Current Social and Economic Issues

GA 332b — 10 July 1919, Stuttgart

On the Establishment of a Cultural Council

Address to an Assembly of the Federation for the Tripartite Structure of the Social Organism Protocol Record

[Emil Molt first gives an introduction about the state of the work of establishing works councils, which is not making much progress. Ernst Uehli presents the new weekly newspaper “Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus” (Threefolding of the Social Organism).]

Rudolf Steiner: If the threefolding of the social organism is to become what it must become, then it must work as a whole. It will not be possible, for example, to take any part, any link out of the whole structure of the threefold social order. It would not be possible, for example, to realize the economic part of this impulse at some time or other - in about the way it is contained in the so-called “program” - and to introduce it into the world in itself. That would not be possible. It is imperative to strive simultaneously for the three parts of the social organism to develop side by side. Just as in a natural organism one could never speak of creating the head or the chest first and then waiting for the other part to arise from the other limbs, so too can no part of the three-part social organism be tackled on its own. Therefore, just as the seed - which you have heard today has not yet borne very hopeful fruit - had emerged, but as the seed of the economic program through the idea of the works councils had emerged, it had to be borne in mind that the work should not be done only in the economic field in our sense, but that the universality should be taken into account. Therefore, while working for the works councils, the leadership of the Federation for the Tripartite Structure of the Social Organism decided, on the one hand, to gather around them personalities who were believed to be interested in creating and preparing for another link in the social organism: the spiritual link, the cultural link. And we tried to start by setting up a kind of cultural council – or whatever you want to call it. You will find a detailed account of what is actually being sought with this establishment of a cultural council in the call to establish a cultural council, as it has now been provisionally published and as it will probably be in your hands. So I will have little more to say to you about the matter today.

It was really possible to organize a kind of collaboration, a collaboration between a larger number of people. Those interested in the most diverse areas of intellectual life were repeatedly here together, and the ideas of such a cultural council were discussed. But then they also went into the individual work. Everyone tried to contribute, to gather the thoughts that had occurred to them in these smaller meetings – the thoughts that had occurred to the individual about reforms, about the transformation of intellectual life. And from this collaboration, like a final editorial board, the first version of this appeal for the establishment of a cultural council emerged.

The next step was to win over a larger group of people who, out of a sense of the needs of contemporary culture, would have joined in the call: Something must be done in the field of intellectual life in our very difficult times. - We then tried to approach this or that representative of intellectual life. It would be a very sad, indeed a very depressing chapter if one were to describe the details of the negotiations that took place in connection with the first figure of this call. Now, in these difficult times, it should be recognized that, above all, a renewal, a reorganization of intellectual life is necessary in the deepest sense, that is, insofar as it belongs to the social organism. This must be recognized, on the one hand, by the fundamental character that the intellectual life of cultured humanity has gradually taken on. It must be recognized, secondly, by how this intellectual life is administered today. That this intellectual life is the basis of what is actually happening today, which is presenting itself as confusion in the chaos of our culture and our entire civilization – this should actually be recognized.

We should recognize what fruits it has borne that for three to four centuries our intellectual life, especially in the form of schooling and education, has been repeatedly and repeatedly absorbed by the state organization. We should recognize that today we have hardly any sense of the innermost needs of intellectual life, which can only exist in the urge for a free shaping of this life. No feeling has been aroused by the fact that the absorption of spiritual life by the state was a decisive factor not only for the filling of posts and for external administration, but also for the content of this spiritual life itself. This could not be shown as clearly in the past as it is today, at the great turning points in the development of humanity that we are currently facing. Over the past three to four centuries, as important branches of our intellectual life have gradually been absorbed into state life, a form of our intellectual life has developed that is no longer capable of producing ideas that would have been a match for the facts, which are asserting themselves more and more powerfully, more and more extensively.

Thus it has come about that, wherever they were locked out of these or those foundations of intellectual life, thoughts were too short to control the facts, that these facts went their own way, came into their own momentum, and in the end it was the thoughtless facts into which man was no longer able to send thoughts, have brought about our terrible world catastrophe, in which we are still very much involved, and with regard to which we are only now entering decisive points, decisive stages.

Nothing shows the decline of our intellectual life more than the state of the proletariat, which is so significant for the movement of today's people. The leading circles, who have been leading up to now, feel with horror what revelations, what programs, what party maxims are emerging from the proletariat. In my book 'The Key Points of the Social Question', I wanted to point out the crucial point. I wanted to point out that the state of mind of the leading members of the proletariat today is nothing other than the legacy of the intellectual life of the bourgeoisie, of the leading, guiding circles.

