Social Ideas, Social Reality, Social Practice I
GA 337a — 28 June 1920, Stuttgart
8. Historical Aspects of Foreign Policy
Rudolf Steiner: Dear ladies and gentlemen! It must be emphasized again and again in the present situation – and I mean the very immediate present of today – that it will not be possible to make any progress in the economic, political and spiritual conditions of Central Europe unless the whole way of thinking of those people who take part in public life is changed. Unfortunately, this has not been the case in the broadest circles so far. And that is why they want to forgive me for going a little further today and, so to speak, shedding light on European cultural policy from a few historical points of view, albeit only in the form of aphorisms.
If we want to gain a point of view within the present public conditions, we must first take a close look at the contrast that exists in the state, intellectual and economic relationships between [three areas]: the first area could be called the world of the West, which includes in particular the populations that belong to the Anglo-American element and in whose wake the Romance populations are today. Then, according to the three aspects mentioned, we must sharply distinguish from that Anglo-American area in the West everything that could be called the Central European cultural area. And from this we must distinguish a third area, that is the East, the vast East, which is becoming more and more a unified area – more than one is inclined to assume here according to the very inaccurate news – an area that encompasses European Russia with all that it already dominates and will dominate even more in the future, and also a large part of Asia. It is not always sufficiently clear what considerable differences exist between these three areas and how these differences should also regulate the individual measures of the day according to the three aspects mentioned, if anything in these measures should bear fruit for the future. It is truly deplorable that we are repeatedly forced to witness how, without the awareness that new ideas are necessary for a new structure, even such important negotiations as those in Spa are conducted as if one could really continue to operate today with the same ideas that led to the absurd from 1914 onwards. I will try – as I said, only in aphorisms, and it will look as if it were characterized in a very general way, but the general includes very specific things – I will try to work out the differences between the ways of thinking in the West, the Middle and the East, and it will become clear that fruitful perspectives for the present and the future can be gained from these ideas.
We may assume that my appeal, which appeared in the spring of 1919, was misunderstood in some circles in Germany because it started from the premise that Germany had lost its true purpose since the 1870s, namely to define and gradually consolidate its state borders. One would like to say: This Germany has limited itself to creating a kind of objective framework, but this Germany has not been able to develop supporting ideas, a real substantial content, a cultural content, within this framework. Now, one can be a so-called practical person and denounce the bearers of ideals as idealists; but the world does not get any further with such practical people than to crises, to individual or then to such universal crises, as one such in 1914 has initiated. If you are a practical person in this sense, you can do business, satisfy individual interests, and seemingly also satisfy interests on a large scale; but however well the individual may do and however good his enterprises may seem to the individual, it must repeatedly and inevitably lead to crises under such conditions, and these must finally culminate in a catastrophe such as we have experienced since 1914 as the greatest world catastrophe.
Now, what is it that characterizes the Central European region, especially since the 1970s, more and more? We see that, where it comes to the actual ideological realm, from which a certain cultural content should have emerged, that within Central Europe – including in political and social life – apart from a few laudable measures, basically only a kind of theoretical discussion is being conducted. You will find almost everything that has been spent to cope with the demands of the time, more or less recorded in the negotiations - be it in parliaments or outside of them - that have been practiced between the proletarian party, which has increasingly taken on a social-democratic character, and the various other parties that, based on their interests or traditions, believed they had to fight this proletarian party. Much criticism and anti-criticism has been expressed, much has been said, but what, basically, has come out of all this? What has emerged from this talk as necessary for building a future social order within which people can live? Those of the honored attendees who have heard me speak before will know that I don't like to get involved in theories, but that I want to address the immediate practice of life when it comes to drawing broad lines. And so today, too, I want to back up what I have just hinted at with direct practice.
