easily provable view of life, the soul must become desolate and that this therefore led to despair in something other than at most an improvement in external material conditions. , and that this soul, emerging from this desolation, came to despair of everything in life except, at most, an improvement in material circumstances. This is the basis of what must be described as the real spiritual demands of the modern proletariat. This cannot be characterized in any other way than to say that the bourgeois social order of modern times has handed down to the proletariat a soul content, a spiritual content, that cannot ennoble the soul and spirit of man, and now this bourgeois social order is being hit back by what has become of the desolate souls, of the abandoned souls. These souls had to be summoned to participate in education through the necessarily widespread democracy. They could not and should not be excluded, nor did anyone want to do so. But they were summoned by a sense of modern intellectual life, the consequences of which were not drawn by those in power, because they did not need to be drawn. If you were a member of the bourgeois class, you still lived in the impulses that came from old religious ideas, from old moral or aesthetic views from ancient times. The proletarian was put at the machine, was crammed into the factory, into capitalism. Nothing arose from this that could answer the big question for him: What am I actually worth as a human being in the world? He could only turn to what was the scientific orientation in modern times. Intellectual life became an ideology for him, something soul-destroying. From this arose his demands, which are still vague today. Only an understanding of this fact can lead to a salutary path into the future. Things are much more serious and in a completely different area than is usually believed today.

The proletarian, for his part, has now gradually seen how, in more recent times, intellectual life arose from the economic order of the bourgeois circles – today there would not be enough time to fully develop the thought. The way people were placed, their existence and economic circumstances, so was their spiritual life. I may, when I tell these things, perhaps refer to a personal experience, because I consider this personal experience to be extremely characteristic. For many years I taught a wide range of human knowledge at the Workers' Education School founded by Wilhelm Liebknecht. I was also a teacher of speech exercises. In my dealings with students who are now active in party life and play a role here and there, I have been able to see much of what emerged at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century. I endeavored to make clear to my students, who also understood, what the intellectual life has made into an ideology, and that is precisely the economic life of the last four centuries. And by limiting himself essentially to the observations of life in the last four centuries, the proletarian and the proletarian theorist come to regard the whole of intellectual life as ideology. But it has only become so in the last four centuries. The proletarian world view is based on this error, in that it takes a fact of the last four centuries for a fact of the whole development of humanity. I have said it again and again: for the last four centuries this is correct, but we are now faced with the challenge of having to replace ideology with real spiritual life that carries the human soul. The healing aspect lies not in the statement that spiritual life is ideology, but in the will to create a spiritual life that is not ideology. For this ideology is the heritage of the bourgeois social order. At that time I was pushed out of the school by the party leaders, although the students themselves were in favour of me and had also understood me. It was not so easy to gain acceptance for those ideas which, after all, must above all be the fundamental ideas for a social reorganization if one first regards the social question as a spiritual question.

The second area of life that we see as having developed into what has come to light in the proletarian demands is the field of law, the field that, as the proclamation states, is supposed to be the actual territory of the state. What then is right? Yes, I have truly tried for decades to understand the different views that people have about the concept of right. I must admit that if one approaches the concept of right in a way that is true to life and reality, and not theoretically, then one says to oneself in the end: right is something that arises as something original, as something elementary, from every healthy human breast. Just as the ability to see blue or red as a color comes from a healthy eye, and just as one can never teach someone who has a diseased or blind eye the concept of the color blue or red, one can never teach anyone teach anyone what is right in any specific area, unless the sense of right and wrong, which is something elementary and original, lives in him, just as seeing colors or hearing sounds is something elementary. This sense of right and wrong arises, I might say, from a quite different corner of the soul's life than anything else that is created in the development of the human spirit. What is otherwise created in the life of the mind is all based on talent. The sense of right and wrong has basically nothing to do with talent. It is something that develops out of human nature in an elementary way, but only in dealing with people, just as one can only learn language by dealing with people. This sense of right and wrong, whether it speaks loudly and clearly, whether it springs darkly from the human soul, is something that the human soul wants to develop within itself. When the proletarian, through modern educational conditions and through democracy, began to participate in the general intellectual and legal life, in the life of the constitutional state, the question of rights arose for him as well. But when he asked about rights, what did he find? Look into his soul and you will find the answer to this question. He found that when he judged the point of law from his point of view, he did not find rights, but privileges, conditioned by the differences between the classes of humanity. He found that what had become established as positive rights had actually only emerged from the privileges of the favored class, as a disadvantage of the right among the classes without property. He found the class struggle on the legal ground instead of the realization of the right. This realization filled him with the conviction that he could advance only if he was a class-conscious proletarian, if he sought his rights from within this class. This led him to the second link in his world view: to overcome class differences so that the structure of the life of the constitutional state could arise on the soil on which these class differences had arisen in the course of historical development.

The third area from which the demands that are proletarian demands and at the same time necessary demands of the present arise is the economic area. This economic area, as it has so clearly emerged through the capitalist world order and through modern technology, how did it affect the proletarian? How did this economic order, this economic cycle affect the proletarian? Well, it affected him in such a way that he saw himself completely enmeshed in this economic cycle. The others had the intellectual life, which he, however, saw as an ideology, and for him to participate in it was actually a lie because he did not stand in the social context from which it had arisen. The bourgeois circles had their special privileges and cultural assets, and they had an economic life that ran alongside. For them, life was divided into three, even if they combined it in the unified state. But he, the proletarian, felt that his whole personality was harnessed to this economic life. How so? You can see why by looking at the feelings – if you want to understand these things, you have to look at real life – that have developed more and more violently in the modern proletarian soul over the last six to seven decades. Just as it became clear to the proletarian that he derived no benefit from intellectual life, that his only connection to it was his role in producing surplus value, so it became self-evident to him that the new economic life contained something that should not be there if he, as a proletarian, was to receive a humane answer to the question: What is human life worth in the context of the world?

