Social Ideas, Social Reality, Social Practice I

GA 337a — 30 May 1919, Stuttgart

2. Questions about the idea of the threefold social order II

Wilhelm von Blume: Dear attendees, on behalf of the Federation for the Threefolding of the Social Organism, I would like to welcome you again today. We have planned an evening on which questions are to be answered that have been or may be asked from the floor, and I would first like to ask Dr. Steiner to make a few introductory remarks.

Rudolf Steiner: Dear attendees, this evening is primarily intended to answer questions that have arisen from the esteemed audience in connection with the impulse given by the idea of social threefolding. Tomorrow I will deal with one of the main objections in a lecture to be held here, the objection that the impulse of the threefold social organism is only some kind of sophisticated idea, some kind of ideology or utopia, and tomorrow I will try to prove that it is really the most practical matter in our present time. Today, allow me just to say a few words to introduce the answering of questions that makes up the content of today's agenda.

It has, in fact, been little noticed, my dear attendees, that the impulse for the threefold social organism is intended to point out the most significant task that has been set for humanity in modern times as a result of developmental conditions. It is truly not out of exaggerated pessimism when one expresses the view today that all too little – truly all too little – of the great seriousness of the time, of the great seriousness of the demands of the time, is recognized in the broadest circles. We are indeed faced with a task that is almost gigantic. For the whole development of modern humanity has come to a head in such a way that this task has arisen at last, and it has arisen out of the momentous events of this world war catastrophe. But the extraordinary significance of this task is by no means understood in the broadest circles today, and one would like to believe that it is itself a task to make the people of the present age fully aware of the seriousness of this task. The task first emerges in the phenomena, in the facts of the time. People from the most diverse classes, from the most diverse social circles and also from the most diverse parties take their stand on these phenomena, on these facts of the time. From all that has emerged from such statements to date, two things stand out. I would like to characterize these two things in these few introductory words; I will go into more detail tomorrow. I would like to characterize this in the introduction because, however desirable it may be to discuss more individual, concrete, practical questions in today's question, But today it is necessary for people to look again and again at the big, comprehensive picture of the task, if only to awaken in people their sense of responsibility towards the great issues of the times.

There are two things that can be observed when considering the opinions of the most diverse circles on this great task today. One can say: One group of people is primarily interested in restoring in some way, in some form - in a form that is acceptable - what has been destroyed by the significant world war catastrophe. And the other type of person, coming from a completely different background, is primarily interested in doing everything differently than it was before the world war catastrophe - partly with the aim of ensuring that such terrible things never happen to humanity again, partly also out of the feeling and conviction that we cannot move forward on the basis of the old economic, state and spiritual order, that a new construction must be tackled very seriously. If we want to call one type of people – in the face of the completely new demands – more the conservative people, then our gaze is directed to all those circles that more or less belong to the old social worldviews, which are somehow intertwined with what the old worldviews have brought to humanity, especially in terms of economic orders. On the other hand, we see the forward-rushing parties, which are made up mainly of the proletariat, and there we see that which takes a completely different approach to the great task and which takes such a different approach that one type of people no longer understands the other. If we look for the reasons for this lack of understanding – I will only sketch them out today – if we look for the reasons for this lack of understanding, we will find that on the one hand the representatives of the old, who in some way want to continue to be associated with this old, have lost an actual cultural goal in the course of recent history and have retained an old cultural practice in which they have continued to work. These people, dear assembled presenters, have a practice, but this practice is no longer imbued with purposeful impulses. This practice always expresses itself in such a way that when you ask these people: How do you actually want to move forward now that the big tasks are coming? they somehow answer with what only means a continuation of the old; but they do not answer with any great goal either; basically, they only answer with what has emerged from the routine of their previous practice. They have a practice without a goal. On the other side stands the proletariat. It has a goal, a goal that can be expressed in the most diverse ways, but it is a goal. But this proletariat has no practice; this proletariat lacks any practical possibility of realizing what it somehow defines as its goals. So on the one hand there is traditional practice without a goal, on the other hand there is a new goal without practice. The proletariat has been kept away from practice, only summoned to the machine, only harnessed to the factory and to capitalism. From this, its goal has emerged, in that it, I would like to say, is rushing against what it has experienced, but it is never connected with the management, with the leadership of the economic forms themselves. Today it demands new forms of life; but it knows nothing of practice. Where does this gap come from?

This gap arises from the fact that we are faced with the greatest problem of modern times, and this greatest problem of modern times has arisen precisely in the age that has brought industrialism to its highest flowering. This problem is hidden at first in the economic sphere, but it extends its various branches to the other forms of life. This problem is so momentous that even a keen mind such as Walter Rathenau's has at most touched on it, but has not come to any clear understanding of this far-reaching problem of the present, this problem from which we all suffer, this problem that imperiously demands its solution. At least the impulse for the threefolding of the social organism would like to consider this problem without prejudice and full of life. And if I am to hint at it in a few words, so to speak as an introduction to tomorrow's lecture, which is to deal with it in its specific forms, then I must say: this problem, it had to slowly arise in humanity, had to, so to speak, rise to its highest development in the time of ever-expanding industrialism and modern technology, and now stands before us, questioning and threatening. It consists in the fact that all industrialism works with a deficit in the national economy – that is the case, there is no other way. The national economy must be attuned to this, knowing that all industrialism, insofar as it develops further and further through its means of production, works with a deficit in relation to what the national economy is for humanity. Insofar as industrialism works with a deficit, what is missing in the human national economy must be replaced from another source. That is the great problem of the present time, that all industrialism works with a deficit and that the question cannot be asked by me or others as to whether this deficit will be covered, but life is constantly being asked to cover the deficit of industrialism. Where does it come from? It is covered only by the soil, my dear audience, only by what the soil produces. In the modern economy, we are constantly involved in this exchange process [between industry and land production], which is covered up by secondary processes – in that the deficit of industry has to be covered by the surplus of land production in the broadest sense. Everything that is involved in the question of wages, the question of capital, and the question of prices in modern life is due solely to the fact that the surplus in the production of land must migrate into the deficit in industry.