One of the most interesting contemporary publications is the book “The Economic and Political Problems of the Proletarian Dictatorship” by Professor Varga, in which he describes his own experiences and what he himself has done within a small, but not too small, European economic area. Varga's book is extremely interesting because it is written by a person who describes what he himself has experienced, done and what has happened to him, while he himself had the power – even if it could only last for a short time – to organize a limited area almost in an autocratic manner, to shape it socially. Professor Varga was, after all, the Commissar for Economic Affairs, that is, the Minister for Economic Affairs during the brief glory days of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, and he has described in this recently published book what he and his colleagues tried to do. He was particularly responsible for economic affairs, and he describes how he wanted to straighten out Hungary economically from a Marxist point of view – from a point of view very close to Lenin's – and he describes with a certain sincerity the experiences he had in the process. Above all, he describes in detail how he expropriated the individual businesses according to the special recipe that could be applied in Hungary, how he tried to create a kind of works council from the workforces of the individual businesses , how he then tried to combine these individual businesses into larger economic entities, and how these were then to be headed by a supreme economic council with economic commissars who were to administer economic life from Budapest. He describes in some detail how he did these things. As I said, he is a man who has gained his entire way of thinking – that is, the way of thinking that was to be put into practice immediately, that was able to operate in Europe for a few months – he has gained this way of thinking entirely as a result of everything that has taken place over the last fifty years between the Social Democratic Party and all that this Social Democratic Party has fought from the most diverse points of view. As I said, his views are very close to Leninism; he emphasizes one point in particular. It is clear to a man like Professor Varga, who describes events with a certain bull-like impulsiveness – a bull-like impulsiveness that we are well acquainted with in the party life of Central Europe – . He was firmly convinced that only the strict and rigorous implementation of Marxist principles, as advocated by Lenin with this or that modification, could bring salvation to the social organism. Now, this Professor Varga is a person who, although not very tall, does not think very deeply, but can think nonetheless. He knows – and he describes it – that basically this whole movement is supported by the industrial proletariat. Now, one thing has become clear to him from the particular circumstances, from his experiences in introducing what he wanted to realize in Hungary: although the industrial proletarians are the only people who, like himself, wanted to adhere just as strictly to the demands of Marxism and believed in them, but that the industrial proletariat, like the urban population in general, are the ones who come off worst if one really starts to do something with these principles. His very brief experience showed him that, for the time being, only the rural population actually had a chance of getting better off somehow with these principles. The rural population gets better off because these Marxist principles reduce the whole culture to a certain primitive level. However, this primitive level of culture is not applicable to the structure of urban life, at most to that of rural life in the countryside. And so Professor Varga has to admit to himself, despite being a Marxist – this is about as self-evident to him as the fact that the Pythagorean theorem is correct – he has to admit to himself: we have to prepare ourselves for the industrial proletariat and the urban population to go hungry.
Now comes the conclusion that a man like Professor Varga draws from such premises. He says: Yes, but first of all, the industrial proletariat in the cities will have idealism and will cling to this idealism even when they are starving. Well, it is of course part of the clichés of modern times that when some idea doesn't work out – an idea that one wants to believe is absolutely right – then one disguises this idea as an idealism for which one might also have to starve. The other conclusion that Varga draws is this: Well, initially things will get much, much worse in the cities and for the industrial population; but then, when things have gone bad long enough, things will get better; therefore, the industrial proletarians and the city dwellers must be referred to the future in the first place. So he says: Yes, at first you may have rather gloomy experiences; but in the future things will get better. – And he does not have before him the very tame workers' councils that we find in the West, but the very radical workers' councils that have emerged from the radicalism according to the Leninist form and as they have been introduced in Hungary. Because the people who keep the whole economic apparatus in order are not appointed by any previous governmental system, they are elected from their own ranks. And that is where Professor Varga's experience came in – he was able to experience all of this himself – he said, and this is an interesting confession: Yes, at first it turned out that the people who were selected and who were actually supposed to ensure productivity work, that they occupy themselves with loafing around and arguing, and the others see this, find it more pleasant and would also like to advance to these positions; and so a general endeavor to advance to these positions ensues. This is an interesting confession from a man who not only had the opportunity to develop theories about the reality of Marxism and Leninism, but who also had the opportunity to put things into practice. But something is even more interesting. Varga now shows how such economic commissars – who were to be set up for larger areas, and where, incidentally, a rather bureaucratic approach had to be taken – actually had neither the inclination nor the opportunity to do anything real.