In essence, the only things that move in the economic cycle are those that can be labeled as goods or human services. Production of goods, circulation of goods, consumption of goods, that is basically economic life. For the leading and guiding circles it was also so, but for the proletarian it was different. His labor power was woven into this economic cycle. Just as one bought goods on the goods market, so one bought the human labor power from the proletarian. Just as the commodity had its price, so human labor had its price in the form of wages on the labor market. This, again, was something that touched the unconscious feelings of the proletarian soul, something that did not necessarily have to come to full conscious clarity, but which was expressed in an elementary way in the great, significant, loud facts of the present. It was therefore to the depths of the proletarian soul that Karl Marx's words about “labor as a commodity” spoke. Basically, the proletarian stood in retrospect in the historical development of mankind by understanding these words in the sense of labor as a commodity. In ancient times, economic culture needed slaves. The whole person was sold like a commodity or like an animal. Later, in a different economic order, serfdom came. Less of the human being was sold, but still a great deal. Now the more recent period came along, which, in order to develop in a capitalist way, had to summon the broad masses of the proletariat to a certain education, which had to cultivate democracy in a certain way. And it was not understood in time to see what was germinating in the present for the future. It was not observed in time, as it is necessary, to tear the buying and selling of human labor out of the economic cycle. The modern proletarian felt that he was a continuation of ancient slavery, that he had to sell his labor power on the labor market according to supply and demand, just as one buys and sells merchandise. Thus he felt as if he were wrapped up in the economic process, not standing outside it, as the other classes of the population do. He felt as if he were completely immersed in it. Because if you have to sell your labor, you sell the whole person, because you have to go to the place where you sell your labor as a whole person. The time had come when it should have been realized that human labor had to be integrated into the social organism so that it was not a commodity, where the old wage relationship could no longer exist. This was overlooked. That is the tragedy of the bourgeois view of life: that the right moment has been missed everywhere, that what was necessary in the course of modern capitalist and democratic development has been missed. This is what, in the end, not from below, from the proletariat, but from a lack of understanding of the times, from the bosom of the bourgeoisie, has brought about the current chaos. “My guilt, my great guilt,” the leading circles should say to themselves all too often, then out of this realization would flow the clear feeling of what actually has to happen. This characterizes what has led to the present situation, that which is now bursting out of the abyss as a threefold demand, as a spiritual demand, a legal demand, an economic demand. And we must no longer build on the fallacy that all salvation can come from the economic order. For that is precisely the evil, the harmful thing, that the modern proletarian has been enslaved completely in the economic order. He must be freed from the economic order!

I have only been able to sketch out the historical development of these ideas. Anyone who has followed these events as they have unfolded in modern times with an insightful eye, anyone who has the good will and the inner sincerity and honesty to look beyond all economic, historical and other judgments of the present the reality, will come, through observation of the conditions of the last three to four decades, to recognize the necessity of this threefold order, of which the call speaks.

The proletarian has only seen that intellectual life is dependent on economic life. From this he formed the idea that all intellectual life must be dependent on economic life. He could not overlook the fact that intellectual life has condemned itself to be an appendage of economic life due to its inner weakness, due to the fact that it no longer had the impact of the old worldviews. Thus it came to its view of ideology. The proletarian had paid less attention to something else, which, however, for the same reason as the intellectual life has also become dependent on the life of the state, has remained unseen on the part of the middle-class. I even want to see the historical justification of this dependency in modern times as something necessary. But it is also necessary to take into account the right time at which this intellectual life must be emancipated, not only from economic life but also from state life. Over the last four centuries, the intellectual life of the civilized world has become increasingly dependent on state life. This has been seen as a sign of progress in modern times. Of course, this was necessary to free intellectual life from the shackles of the church; but now it is no longer necessary. It was considered progress to place intellectual life entirely under the wing of state life. How could anyone scoff at the Middle Ages, which we truly do not want to see again, how could anyone scoff at the fact that in those days philosophy, that is to say, for the Middle Ages, science in general, carried the train of theology. Well, at least it has come to pass that modern science does not everywhere carry the train of theology. But science has come to something else, intellectual life has come to this: to the dependence of this intellectual life on the needs of state life, which has been gradually established – this has been shown in particular by the world war catastrophe – entirely according to the needs of modern economic life, which were not generally human needs. The catastrophe of war has made us in Germany very aware of this in individual phenomena, I would say symptomatic. Of course, I could multiply the symptoms a hundredfold, even a thousandfold, but you will understand me when I point to what emerged from a certain scholarship precisely during the war, which, after all, brought everything to an extreme. But the matter has always been there. A very important natural scientist of the recent past, for whom, as a natural scientist, I naturally have the utmost respect, spoke a word that is particularly indicative of the dependence of science on the modern state. He spoke the word as Secretary General of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, calling this Academy of Sciences “The Scientific Guard Troop of the Hohenzollerns”. Well, you don't have to go that far everywhere. In relation to mathematics and chemistry, the corresponding fact is very much hidden, but even there it is present. But go up to those areas that touch on a great vital question of world view, to the field of history, and in modern times, intellectual life has truly become nothing more than the scientific protection force for the modern state. But intellectual life cannot be cultivated in its inner essence by legislating on freedom of teaching, on free science and free teaching. Laws have no influence at all on intellectual life, because intellectual life is based on elementary human talents. And anyone who is familiar with the official intellectual life of modern times knows, even if it sounds paradoxical – I do not even like to say it, because I had to struggle with a certain reluctance to come to this conclusion – that this modern official intellectual life has gradually developed a certain hatred for the talents and a certain preference for the production of the average in human nature. But all intellectual life must be based on the original human talents.