But this, dear ladies and gentlemen, is linked to something else. It is linked to the fact that, on the one hand, everything in man that is connected with the soil tends towards a certain conservatism. This can be strictly proven, but today I will only hint at it in my introduction. If only the land and its products were available, we would have to remain more or less in a primitive state in terms of culture. The progress of humanity stems from the fact that industry, with its extensive division of labor, favors this progress. But at the same time, industry becomes the basis for progress in the most diverse fields, first of liberalism, then of socialism. Thus, what is expressed in the significant, I would even say bookish, contrast between land and industrial means of production is transferred to human sentiment. And as human sentiments clash with one another in life, this conflict is intimately connected with what underlies it: the opposing economic interests of land and industrial means of production. But in modern times this whole problem has intensified in yet another way. Not only that in parliaments liberal and socialist sit opposite the conservative, stemming simply from the assets and liabilities of the entire world economy; not only that in modern times the conservative and progressive element has crept into the people's assemblies of humanity , but economic interests have also crept in, with everything connected with the land, on the one hand, working for what remains stationary, and everything connected with industry, on the other hand, working for what is progressing. And so it has come about that, on the one hand, man's spiritual progress and, on the other, man's economic interests have been chaotically thrown together in our modern unitary state system.

This is the great problem that confronts people today, I would even say it is a gigantic one. People on the left and the right are fiddling around with this problem. Because it is so huge, that is why it is so difficult to reach an understanding. People on the one hand only want to consider the most immediate issues and only call that practical, while the times demand that we find some solution to the great accounting disparity between the land products and industrial products, from which humanity feeds, clothes and satisfies other needs, in the more recent development of humanity. I would say that everything that has occurred can ultimately be traced back, almost in terms of numbers, to the accounting result mentioned. But it takes real goodwill to engage with the fundamental forces of real practical life, even if you just want to see the task. We are at the point today where we have to see this task, that what is chaotically mixed up must be properly separated again. The impulse for a threefold social organism wants to face up to this task, which wants to place a healthy social organism on its healthy three legs in the right way: on the spiritual, the legal and the economic. This problem has arisen simply from what is inherent in this development of modern times. And even if, for my sake, people still find the next results, to which the impulse for the threefold social organism has come, disputable, one comes, without asking about these three areas of life in such a way that for their proper organization in the future, one does not come any closer to the greatest problem that has been set for us; one does not come any closer to what alone can lead out of the threatening chaos and confusion.

I wished to say this by way of introduction for the simple reason that, on the one hand, it should be seen how the impulse for the threefold social organism is really connected with the highest that is set before humanity as a great historical and because, on the other hand, the answer to the question will show how much can already be said today, based on a real observation of life, about what can arise in detail from the questions posed today.

I will now begin by answering the questions that have been put to me.

Wilhelm von Blume: So we will now begin to answer the questions that have been put to us in writing.

Rudolf Steiner: Dear attendees, I will try to answer the questions that were handed to me in writing in a not too long form, for the simple reason that I believe that perhaps afterwards numerous questions from the esteemed audience may still be asked orally or in writing.

The first bundle of questions that I have before me is headed “On Threefolding”. The first question:

In what way are individuals, associations and enterprises placed under the three different organizations? Individual borderline cases are, for example, the newspaper publisher, public health institutions, theaters and cinema enterprises.

Now, esteemed attendees, I would like to focus on the newspaper industry in particular from this first question. Because it is precisely something like the newspaper industry that will make it possible to see how, on the one hand, the threefold social organism can actually lead to a complete transformation of the current situation, but in an organic way, and how, on the other hand, it can result in the unity of life not being disturbed at all. Basically, it will also be possible to show that what people say about the incomprehensibility of the three-part social organism is actually based on the fact that, out of old habits of thinking, they do not want to engage in the present with what is necessary. But they will have to decide to come to terms with this necessity.

As you can see, dear attendees, in the newspaper business, all three aspects of human life basically come together. In the newspaper business, on the one hand, we have the publisher, the person who has to ensure that the newspaper is printed, that it is distributed in the appropriate manner, and so on – this is a purely economic task. On the other hand, we have those who write the newspaper. I believe that today, many people are already comfortable enough in our strange circumstances to come to the conclusion that newspapers should be written differently than they are often written. You see, something beneficial for humanity can only come out of writing a newspaper if what is written arises solely from the interests and needs of the spiritual life of humanity and from the needs that arise from the fact that the spiritual life also looks at the various other branches of life. The newspaper writer and everything that belongs to the editorial staff belongs to the spiritual life. And since we are dealing on both sides, both in the economic part of the newspaper business and in the spiritual part of the newspaper business, with people who, in turn, as human beings, are in relationships not only with their subscribers, but also with the whole of the general public, we are dealing with relationships that take place from person to person, that is, with legal relationships. The issue at hand, esteemed attendees, is that in the future, especially in a business such as the newspaper industry, the economic, the legal and the intellectual, cultural aspects will not mesh for the detriment of humanity, otherwise, in the culmination of the disaster, we will end up with things as we are experiencing them in the present, for example. Recently, a strange advertisement appeared in the so-called press. It called for the world of big industry and the world of capitalists in particular to join forces to create a new newspaper. So it is advertising for a new newspaper, especially among capitalists and big industry. The purpose of this newspaper is to fight with all spiritual means against the socialization of the means of production. So, dear attendees, the interest of capitalists and big industrialists is supposed to enslave everything that should actually educate humanity from the judgment that comes from impulses of the spiritual world. Those who have some experience in life will know how, especially in the newspaper industry, these things have increasingly merged in recent times and have developed in a particularly grotesque way under the present circumstances.