You see, Varga's book about Hungary under the Soviets is extraordinarily interesting from a contemporary cultural-historical point of view, because of the descriptions, which go into great detail and are as interesting in their details as the few things I have mentioned. In the book, however, the most interesting thing was something that was written in about three lines. I would like to say that the most important thing is precisely what Professor Varga says when he talks about the tasks of the economic commissioners and how they were unable to fulfill these tasks. He says: Yes, but these economic commissioners will only gain in importance and significance in the future if the right people are found for their positions. Professor Varga does not seem to realize the powerful confession contained in these three lines, which are among the most interesting in the whole book. We see, quite unnoticed, the confession of a person who, I might say with Leninist strength, has grown out of the ideas of the 20th century and who had the opportunity to turn these ideas into reality; we see the confession [to the contrary] of what has been preached over and over again in almost every Social Democratic meeting: Yes, it is wrong, thoroughly wrong, to believe that history arises from ideas, from the genius of individual personalities; rather, it is true that personalities themselves and all the ideas they can develop arise from economic conditions. It was said again and again by these people how wrong those people were who relied on ideas and personalities, and how one should rely solely on the conditions of production, which, as a superstructure, drive out of themselves the guiding ideas. Now a man comes along and actually introduces [Marxist ideas], and he says: Yes, these ideas are all very well, but they can only be implemented when we have the right personalities for the job. One can hardly imagine that what makes up the essence, the nerve, the innermost impulse of the way of thinking of such a person as Varga, this Central Economic Commissar, this Minister for Economic Affairs in Council-Hungary, could be more ad absurdum. He shows quite clearly that the future-oriented ideas concocted in the Central European regions were bound to fail the moment one set out to build anything positive out of them. One has only to read these descriptions and hear these confessions to see how powerless such a person really is, who has been driven to the surface to take the lead in a country that is, after all, important, and to what conclusions such a person comes in the economic field.
But it is also interesting to see what such a person comes up with in the area of state. You see, here one must already hold Professor Varga's remarks together with the circumstances of the time. Perhaps you remember how, in recent decades, more and more complaints have been raised from a wide variety of sources that all offices are being flooded not with technical or commercial specialists, but with lawyers. Do you remember how much was said about this fact from the workings of the old state? In other matters, too, notably in the nationalization of the railways, the actual specialists were always pushed into the background, while the lawyers were the ones on whom all the emphasis was placed and who held the most important positions. Now, how does Professor Varga talk about the lawyers, to whom he also counts himself, incidentally? How does he talk about other state officials, state leaders, state officials? He talks about them in such a way that he says: No consideration is given to them at all, they are simply abolished, they cease to have any significance; the lawyers of all kinds must join the proletariat, because they are not needed if one wants to socialize economic life. Note how two things collide here: the elitist legal state, which has driven lawyers to the surface, and the socialist state, which declares this entire system of jurisprudence unnecessary. So, in the socialist state, lawyers are simply eliminated, no thought is given to them. They are people who are no longer counted on. They are not taken into account when one wants to create a new social order. And the intellectual life is simply regulated by the economic state on the side. That is, of course, it was not regulated at all in the few months of the Hungarian Soviet Republic. Therefore, Varga has no experience there; he presents only his theories. And so we see how this Professor Varga, who has written a remarkable work in the current literature, I might say in a world-historical sense, we see how this man is not rooted in reality at all. At most, he is rooted in reality with the only trivial sentence, with the only matter of course: If you want an office to be properly run, then you have to put the right person in it. Everything else is nonsense, worthless stuff; but this worthless stuff should have become reality in a field that is not narrowly defined after all. Of course, such a person finds all sorts of excuses for the fact that the Hungarian Soviet Republic came to an end so quickly – due to the Romanian invasion and whatever else. But anyone who looks deeper into these things must say to themselves: simply because Hungary is a smaller area, so because all the disintegrating and subversive forces had a shorter way from the center of Budapest to the periphery of the country, therefore what is still to come in the East, in Russia, where the distance from the center of Moscow to the periphery is greater, has already manifested itself in Hungary, where the path is shorter, and will manifest itself even more so, albeit in things that can cause us great concern.
You see, basically we are dealing with only two types of leading personalities, of truly leading personalities. On the one hand, we have those leaders who, like the present Reich Chancellor - one still says “Reich Chancellor” - play an ancient role in international negotiations, still working with the most hackneyed ideas. On the other hand, we have personalities like Professor Varga, who wants to establish something new - something new, but only new in that his ideas lead more quickly to dismantling. The ideas of the others also lead to a reduction, but because they do not proceed so radically, the reduction is more sloppy and slower; when Professor Varga comes with his ideas, it is more thorough, more radical.