Recently, two members of the Federation for the Threefolding of the Social Organism who belong to workers' circles gave a lecture at a public meeting. This was followed by a discussion in which prominent figures of the proletariat, who were far to the left, intervened. I then spoke a few words, which amounted to saying that, in my opinion, these personalities, who were far to the left and belonged to communist circles, had nothing but the worst offshoots of the intellectual heritage of the leading and governing circles – which they were until now – in their speeches. I would like to say that one has never heard such bourgeois talk as was the case with these independent and communist personalities. They have learned this from their bourgeois ancestors. They had to learn it. And anyone who can look more deeply into the official development of our intellectual life, into the administration of our intellectual life, knows that this intellectual life has finally led to the complete withering away of intellectual production and that, where intellectual matters are concerned, nothing is left but empty phrases. We live in a world of empty phrases. There are still people who do not want to see these things. There are still people in Central Europe – it is hard to believe – who do not want to see these things, who still want to indulge in the illusions that have allowed them to numb themselves for so long, about rushing into self-inflicted destruction. Self-inflicted because they do not want to face what is without prejudice, because they only want to hold on to old habits of thinking and feeling.

The aim of a cultural council as it is conceived today must be a complete reorganization of the entire education and teaching system. I would like to say that something like this can be tackled on a small scale. It is to be tackled by setting up the so-called 'Waldorf School' here. This Waldorf School is to be brought into being by our friend Mr. Molt, initially for the children of the workers at Waldorf-Astoria. This school should be set up in such a way that the children between the ages of six and fifteen are taught not in the way that teaching has been conducted at this school level so far - out of the mere needs of the template state - but in a way that is appropriate to human nature between the ages of seven and fifteen, according to a thorough understanding of that human nature. What people have in mind as a so-called unified school that is not born out of anything other than human nature, which is a unity for all people, especially in these years, should underlie the entire structure of the Waldorf school. The whole structure of the Waldorf school should be based on this knowledge of what should grow with the human being in the world, and on this knowledge of how teaching should be structured. Teachers should work seriously to receive a pedagogy that is based on real anthropology, on a comprehensive anthropology. The task of these teachers is to educate the human being to develop the powers that lie within the human being, which must be cultivated during childhood, so that something can be avoided in the future that every observer of human nature, who has a knowledge of psychology, can see so clearly today.

Indeed, what is the most important and essential characteristic in the life of our time? What is it that weighs so heavily on our minds today as a major cultural concern? If we look at what prevails among people today, we find that most people today are what I would call “bent natures”: those people whose will and feeling and thinking are “bent” by the vicissitudes of life. Why are they “bent”? The reason is that our school education for children is such that the most important powers of the soul are not strengthened to such an extent that they can no longer be “bent” later on, that the human being is able to cope with life. This should be the concern when setting up a Waldorf school: to prepare the human being for life in such a way that the soul and emotional forces that can only be developed in childhood are developed so that the human being can cope with life. Everything that is to be taught in so-called subjects is only secondary. Everything that figures as a so-called subject will always be asked: How does it contribute to the development of the powers of the human soul? When is this and this, at what age should this or that be introduced to the child? Lessons should be taught from a comprehensive understanding of the human being. Then the people who come out of such a school will be able to stand strong in life. Not less, but more effort will be needed by the human being in the age that hopes for social organization - in contrast to the divisions into class differences and the like that existed before. Of course, what is today the middle school, grammar school, secondary school and so on would also have to be reorganized, and what should be completely different for the future if one wants to have people who are good for life; it would have to be raised to a higher level than the lower level of elementary school, and the reorganization would have to extend up to the highest levels of teaching, at least to the college level. You can find more details on how this is to be achieved in the appeal to found a cultural council.

As I said, you can do something on a small scale, like the Waldorf School, with someone who really has such a deep understanding, like our friend Mr. Molt, for what needs to be done in terms of threefolding. The individual can have a beneficial effect by doing such a foundation. But with such an individual foundation today, the necessary is not yet done. Today it is a matter of awakening the consciousness in people in the widest possible circle: that which can be intended for such a particular thing should become the common property of humanity if we do not want to sail into the downfall of European culture. Today it always looks as if one is merely putting some kind of fantasy before the world when one says: we are faced with the “either/or”. Either we must decide on great things, or we must familiarize ourselves with the thought that European civilization is sailing towards its destruction. Anyone who still does not believe in this “either/or” today simply does not understand the times. Today's call is not for our timidity, but for our courageous will. And here I must say: in view of everything that has been said about the transformation of spiritual life in the sense of threefolding, it is truly one of the most serious disappointments that now, after weeks of efforts, nothing more is available than the attempt at such an appeal, which has indeed found a number of signatures, but of course not nearly enough. Because what is to be done today must be well-founded in the broadest sense of the mass judgment. Only in this way can we move forward.

The negotiations have shown time and again that the old problem is also occurring in this matter: one person wants this, the other that; one person did not like a sentence, another did not like the stylization; one person finds it necessary to spend weeks discussing a matter. Yes, it must be said: the concerns that have been expressed, especially by this or that personality on whom we had counted in this cultural appeal, were of such a nature that they really proved how necessary the transformation of our intellectual life is. – There is nothing that shows the poor state of our intellectual life more than the intellectual life that has produced such objections as those that have been raised against us. That is why this cultural appeal must be discussed today.

