The Big Questions of our Time and Anthroposophical Spiritual Knowledge

GA 336 — 13 February 1919, Basel

3. The Social Necessities of Contemporary Humanity Based on a Study in Spiritual Science

Dear attendees! Those who do not sleep through the present conditions of life, in which they are enmeshed, but who live through them with an awakened consciousness, will be able to feel that what has been looming in the life development of modern man for decades has only now, in the present, basically achieved its true historical form and its elementary historical power. That is what is making itself so powerfully felt in our lives today: the social question. In particular, one should feel how something that may have been taking place for decades, perhaps more below the surface of life in its actual form, has now come to the surface with ever greater and more far-reaching significance. The starting point of the last few years, the war catastrophe that engulfed the world, showed how the social impulses of modern humanity played a role in general life. Many a personality who shares the responsibility for the disaster that has entered our lives in this way would have behaved differently if they had not been under the influence, whether of fear or something similar, of the so-called social movement for a long time and out of a certain fear or anxiety or other mental states, behaved in a completely different way than she would have behaved if she had been able to gain clear insight into what was in the air in the ill-fated year 1914 in complete composure.

And again, during this terrible catastrophe, how did people on the one hand nurture hopes that the destroyed harmonies could somehow be reconciled from the social movement of humanity? On the other hand, how did those personalities who were somehow in a leading position during this time of horror stand under the influence of the social demands of humanity, so that they were essentially influenced by this side in their actions? Many things would have taken a different course if that had not been the case.

And now, esteemed attendees, now that the catastrophe has entered into a crisis, we can see that all the more what can be called a social movement is entering into the life of present humanity in a decisive way, so that the attitude of most people can be seen to be permeated with something of deep tragedy. Can we not say that the fact in which our lives are embedded, over a large part of the civilized world – and this will spread further and further, as anyone with insight can see – can we not say that the fact in which our life is geared to, to the judgment of people, to the judgment of people that is supposed to prove itself in the right way through action, through intervention in life, that this fact shows in the face of this judgment how little the judgment of most people can actually cope with these facts.

Yes, esteemed attendees, it is really as if certain currents, certain forces in the life of newer humanity wanted to show themselves in their impossibility, in their absurdity through this catastrophe, and as if that which which has been played out in an absurd way, to the detriment of humanity, has left something behind that undermines many of the things that we might have believed could not fail before this catastrophe occurred.

On the one hand, we see the drastic facts that are unfolding in such a way that they must deeply affect every individual life. We see how, from the innermost impulses of humanity, a re-shaping of life is demanded. We see the old party ideas and party programs asserting themselves within what is emerging, asserting themselves in such a way that they want to take hold of what is there. But how do these party ideas, these party programs, this thinking, which is also sometimes formed in a scholastic way in social events, appear to us today? One would like to say: like mummies of judgment that suddenly want to come to life, but which only walk around as mummies in the face of living events.

The way people think today about what is happening is like something dead in the face of the living demands of existence. The seriousness of the situation, which is characterized by this, makes it clear to every thinking person that it is necessary to form an opinion about the current situation, to the extent that their actions allow.

The lectures I intend to give here will proceed from this point of view, dear attendees. Today I would like to show more what the true form of the so-called social demand actually is, how this true form has arisen from the life of newer humanity, and tomorrow I would like to go into the important matter of possible attempts at solutions that do not arise from this or that fantastic fantasy, this or that one-sided impulse of the will, this or that party coloring, but which arise when one takes into account the true reality of life, the true reality in all its depth and in all its breadth.

It is not only in the life of the individual human being, but also in the social and state coexistence of people, that many things are at work that do not play out in consciousness, but rather, so to speak, prevail in the unconscious; indeed, it can be said that even in the social, state and societal life of the human being, many more unconscious factors play a role than in the life of the individual human being. And anyone who has no idea about these unconscious factors, or who has no sense of how to engage with them, will hardly be able to get behind the true nature of what is asserting itself today as a social movement.

One can certainly look with a certain respect at everything that has been thought, written and spoken for decades, and also done within certain limits, to deal with the so-called social questions and the social movement. However, as much respect as the effort and thought that has gone into it reveals, one will only be able to truly understand the social question, which is so essential for everyone today, if one looks at this question not from the perspective of how it has been shaped by the consciousness of people, but if one looks at it from the perspective of full life, including from those depths of life where the unknown factors play a role.