Anyone who looks into the connection between human and individual talents and the social order of human society knows that spiritual life can only prove itself in reality when it is compelled to prove this reality from its own essence prove this reality, when it is left to its own devices from the lowest school up to the universities, from what is today perceived as an appendage of the state to the free artistic expression and so on. Social democracy has so far only found the opportunity, based on feelings that may be wrong, which is not to be assessed here, to demand that religion must be a private matter. In a similar way, all intellectual life must become a private matter in relation to the state and economic order if it is to continue to prove its own reality. This reality can only be proven if this intellectual life is left to its own devices. Furthermore, if it is left to its own devices, this intellectual life will no longer engage in the nonsense it has been engaging in, for example, by interfering in the legal order of the state. One will have to recognize the enormity of the fact that a party like the Center, based purely on spiritual foundations – one may think of it as one pleases in terms of content – has wormed its way into a state parliament, such as the German Reichstag, where only human rights and the like were to be formulated. The moment such a party enters into the life of the state, this life is inevitably tarnished from one side, from the spiritual side. For only that can flourish in the life of the state in which all people are equal, just as they are equal to a certain degree in language. In the life of the state, only that which is not based on special human talent can flourish, but what is determined from person to person on the basis of the original sense of right and wrong. From an understanding of intellectual life as well as from an understanding of the conditions that have arisen in modern times from the intermingling of intellectual life with the state, the demand arises to completely separate intellectual life as a separate organization and to stand on its own. There is no need to fear, as the Socialists do, that the unity of the school system, which they advocate, might be endangered by the fact that the lowest school is placed on the independent basis of spiritual life, in an independent spiritual administration. The conditions of social life in the future will be such that special schools for different classes and groups will not be able to develop. Especially if the lowest teacher is not a civil servant, but only dependent on a spiritual administration, then nothing else can arise from this but the unified school. For how did the classes come about? Precisely because spiritual life was combined with state life.

On the other hand, economic life must be detached from state life. By raising such a demand, one is only too deeply involved in practical life. For basically one can say that economic life, in developing in modern times, has something so arbitrarily compelling that it has gone beyond outdated state and other ideas. Today, people still do not have a clear idea of this, because they do not look at what the necessary demands of modern times are. Let me give you a concrete example, an example that could be multiplied a hundredfold, and that shows how economic life has emancipated itself from the other areas, from intellectual and legal life, in modern human development. I would like to point out the necessary extraction of raw iron at the beginning of the 1860s. In 1840, the German iron industry needed about 799,000 tons of raw iron, which was mined by just over 20,000 workers. In the relatively short period up to the end of the 1880s, the German iron industry required 4,500,000 tons of pig iron, compared to the previous 799,000 tons. These 4,500,000 tons of pig iron were mined by roughly – there is only a slight difference – the same number of 20,000 workers. What does this mean? It means that regardless of everything that has happened in the development of humanity, regardless of what has taken place in the development of humanity, at the end of the 1880s, with 20,000 people, purely through technical improvements, through technical developments, about five times more iron was produced than in the 1860s. That is to say, that which belongs to the technical-economic sphere has become independent, has been set apart from the rest of human development. But people have not paid attention to this, they have not even seen it - and this example could be multiplied a hundredfold - how economic life has emancipated itself. What people did in the economic sphere was not followed by progress in the economic sphere through technology. One should not ignore the opinion expressed here. This opinion is that technology has advanced, but that there was no corresponding idea to accompany technical progress with appropriate social progress. Those who are able to observe facts know that this modern economic life has emancipated itself, and that when this emancipation is demanded from state life, all that is demanded is that people should admit it and make such arrangements as they have developed by themselves. Thus the necessity of the emancipation of economic life follows from many examples, which are not thought up by me or others, but which live in the facts themselves. It is what the facts demand. But what will be the consequence?

Well, a basic requirement, a fundamental requirement of modern life can only be met by separating economic life from state life. Contrary to the thinking of many a socialist thinker of recent times, development must proceed in this direction. While many socialist thinkers think that economic life must develop as in a large cooperative, that it must also include intellectual and state life, economic life must be separated and only run in the cycle of goods production, goods circulation, and goods consumption. But that is the only thing that can lead to a satisfaction of the necessary demands of life in the present.

You see, economic life borders on natural conditions on the one hand. We can only master natural conditions to a certain extent. Whether an area is fertile, whether the soil contains raw materials for industry, whether there are fertile or infertile years, these are natural conditions; they underlie economic life. This builds itself as on a base from one side on it. In the future, it must build itself on something else, which cannot be regulated by economic life any more than the natural forces in the soil. You cannot make decrees about the forces of nature. On the other hand, economic life must be adjacent to the legal life of the state. Just as economic life borders on natural conditions on the one hand, so it must border on the legal life of the state on the other. This also includes ownership, employment relationships and labor law. Today, the situation is such that, despite the employment contract, the worker is still harnessed into the cycle of economic life with his labor. This labor must be released from the cycle of economic life, despite the fears of Walther Rathenau. And it must be released in such a way that the measure, time and nature of labor are regulated on the legal basis of the state, which is completely independent of economic life, from purely democratic legal relationships. The worker will then, before he enters economic life, have himself co-determined the measure, time and nature of his labor from the democratic state order. How this measure, this nature, this character of the labor force is determined will underlie economic life, just as natural conditions underlie it. Nothing in economic life will be able to extend the basic character of that life to human labor. The basic character of economic life is to produce goods in order to consume goods. That is the only healthy thing about economic life. And it is the very nature of economic life that everything drawn into its cycle must be consumed to the last bit. When human labor is drawn into the economic process, it is consumed. Human labor, however, must not be consumed to its very last ounce, and must not, therefore, be treated as a mere commodity. It must be determined on the basis of the legal life of the State, which is independent of economic life, just as the foundations of economic life are laid in the soil by the forces of nature, which are independent of economic circulation. Before the worker begins to work, the nature, extent and duration of his labor are determined in the realm of the legal life.

