Current Social and Economic Issues

GA 332b — 26 July 1920, Stuttgart

Address at the Staff Meeting of Carl Unger's Machine Tool Factory

On the occasion of the handover of the factory to the joint-stock company “Der Kommende Tag”

[First, Carl Unger speaks about the decision to incorporate the company “Carl Unger Maschinenfabrik” in Hedelfingen into “Der Kommende Tag”. The wording was not written down.

Rudolf Steiner: My dearest attendees! As the chairman of the board of directors of the “Der Kommende Tag” stock company, it is my responsibility, in a sense, to hand over your work to this “Coming Day” in the sense in which Dr. Unger has characterized this handover to you. It is my responsibility, I say, to warmly welcome you on behalf of this stock company “Der Kommende Tag”.

Perhaps you know that the efforts – Dr. Unger has characterized them to you – that the efforts related to the idea of threefolding were to be intensively launched in Stuttgart and the surrounding area from April 1919, under the impression of what was seen as approaching from the great world catastrophe for German economic life. You know, of course, that at that time we had made every effort to prove and substantiate the ideas of threefolding, which is the only way that economic life could recover, to the broadest masses, so that something could have been undertaken from these broad masses, from the circles of the proletariat itself, to get this threefold social order, which is by no means a utopia but an eminently practical idea that could be realized every day, off the ground. If I may say a few words, and it seems to me perhaps not inappropriate at this moment, to share my personal impressions, since I have worked in an outstanding position to disseminate these ideas of threefolding, I believe that if we had been able to continue working in the same spirit as we began, then today we would be on a different footing. Believe me or not, we would be on a different footing. Of course, there is not enough time now to identify all the obstacles that have prevented us from continuing to work in the originally intended sense, but I can at least hint at some of them. It is my conviction that had we been given the opportunity to make the ideas of threefolding plausible to the broadest circles of the proletariat, we would have been on different ground today. If we had been able to carry out what we repeatedly presented to various circles of the proletariat last summer, for example, as our idea for the establishment of works councils, we would not have needed the joint-stock company “Der Kommende Tag” in the form in which it had to be founded. For threefolding is the way by which this could come about, so that economic life could really be sustained by the whole broad mass of the population.

But what has happened? While we were trying to gain the support of the broad masses, we were hindered – why should we not say it frankly when we are in a smaller circle – by the traditional leaders of the proletariat, the socialist leaders, who believed that we wanted something completely different, that we were trying to undermine them, that we were out to take their place in the unions and eat at the same table as them. Unfortunately, the proletariat is still unable to free itself from its leaders. But those who lead the proletariat – read the statement made by Professor Varga, because he is one of them, too, regarding the completely senseless establishment of the Hungarian Council of Ministers, where he explains what caused the whole thing to fail - if these leaders continue to pursue the course they have been pursuing for years, which of course the individual of you within the proletariat cannot fully understand today, then the entire civilized economic life will most certainly come to an end.

Now, you know that there are not only those leaders who guide the proletariat out of impractical ideas, but unfortunately, precisely because of these circumstances, there are also a great many bourgeois leaders who, precisely because of their follies, because of their impossible management of affairs because they only emerged from economic selfishness, which ultimately brought Europe into this decline, but they cannot see why it should not continue as it was, when they pushed the world into the catastrophe of murder and so on. These bourgeois leaders could have been gradually brought to realize this folly if the leaders of the proletariat had not found such willing followers in the broadest circles. I am not saying that one could have counted on these leaders of the bourgeoisie, but what was the idea with them? In the period when we started working, they were actually through — much more through than perhaps a single one of you believes; they were through and would have remained through if understanding for threefolding had been mustered. They came up because there was no understanding for the threefold order, and they came to the hope: Yes, if the proletariat follows these leaders and does not gain any understanding for the threefold order, because we had practical ideas, that is why the leaders of the bourgeoisie hated us. If we had come into the world as impractical people, they would have said: the fools, the utopians! and would not have bothered about us. But because they saw something practical, they hated us so much. And because we were abandoned by the broadest masses, who were seduced by their own leaders, it is understandable that those who were down got their heads above water. And the consequence was that at first the idea of threefolding could not be developed in the way we had envisaged. Of course, this does not mean that it loses some of its character of real practice, but it just has to be implemented differently. Because the idea is practical; it is the only saving idea.