And if I may begin, dear attendees, with a personal remark, let it be this: I came into close contact with the social movement early on, but particularly in its full vibrancy when I was a teacher at a workers' education school for years, from where I gave lectures and had to organize discussions in trade unions and cooperatives. It was precisely through these life circumstances that I was able to experience what was going on in the minds of the proletarians and to see from direct experience what impulses are actually at play in the modern proletarian movement. I would like to say that anyone who is inclined to look at the modern proletarian movement with such a realistic view of life is, above all, confronted with what could be called a contradiction in the feelings, the will, and the thinking of the modern proletarian , but one that is as full of contradictions as all life that does not unfold in logical sequences but rather proceeds from one contradiction to the next.

And so, when we look at the modern proletarian movement in particular, we see that, on the one hand, it is not at all inclined to attach great value to human thinking and feeling, to social coexistence , for the social impulses, that it is actually inclined to consider everything that man thinks and feels more as an emanation of what goes on in economic life and in pure material, economic life. We will come back to this.

I would like to say that the sustainability, the impulsiveness of thought itself, is denied to a certain extent in the mental life of the modern proletarian. And yet – that is the strange thing – never before, one might say, was a world-historical movement built to such a high degree on thought, indeed on the scientific pursuit of knowledge, as this modern proletarian movement. Anyone who has ever really seen – which, unfortunately, the bourgeois circles have neglected to do for decades due to certain circumstances – anyone who has seen how certain difficult-to-grasp ideas, let us say ideas that arise from scientific Marxism, live themselves into, fully into the modern proletarian soul, only he gets an idea of what lives unconsciously in millions and millions of people today. For, as we shall recognize from these lectures, the fact that a deep gulf has opened up between classes of people, on the one hand the previously leading circles with their ideas, with their habits of thinking, as it has become fashionable today, with their sentimentality; on the other hand the proletariat with its habits of thinking, with its particular way of feeling - there is little possibility of mutual understanding! This is something that has a profound impact on all of modern life. Because, when you get right down to it, how superficial it seems that much of what the leading circles have done to gain understanding with regard to the social life of broad sections of humanity! They went to the theater and watched Hauptmann's “Weavers” in order to gain some insight into the lives of a large part of modern humanity. In this behavior lies – as you will recognize more and more, dear ladies and gentlemen – a profound misunderstanding.

If one tries to penetrate into the depths from what is happening on the surface of life, then one will want to pay less attention to everything that so-called intellectualist leading circles think about the social movement today. One might even want to show less consideration for what the modern proletarian himself thinks about what he wants and what he strives for; but one will feel all the more compelled to bring one's own living understanding more precisely into line: not so much the objective course of events of the social movement as the modern proletarian himself, the inner life of this modern proletarian.

I believe that countless observations of an intensive kind, intensive experiences of the life of the proletariat, have opened up the right thing to me in a certain sense, in that I thought I noticed that an essential thing in this social question is what is hidden in the word that one can hear again and again within the modern proletariat: the modern proletarian feels class-conscious. He has awakened from what used to be an instinctively dull life to class consciousness, to an awareness of his situation within his human class.

But just when one considers this as a characteristic of the modern proletarian soul, then one comes to realize that this feeling of being imbued with class consciousness points to something much, much deeper, to something that only opens up the way to the actual, true form of the social question of the present.

What can be recognized as the true form of the social question of the present has been tried to be recognized by many, by repeatedly pointing out how the modern proletariat was actually created under the influence of modern technology, which is revolutionizing people's living conditions, and the related capitalism in the economic order, to what took place in these matters in world history.

Now, esteemed attendees, I do not need to point this out in particular, it has been presented over and over again. It has been shown how the old crafts, how the old economic conditions have been absorbed by everything that depends on technology and capitalism, how the proletarian class within the newer life of humanity has actually only been created as a result. But to the student of human evolution something quite different is revealed in addition to these things. And here I come to the point where it might be apparent to the man of today that it is precisely in regard to the incisive social questions that the spiritual-scientific method can truly penetrate to reality.