I know all the objections that can be made against what has been said. One thing in particular can be objected to. As a necessary consequence of this view, it will be said that what is called national prosperity comes to depend on what labor law is. Yes, that will happen, but it will be a healthy dependence. It will be a kind of dependence that does not ask for production and production and more production, but asks: How can the person who has to intervene in the economic process maintain his physical and mental health despite the economic process? How can he be assured of rest from work, in addition to the consumption of his labor power, so that he can participate in the general spiritual life, which must become a general human spiritual life, not a class spiritual life? For this he needs rest from work. And only when social consciousness arises to such an extent that the rest from work also satisfies the purely human needs of the proletariat, when it is recognized that this rest from work is just as much a part of work, of social life, as is the labor force, only then will we emerge from the turmoil and chaos of the present. It is necessary that those for whom the above is biting into an apple, do it. Otherwise they will realize in a very different way what the modern demands mean, which do not arise from human souls alone or from human minds, but from the historical development of humanity itself. If this demand regarding labor law is met, then the formation of prices will depend in a healthy way on labor law and not the other way around, as it still is today despite some labor protection legislation. Wages, that is, the price of human labor, will depend on the other conditions of the economic cycle. Man will become the determining factor for what can be there in economic life. However, just as with nature, which can only be approached to a limited extent through technical devices, one will have to be reasonable in determining labor law and ownership in a certain direction. But on the whole, economic life must be aligned between the legal life and natural conditions. This economic life itself must be built on purely economic forces, on associations that will partly be formed from the professional guilds, but mainly from the harmony of consumption and production.

Today, due to a lack of time, I cannot go into the causes of the great economic crises, especially not into how they ultimately led to the great catastrophe, the Baghdad Railway and the like. But it is necessary to consider – and it can be shown in concrete terms – how these things must actually be thought.

You see, a healthy economic life can only result when the relations of consumption are regarded as the decisive factor, not the relations of production. Now, perhaps I may mention something that was once attempted, which failed only because, within the whole old economic order, such an isolated attempt is bound to fail. It can only succeed if the economic system is radically emancipated from all other aspects of life. In a society that most of you do not love very much because it has been much maligned, we tried, before the catastrophe of war befell us, to accomplish some of the things that must become the economic system of the future, developed, of course, to an immeasurable extent, in a small area, in the area of bread production. We were a society, we could provide consumers with bread. The consumers were there first, and the aim was to produce according to the needs of consumption. For various reasons, the project failed, especially during the war catastrophe, when such things were not possible. But take another example, which may seem strange to you because, compared to the “idealism” of today, it unjustifiably combines intellectual life with economic life for many people — after all, the idealists of materialism are strange people. In the same society, which, as I said, many of you will not love, I have always tried to put the economic element of intellectual production on a healthy footing. Just think about the unhealthy economic basis on which much of today's intellectual production stands. In this respect, it is truly exemplary of what should not prevail in the broadest areas of our economic life. So-and-so – well, who is not a writer today? – writes a book or books. Such a book is printed in a thousand copies. Nowadays, there are truly quite a lot of books that are printed in such numbers, but of which only about fifty are sold, the rest are destroyed. What actually happens when 950 books are destroyed? So many typesetters and so many bookbinders have worked unproductively, work has been done for which there was no need at all. This happens in the intellectual realm in relation to economic life, in relation to material things. I believed that the healthy thing was this: that, of course, needs must first be created. And within this society, which, rightly or wrongly, many of you do not love, the necessity has arisen to establish a bookshop of this kind, where a book is only published when it is certain that there will be takers for it, where only as many copies are produced as needed, so that human labor of typesetters and bookbinders is not wasted, but rather that what is created is adapted to human needs, which one may find wrong for my sake. And that is what has to happen: production must be adapted to needs. But this can only happen if economic life is built on the basis of associations in the way described.

Since the eighteenth century, the modern social life has been imbued with the threefold motto: liberty, equality, fraternity. Whoever hears these three words resounding in the human heart knows that great things have been said with them. But there have been clever people in the course of the nineteenth century who have proved that these three human impulses contradict each other. They really do contradict each other. Three dear human mottos contradict each other. Why? Because they arose at a time when, as far as these mottos are concerned, people felt true human impulses, but were still hypnotized by the unitary state. It was not yet possible to see that the salvation of the future can only lie in the threefold division into a spiritual organism, an economic organism and a state organism. And so people believed that they could realize freedom, equality and brotherhood in a unitary state. They contradict each other. Structure the healthy social organism into its three natural parts, and you have the solution for what the human soul has been brooding on for more than a century: freedom is the basic impulse of spiritual life, where the freedom of individual human abilities must be built upon. Equality is the basic impulse of state and legal life, where everything must arise from the consciousness of the equality of human rights. Brotherhood is what must prevail on a large scale in the economic sphere of life; this brotherhood will develop out of the associations. These three words suddenly take on a meaning, an unsuspected meaning, if one discards the prejudice of the unitary state and embraces the conviction of the necessity of the threefold social order.