And because it cannot be realized in reality by people as we tried to do it last year, we had to try it in a different way this year, and that is to found real associations, to start at some corner of social life. We must begin to establish individual aspects of the threefold social order. It will be difficult, but we must establish individual aspects. And the point is that we establish such associations that are not based on personal advantage, but that work now as one must imagine work must be done in a truly serious social community. [This is what] “Der Kommende Tag” means: we should work in such a way that we practically have to work in a truly social community. We will try to work in a small circle in such a way that in the service of the whole, to establish what needs to be done to establish an orderly spiritual life, to gradually democratize the community body and a healthy economic body, whether this can be tackled in this way. Since we have not been able to proceed as we should, for example in the factories, where we would have started from the real establishment of the works council, we must try, instead of what we were not allowed to do on a large scale – because people did not join forces to do so – we must do it, so to speak, on a small scale; but we will work with all our might to make it possible to do it on a small scale.

Dr. Unger has already explained to you how some of the concerns that were previously entrusted to his sole care are being transferred to the “Kommende Tag”. And I believe I can promise you that the transfer of the worries about this work to the “Coming Day” will be done with just as much dedicated work as has been done so far. You see, now that the “Coming Day” has to take over some of these worries, I think I can say that these are worries that should be taken off the shoulders of a single personality, because a single personality is no longer able to maintain any area of economic life in the face of world conditions, because this can only be done associatively. Now that this important step is to be taken, I may well say to you: We at “The Coming Day” are in a position to look around so that we do not do anything foolish. We cannot take on any work that is in a sorry state – we would like to, but we can't, because we have to continue our work fruitfully – and so we have to have a certain basis for everything we put together associatively.

Yes, you are of course familiar with the economic life from the angle that is available to you. That is how it was with the bourgeoisie. If they looked at it, they would see how difficult it is to integrate any one business into the whole organism of the entire economic life.

Then there is the responsibility that comes with taking on such a task, and things have to happen quickly. I ask: What were the foundations that allowed us to say that we could take on this task? Yes, the documentation for this is extremely difficult to obtain today. You wouldn't believe how difficult it is today to just enter the business world under responsibility and want to continue something that has already been made three-quarters impossible by the messed-up circumstances of our entire lives. You see, we have the only real basis for what I can tell you in a few words: We must build on the efficiency and strength of character of the previous manager, Dr. Ungers.

What do we know? We know much more precisely than could be gained from any annual balance sheet of a company or anything of the sort; we know because we know Dr. Unger inside and out, so to speak. We know that this business has been run in an exemplary manner in the sense of today's economy, that we can take responsibility for incorporating it into the measures of the “Coming Day”; and we knew that we could continue to run it, even in such a way that you will all be just as satisfied now under the new flag as you were before under the personal flag of Dr. Unger. We know this because, on the surface, nothing will change – nothing will change on the surface, but only the way the entire operation is integrated into the economy as a whole will have changed. We also know that if Dr. Unger is now in charge of this work on behalf of the “Kommende Tag,” it will be well managed, and we are convinced that it will be well managed in technical terms; because the work is, if I may use an Austrian expression, technically “cleanly” managed, so managed that one sees that there is working energy in it. The work is one that, today, when faced with the decision of whether to include it in the “Kommenden Tag”, makes it clear that it can be included; it is a work with which we can attempt to do something to restore economic life in an associative way. And what we want to do in the service of the general public should also benefit you. You will just have to familiarize yourself, as Dr. Unger already mentioned, with the idea that social work is to be done here, that you will have to take an interest in the way we work here, and that you can't achieve everything overnight. It is not least the fault of the circumstances in which the entire economy finds itself that we cannot immediately achieve everything that has been conceived. So I promise you that we will certainly try to gain your trust in every direction. We want to be collaborators, nothing else. We should not supervise anything, we want to work together with you, not only for the individual company, but for the social whole. In this sense, you will see that we will try to act, not just talk, although it will be quite difficult to act in the current confused state of economic life. So in this sense, we want to move forward, we want to have confidence that things will continue as they have done so far in the future.