The modern technology and capitalism looming before us are, after all, only a later manifestation of something quite different. In lectures that I have been privileged to give here in Basel over the years, I have already hinted at what is at issue here. The life of humanity as a whole, although fundamentally different in many respects, is similar to the life of the individual cell in one respect. Anyone who properly considers the individual life of a human being will be repeatedly forced to combat the preconceived notion that nature never makes leaps. In fact, in crucial points, all natural development makes leaps. In the individual life of man, dear honored attendees, we find that development does not proceed in a straight line, so that we can always link the effect directly to the cause. For example, we face a decisive crisis in the life of an individual human being around the seventh year when the teeth change. We find another decisive crisis when sexual maturity sets in. We find such crises even later on, when we observe life more closely. However, the later ones elude superficial external knowledge.

What takes place in the life of the individual human being does not follow on directly from a previous cause in a linear way, but it is as if forces with elemental power came up from the depths of the organism.

The life of the individual human being is no different in this respect than historical life as a whole. Within this historical life, not everything simply progresses in a successive manner. Rather, the historical development of humanity also includes critical upheavals in which elemental forces work their way from the depths to the surface. Such a crisis occurred for modern humanity at the turn of the fifteenth to the sixteenth century.

Only by treating the historical life of humanity in a scholastic way today, by looking at it rather superficially, do most people fail to see the fundamental difference in the spiritual life - and in everything connected with it - of man after the turning point in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and what took place in man in the Middle Ages or in even older times.

Once a true historical perspective replaces what, especially with regard to this point, is often convention in today's world, it will be recognized how radically life has changed at this turning point. And if one is to describe what has emerged from the depths of the subconscious, one can say: things that previously worked like instinctive impulses in the social coexistence of people, unconscious impulses, are coming to the surface more and more, so that people want to understand them consciously.

And this self-confrontation of the human personality through a deepening and illumination of consciousness coincides with what otherwise takes place superficially in modern technical life and modern capitalist economic life. And the essential thing is that, as a result of living conditions that used to be different, man is placed at the machine, to which he can only have an impersonal relationship, that man is woven into the fabric of capitalist economic life, within which he can also only have an impersonal relationship.

Look at how the old craftsman in the thirteenth century still stood by what he had produced, how he loved it, how it gave him joy, how his honor was involved in the context of his profession. Consider all the personal connections of the human being with what he has made in the economic life in earlier times before this turn of an era, see how this changes in modern life, how the human being can no longer develop a personal relationship, neither to the machine at which he works, nor to the economic conditions of circulation in which he lives. And he is called upon to submit to these impersonal conditions – at least a large proportion of people are called upon to do so – at a time when personal consciousness is awakening in particular, when the human personality is being confronted with itself.

That is the significant thing. While economic conditions arise that drive people into the impersonal, on the other hand, historical events push them to face the pinnacle of their own personality. Outwardly, they are made impersonal, but inwardly, all the more personal. Outwardly, he cannot develop any interest in what he is dealing with. This forces up the innermost strength of his soul. He comes to self-reflection. He comes to the question: What am I actually as a human being? What do I mean as a human being in the world?

Simply and fundamentally put, one could say: the one who was led as a laborer to the machine, since the machine could not interest him, truly had the opportunity and time and reason to reflect on what he actually is in the context of the world as a human being.

And so we are confronted with something peculiar. The modern proletarian calls it class consciousness. But behind this class consciousness stands the emerging consciousness of human dignity in general, the question: What am I as a human being in the context of the whole of humanity?

Not the machine, not capitalism has brought this about; they were only the cause of this most modern impulse of human life coming to light precisely in those who have been driven by the necessities of life into modern technology and modern materialistic economic life.

We must not overlook the fact that the class-conscious proletariat is actually the truly human-conscious part of the modern world. Something peculiar is taking place there, which can be easily recognized. Perhaps it can be understood by comparing it to another historical fact.

Let us consider: at a certain time, in a province of the Roman Empire that was of little consequence at the time, the impulse of Christianity arose. That impulse, which was then to take hold of the world in such an intense way. The Christian impulse spreads. But how strangely it spreads within the Greek and Roman worlds. It comes, as it were, despite the fact that in the Greek and Roman worlds there is a mature education, a culmination of ancient education. It comes only into its own when the barbarians, as they were called, came from the north and adopted Christianity. Christianity was only able to develop its true strength in the simple, elementary minds, not in the mature education of the Greek and Roman world.