I can only hint at all these things, and I can understand if many people still say today: these things seem incomprehensible to me. I have repeatedly tried to seek the reason for this lack of understanding in the call. And many were among those who said that they found it incomprehensible, for example, I cannot quite understand how they can justify what they have understood when they have been ordered to understand it in the last four and a half years. There are many things that people have understood that I truly have not understood. But with this call, something penetrates to the human soul that is to be understood from its freest, innermost resolution. To do so, however, requires the inner strength of the soul. But this inner strength of the soul will be needed if we want to emerge from the chaos and turmoil of this time. The appeal was first made in the midst of the terrible situation in which we found ourselves, because it was originally intended – now we have entered a different phase – as the basis for a foreign policy of which I could assume that with a certain revival of the ideas of this appeal, despite the fact that they only appear to be domestic political ideas, it would have been possible for them to have resounded in the thunder of the guns in the last few years. Then something would have emerged from Central Europe that could have been believed to have resounded out into the world in such a way that it would have been on a par with Woodrow Wilson's so-called Fourteen Points. These fourteen points, which are truly conceived in a quite different interest from the Central European, should have been opposed by the Central European interest. Then there would have been a possibility of speaking of understanding, whereas all the other talk of understanding was hollow. That is what was first attempted there, where it might have had an effect. But it was preaching to deaf ears. Those people who still had influence at that time, those who were the successors of those who had spoken of the “progress of general relaxation” before murdering ten to twelve million people, were told: You have the choice of either accepting reason now or expecting something disastrous. What I said in 1917 at a decisive moment in this appeal, is not the invention of one man, but the result of devoted observation of the developmental necessities of Central and Eastern Europe. You have the choice of either presenting to humanity what reason wants to be realized first, so that this humanity of Central Europe may have a goal again and be able to speak of it like the people of the West, or you will face the most terrible cataclysms and revolutions. In those days people listened to such things, and they were understood. But the will was lacking, or rather, there was no bridge between the intellectual understanding and the development of the will. Today, the facts speak loudly of the fact that these bridges from understanding to will must be found. That is what this call to humanity is meant to say. This call is to be understood out of free inner resolve. It is to be understood out of the will to think.

What I can contribute to this through the book “The Key Points of the Social Question in the Necessities of Life in the Present and Future”, which will be published in the next few days, I will do so. But humanity will have to admit that completely new habits of thought are necessary for the new building, that something is necessary that has not been thought of in such a way on the left or on the right. One should not take things lightly. Humanity will have to make an effort to do so. It is making an effort to do so, forced by external circumstances to recognize that the time is past when people were led to believe that they can only be happy, contented and socially viable if throne and altar are in order. From the east of Europe today, a different song is heard: “throne and altar” are to be replaced by “office and factory”. In the womb of that which arises in the office and factory lies something very similar to that which arose under the influence of throne and altar. Only if we are willing to look neither to the left nor to the right, but only at the great historical necessities of development, will we find the way that leads us to what we need, namely, to nothing other than humanity, neither to throne and altar nor to office and factory, but to the liberated human being. For by dividing the social organism into three parts, you allow people to participate in all three parts. They are part of economic life, they are part of the democratic state, they are part of spiritual life or have a certain relationship to it. They will not be fragmented, but will be the connecting link between the three areas. It is not a matter of reinstating the old class distinctions, but precisely of overcoming the old class distinctions, so that the free human being can live fully by organizing the external life of the human being in a healthy way within the social organism itself. That is what the future is about. We can only free the human being, we can only place him in a position where he can stand on his own, if we place him in the world in such a way that he stands in all three areas without his humanity being fragmented.

Of course, it is still quite difficult to understand these things under certain circumstances. Recently I gave a lecture on these matters in a town in Switzerland. A speaker stood up who said that he did not really understand the threefold social order, because justice would then only develop on the basis of the state; it must also permeate intellectual and economic life. I replied with a comparison to make the matter clear. I said: Let us assume that a rural family community consists of a man, a woman, children, maids and farmhands, and three cows. The whole family needs milk to live, but it is not necessary for the whole family to produce milk. If the three cows produce milk, the whole family will have milk. Justice will then prevail in all three areas of the social organism when justice is produced on the soil of the emancipated state. It is a matter of returning from clever thoughts and ideas to simple thoughts and ideas about reality. I am convinced that this call is not understood because people do not take it simply enough. Those who take him simply will see how he and his ideas express the longing that we gradually emerge from the turmoil of the present, from the chaos of the present, from the trials of the present, to a life in which, precisely through the threefold social order, the uniformly healthy human being, the human being who is healthy in soul, body and spirit, can develop.

Closing words after the discussion

Someone asks Dr. Steiner where, in our German life at the moment, in the form in which the present government exists, the best opportunity presents itself to translate the ideas expressed into reality. Is there any hope that more can be expected for the thoughts expressed here tonight, or that more can be expected for the development of these thoughts, if the present socialist majority government remains in power?