In the future, the aim must be for the newspaper publisher and printer to be a mere economist, subordinate to the administration of the economic part of the social organism. He will be part of the economic organism with all the interests he can develop within his newspaper business. The editorial staff will not be part of the economic organism, but will be entirely subject to the self-administration of intellectual life, along with the other branches of intellectual life. The editorial staff will form a unit with all that is teaching, art or the like, which are other branches of intellectual life. How a particular newspaper publisher can come to be a particular editor depends on the contract that can be concluded between the newspaper publisher and the editor, whereby the editor, because he belongs to the self-government of the spiritual organism, is independent of the newspaper publisher with regard to his entire material life. The editor will merely have an interest in being able to pursue his profession at all. If he did not pursue this interest in practicing his profession, he would be without a livelihood. But the moment he succeeds in concluding a contract with some administration, he will not receive compensation for this profession from the interests of that administration, but from the interests of the self-governing intellectual life. If any matters arise through which one or other part of the newspaper violates the law, this violation of rights will be subject to the laws of the constitutional state. In the future, therefore, it will be desirable for such a branch of production to be influenced by the three great administrative branches of intellectual, legal and economic life. In the most diverse branches of production, those interests that are administered from the most diverse directions will converge. And it will come about in the cooperation of people that these interests - which otherwise, when they are confounded, when they are mixed together into a tangle, only interfere with each other - that these interests will precisely moralize, ethicalize, and support each other. The one who really has a practical mind will say to himself: There is no doubt that such a division of a single trade can really be carried out in practice. And by this structuring of the entire social organism, which reaches into the individual circumstances, we then have the recovery of the whole of social life. It is just that people today are not accustomed to thinking about what leads to such a recovery. They are also unaccustomed to it because they have to let go of many things that they consider almost indispensable from certain old ways of life. Today it is considered essential that the person who takes the economic risk for a newspaper also makes the person employed by the newspaper on the editorial staff his writer. He will not be able to do that in the future. From this will arise a great independence of the writer from the economic interests of the newspaper publisher in the newspaper industry, and precisely in this branch will come a recovery that we truly need and must admit that we need if we want to address the living conditions of a healthy social organism.

The second question put to me is:

Will the municipal administration, with its enterprises that break through the tripartite division, be maintained in the areas of the three organizations – for example, schools, gasworks, and jurisdiction?

Now, dear attendees, it is not the intention, in this transitional period – in which we are not even in it yet, but are only striving for it – to talk about the size of the individual spiritual, legal and economic areas, which I talked about in the last lecture here. In regard to the external structure of social life, not much needs to change at all if there is to be a genuine socialization of all human life. But what I have just explained for a single trade can just as easily be carried out by any state, an empire or a single local authority. Schools, gasworks, courts of law, they will have their various aspects, partly on the legal side, partly on the economic side – and in the case of schools, also on the spiritual side – and what emanates from the three organizations and their administrations will play a role in the individual enterprise, be it spiritual or more or less merely material, economic. The third question:

Who decides on the respective affiliation to one of the three organisms?

This question, dear attendees, actually arises – forgive the harsh word – from a certain prejudice that everything must come from an authority. In what is striven for as a healthy social organism for the future, the affiliation arises from the matter itself. We have just seen in our discussion of the newspaper industry how this affiliation arises from the matter at hand. From this affiliation, a much more comprehensive answer will be given than is currently thought. And a question like this one - it will be recognized as one that actually flows from the present-day mood of obedience to authority, and not from a truly factual basis. The fourth question:

Is there, in addition to or above the special representatives of the three members, any thought of a parliament consisting of their top leadership or an elected parliament (for the individual states? for the empire?)?

Now, ladies and gentlemen, it must first be stated that, of course, as I have explained in my book on the social question, the question of what is the administration or representation in the individual of the three parts of the social organism is that it must belong to the others in some way and that a mutual exchange must take place through people. But in this respect, too, people often think far too stereotypically. For example, it is stated — and this is not in this question — in a long document that was sent to me a few days ago that threefolding actually makes three different parliaments necessary: a cultural parliament, a state parliament and an economic parliament. Now, I am of the opinion that if three parliaments with three ministries were to sit side by side in such a stereotyped way, then the only consequence that could arise would be that all three would sabotage each other. And this is precisely what follows from a true understanding of the actual situation: that parliamentarism – and only a democratic parliamentarism is a true parliamentarism – can only be based on that which can be established between human beings by virtue of the fact that the human being is simply an adult, a mature human being. Everyone must be able to participate in democratic parliamentary life who is an adult, a mature human being. For everything that comes to a head in the legal sphere can be based on what a normal, healthy, adult, mature human being is, on what he can know, think, feel and want. But economic life has become mixed up with this legal life, which is therefore not only based on the feelings and thoughts of the adult, mature person, but which is based, firstly, on economic experience, which one can only acquire in a specific area can only be acquired in a specific, concrete area, secondly on the actual foundations, I would like to say on credit in the broadest sense. I do not mean monetary credit, but credit in the broadest sense, which is generated in a group of people by the fact that this group of people is involved in a particular branch of production. Because everything in economic life must develop from actual experience and the actual administrative basis of the specific individual branch, the organizational structure that exists in economic life can only arise on such a basis. That is to say, only an appropriate administration can develop in economic life from economic experience and economic facts. There will be no parliamentary representation at the top, but rather a structure of associations, coalitions, cooperatives from the professional classes, from the grouping of production and consumption and so on, which organize themselves and can manage themselves. And this structure will also develop a certain leadership, I would say a central council. But this cannot be the same structure that is expressed in what must be independently separated as the legal basis. On the contrary, it is precisely that which is to have an effect on economic life as law that will have the right effect as law, because it can now arise purely, without being contaminated by economic interests, on the legal basis of the community of all people who have come of age. And just as little as economic life can be administered in a stereotyped, parliamentary way, just as little can spiritual life be administered in this way. Spiritual life, in turn, must develop an organization based on its own laws, which will be quite different from that of economic life, because of its special circumstances. That which arises at the very apex of intellectual life, together with all that which stands in the middle, on the legal ground, what is administered by parliament and by ministers, and with that which arises as a kind of central council in economic life, will be able to order the common affairs. I know that there are many people who cannot imagine such a thing; but in practice it will be simpler, above all more fruitful, than all that stands in its place today.

The second set of questions is entitled “On Economic Life”. First:

What will happen to the existing property of the wealthy, in particular agricultural and urban property?

The question is clearly explained in my book on the Social Question. That which has led us into the individual crises of economic life and now into the great crisis - for such is the present world catastrophe - is that form of modern economic life which I have tried to highlight in my book 'The Crux of the Social Question'. In this book, the question is answered as to how, in the future, on the one hand, the means of production, which consists of land, and, on the other hand, the industrial means of production, must be viewed differently. The industrial means of production may only suck capital out of the economic body until they are finished; when they are finished, their sucking of capital out of the economic body is also finished. In other words, industrial means of production can only cost something while they are being worked on until they are completed; then they have to be transferred to the circulation process for means of production; then they have to be what is generally owned. But the land, which is not manufactured but is already there, can never cost anything.