You can only recognize such things if you know how, on the one hand, the mature or overripe education of some part of humanity stands in relation to the unspent, virgin powers of another part of humanity. The very personalities who count themselves among the leading circles of humanity have a very warped judgment on this point. Oh, this or that, what is emerging, it is too high for the people, they say. These judgments have been heard ad nauseam in a decadent time at the end of the nineteenth century. What had been imagined, how something should be, childishly, simply, so that the people would understand it, because the people's intelligence was not very high. Usually, such judgments prove little more than that it was uncomfortable for the person making the judgment to accept such a thing for himself.

Those who truly know life know that what the bourgeois intellectual sometimes finds extremely difficult to grasp is actually easy for the fresh intellect and the unspent power of the soul of the so-called subordinate part of the population.

And so the ancient Greeks and Romans could have said: That which did not want to enter him properly, Christianity, precisely because it penetrated the unspent soul power of the barbarian tribes coming down from the north. And that was new, original, elementary soul power. It understood much more than the highly educated Greeks and Romans in terms of what the time demanded.

We see something very similar today, only most people have not yet recognized it. Fresh intellectual and spiritual power is rising up from the depths of humanity and taking with it what can be offered from the entire historical power of modern human life.

In a sense, we are living in a new migration of peoples. Only this migration of peoples does not take place in such a way that masses of people move from some region of the world, but instead of the horizontal direction, this migration of peoples takes on a vertical direction: something rises from the depths of the people, with tremendous power of understanding, with tremendous power of longing, to receive something of the goods, of the best soul goods of people as well.

In view of this, it is very natural to raise the question: What did the leading circles do for this modern proletariat, which represents this mass migration, since the indicated turning point in history? What did the leading part of humanity bring to the proletariat in modern times in the way of human goods, what was it called by this leading part of humanity, what was it woven into the capitalist economic order? This proletariat, which was pointed to by life at the machine, was pointed to its own personality, was pointed to the longing to enrich the soul, this modern, emerging proletariat longed for something that could meet it halfway. But what came to meet it?

What met them was historically unlike Christianity, which met the northern barbarian voices on the soil of Roman-Greek culture. And here something very peculiar presents itself. The soul and spiritual life of humanity had taken on a special form of development towards the fifteenth or sixteenth century, and in general towards the modern times, in which the old driving force of the human spirit no longer lay. Whoever takes a deeper look at the historical life of humanity, oh, he finds, however he may feel about the content of this or that older religious or other spiritual impulse, that these impulses can strike deep, deep into human hearts and souls, that they can sustain human life from this side, that they have a certain momentum to lead man to happiness, to a certain appreciation of his life on earth. For the spiritual impulses open up for him the prospect of a connection between what he experiences here on earth and the supersensible, which shows his human dignity in a higher light than everyday life can.

In more recent times, since the turning point described, what is modern science has taken the place of the earlier spiritual impulses. This modern science has bound its ever-increasing, its immense significance for the whole development of humanity to the names Giordano Bruno, Galileo, Kepler. But one thing is curiously missing in this newer development of humanity: the older spiritual impulses cannot extend beyond what is emerging. And so we experience that a science, a knowledge takes hold of people in which nothing is alive that tells people what they are and how they are placed in the world.

And so the modern proletariat craves more and more for enlightenment through science. But it does not get, at the same time, an impulse that tells it what it is in the overall context of humanity, what constitutes its human dignity, while it seeks a task.

This is a point where, to a certain extent, modern life becomes tragic. We see how religions, at the turn of this period, have arrived at a point where they reject what is emerging as science, reject what is emerging as human knowledge, declare it heretical, prove themselves incapable of sending their impulses into what is emerging as something new.

And so we must regard the following as one of the most essential factors in the development of the life of the modern proletariat: for the reason given, this modern proletariat craves knowledge, craves insight, wants to experience through insight what is worthy of man, what a human existence is.

In this sense, only that which is imbued with the momentum that simultaneously makes knowledge and insight a powerful life content can live as insight, in addition to what bourgeois circles or the other estates bring him.