Let's take Western ideas for a moment. As I said, there is a lot that can be described, and I could go on until tomorrow, but I would just like to give a few points of view. You see, you can think as you like about these Westerners, especially about Anglo-American cultural policy, from a moral point of view or from the point of view of human sympathy and antipathy. For all I care, you can even call it an uncultured policy; I don't want to argue about matters of taste. I want to talk about world-historical and political necessities, about that which worked as an impetus in English politics during the same decades in which there was so much theoretical discussion in Central Europe that Varga's ideas were the first to emerge. If you look at this English policy, you will find that it is based, above all, on something that is a trait, a basic trait – it does not need to please anyone, but it is a basic trait – through which ideas work, through which ideas flow.
How can one properly characterize the contrast between this Central Europe and these Western, Anglo-American countries – including, of course, the colonial offspring in America? One would like to say: it is extraordinarily characteristic that in this train, which goes mainly through the trade policy, through the industrial policy of the Western countries, something is always clearly noticeable - I do not say understandable, but clearly noticeable - something that also expresses itself as an idea. In 1884, an English historian, Professor Seeley, described the matter in the book “The Expansion of Great Britain”. I will quote to you in his own words, preferably the few sentences that express it clearly and distinctly, what it is all about. Seeley says in his book “The Expansion of England”: “We founded our empire partly, it must be admitted, imbued with the ambition of conquest, partly out of philanthropic intentions, to put an end to enormous evils.” - He means evils in the colonies. That is, it is quite consciously aimed at an expansionist policy - the whole book, of course, contains this idea - an expansion of Britain's sphere of influence over the world. And this expansion is sought because it is believed that this mission, which involves the use of economic expansion forces, has fallen to the British people - much as a certain mission fell to the Hebrew people in ancient times. A historian says: In those people who trade in England - I mean trade, who are industrialists, who are colonizers, who are state administrators, in all these people lives a closed phalanx of world conquest. That is what this historian Seeley says. And the best people in England, who also know from the secret societies what it is all about, explicitly emphasize: Our empire is an island empire, we have sea all around us, and according to the configuration of this our empire, this mission falls to us. Because we are an island people, we must conquer out of ambition on the one hand and try to eliminate the evils that exist in completely uncultivated countries out of philanthropy – real or imagined – on the other. All this is based on popular instinct, but so based on popular instinct that one is always prepared to do one thing and not do another if it comes to that, in order to somehow approach the great goal of extending the British way of life. What do we know about the British character? I beg you, ladies and gentlemen, to consider very carefully what I have just said. What do we know about it? We know that the English think: We are an island people. It is the character of our empire that it is built on an island. We cannot be anything other than a conquering people. If someone has a taste for saying “a robber people,” they may do so, that is not important today, only facts and political tendency matter, because they bring about change; in the area in which we are talking, judgments of taste matter nothing. So they [in England] know how to pursue a policy, especially in the economic sphere, which starts from a clear recognition of what it means to be a people in the part of the world in which they live. That is a sense of reality, that is a spirit of reality.
What is the situation in Central Europe? What is the point of constantly indulging in illusions here? You will never get ahead there. One can only make progress by facing reality. What is the situation in Central Europe at the same time when more and more crystallized the English will in what I have just spoken, which emanates from a clear understanding of the area in which one works - what is the situation in Central Europe at the same time? Well, in Central Europe, we are not dealing with a similar recognition of the tasks that arise from the territories in which one lives – not at all. Take the area from which the disaster in Europe originated, Austria-Hungary; this Austria-Hungary is, so to speak, created by modern history to provide proof of how a modern state should not be.
You see, this Austro-Hungarian Empire comprised – I cannot go into this further today, I just want to give a very brief and superficial characterization – this Austro-Hungarian Empire comprised, first of all, the Germans living in the Alpine countries and in Lower and Upper Austria, who were divided in their views , and further north the Czechs with strong German enclaves in German Bohemia, further east the Polish population, still further east the Ruthenian population, then the various other ethnic groups in the east of Austria-Hungary, mainly the Magyars, and further south the southern Slavic peoples. My dear attendees, is all of this held together by a reality-based idea in a similar way to the English: we are an island people and must therefore conquer? No! What held these thirteen different, state-recognized [language] areas of Austria-Hungary together? Held together – I may say this because I spent half of my life, almost thirty years, in Austria – they were held together solely by Habsburg domestic policy, by this unfortunate Habsburg domestic policy. One would like to say that everything that was done in Austria-Hungary was actually done from the point of view of: How can this Habsburg domestic policy be maintained? This Habsburg dynastic policy is a product of the Middle Ages. So there is nothing [to hold it together] but the selfish interest of a princely house, nothing like what the English historian Seeley expressed in 1884.