You see, dear ladies and gentlemen, if you think in a healthy way, it already arises in a certain way today, but only in the individual cases where you think economically in a healthy way. We have built a structure in Dornach as a School of Spiritual Science that is not yet finished, which has been affected in its completion by the catastrophe of the world wars. We have, of course, built it out of the present economic conditions, but the question can be raised about this building: when we are all dead, when we are no longer there when the building is finished, who will own this building, who will be able to sell it to someone else? This question answers itself for our building. It will not belong to anyone; it naturally belongs to the general public. For it is built on the sound foundation that it will one day [in the future] be able to pass as the common property of all humanity to whoever can manage it in turn. One only has to have come up with such a thing in practice. In the present economic system, one can only come close to this, but one will see that what is written in my book “The Crux of the Social Question” about the fact that every purchase relationship ceases with a means of production when it is completed, and that this means of production, which can no longer be bought in other forms, then passes into the administration of society. And one will see that there is something eminently practical in this.

The second question:

How should small-scale crafts and trades be organized?

It is to be organized in no different way than large-scale industry and trade, for the simple reason that it will follow from the laws of economic life itself - from the laws that I explained in the lecture the other day - that a trade or business that is too large harms and starves those who are outside of it, and that a trade or business that is too small harms those who are within it. Size will be determined by the future economic situation.

The third question:

Should trade, in particular wholesale trade in import and export, be stopped?

That would, of course, be completely absurd if it were to stop. Anyone who really thinks through with a practical mind what is explained in my book “The Key Points of the Social Question” will see that the actual conditions at the boundaries of the economic, legal and intellectual spheres will by no means change. Not even the initiative of the individual will change as a result, which is of course necessary, especially in the external world. What is changed are only the social conditions within. In fact, only things that have nothing to do with what is happening on the borders will be changed, except that on these borders, what has previously had such a disturbing effect and has come to a head in the terrible explosions of war, will harmonize with each other. The fact that economic conditions at the borders have a harmonizing effect on international legal and spiritual conditions – for example, also at language borders – is precisely why the threefold social organism in its international relationship, as I explained in my book, will have its greatest significance. It will no longer be possible for what develops on the one hand from the economic and on the other from the legal or from the spiritual, to which the national also belongs, to mix in a colorful way with imports and exports. The absurdity of a “national economy” will, however, come to an end, for the simple reason that only economic conditions will be decisive for export and import across borders and because there will no longer be the possibility of such world conflicts being caused by the intertwining of economic and political interests. A great deal of what led to the present world war catastrophe lies in such a tangle of political, cultural and economic issues, as has emerged, for example, in the Sandschak question or the Dardanelles question in the southeast of the European continent or in the Baghdad railway problem.

The fourth question:

Will the economy of exchange by 'wages' be replaced by a natural economy?

In my book and in many lectures I have explained that the concept of wages will no longer have any real meaning in the future, because a kind of socialization will occur between manual laborers and intellectual workers. So there can be no question of a return to a purely natural economy. But money will — even if the leading commercial state of England adheres to the gold standard — at least initially in domestic trade — take on a different significance. What adheres to money today — that it is a commodity — will fall away. What will be present in the monetary system will be only a kind of changing accounting of the exchange of goods between the people belonging to the economic area. A kind of written credit will be kept in what is used as a monetary record. And a deduction of these credits will take place when one acquires anything one needs. A kind of bookkeeping, walking bookkeeping, will be the monetary system. Money, which is a commodity today and its equivalent, gold, which is only a sham commodity, will no longer be a commodity in the future.

The fifth question:

Is compulsory labor envisaged?

Now, dear readers, anyone who delves into the spirit of my book “The Key Points of the Social Question” will see that what must seem to every humanely thinking person - I say quite bluntly here - must appear as the most abominable, a bureaucratically ordered compulsion to work, that in the future [in a threefold social organism] can be eliminated. Of course, everyone is forced to work by their social circumstances, and one has only the choice of either starving or working. There cannot be any compulsion to work other than that which arises from the circumstances in this way [in a social order] in which the freedom of the human being is a basic condition.

The sixth question:

Is the abolition of inheritance law planned?

Inheritance law, to the extent that parts of it remain, will at most be based on the fact that in a transitional period some kind of reckoning must be made with feelings of piety and the like. But inheritance law [in the sense of the previous inheritance law] will no longer be talked about in the future for the simple reason that, on the one hand, it can no longer be the case that something that cannot actually be sold, that is not for sale, still has value for someone. On the other hand, inheritance will no longer be needed, because under the institutions of a healthy social organism, people will be able to provide for the future of those who belong to them in a completely different way than is the case today under the purely materialistic law of inheritance. I have stated this in my book.

The third set of questions is headed: “On practical feasibility”. The first question:

Does not the accidental nature of personal talent (often not factual content, but individual ability such as skill, oratory and the like) create an upper class with the danger of abuse of the power entrusted to it, as well as corruption, and towards which envy and resentment of the lower class persists?

Now, dear attendees, anyone who does not want this formation will never be able to contribute anything to any fruitful shaping of the social organism if it does not correspond to the absolutely ideal state. The greatest enemy of all social impulses is when, through these social impulses, one wants to establish, so to speak, the happiness of humanity. I would like to use a comparison here. You see, dear ladies and gentlemen, let us take the human organism, let us assume that it is a so-called healthy organism. You don't feel it at all, and precisely because you don't feel anything in your organism, it is a healthy organism. Joy, harmony, and inner soul culture must first arise on the basis of such a healthy organism. You cannot expect the doctor to give you soul joy or inner soul culture in addition to health, but you can only expect him to make your organism healthy. It is only on the basis of a healthy organism that inner soul culture can arise. But if the organism is sick, then the soul shares in the sickness, then its inner life is dependent on this sickness. It is the same in the social organism. The sick social organism makes people unhappy; but the healthy social organism cannot yet make people happy, but only creates the conditions for human happiness, which can arise when the social organism is healthy. Therefore, the impulse for the tripartite social organism is to seek the living conditions of a healthy social organism. Of course, corruption or the like can also arise there – that cannot be denied – but such corruptions can be improved by countermeasures, and the greatest prospect of improving them when they occur lies precisely in the health of the social organism itself. I am firmly convinced that if the social organism is healthy, then the professional windbags with their gift of the gab will simply drive people away; they will not have much support. At present, due to our social circumstances, this is not yet the case. Particularly in those spheres where intellectual life is supposed to flourish, it sometimes happens that the audience of some professional babbler in a professorial chair takes to its heels, but they have to pay their college fees and may also take their exams. And professional babbling with its corruption has no particular effect on real life, on the living conditions of the social organism. Such things will naturally fall away in the future when man is instructed in the spiritual life to rely on the fact that he must gain the trust of his fellow human beings and that, for example, only on this trust of his fellow human beings can his achievements be based.