A worker: If the socialization question would “march” under the present government, how about the joint-stock company of the “Coming Day”? Would it be out of the question, illusory?

Rudolf Steiner: Not true, it is self-evident that under the present government nothing desirable can be achieved. You see, for those who think practically, it is of course very important to realize that nothing desirable can be achieved under a government like the present one. But the much more important question is how, after such a long time, after November 1918, this government has become possible again under the present circumstances. And this question is not to be raised only today, but had to be raised by us long ago. It only reflects the impossible circumstances that are unfolding. Fun. We have fun behind us, fun, something that could have become important for international economic life as well. But who was there? Fehrenbach was there, Stinnes, Simons were there - all people who have grown out of the old circumstances completely. People who should have been removed from their positions long ago, because nothing sensible can come out of the minds of these people, all of whom are involved in the currents that led into the catastrophe. Recovery can only be brought about by bringing in new people – people who realize that they must not bring in the old ones again. For us, since we did not get through with the first way of presenting the ideas of threefolding, for us it is above all a matter of working to get the ideas of threefolding into as many minds as possible. Only then, when we have enough people who understand what needs to be done, only then can we make progress, and only then will we also have governments with whom we can work. Therefore, we must consider anything that brings down one government and lets another come to power as impractical, because a government is coming that will either do something nonsensical itself or bring in the old people, or we will hear the most ancient phrases, ideas, again raised that have proven their impossibility through the catastrophe of war.

For us, it is a matter of new people coming who understand and can do something themselves and who realize that the old ones must not be brought back. And to achieve something like that is not easily done with mere words – that has been shown. We had to resort to introducing something practical and economic. If we do something sensible with it, people will say: They can not only talk sensibly, but also do it, and we will have a means of awakening more understanding for our cause. We are not thinking of utopianism, but of the fact that what can be done must be done. If you think abstractly, you can say: As long as this government is in power, nothing sensible will be done, and with a different government, sensible things will happen even without “Kommenden Tag”. But “Kommenden Tag” wants to help create sensible things. Then he can step aside when he has helped to create sensible things.

But things are not always so that one has only an either/or. In free Switzerland, for example, one could not found such a “Free Waldorf School” as we have in Stuttgart. Because there, in free Switzerland, the law is so tightly knit that one cannot found such a school. But with us there is the possibility of wriggling through. So we don't just have a mere either-or, and so the “Kommende Tag” will also seek, with all the means left to us in the old circumstances, to use this remainder to make progress. We do not think: government gone, another government coming! - you won't get anywhere with that; but we think: you have to use the things that can still be used. The “Kommende Tag” is such a practical institution; it does not want to wait abstractly until the right government comes.

Another worker says a few words about what he thinks he has to say about the threefold order in connection with his reading of Zola's [book] “Work”.

Rudolf Steiner: Zola was not yet at the point where he could have created something positive. With Zola it was only criticism. At that time, people had not yet progressed to the point where they could have criticized. It took the circumstances to make it clear that something had to be done. Today we have to say: what people like Zola did must be changed today. There is no other way. At that time, the reactionary powers could continue to operate; now, they can only muddle through for a while. There is an absolute necessity for action. Some people see it differently, but we have to see the matter of threefolding as the right one. We cannot admit that it could be done better any other way.