Dr. Steiner: Those who try to penetrate more deeply into what this appeal actually means will, I believe, not find it difficult to see the direction in which the significant, weighty questions of the esteemed previous speaker are posed. I would like to say a few words about the historical phenomenon touched on by the esteemed previous speaker. You see, I only did it in two places in my lecture, but I believe that today's public life must have thrown its mirror images into personal experience in a certain way for anyone who really tries to penetrate it, dares to have a say in it, and has the confidence to dare to do so. I only mentioned two personal experiences, but perhaps I may say, in response to this question: I myself actually came from a working-class background, and I still remember as a child looking out the window when the first Austrian Social Democrats walked by in their large democratic hats on their way to the first Austrian assembly in the neighboring free forest. Most of them were miners. From that time on, I was able to experience everything that happened within the socialist movement, in the way I have characterized it in the lecture and as it happens when one is determined by fate, not just to think about the proletariat but with the proletariat, while still maintaining a free view of life and all its individual aspects. Perhaps I bore witness to this in 1892, when I wrote my “Philosophy of Freedom,” which truly advocated the structure of human social life that I now see as necessary for the development of human talent. Well, you see, in the 1880s, you could take part in many discussions and the like within the social movement, in which the socialist ideas that were emerging were reflected. I would like to say that a certain basic tone was present in all of this.

Of course, it would be going too far to talk about it, because the history of modern socialism is a very long one; it would be going too far if I wanted to be more detailed about this chapter, so what I say will already be subject to the fate that one must, to a certain extent, characterize superficially. In all that was truly alive in the proletarian-socialist worldview, there was something that I would like to call social criticism. It was something that could point out the entire process of modern life over the last four hundred years with tremendous acuity, with the acuity of human self-awareness. One experienced the social impossibilities of the present. But even when one spoke about these things in small circles, the most knowledgeable, the most active—I cite as examples the recently deceased Viktor Adler and E. Pernerstorfer —, the most knowledgeable stopped the discussion at a certain moment, when ideas were to be developed about what should happen, when the inner consistency that was pointed out, the inner consistency of the modern economic order, led to its dissolution, which was called “the expropriation of the expropriators”. What should happen then? If one considered the nullity of what was given at the time as an answer to this question, what should happen then, one could indeed have a certain cultural concern, because one could already see into a future at that time, which is now actually here. Into that future in which those who thought as people thought at that time are called upon to create positively. Those who have now emerged from these views, which caused such cultural concern – you really didn't need to be a fanatical bourgeois to experience this cultural concern in discussions with Social Democrats; it could arise from honest human thought and will – the descendants of these people are the present-day majority Socialists, and the cultural concern is now faced with facts. That is on the one hand. On the other hand, all the people who spoke in this way said: “Let us only get to the helm, then the rest will follow.” If one could not believe that “the rest would follow,” one nevertheless more or less became a prophet of what one is confronted with today: the helplessness of the successors of these people in the face of the facts. In those days, one was considered a fanatic if one pointed out what has happened today.

I truly admire Karl Marx for his keen insight, for his comprehensive historical perspective, for his superb, all-encompassing sense of the proletarian impulses of modern times, for his powerful critical insight into the self-destructive process of modern capitalism, and for his many ingenious qualities. But anyone who knows him also knows that Karl Marx was basically a great social critic who always fell short when it came to pointing out what should actually be done. This is the source of what we see today as the inability to achieve positive progress. Today we see not only the consequences of the facts, but also the consequences of opinions. You see, when I recently gave a lecture in Basel, to a different audience than the one I mentioned earlier, one of the speakers said that, above all, it was necessary for salvation if Lenin were to become world ruler. The other social issues are national. Internationally, Lenin must become world ruler. Well, in the face of such a remark, I had to allow myself to say the following: however we understand the concept of socialization, more or less, one out of insight, the other out of preference or under the compulsion of the facts, let us be a little consistent in these matters as well. If one wants to socialize, then I believe that the first thing to socialize is the relations of domination. Those who demand a world ruler may socialize in some areas, but they certainly do not socialize in the area of power relations. The socialization of power is what is really a basic demand in the first place. So, you see, today you can be radical and fundamentally conservative, even terribly reactionary. Those who have emerged through what I have characterized are often like that.

Today, one has to think in paradoxical terms in many things, because what is true contradicts the habits of thought so much that people today prefer to present contradictions rather than simple truths. But we also need consistency of opinion. Let us consider the opinion of a thinker who is so consistent – whether one likes him or not – as Lenin is. He is consistent, even with regard to a certain action. If you look at his views, you have to say that, in his opinion, he is more firmly established than any other, especially more firmly established than the majority socialists, in what Marxism is. And in one of his books, which is very interesting, he makes a highly interesting remark precisely from the point of view of Marxism. It is all the more interesting, at least formally, because it is not made by someone who writes about socialist parties within his own four walls, or by someone who may be a minister or otherwise in public office, but by an almighty man. He discusses those tenets of Marxism which point out how the old bourgeois state must pass into the proletarian state, but how this proletarian state has only the single task of gradually killing itself. Thus the establishment of a state that makes laws that ultimately kill it. In this state there will be a social order in which all people are equal not only in terms of the law, but also in terms of economic and intellectual conditions. Oh, the intellectual workers will not have a penny more than the physical workers. But at the same time, Lenin is absolutely convinced that this is only a transition. Because, and this he also deduces from Marxism, after the proletarian state has been killed, so all that it is striving for today will have perished, then the other will come, the actual great ideal, which will be realized in that there will be a social order in which everyone will have, not the same as the other, but where everyone will have according to his talents and his needs. But – now consider this big but – but, says Lenin, this state of affairs cannot be achieved with the present people; a new breed of people must first come. You see, in a sense that is also correct thinking, only in a peculiar way correct thinking. On the one hand you have the negative, and on the other the negative, which has led to the present-day consequence of facts, where people are faced with tasks that they cannot overcome from old theories, from old dogmas. They have the consequence of opinion. Something is to be done, but for people who are not yet there.