The second question, and this is the last question that has been put to me in this bundle of questions:

What evidence is there that communism, which does not strive for the equality of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie but for the rule of the proletariat, and which believes that the bourgeoisie will not voluntarily renounce its present position, will renounce its program of power in favor of threefolding and see an accommodation on the part of the propertied classes not only as an advance payment?

This question cannot be answered simply on the basis of the structure of the threefold organism. Rather, it must be said that the gulf that has arisen between the proletariat, on the one hand, and the non-proletariat, on the other, is essentially the fault of the leading circles , that is, the non-proletariat, and that the next task of these leading circles would be to really understand the demands of the proletariat and to be able to respond to them; for the proletariat will need, above all, the strength of intellectual workers. It is not in some impossible demands from one side or the other that one should see a danger, but only in the lack of goodwill to build any kind of bridge across the abyss.

There are now a few other written questions, for example the question:

In the three-part social organism, human labor will lose the character of a commodity. There will no longer be a wage in the traditional sense. The workers of a company will receive a contractually agreed portion of the total revenue of the company in question, while another portion will belong to the employees and the manager. How will it be ensured that the worker is guaranteed a kind of subsistence minimum, for example if a single company has a low earning capacity?

This question is dealt with in my book, and I will only note here that the question in the most eminent sense, when the three members of the healthy social organism really exist, is an economic question, and that the socialization of economic life will give rise to a major practical question for those administrations that will be active within the economic body. In essence, I would say that this question boils down to the following: what is today called the minimum subsistence level is still conceived in terms of the wage relationship. This kind of thinking will not be able to take place in the same way in the case of independent economic activity. There, the question will have to be posed purely and simply from the point of view of economic life. This question will then arise in such a way that a person, by performing some kind of service, by producing something, will receive in exchange as many other human services as he needs to satisfy his needs and those of those who belong to him, until he has produced a new, similar product. In doing so, only what the person has to do for his family in terms of work and the like must be taken into account. Then one will find a certain, I would say original cell of economic life. And that which will make this original cell of economic life what will make people satisfy their needs until they produce a similar new product, that applies to all branches of spiritual and material life. It will have to be organized in such a way that the associations, the coalitions, the cooperatives of the kind I have described earlier will have to ensure that this primal cell of economic life can exist. That is to say, that each product, in comparison with other products, has a value equal to the other products needed to satisfy needs until a new, similar product is produced. The fact that this original cell of economic life does not yet exist today is precisely because labor, goods and rights converge in the supply and demand of today's market and that these three areas must be separated in the future in the tripartite, healthy social organism.

Then the following question was asked:

How does Dr. Steiner envision an improved future for the status of private teachers and teachers of similar professions whose necessary income depends on the number of hours they personally work? How will it be possible in the future to strip their labor of its character as a commodity?

Well, that takes care of itself, because anyone who works as a teacher in the spiritual life will, when they are no longer tied into the state machine, actually be more or less free, but then in a healthy way, like any spiritual cultural activity in the threefold organism. That is about all that can be said on the matter. Simply, such persons as are meant here will be equated with those who today have monopolies, in that they are, in the field of the spiritual, combined in their position with purely state affairs.

I think I will now take a break in answering the questions submitted in writing so that any questions that may arise from the honored audience are not affected. The questions that I answered first have been on my mind for quite some time, and I wanted to answer them first today because I believe that they could be really significant for a larger circle. If we are unable to answer all the questions today, we can do so at a later date. I think it would be a good idea to let the questions that may arise from the audience approach us now.

Wilhelm von Blume: So I ask the esteemed attendees, if you have any questions on your mind, to speak up now and submit them in writing as far as possible. But you are also welcome to ask questions orally. We would just ask you to come here and ask the question from here so that we can hear you all. Perhaps I may in the meantime answer the one question that was raised earlier with a word that I would like to add to what Dr. Steiner said, because this question has occasionally arisen for me myself and I therefore well understood that it was asked. It is the question of the position of the municipalities in the future threefold social organism. Perhaps the questioner would like to know more about what the situation of the municipalities will actually be in the future threefold social organism. The question has been asked: What will happen to the municipal schools, what will happen to the gasworks and so on? Behind this is the question: what will become of the community in the future, if, as there is no doubt, the gasworks, as an event in economic life, must be integrated into the overall organization of economic life, and can no longer be considered a special municipal institution? The questioner did not mention anything else, but the question of housing is at least as important. Who will be responsible for the construction of housing in the future? The construction of housing is, to put it bluntly, an economic process, since it involves 'production'. And there can be no doubt that the allocation of housing for use can also be regarded as an economic process. In the future, this matter will have to be dealt with by the special economic organization. One might think that the community will lose all or at least almost all of the tasks it has had until today – so what will actually become of the community? And yet: the community remains, and the community will continue to play an extremely important role in the future, just as the state remains and will continue to have tasks to perform in the future. I think everyone will immediately feel that the transfer of the gasworks from pure municipal administration to a special economic administration also has its very, very good sides, when they consider that the price of gas, which is charged by the community today, is not set with the aim of enabling as many people as possible to have this gas at a price that reflects the cost of production, but rather because the gasworks is a municipal institution that generates income and [through the surplus] municipal finances are maintained. The same applies to the power stations, the trams and so on. This means that these institutions, which are actually supposed to pursue very specific economic purposes, must also serve the financial purposes of the community, and often enough in such a way that the actual purpose of providing the community's residents with these extremely important goods is severely compromised. So it is certainly an advantage if, in the future, the community can no longer use such institutions for its financial purposes, but if they are only used for purely economic purposes. But the community remains the organization subordinate to the state in all matters of law and administration, that is, in particular, the police and the so-called welfare work - the welfare work insofar as it relates to the maintenance of the strength of the individual. That will be the task of the community, and that is where it has its most important task, as it does today. The community has only taken on economic activity because no one else has properly addressed this task, and it is fortunate, I believe, for a proper community life if in the future the purely economic is no longer the concern of the community. It is fortunate that in the future the municipal administration will no longer be organized in such a way that selfish interests prevail, but will be organized in such a way that every individual can effectively come to his or her rights. As for spiritual life, what applies in general to the separation of this spiritual life from the influence of the state must also apply to the community. It is clear that today the communities have achieved a great deal of good in this area, but the disadvantages of economic interests interfering in cultural matters, which keep cropping up, can be felt clearly enough in the area of community life. But nevertheless, the community still has the very large area that it had before it took over such community institutions. So the fear that the community would become completely superfluous is just as unjustified as the other fear that the state would actually be finished off by this threefold order. It is not. No further questions have been asked from the audience so far. Dr. Steiner will now answer the questions submitted in writing.