And what have we experienced in the rest of Central Europe, for example in Germany? Yes, I must say: it has always cut me to the quick when I read, for example, something like what Herman Grimm often writes, who clearly and distinctly describes what he felt during his own student years, in the days when it was still a crime to call oneself a German. People no longer know this today; one must not forget that one was a Württemberger, one was a Bavarian, a Prussian, a Thuringian, and so on, but one was not German. And to be German, a great German, that was a revolution in those days, one could only confess that in the most intimate of circles, it was a crime against the selfish interests of the princely houses. Until 1848, says Herman Grimm, among the Germans the greatest crime in the political field was what among the French was the greatest honor: to call oneself a Frenchman; to call oneself a German was [among the Germans the greatest crime]. And I believe that today many people read Fichte's “Address to the German Nation” and do not even understand the opening words correctly, because they relate them to something else. Fichte says: I speak for Germans, purely and simply, of Germans, purely and simply. He means that he speaks without taking into account the differences between Austrians, Saxons, Thuringians, Bavarians, and so on, just as Germans. He means this strictly [in the sense of] internal politics; nothing in this sentence contains anything that goes outside. Being German [in the political sense] was something that was not allowed to be, that was forbidden. It may seem almost laughable, but it was forbidden – a bit like the principle that occurs in an anecdote about Emperor Ferdinand, who was called the Benevolent, Ferdinand the Benevolent, because he had no other useful qualities. It is said that Metternich reported to him: People in Prague are beginning to revolutionize – and Emperor Ferdinand said: Are you even allowed to do that? — It was more or less along these lines of “not allowed” that the issue of being German was treated until 1848. And then, of course, this “being German” gave birth to an ideal that was later undermined by power politics; that ideal [of unity] gave birth to something that people still long for today. The best way to see how it took its fateful course is to look at the example of the aesthetician Vischer, the “V-Vischer,” who lived here in Stuttgart; he was filled until the seventies with the Greater German ideal, which is contained in the words of Fichte: “I speak for Germans, pure and simple, of Germans, pure and simple.” But then he submitted to the conditions which Nietzsche at the beginning of the seventies characterized with the words: They were an extirpation of the German spirit in favor of the German Reich. But one sees how grudgingly a man like Vischer metamorphosed the old ideal into the new one, how terribly difficult it is for him to present the new one as a truth to which he has converted. Vischer's autobiography 'Old and New' is extremely interesting in this respect. And in what I have just explained, it is often the case that when world affairs demanded world politics, nothing developed in Central Europe but the worthless discussion of which I have spoken. What really happened in the 1860s and 1870s was factional politics pitted against factional politics; what should have been born of the German ideal had been replaced. Basically, ladies and gentlemen, the Italians, the French, perhaps even the English would be glad to have a historian like Treitschke was for the Germans. You may call him a blusterer – perhaps he was, and you may not find much taste in the way he presents things – but this German did find some very nice words for the Germans, who are so dear to him. You just had to see past the bluster – you had to do that personally too. When I met him in Weimar for the first time – he was already losing his hearing at the time, so everything had to be written down for him, but he spoke very loudly, distinctly, and with emphasis – he asked me: Where are you from, what nationality are you? – I wrote down that I was Austrian. After a few brief sentences, he said to me: Yes, the Austrians, they are either very ingenious or very foolish. Of course, one had the choice of signing up to one of these categories, because there was no third one. He was a man who spoke decidedly. Treitschke is a good source of information on the struggle for power between the Habsburgs and the Hohenzollerns, which actually determined the fate of the German people, and Treitschke has the words to tell the Hohenzollerns the harshest truths. Now, the strange thing is that when you make policy without knowing your own territorial circumstances, when you make policy in a way that has not been seen in modern times, then unnatural circumstances arise. And when you are in the midst of something so unnatural, you long for it, just as Professor Varga longed for it and still longs for it today: yes, if only you could manage to have the right people in the right places.