You see, when we talk about what concerns humanity as a whole, what is so clearly shown by the whole configuration of our time that it concerns all of humanity, what do we learn? These days, I read in various Stuttgart newspapers a description of what the Waldorf School wants. This description was also contained in the local Social Democratic paper of the USPD, the “Sozialdemokrat”. The “Sozialdemokrat” could not help but make the following comment on this description, which was [objective]: The matter would be all very well, but it comes from factory owners, and we will not put up with that.

This is the state of mind of contemporary humanity. But this state of mind of contemporary humanity is particularly evident in what has been encountered in so-called “bourgeois” economics, namely the most enlightened economists at our university, the leading economists at our university.

I ask you to buy this issue, which is entitled “Das gelbe Blatt” (The Yellow Sheet) – the current issue. You will find an article by Professor Lujo Brentano about the entrepreneur. Of course, today the newspapers are everywhere reporting on Professor Brentano's article about the entrepreneur, as they are accustomed to doing based on their belief in authority. For our time, which according to its illusion is not one of blind faith in authority – it is more blindly faith in authority than Catholics ever were in relation to their church leaders in earlier times. But try to read this article by Professor Brentano on entrepreneurship with your common sense, emancipated from all this blind faith in authority. It is to be hoped that as many people as possible today will apply common sense to such things.

First of all, there is a definition of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is characterized in three points. And a concept of the entrepreneur is created, a concept that the luminary of economic science, Professor Brentano, ultimately uses to such an extent that the concept of the entrepreneur also includes the ordinary proletarian worker; because, according to Professor Brentano, the ordinary proletarian worker is the entrepreneur of his own labor, which he brings to market at his own risk and expense. Today our intellectual life is such that pure nonsense enjoys the greatest fame. Until we can fully grasp the full weight of this fact, we will not develop a sense of what is necessary. And until we develop this sense, we will not understand how much inner courage is required for this transformation of our intellectual life; how much is demanded by a truly fundamental renewal of our intellectual life, especially of our education and teaching.

Oh, I would give anything to have the gift of very different words and word coinages to make today's humanity aware of what one really had to achieve through a bloody struggle for life. Do you think it is easy to say such things as I had to say against a so-called luminary of today's science? If you say such a thing, everyone sees you as an angry rabble-rouser, as a person who must be silenced. And only the most sacred sense of duty can lead one to tell the truth about these things today. And this truth is serious, very serious. For what have we already achieved in the details?

I would like to recall the lecture I gave in Heilbronn on the threefold social organism, which Mr. Molt has already mentioned today. In the review of the “Heilbronner Zeitung” that Mr. Molt reported on, there are many things that do not interest me, because I am highly indifferent to what a line-pushing writer writes about what is spoken out of today's seriousness of life. But if this wordiness becomes a symptom of what lives in today's hearts and minds, then it needs to be considered a little. There it has yet such a wordy windbag managed to say that I have resorted to “the three old hits Freedom, Equality, Fraternity”. Well, this is how far this generation has come, that today one can freely say that these three great goods of humanity – freedom, equality, fraternity – are “hits”, that one can mock what is most sacred to people. One is reminded of the words of Hamlet: “Writing tablets, writing tablets, that one may write down, that one may smile and always smile and yet be a villain.” And one would like to say: writing tablets, so that one can be considered an educated person in the face of contemporary humanity and even be allowed to write in newspapers and still be allowed to mock the highest ideals of humanity in the most stupid way!

These things are rooted in our present-day culture; that they be seen, that what everyone who takes today's world seriously longs for, and that out of this longing develops that which in turn can result in a recovery of our social organism!

We are really on the verge of the catastrophe that is looming in the most diverse areas of life. What we need is to find the strength to draw upon our inner resources. We need to do everything we can, especially in view of the impending danger to Central Europe, to draw upon our innermost human powers. We need to let the danger to Central Europe become the impetus to do everything we can from our innermost being. Much will be taken from this Central Europe, it will be made very, very poor. And truly, one is repeatedly reminded of what one has already had to let sink in again and again from life, very, very bitterly: It was always a painful sight for me to see a young child here and there in more intimate circles during these war years, because then one had to feel: The old have at least something behind them, have a memory of something; but those who are now children are growing up in terrible times. And today, this feeling does not only come to mind through the general world situation; today it also comes to mind when one has to notice how sleepy humanity is in the face of what can be observed today. It must be observed how we are absolutely sailing into destruction if we do not start from such points of view, which I have been able to characterize here today, albeit very imperfectly, in just a few words.

Let me say it once again: Much will be taken from this Central Europe; it will be made very poor. It can only be saved if it draws on something that cannot be taken away: the innermost powers of the soul. And it is precisely the folk forces of this Central Europe that are capable of cultivating this innermost power of the soul. We have not cultivated it in Central Europe in recent decades – that is our great fault. Let us learn from necessity to cultivate it.

This is what comes to mind today when one wants to speak about something like the founding of a cultural council. It is from such serious foundations that this appeal for the founding of a cultural council is written. May its individual sentences be found good or bad; I do not care what these individual sentences are called - it is the spirit behind them that matters! And one would like to see this spirit recognized; to see how it cannot be grasped merely in the mind, but how it must be grasped as a stimulus to real action for a renewal, a transformation, a new creation of our spiritual life.