Rudolf Steiner: There is still the question:

The Steinerian economic order will have to submit to a certain government policy in broad outline, such as the nationality principle, the militaristic or pacifistic world order. Will the burden on the economy (apart from the current war debts and war reparations) be any different according to these guiding principles? Will not, for example, a nationalist policy, conceived in the old way, again burden the economy above all else and undermine the general welfare?

Now, dear attendees, the question arises from a not yet complete penetration of what the essence of the threefold social organism actually is. You see, the damage caused by the unitary state arises from the fact that, let us say, in the legal sphere, and thus to the greatest extent in politics, economic interests interfere, for example, when farmers form an alliance and assert themselves in the state parliament as the “Alliance of Farmers” and there, based on their interests, influence the legal system. On the other hand, harm can come about when a corporation that pursues purely spiritual interests – let us say, for example, the Catholic-organized “center” – in turn sits in the state parliament and there makes the legal interests, I would say, into reshaped spiritual interests. Now you will say: Well, in the future the three elements will exist separately: the spiritual organism, which is completely self-governing from the spiritual principles; the legal organism, which will form the continuation of the present state organism, but which will not have the spiritual and economic life within itself, but only the legal and political life; the economic organism, the cycle of economic life. But, you will say, the three areas do have certain things, certain interests in common, and they are connected through the individual himself; the individual is involved in some kind of business in which the three independent administrative areas play a role. You will ask: Yes, could not some club or the like assert itself in the future for the parliament of the legal ground, which carries the economic interests into the legal ground and asserts its interests in the state parliament , as for example, in the unified state, the farmers' union wants to make rights out of economic interests, or as the center wants to make rights out of religious, confessional interests, that is, out of spiritual life, through coalitions with other parties?

Now, dear attendees, the essence of the threefold social organism, which is still so little understood today, is that in the realm of the economic plane, only economic measures can be taken, not legal measures and not measures that have anything to do with the development of human abilities, which are to be administered in the realm of spiritual life; in the realm of the legal life, only legal issues will have to be developed at all. Let us assume, then, that a club with economic interests were to be found in the parliament of the legal sphere, in the state parliament. It would never be able to take measures that somehow influence economic life, since only legal issues relating to the equality of all people are ever discussed in this parliament. They cannot be conceived in terms of economic life. Economic life is out of the question in the Parliament of Right. It is impossible for anyone, no matter how much economic interest he may have, to assert his economic interests in the Parliament of Right, because nothing of an economic character can take place on the basis of the life of right; that can only take place on the basis of economic life. The point is that it is not a question of dividing men into classes, but of dividing the social organism itself. Thus the present unified state breaks down into three areas, and the interests of each area cannot be asserted in any way in the other two, because such assertion would have no effect in these areas. It is precisely this consistency that will bring about the future healing of the social organism; it is also the reason why this tripartite social organism is a social necessity.

I believe that most of those who have already familiarized themselves with the impulse of the tripartite organism consider what is meant by it to be much too sophisticated, something beyond practical application, something that someone has thought about and come up with: The unified organism did not work out well, so let's make three of them. That is not the point. What is important is the recognition of real life and real necessities, which lead to the tripartite social organism as a consequence. Today, we often hear people say: “We don't understand what is actually wanted.” They don't understand what is actually being sought. Today, so many people say to such an impulse: “We don't understand that.” Why is that? You see, that comes from something that is supposed to be different and better through the threefold social organism. Today, when people are called upon to judge something, what is missing above all is the connection with life. When someone speaks today from a theory, from something that can be explained with a few general principles, which are ultimately comprehensible to every normal person when they come of age, then people understand it. But when we speak today of something that cannot be grasped in this way, but for which a true connection with life is necessary, where one must appeal to life experience, then people come and say they do not understand it. Where does this come from? It comes from the unitary state that we have had for four centuries; through this unitary state, people have been thrown into a life in which they are involved in a particular area of life and have acquired a certain routine in it. They call this routine their practice. They know what they have through this routine. Otherwise, they are educated by the state from the lowest school level. What will play a role in the future is not part of their education, real life is not part of their education, but decrees, laws and so on are part of their education. The abstract nature of the decree and the law flows into human thinking [from the lowest school level], so that today people only have the routine of some individual branch, which they handle quite mechanically. Anyone who disagrees with them on this point, based on a broader experience of life, is called a fool or an impractical person. And on top of that, they have a head full of abstractions because they have only been educated from decrees, laws, teaching objectives and so on, which are not taken from life, but merely from some abstract way of thinking, which has sole authority on the legal ground, but on no other ground of life. In the legal sphere, it has legitimacy because, in the legal sphere, anything that any normal person of legal age can spin out of themselves simply by being of age can be claimed as a human right over against all other people. But what cannot be spun out of the ground is what must flow into the administration of economic life and into the development of intellectual life. Therefore, because we have lacked the freedom of intellectual life, the self-reliance of intellectual life, we have today this strange phenomenon that people can only grasp what they have been thinking for a long time.

Recently, I spoke in a neighboring town about the same issues that I am talking about here now. Afterwards, someone came forward to join the discussion who put forward something from which one could see that he had only taken up and even heard from my remarks what he had been used to for decades, even down to the sentence structure. But what had not been in his brain box for decades, that man did not even hear, it passed him by so strangely that he did not even hear it, that he denied it altogether in the discussion. This is because something like the impulse for a tripartite social organism must appeal not to what we have been educated to through abstract decrees, laws, teaching objectives, courses and so on, but must appeal to what people understand from life itself. That is why such a gulf has opened up today, when one speaks not out of utopian and ideological thinking, but precisely out of life. The more practical one's words are today, the more impractical people call one, because people do not have a real life practice, but only life routine and abstractions in their heads. That is also what leads to the fear that in the future, in the tripartite social organism, there could somehow be a tyranny from one side or the other. This cannot happen because, as I have explained, such a tyranny cannot even assert itself. No matter how many laws are passed in the right-wing parliament, they would not affect economic life, because even what would be dangerous for the interests of economic life could not affect economic life, since it is independently administered.