Now, dear attendees, in the face of all this, our appeal is for people who are here. And it is precisely this that distinguishes our appeal from everything else: it is radically different from basically everything else that is emerging in this field. What else is emerging? Programs! Well, programs are as cheap as blackberries today. It is very easy to found a society, a party, and make a program. But that is not the point. This call is not based on theory or dogma, but on reality, on practical experience. It is therefore not directed at programs, but at people.

It has been said time and again that if a person is placed alone on an island from birth, he never learns to speak, he only learns to speak in the company of people. Thus, social impulses can only develop in the context of living together with other people. They develop in the individual in a very particular way. Here is some proof of this. Among the Bolsheviks today, you know Lenin, Troitsky, and so on. I will mention another Bolshevik whom you may not have considered, and whom you will be very surprised to hear me call a Bolshevik. This Bolshevik is Johann Gottlieb Fichte! No one can have more respect for Johann Gottlieb Fichte than I do, but read his “Closed Trade State,” read the social order he designs in it. Truly, it is being realized in Russia. What is actually at its basis? Fichte was a great philosopher, one might say, a great thinker. All the spiritual paths he has trodden can rightly be trodden by anyone who brings to development what is latent in the human soul, what flows out of human talent. But more recent times have placed the individual at the very pinnacle of the personality. On the one hand, we have to develop this personality today, but just as language does not come from the individual human being when he develops alone, so a social order does not come from the individual. Social ideas, social impulses, social institutions can only develop in the society itself. Therefore, one should not set up social programs, but merely find out: How must people be organized socially, how must they live together so that they find the right social impulses in this living together? That is what is sought in this call. That is the important thing: how people must be structured in the social organism so that they can find the social impulses in the context that then arises from the right structure. This call does not believe in the idea, so common among social thinkers, that one is wiser than all other people. The author of this appeal does not imagine this; but he does believe that with this appeal he has been led to a burning point of reality. To the people to whom I have often spoken in smaller groups, I have repeatedly said: I could imagine that, based on the appeal, no stone remains upon another, that everything will be different than initially conceived, but that is not the point. What matters is to grasp reality as it is meant here, then people who grasp reality in this way will discover something that will also be in accordance with reality. What matters to me is not a program, not details, but that people work together in such a way that the social impulses are found through the collaboration. That is what must underlie realistic thinking today: to bring people into the right relationship. If a person wants to spin out of himself, as Lenin, as Trotsky, as Fichte did, some kind of socialist program, then nothing will come of it, because the socialist will can only develop in the social context.

Therefore, one has to seek out the right structure, the right design of the healthy social organism. What lives today as socialist theory reminds one of the old superstition that Goethe dealt with in “Faust”, how in the Middle Ages people wanted to compose certain substances of the world out of pure intellectual ideas in order to create a homunculus. Today, one looks back on this as a medieval superstition, and rightly so. But in the evolution of humanity it seems to be the case that superstition flees from one area into another. We no longer seek homunculi in the retort, but we do try to assemble an ideal picture of the social order out of all kinds of mental ingredients. That is social homunculi making, social alchemy. The world suffers today from this superstition. This superstition must disappear. It must become clear that reality must be grasped, that it must be pointed out how people must stand in the social organism. That is why I said: ultimately, it does not matter to me what the names of those who will participate in the new construction are here or there. It does not matter which former classes and social circles will be the ones to participate in this new construction. It does not matter whether they call what is necessary one thing or another, whether it is a dictatorship of individuals in the transition period or whether it is already widespread democracy. All these are ultimately secondary questions. What matters is that the right thing is thought, the right thing is felt, the right thing is wanted. I must again emphasize that, however beautiful our thoughts about social institutions may be, we must devote ourselves to the reconstruction of social institutions wherever we can. But anyone who believes he has a deeper insight into the situation must also assume that the following will be revealed to him from these conditions.

If you continue to make good institutions today, but leave people's habits of thought as they are, then in ten years you will have achieved nothing with these institutions. Today we need not just a change of institutions. As paradoxical as it sounds, what we need today are different minds on our shoulders! Minds in which new ideas are present! Because the old ideas have brought us into chaos. This must be understood. Therefore, today it is a matter of spreading enlightenment about the living conditions of a healthy social organism in the broadest circles. It is important today to start with a free intellectual life, to start expanding the opportunities everywhere to bring people to an understanding of the healthy conditions of the social organism. Above all, we need people who do not practice social alchemy or social homunculism, but people who create from social reality. Therefore, I do not believe that another revolution, and yet another, will follow the past revolution without a thorough re-education with regard to the ideas that a revolution brings something beneficial. Only when it becomes an ideal to engage in the healthy organization of intellectual life, the dissemination of healthy ideas, the arousal of healthy feelings, then there will be people — no matter how they assert themselves, be it in the soviet government or in something else — who will be able to bring about the recovery of the social organism. I consider that the most important thing. The most important thing is the revolutionizing of the human world of thought, feeling and will. Only on this basis can the result be achieved that the previous speaker longs for. I do not believe that salvation can come from anything else without these foundations. Because I take the matter so seriously, I have devoted myself to the area that was expressed in the appeal. Only when more and more people can be found who have the honest will and courage to radically understand and then implement this threefold order — it can be implemented from every point in practical life today —, when enough people with new thoughts replace people with old, unfruitful thoughts, then in some way that which must happen for the good of people and for their liberation will happen.