But the strange thing is: in the special English circumstances, this developed naturally out of a certain sense of reality. While in Central Europe socialist and anti-socialist theories were being debated, only to be followed by attempts at social reconstruction that could lead nowhere, it was the realistic recognition of their own circumstances that brought men to the fore in the West who, in their positions, really did the right thing for what they wanted to achieve and what Seeley describes. A sense of reality brought the right men to the right place – of course, they were the wrong men for us, but it was not their job to be the right men for us. Take perhaps one of the greatest – there were many others, smaller ones – one of the most typical: Cecil Rhodes. All his activity is actually directed towards practical organization, while in Central Europe people are theorizing. In Central Europe people are theorizing about the state of the future. Cecil Rhodes, who came from a very modest background, worked his way up to become the greatest diamond king. How did he succeed? Because the strange thing is – it seems strange to us – that the Rothschild banking house, still powerful in his day, provided him with the largest world loans; it provided them to a man who had a practical hand, exactly in the direction of doing business, as Seeley describes British world politics from the British ideas that go all the way to the secret societies. For Cecil Rhodes was a man who not only did business, but again and again he went back to England, withdrew into solitude, studied Carlyle and similar people, from whom it became clear to him: Great Britain has a mission, and we put ourselves at the service of this mission. And what results from this? First of all, there is the banking house of Rothschild, [which provides him with loans] – that is, a banking enterprise that is intertwined with the state, but which nevertheless emerged from private circumstances. But then: what is a man like Cecil Rhodes capable of? He is able to regard what might be called the British state entirely as an instrument for the English policy of conquest, and to do so with a great deal of conviction, combined with a belief in Britain's mission. He is able, like many others – only he is one of the greatest – to use the British state as an instrument for this and to reflect what he achieves back onto the ever-increasing British power. All this is possible only because the English population is aware of the special world-historical task of an island people. And nothing could be opposed to this from Central Europe that would have been a match for it. What is happening in the West? An economic policy supported by personalities is growing together with state policy. Why are they growing together? Because English politics has gone completely in the spirit of modern times, and in the spirit of modern times it is only if one is able to understand ideas from the reality in which one lives. Then state politics and economic politics can grow together. But the English state is a state that only exists on paper - it is a conglomeration of private circumstances. It is only a cliché to speak of the British state; one should speak of British economic life and of the old traditions that go into it, of old intellectual traditions and the like. In the sense that France is a state and Germany is striving to become a state, Britain was never a state. But they understood the area in which they lived; they organized their economic life in a way that suited that area. You see, today people think about how England should be something else, how England should not pursue a world policy of conquest, how it should become “well-behaved”. The way many people in our country imagine it today, England could no longer be England; because what it does and has done is based on its very essence as an island kingdom. It can only continue to develop by pursuing the same policy.
What was the situation in Central Europe? There, in Central Europe, there was no development of an understanding of the territories on which one lived; there was no idea of a mission appropriate to one's own reality, this great trait was lacking. While in the British Empire, what is called a state, but is not one, was readily used by the most talented economic politicians as an instrument of English politics, things were different in [Austria-Hungary]; there one could only entertain the illusion that the territory on which one resided could be used for what should be Austro-Hungarian policy. There the things diverged that converged in England. And the study of the Austro-Hungarian situation offers something positively grotesque, because one tried to create an economic territory from a point of view from which it could not be done at all. For Austrian domestic policy would have had to be a kind of [economic domestic policy] from the very beginning. Yes, if the Habsburg domestic policy had been the policy of the Rothschild global house, then an economic domestic policy could have developed; but Austrian domestic policy could not develop into something like the policy on the Orient or the like. That did not work, things went in different directions. The same was true in Germany, although I did not have the opportunity to observe it as clearly as the Austrian situation.
One could also describe the conditions in the East and show how there was no discussion at all. In the West, all discussions had been had; they had actually been over since Cromwell's time, I would say dismissed. Afterwards, the practical developed. In the central area, there were discussions and it was believed that the practical is what arises from a merely abstract-logical necessity. Then in the East they did not even get to [such discussions], but there they simply took what was western, that a tsar, Peter the Great, carried it to the East, or that a Lenin found his way into Western discussions and carried them to the East. It is truly only the mantle that has changed, because basically Lenin is just as much a tsar as the earlier tsars were. I do not know whether he is as successful in actually wearing the mantle as it is said that Mr. Ebert does, for example, according to those who have observed him in Silesia and who claim to have noticed that he has already mastered the correct nodding in imitation of the Wilhelmine manner. I do not know whether this is also the case with Lenin. But no matter how different the mask may be, in reality we still have a tsar before us, only in a different form, who has brought the West into the East. This is the cause of the unnatural clash between the expectant mood of the entire East and the misunderstood ideas from the West. It is indeed strange that things are so for Russia, that 600,000 people control the millions of others very tightly and that these 600,000 are in turn controlled only by a few people's commissars. But this can only be the case because the person who longs for a reorganization of the world as much as the man of the East does, does not really notice how his longing is being satisfied. If someone else had come to Moscow with completely different ideas, he would have been able to exert the same power. Few people today pay attention to this, because most of them are completely immersed in unreality.