And so we see something emerging in the newer development of humanity that reveals to us the true form of the modern social question in one point, in one area. We see the proletariat's yearning for an understanding of its own nature, the search for this own nature through modern science. But we also see the impossibility of receiving an actual spiritual impulse in this modern science. And so what this modern proletariat seeks as its knowledge, as its spiritual life, becomes what is now called in the leading circles of this modern proletariat: ideology.

And in this view that the spiritual life is an ideology, we have the true formulation of the social question in one area. Much else is only a consequence of this. Even what often appears in the purely economic sphere (we shall see this in the course of these lectures) is only a consequence of the fact that in the decisive period, when the proletariat longed to receive a spiritual life, the other classes gave it something in which there was no spirituality left. The modern spiritual life had become ideology, ideology. The religious momentum, the religious impact, the spiritual impact in general had disappeared from this intellectual life. This is how the modern proletarian received this intellectual life. He, who was placed at the machine, he, who was ensnared in the capitalist economic order, asked: What is a dignified human existence? How can I learn something about a dignified human existence from science?

The intellectual life alone had become mere thoughts, mere concepts, mere laws of nature. He saw as reality that which his hand had to grasp. The proletarian saw that which entered into modern economic life as an impersonal element. Nowhere did he see anything but its reality; and that which the leading bourgeois circles told him about the spiritual was reduced to mere thoughts, to mere ideas, it was not permeated by living spiritual power.

And so the opinion emerged in the minds of the proletarians that the only real thing is the external economic life, that from this economic life in its circulation, in the external scientific existence of man, arises like a smoke, like a social superstructure, only that which takes place as spiritual life - takes place in science, takes place in art - that this spiritual life is only ideology.

It would not be true if this spiritual life were something that was imbued with the spirit itself, something that, through its own content, would lead people to tie their existence to a higher world, not just a mirror of external material reality, for the proletarians of the external economic reality, the spiritual life was so. But to see the spiritual life in this way means that the soul becomes desolate, that the souls remain empty with regard to their innermost impulses, that the soul asks, asks into the empty space, receives no answer, stands before the riddle of existence emotionally, intuitively, receives no answer!

This is the state of mind of the modern proletariat more and more become: that it had to take over as an inheritance from the other classes not a living spiritual life, but an ideology, that was its fate.

What was caused by this in the souls of the modern proletarians has ultimately led to everything that is emerging today as a social movement. This is how we must understand the true nature of the social question in the one area. It is the actual intellectual area. The modern proletarian was condemned to lead a spiritual life that had to become a mere ideology for him.

The second area, dear attendees, comes to the fore when one actually considers the legal and the political. Political and legal social coexistence was presented to the older estates with their traditions by the fact that their interests, their entire happiness in life, was connected with what emerged as the state, as external political life, as external legal life. What the individual had, what the individual did in the so-called ruling classes, that had its basis in the structure that was the state, that was the political structure.

Of the life of the proletarian, which was emerging, only one thing flowed into this structure, into this political, into this legal structure: that which is closely connected with his existence, and in relation to which he could not come into a similar relationship with the state and politics as the leading circles: it flowed into the social structure of the proletarian as labor power.

And by considering this, we come to a true picture of the modern social demand in a second area. If the worker, who has nothing but his physical strength, gives it to the machine or to something else, he is part of the social organism quite differently than someone who is interested in political or state life through property or other legal relationships. Now, however, the proletarian became more and more aware that he was part of modern technical, modern capitalist life, that his labor had taken on a very specific character through modern conditions and that this character had pushed itself into human consciousness in a particularly clear form. The modern proletarian became aware of the fact that his labor power had taken on the character of a commodity, because in modern times that which was previously instinctive has pushed its way into human consciousness.

Otherwise, economic life is characterized by what may be called the circulation of commodities, which consists of the production of commodities, the circulation of commodities in the narrower sense, and the consumption of commodities. All other classes, so to speak, brought their wares to market, bought and sold. The proletarian had nothing to sell but his own labor power. And life turned out so that this labor power of the modern proletarian more and more took on the same form as the commodity has on the economic market. Just as one buys goods according to the principle of supply and demand, so the modern proletarian has to bring his labor power to market, which the owner of the means of production buys from him – buys at the cheapest possible price, if no legal countermeasures prevent him from doing so.