A communist speaker doubts that socialization in the form of the lecture can be carried out with today's people.

Dr. Steiner: Basically there is not much to be said in connection with what the previous speaker said, because he spoke out in favour of threefolding and is really suffering from a certain pessimism, namely the pessimism that people today are immature for this threefold social order and must first go through a communism in the sense of Lenin and Trotsky. It has been said as if these had been discussed here in a way that they did not come into their own. I only said, “think about it as you will,” that is the only thing I said about the content. I only characterized the form. It seems to me that the honorable gentleman who spoke before me does not actually believe that humanity could really be brought spiritually to put other heads on its shoulders. Well, you see, we have all experienced that five months ago people still wanted the world war and so on. But, dear attendees, I believe that there is one tremendous teacher of all that can be said today by people, and that is the world of facts itself. That is the terrible world catastrophe itself. I do not believe, however, that since the world catastrophe entered a new phase, there has been enough time for all people to learn anew. But for very specific reasons, I cannot join the previous speaker in his pessimism, in the form in which he has it. Not for the following reasons, in particular. You see, if it were simply the case that there was no other way to achieve threefolding than through the detour of communism – believe me, I am not suffering from any kind of pettiness or faint-heartedness about what is necessary – then one could also agree with that. If it were only possible to achieve the threefold social order through communism, as the previous speaker suggested, then I would immediately think that this is the way to go. But I have not said this without careful consideration, but rather based on decades of life experience: from the throne and altar on the one hand, to the office and factory on the other. You see, I am perhaps two and a half times older than the previous speaker. Now, even at this age, I just want to touch on this with a few words, one certainly has the opinion that a great deal of what needs to be done can only be done by young people. I have the opinion that you can stand at the end of the sixth decade of life and have a soul that is just as young as the previous speaker. That may be selfish. But I have given a great deal of thought to what I said about throne and altar on the one hand, and office and factory on the other.

You see, the situation is simply this: when you create any kind of social structure, you are not creating something eternal for all time or even for a long time, but something that is developing and growing. And for those who have gained the necessary life experience, the situation is such that they know full well that when a child is growing, they will take on a different form when they are adults. So, if you look at the living conditions of the social organism, you also have a definite idea of how it will develop and grow. On the one hand, I see something that has grown old, emerging from older communities: the private-sector administration of more recent times, the capitalism of today with its terrible harmfulness. We have experienced this as decomposition under the throne and altar. Now we are starting again with communism, only in a slightly different form – not under the motto 'throne and altar', but under the motto 'office and factory'.

All right, let us start again. After some time, we will not be at the threefold social order, but at another form, at a terribly bureaucratized form under the motto “office and factory”, under what is being prepared today in communism. There will not be what the propertyless experience today through the propertied. There will be, whether you believe it or not, a hunt for positions in order to achieve through the hunt for certain positions what is hunted today through capitalist profit. Instead of the harm of today, there will be a tremendous amount of spying and informing. Those who, on the basis of superficial thoughts, want to restore a bygone social order today so that they can start again and then believe that by starting over with what has already been tried and tested to the point of decrepitude, we can arrive at different conditions, are not considering all of this. Of course, in view of what we have experienced, how so many people have believed in what they were told, while they only barely approached something like the call, one can become pessimistic. I fully understand pessimism as a sign of the times. And in a certain respect, after months of talking about these things, I have also felt something that seems like a tragedy of the times: that it is so difficult to engage in discussion with bourgeois personalities. I regard that as a very significant phenomenon. It is something that very, very much encourages pessimism. You experience many things. For example, recently in a southern city, I experienced that in a newspaper review of a private page it was said, well, he made quite good comments in the first part of his lecture on intellectual life, but one would have wished that a speaker would have appeared who would have considered private-sector capitalism as his business and would have defended it, because it could be defended. It is sad that not a single such speaker appeared. It makes you want to believe that the capitalist order has reached its end. — A tangle of contradictions. First, you have to admit that the private-capitalist administration, the private-capitalist economic order, must be defended, so it must represent something durable after all. But the second thing is that the writer himself doubts it because no speaker could be found to defend it. The third thing is, if the sender was there himself, why didn't he actually speak himself?

It is as if people were extinguishing themselves and thereby proving how far they have descended into nothingness. I can understand all that, but still, for those who do not think pessimistically, there is only one thing to do: we must find as many people as possible who understand this threefold social order, then we can actually realize it in a very short time. Nowhere have I said that it cannot be realized for another ten years. No, this threefold social order can be realized today from every point of view. And that is why it is important to get it into people's heads, which is why we all want to take it seriously enough and work for it. But if you want to work for the good of humanity, you don't have to be pessimistic, you have to believe in your work. You have to have the courage to really think about being able to realize what you think is right. I consider it a form of self-destruction when someone says: I have ideas that can be realized, but I don't believe in them. I don't consider this question to be a question of reality, but only: What are we doing to ensure that a realistic idea can be realized as quickly as possible? Let us not think about what minds are like today, but about what they must become.

Let us take courage, and we will not have to wait for a new breed of human beings; we will find people who, although they have been depressed by the violence of recent years, will find a way to carry the new heads on their shoulders that is different from what some people think. So let us not be pessimistic, but let us work and see if our ideas will take hold or if we have cause for pessimism. If there were such a cause, then I do believe that the ten years of transition would not lead to threefolding but to something else. We have ruined much and would ruin much more, and before ten years have passed, we would reach the point where we would no longer be able to ruin anything because everything has been ruined. Therefore, it is better to work than to fall into discouragement.