What emerges from all that I have just attempted to state in aphoristic form? It follows that in the West it will take a long time for the idea of threefolding to become popular, because of the way in which so-called state interests have grown together with economic interests. And it also follows that the European center is the area where this idea should definitely take root first, because people should realize that the old conditions have driven everything apart here. Basically, everything is already divided; we are only trying to hold it together with the old clamps that no longer apply. The threefold social order is basically already there below the surface; it is only a matter of becoming aware of it and shaping reality in the same way as what is already present below the surface. For this, however, it is necessary to finally realize that nothing can be done with the old personalities and that those who are clear about the fact that what these old personalities have been thinking since 1914 has been reduced to absurdity and that something new must take its place. That is what I tried to make clear during the disastrous World War to those who might have had the opportunity to work for the cause. And herein lie the reasons why, since the world catastrophe of world revolution temporarily ran its course, we have been trying to carry the idea of threefolding into as many minds as possible; for what we need is as many people as possible with the ideas of threefolding. During the world war, people did not understand that the fourteen abstract points of Woodrow Wilson should have been countered with the concrete threefold social order from an authoritative source. The practical people found them impractical because they have no real idea of the connection between idea and practice. Certainly, Woodrow Wilson's fourteen points are as impractical as possible. And it is perhaps the greatest tragedy that could have happened to the German people that even the man whom they counted on in the last days of the catastrophic period, who could still become Chancellor of the Reich from the old regime, was incapable of taking Wilson's Fourteen Points seriously. For the time being, these Fourteen Points have been rendered impossible by the abstract form of the League of Nations; they have shown their impracticality in practice at Versailles and Spa. But despite their abstract form, they have achieved something: they have set armies and ships in motion. And that is also what the points that come into the world through the threefold order should do; if not armies and ships, then they should at least set people in motion, so that a viable social organism could arise again. This can only happen through the threefold order — this has been discussed here from a wide variety of perspectives.
Today I wanted to discuss it from a few points of view of recent history. This recent history must, of course, be viewed from different perspectives than it is usually viewed when only the scholastic aspect of it prevails. Threefolding will lead us out of this scholasticism by freeing spiritual life. And from the liberated spiritual life, those personalities can then be placed in the places of which even a Professor Varga must say today: if we had them, then perhaps history would have turned out well. But one thing is certain: the paths of Professor Varga do not lead to those personalities who will stand in their rightful place.
After Rudolf Steiner's introduction, various personalities express their views and ask questions.
Max Benzinger: If we really want to implement threefolding, then we absolutely must go public with this idea. It is not enough simply to call for interested people to be brought along to study evenings. Siegfried Dorfner: In the “Key Points” it says that the means of production should only cost something until they are produced. If a factory produces means of production, for example lathes, should the lathe only cost something until it is produced? But then the manufacturing factory would have no cover for it. Should the finished means of production not be paid for?
Rudolf Steiner: If you produce lathes and want to sell them as lathes, they are not yet means of production. They are still commodities and not means of production; they only become means of production when they are used in the social community for production. It is important to see the concept of the means of production in the real social process. Lathes are only means of production when they are used only as means of production; until then they are sold as commodities, and the person who buys them is a consumer.
Another participant in the discussion: We have been talking about commodities. Must we not distinguish between agricultural commodities and industrial commodities? Agricultural commodities usually produce a surplus, while industrial commodities operate at a deficit.
Rudolf Steiner: This matter will, of course, often be misunderstood today because we do not live in such circumstances that a kind of overall balance sheet would result if we were to simply include everything that is produced in this balance sheet of a closed economic area - such a balance sheet cannot be drawn up. You cannot somehow insert our current agriculture into a total balance sheet if you have so and so many [mortgage] encumbrances on the goods, and then compare that with industry. If I say that industry is fundamentally dependent on living from everything that the land produces, then we have to disregard everything that has been mixed into it in our country, which means that only a disguised total balance can be achieved. If that which cannot be a commodity ceases to be a commodity, namely land and human labor, and only that becomes a commodity which, in the sense of the threefold order, can circulate between producers and consumers, then it will be possible to draw up a balance sheet showing that the expenditures necessary for industry must always be covered by the surpluses of agriculture. It is self-evident that this is not the case at present. But we are living in times when a truly production-based total balance of a closed economic area should emerge. What I have presented has long been recognized on the economic side. You will even find Walter Rathenau emphasizing that every industry is a devouring beast, that is, that profits must constantly flow back into industry and that it must be constantly fed. But that has to come from somewhere, and it can only come from the profits of land. But in our current balance sheets, this is not expressed at all.