This is the second area where we encounter the true forms of modern social demands. This is, so to speak, one of the fundamental points of the modern proletarian movement. One must only know, one must only understand, what impression - even if it is outdated today in certain circles, even among workers - it has made on the modern proletarian soul over decades, that Karl Marx - as I said, even if Marxism is often outdated - that Karl Marx showed in a penetrating way, as scientifically as can be justified, how modern economic development has brought it to the point where the modern proletarian has to take his labor to the economic market, just as the other takes his goods, that the proletarian must, so to speak, trade in something that is as intimately connected with his humanity as his labor, that was the inspiring thing, that was what dug itself deep, deep into the soul. That is what they carried within them, instinctively, the people, the proletarians, what they could hear in scientific form from those who wanted to lead the modern proletariat scientifically.

This is the point that must be placed in the right perspective in the historical development of humanity in order to recognize its full significance. This is not something that has only come into humanity through modern technology. This is something that the modern proletarian experiences, albeit not in full consciousness, but sometimes, in that it remains in the subconscious, in such a way that he knows, knows in a certain way: once upon a time there were slaves, the whole person was sold on the labor market, on the goods market. The whole person was a commodity. Serfdom was the next step; the human being was already less of a commodity. Now, in more recent times, labor has taken its place: with it, a part of the human being is still brought to the slave market. Such is the feeling of the modern proletarian.

And just as humanity once overcame slavery – as it was done relatively recently – and serfdom, so must the modern life overcome the fact that labor power is treated as a commodity in modern economic life.

This is what the proletarian has increasingly come to feel is in his interest in relation to the political and legal state. This is one of the fundamental issues of the modern proletarian movement: to wrest human labor from the market, to strip this labor of the character of a commodity.

Of course, dear attendees, there are still many people today who cannot see how one should separate from the goods, from the product into which this labor flows, this labor itself. One need only consider the following. We will overcome this prejudice. The great Greek sages Plato and Aristotle considered slavery to be a necessary institution; nevertheless, it has been overcome in the course of human events. Today there are many people who still cannot imagine that what has just been mentioned in relation to human labor must also be overcome in the same way.

And so, in this second area, attention must be paid to the true nature of the social demands, which consists in giving human labor a position in the social organism such that people no longer have to sell this labor like a commodity, and that only objective material goods remain as commodities in economic life, no longer human activity.

This is something that seems to many to be an almost insoluble problem. We will see tomorrow where we want to proceed to attempts at a solution that it is precisely in the attempt to solve this question that something tremendously far-reaching for the whole of contemporary social life lies. The modern proletariat craves a political and legal organization in the modern state, through which its labor power loses its commodity character, and this labor power - institution in the social organism changes accordingly in relation to the commodity.

And a third area comes to us. This is the area that represents economic life in the narrower sense, the purely economic life, which proceeds in the production, circulation, and consumption of commodities. That which is thus integrated into the human social organism has certainly taken on a very special form after the aforementioned point in time in the fifteenth or sixteenth century and during the emergence of modern technology and modern capitalism. This economic life gradually emerged, one might say, flooding out everything else with its complexity, in that the economy expanded in modern times to encompass the whole world, extending to the circumstances of the whole world; whereas in the past the economic spheres were relatively were relatively narrow; but also because economic life itself became impersonal, separated from human honor, from human joy, from human devotion, and thus this economic life became the one that presented a particular, forced difficulty in the overall life of man.

And so it came about that, as a result of the former connection between man and what he worked, what he produced, developed into the incalculable relationship to the technical, to the capitalist world, that, I would say, economic life was pushed away from man. But precisely because it was pushed away from people, because they were no longer personally connected to it and their gaze was hypnotically absorbed by this economic life, it gained more and more power over people themselves.

And so it turned out that in the materialism of modern times, people's attention, their view, their living conditions were increasingly directed towards this economic situation.

This resulted in a very special imbalance for the proletarian, compared to those who live in the other areas of the social organism. He received the spiritual life as an ideology through the course of history. He could not affirm the legal life because, through this legal life, which gave property and rights to others, his labor power was basically stamped as a commodity. Thus, the spiritual life was, in a sense, a vain ideology; something with which his interests and human dignity could not be connected: political and state life. Thus the modern proletarian was completely pushed into economic life, and so it came about that he expected everything from this economic life, until the spiritual life was paralyzed into a shadowy existence, increasingly flooded on the other side by its crude reality, overwhelming all thought, feeling and will.