Another question:

On the other hand, how are the requirements of social policy, for example support for war invalids, orphans, the weak, and so on, regulated? In particular, on what scale? How are the results of the economy used? Couldn't a suitable government configuration render Dr. Steiner's social policy illusory? Even if the main excesses of capitalism, the rent economy, were eliminated, can't the distribution of the burdens still be one-sided?

The last part of the question has already been answered with what I have just said. But the fact that a truly self-reliant economic life can take even better care of widows and orphans, etc., is explained in more detail in my book “The Crux of the Social Question”. I have already indicated that the economic unit must take into account what each person has to contribute as a quota to what widows and orphans, and other people who are unable to work, receive, as explained in my book, and also for children for whom I claim the right to educate. The standard for this will be derived simply from the living expenses of the other persons. Since the economic unit provides a standard for the living expenses of a person according to the existing overall economic prosperity, this also makes it possible to create a standard for the living expenses of those who really cannot work.

The next question:

Could the dangers of the so-called bourgeois government not continue to exist? Are these not further strengthened by the fact that, depending on the composition of the leading political direction, the distribution of offices can take place in such a way that, despite all the good words, the leadership and the occupation of the factories, cooperatives and so on happens through cronyism? In a backward ruling society, that is, in parliament, who guarantees the removal of the incompetent and the lazy from a leading or independent position? Can't a clique economy quickly destroy the advantages of Steiner's system?

Basically, the answer to this question also follows from what I have already said. Because, dear attendees, it is really not a matter of devising some ideal state in which it can no longer happen that one or the other eats up something, but rather it is a matter of finding the best possible state adapted to some specific human society. What is here called the “cousin's” way and the like, that would, if you only really think about things - but think about them practically, according to reality - become quite impossible. For just consider that in this threefold social organism the circulation of the means of production takes place on the widest possible scale, and that, furthermore, the cooperation of the manual workers with the intellectual workers is based on a completely free contract regarding their respective services. So there are much greater safeguards than anywhere else. If you consider, for example, what can arise from corruption and informers in a large economic cooperative that has become a tyrannical state, then I would like to know how that compares with what can arise in the threefold social organism due to a flaw in human nature in the individual, certainly here and there, but which will of course soon be corrected. The greatest safeguard against the spread of damage that is inherent in human nature is offered by the very liveliness that takes place in the threefold social organism, because the three limbs of the social organism themselves control each other. A unified organism, especially one that is built on the purely material economic life, carries within itself the dangers that are characterized by this question. And because these dangers can be foreseen, the question has arisen – again out of a practical necessity – how to remove the possibility of these damages arising from a unified economic body. By taking out the legal life, thus creating a correction for what can arise as injustice. How do you remove the damage to the spiritual realm caused by the economic system of production? By the spiritual realm governing itself; it must be based on trust in one's fellow human beings, and the unfit must withdraw from the spiritual life and become manual laborers or the like. All this arises directly from the threefold social organism, because this threefold structure also provides the possibility of correction for damage that occurs in one or the other area.

Another question is asked here:

How do you envision the self-administration of the spiritual realm and which organizations will support it?

Now, dear attendees, to characterize this complicated self-administration of the spiritual realm in detail would take a long, long time. I can only hint that it will be a matter of only those people being involved in the self-administration of the spiritual realm who are also active in this spiritual realm themselves. Thus, for example, in the field of education, nothing but that which the pedagogue, as pedagogue, must properly exert as influence, will enter into the self-administration. The selection of personalities for certain posts will not be based on examinations, decrees and the like, but on the actual pedagogical knowledge of abilities and so on, so that the question of where I stand in the spiritual organism will depend, let us say in the specific field of schooling, on pedagogical considerations alone, that is, on inner considerations. Never will any other body, the economic or state body, be able to organize the schools according to its own needs. The schools will be organized solely on the basis of human needs up to the age of fifteen, and from the age of fifteen on, according to the needs of the social organism, according to the needs of the life of this social organism. But this means that what is administration depends precisely on the same points of view as teaching itself in educational institutions. In the future, the human being must not be placed in one place by a state and then also have to follow the state's decrees; rather, everything that is active in the spiritual life is placed only in an administration that has arisen from the point of view of this spiritual life itself.

The question then arises:

Has the Federation for Threefolding already considered the establishment of a cultural council for the spiritual realm? If not, then the assembly should take the initiative to do so.

Now, esteemed attendees, it is of no use today if we do not speak openly and honestly about the great tasks that present us with the present, Economic life has taken on forms that have led the proletariat to vigorously defend its economic interests. It is well known, through a wide variety of circumstances, that today the proletariat suffers greatly from the fact that it has more or less a theoretical goal but no practice. Nevertheless, what lives in the proletariat is a definite will, which is also the result of a very definite political education that has gone through decades. From this will, something like a works council or a council of intellectual and physical workers can be formed today. This will not be easy, especially since if it does not happen quickly, it could be too late.

But, I would like to say, today it is a struggle with obstacles that are less and less formidable than those of the creation of a cultural council, because the most diverse [obstacles] confront one. For example, there are party leaders today who believe they think socialist, completely socialist, no longer in the sense of the old intellectual culture of the privileged classes, and yet they have adopted nothing but that intellectual culture. Nothing but the ultimate consequence of this intellectual culture lives in their heads. This intellectual culture of the leading and ruling circles can be characterized by the fact that, over the past four centuries, it has increasingly merged with economic life to such an extent that intellectual life is now actually only a consequence of economic life, a kind of superstructure over economic life. From this experience of the last three to four centuries, the proletariat, or rather proletarian theory, has now formed the view that intellectual life may only be something that arises from economic life. The moment you put this into practice, the moment you say that intellectual life may only arise from economic life, you lay the foundation for the complete destruction of intellectual life, for the complete destruction of culture. The bourgeoisie cannot now demand that the proletariat should take a different view and expect everything from economic life, because the bourgeoisie itself has brought everything to the point where ultimately everything of a spiritual nature is somehow dependent on economic life.