Mr. Roser: It is a sign of our time that a man like Varga had to realize that there was a lack of the right men. What is needed is the education of the masses. But even here in the threefolding movement, there is a lack of the right men. Such men are absolutely necessary because threefolding must be propagated on a large scale. Emil Molt: Something really must be done. Everyone should realize that, if only for their own sake. Another participant in the discussion: I would like to ask Dr. Steiner another question. There was an article in the Frankfurter Zeitung recently that posed the obvious question: How can spiritual life be freed at all, since it has to be financed by economic life? How does Dr. Steiner answer this question, which was not sufficiently answered at the event referred to in the article?
Rudolf Steiner: We have indeed dealt with this question very often here, as it will be with the economic support of spiritual life. And the note in the newspaper must simply be incorrect if it refers to our discussions in the threefold social order movement as a whole.
Interjection
It may well have happened that someone was unable to provide information; but how often have I myself said that the threefold order is not really about a threefold division of people, but about a division [of the social organism] into three life organizations that must necessarily develop alongside each other: spiritual, state and economic life. People will, of course, be involved in all three. And so it is quite natural that what the personalities who are part of the organization of spiritual life have to administer as the spiritual part of the spiritual life, this only forms the one link. But these personalities, who carry the spiritual life, must also live. Therefore, they will also be part of economic organizations. And there will be no difference whether such an organization consists, let us say, of teachers or musicians or of shoemakers or tailors. For the economic organization is not there to look after just one or the other area of economic life, but to support all people economically. And because they are part of the economic sphere of the social organism, they are economically supported.
One can be surprised at how things are misunderstood there. A nice scheme also appeared before our, if I may say so, three-part eyes, which was worked out by a radical social-democratic party in Halle. It is beautifully academic, isn't it, how to make schemes. There are (it is drawn) so beautifully at the top the central places of economic life - at the very top, of course, is only one. Then it is organized further down. If it worked that way, the future socialist state would be something that would correspond to the highest ideal of the bureaucracy. But at the very end, there were three smaller departments dedicated to intellectual life. And some gentlemen were so charmed by these three departments that they said, “The whole idea of threefold social order is contained in this.” 
Now, this was based, above all, on the false idea that the social organism would ever be divided in this way. It should not be divided in this way, just as the human organism is not divided into three parts lying next to each other. And yet there are three parts to the human organism: We are, first of all, a head person, a chest person and a metabolic person. But it is not only the head that is a head person; the head extends to the whole human organism. The whole nervous system belongs to the head person. And the heart person is not only found in the heart; the sense of warmth, for example, extends throughout the whole body, so the whole body is also a heart person. And we have rhythm everywhere, even in the head system. The systems permeate each other. I can only explain this in the abstract, but the corporations of spiritual life will simply also be there as economic corporations. Only these spiritual corporations will have their organizations in the economic part of the entire social organism, and what they do there will not be able to interfere with the organization of the spiritual part of the threefold social organism.
Today, however, there are many reasons for having misleading views on these matters; such views have been found time and again, even among university lecturers. These university teachers should at least be part of intellectual life. But when you say to them that it should be self-evident that those who are part of intellectual life form a community with their peers in order to administer intellectual life themselves – Klopstock already spoke of a republic of scholars – you often hear a university teacher says: No, [I don't want that], because then the one who matters would not be a consultant in the Ministry of Culture, but my colleague; no, I prefer the consultant in the Ministry of Culture to be my colleague.
So the point is that we do not think in terms of anything other than the three estates, the teaching, military and nutritional estates, that we do not think in terms of anything at all [in today's social conditions], but that we are clear that people today do not live in three separate groups [in estates]. [We must be clear] that the human being is completely immersed in all three parts of the social organism. Then it will also be possible to understand how everyone who has to be active in the spiritual life or in the life of the state is nevertheless part of the economic life and must be provided for by the economic life. So it is important that people are part of the whole social organism.