And so the belief arose that in the modern proletariat there is now a third area in which a true social demand is emerging: the belief that the rest is worthless to me; that I can rely only on what takes place in economic life itself. What redeems me, what gives me human dignity, must arise from economic life and its own laws. And a strange faith, one might say, a strange economic religion, has emerged. No religious impulses could come from the spiritual life that has become ideology. No religious impulse that could somehow fill man with his own dignity could come to the proletarian from state or political life. He hoped for it from the one to whom he remained connected, to whom he became more and more connected through technology and capitalism. He hoped for it with religious confidence from economic life.

From this feeling it is understandable that, in turn, the Marxist doctrine, or what later developed from it in one form or another, entered with such power into the modern proletarian soul that economic life, that the struggle of the individual economic classes, is the only real, the only thing of real importance; and that everything else, the spiritual, the political, everything that has to do with morals and customs, even art and religion, is a kind of superstructure, an ideological superstructure of the only true thing, economic life. But the economic process is an objective process. The economic process is one that takes place outside of the human personality.

And so one could say: From these foundations, the modern proletarian soul lost all trust in the personal powers of man, retaining only trust in that which, without man, one might say, with natural historical necessity, permeates the world: economic life.

They tried to recognize the course of this economic life, how it developed from earlier economic forms into modern capitalism, how this modern capitalism culminated, culminating in capital multiplying itself through itself, so to speak. They observed all this. They observed the accumulation of capital in a few hands. This finally became particularly transparent to the modern proletarian's eye, which had become clairvoyant in this purely material, economic field: the economic process, which takes place without people, has brought about modern misery, it has brought about what the modern proletarian perceives as his life situation. It must continue. But Karl Marx tried to show how it must continue by turning into its opposite, by what the newer economic order of capitalism has taken from the proletariat must be taken back from capitalism by turning into its opposite through the proletariat.

From this reversal within the economic process, that is, from a purely economic process of development, the modern proletarian expected what was to become of him. Just as he has debased intellectual life to ideology and fails to recognize it through the inheritance he has received from the other classes, so on the other hand he fails to recognize economic life, which can certainly never develop anything spiritual out of itself, but in which he believes that it must develop something spiritual, in which he alone has confidence. Underestimation of the spiritual, debasement of the spiritual to the point of ideology; lack of faith in the legal power of the political state that has taken away the dignity of its humanity by turning its labor power into a commodity; overestimation of the viability of economic life by believing that everything a person experiences can only economic life, and giving the development of economic life a quasi-religious consecration. These three things in three different areas, in the spiritual, in the state-legal, and in the economic, are the threefold true formulation of the social question, and are what lives in the modern proletarian. If we recognize this, then we know how the modern proletarian movement came into being. But then we also know what power it has. And we see that it has emerged with a certain inevitability in the development of the present and that it must continue to exist in the development of the future. That is why all modern life springs from two roots, and that there is so little possibility of mutual understanding between the classes.

On the other hand, the formerly leading classes have brought up intellectual, state, and economic life. They have toned it down to what was then passed on to the proletariat as inheritance.

The proletariat, driven by the impulses of modern humanity, craved intellectual life. It was given ideology. It craved a dignified existence. This dignified existence was extinguished by the imposition of the commodity character of its labor power. Economic life had finally emerged as the all-encompassing factor for the other classes as well. But these other classes brought into the modern organization of economic life what they had in their traditions. The modern proletarian was placed alone in this economic life. Therefore he expected everything from the development of this economic life.

The reasons for the attempts to solve the social problem in the present must also be sought here; how this social problem, whether it be temporary or whether it be solved in some definitive way, can be solved, can only be fathomed if one first attempts to fully recognize how the true form of the proletarian social movement has emerged in these three different areas: the spiritual, the state, and the economic.

We must seek the threefold solution of this modern proletarian movement in what can arise as such attempts at solutions precisely from the three currents that have led to the modern proletarian current. From this basis, we will now try to approach tomorrow, esteemed attendees, that which is so urgent and necessary for humanity today: to form an opinion on certain attempts at solutions, realistic attempts at solutions to the modern social question.