The course of development was such that, in the beginning, historical development overcame those damages that arose for man within human society from the aristocratic order. From this aristocratic order, legal damages arose; the bourgeoisie fought for rights against what used to be the aristocratic order. Then, in the course of historical development, the antagonism between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, that is, between the propertied and the propertyless, emerged as a further consequence. The great struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is aimed at no longer allowing labor power to be a commodity. As things stand today, the proletariat is vigorously demanding – and this is not only a proletarian demand, but an historical one – that in the future physical labor should no longer be a commodity. The bourgeoisie demanded liberalism because it no longer wanted the old aristocratic privileges, because it no longer wanted to make the law a thing to be conquered and bought. The proletariat demands the emancipation of labor from the character of a commodity. If we do not want to leave something behind that would plunge all of Central and Eastern Europe into a state of barbarism, we must recognize something else today. If the proletariat were not to demand cooperation with intellectual labor in a spirit of understanding, the proletariat would succeed in divesting physical labor of its commercial character. However, the consequence of this would be that in the future a state would arise in which all intellectual human labor would become a commodity. This state must not be allowed to come about, must not be brought about. The seriousness of the task must be grasped in such a way that at the same time as physical labor, spiritual, truly spiritual labor, also comes into its own. The old aristocracy brought about the lack of rights of the people, the old bourgeoisie brought about the lack of property of the proletariat. If the purely materialistic-economic view of the proletarian question remained, the dehumanization of intellectual life would remain. We are facing this danger if those who have a heart and mind for cultural life do not take the initiative to liberate this intellectual life themselves. And this intellectual life can only be liberated if we break away from the dependence of intellectual life, which I have characterized in so many different ways, and really bring about a reorganization of intellectual life through a serious cultural council. But today we must speak honestly and openly: interest in this area is unfortunately still far too low. The most pressing task at hand is to recognize that this is an urgent issue. A cultural council must be formed.

The attempts we have made, including a meeting yesterday, have not been very promising, because people do not yet realize what is at stake today if we do not manage to put intellectual work on its own feet and not let it be a slave of economic or state life. It is therefore an urgent necessity that in the very near future hearts and minds be stirred precisely for a cultural council. The apolitical nature of our Central European people, which has unfortunately manifested itself in such a dreadful way in the last four to five years, is what should lead to self-knowledge precisely in the spiritual realm. This is what should open people's spiritual eyes and hearts to the fact that our spiritual life has so far been the spiritual life of a small clique, calculated on the basis that it would develop on the soil of broad masses of people who could not participate in this spiritual life, and that today we must create a spiritual life in which every human being can find a dignified existence not only physically but also spiritually and soulfully. Dearly beloved, if one looked into the damage to this spiritual life, especially in the years that have proven to be the decades of preparation for the current world catastrophe, one could truly be seized by cultural concerns.

Then the question was:

What is the best way to educate our children?

In the time when people were so proud of the fact that they did not want to pay homage to any authority, children were still being educated in such a way that the blindest belief in the authority of the established was the most authoritative of all, and the connection between this established order and life could no longer be judged at all. They had neither the heart nor the mind to appreciate that, for example, the habits of thought that a person absorbs in the last years of youth permeate his entire being and constitute his entire being. Do we, as members of the intellectual elite, really absorb anything vital for the present day?

Dear attendees, it is important to talk openly, honestly and urgently about this question today. A large proportion of our leading people today absorb the thought forms of the Greeks and Romans in grammar school; they absorb how the Greeks and Romans thought about life, how the Greeks and Romans organized their lives. Only those who pursued science, art, politics, or the management of agriculture were worthy of being free people. The rest of the people were condemned to be non-free people, helots or slaves. The way people live extends to the very structure of language, which we acquire in our youth, to the very structure of sentences, not only to the very form of words. In secondary schools, the members of the leading and ruling circles take on what was viable for the lives of the Greeks and Romans, and nothing of what is viable for our present lives. Whoever says this today – and it must be said, because only the most radical openness can lead to real salvation – is of course still considered a fool by a large number of people today; but what is still considered foolish today is part of what we need to heal the social organism. We need people who think in terms of the way contemporary life is, not in terms of how Greek and Roman life was. This is where the social question in the spiritual life begins, and it is a very strong one.

Interjection: Very true!

Oh, this spiritual life needs a thorough transformation, and it is very difficult to find an open ear among people in this field today. But until this open ear is found, there will be no salvation. There is no one-sided solution to the social question, only a three-pronged one. It is essential to stand on the ground of a spiritual life that really arises out of life. This requires goodwill, not the unconscious evil will of the pigtails. Therefore, it is urgently necessary that precisely in this area, something arises that can be called a cultural council. I can only say that a cultural council seems to me to be an absolutely essential requirement, because it must develop an activity that saves us from the commercialization of intellectual work in the external life.

This question seems to be related to the other question that was asked:

If we can expect the transformation of economic life in the sense of the separation from the unitary state through the organization of the works council to take place quickly, how then can intellectual life quickly be made independent and its reconstruction tackled?

Precisely by forming a cultural council and exploring the requirements within this cultural council that are necessary for the rebuilding of our intellectual life. That is what I have to say in response to these questions.

Lively applause and hand clapping. Dr. Carl Unger: Dear attendees, a whole series of further questions have been received, which we will probably – and I hope you will agree – postpone answering until a later evening. However, it is extremely important to us to really take to heart the last words of the esteemed speaker. Right now, a challenge is circulating among us that truly bears the mummification of the bankrupt intellectual life: the question of the galvanization and preservation of the humanistic grammar schools in the old sense. We have heard in which direction we have to look when we look at the dire consequences of contemporary life, and we have heard where we have to attack in the intellectual life. And just in these days we have also noticed how the impulse of a new spiritual, a new artistic life has been met with the greatest philiserosicäs. Dear attendees, we must allow strong impulses to arise within us from the words we have just heard, which work to release forces and strong, even revolutionary willpower for the spiritual life in us in the direction of preparing to found or form a genuine cultural council. But this can only be founded on freedom, on the own initiative of individual personalities who, from whatever situation in the spiritual life, are willing and able to contribute to a real new development of spiritual life. The purpose of my present words is to trigger this initiative and to work towards promoting this idea and the threefold social order among those present. We are prepared, first of all, to accept addresses – and indeed as early as this evening – from personalities who are willing to take on the heavy task that our esteemed speaker has set us. I ask to be allowed to approach you with this request, and I would like to ask you in particular to let the impulses for the rebuilding of intellectual life take effect in you in the strongest possible way and also to bring them to bear in other personalities. With that, allow me to close today's meeting.