110. On Prof. v. Heck's Criticism of the Threefold Social Order

One does not do justice to the essence of the threefold social order if, as Prof. v. Heck does, one characterizes the facts to be created with the words: “If you look more closely, Steiner also leaves three economically very important questions to the right-wing parliament. He leaves tax issues, the creation of workers' rights and the restriction of ownership of the means of production, which should only last for a lifetime, to it.” With regard to tax issues, we shall have to adhere to the practical formulation of what is indicated in my “Key Points of the Social Question” $53 with the words: “What the 'political state itself demands for its maintenance will be raised through the tax law. This will develop through a harmonization of the demands of legal consciousness with those of economic life”. In practice, the fulfillment of this requirement will be such that the constitutional state will face the economic organization as a consumer corporation, just as a consumer corporation faces a production cooperative within the economic cycle itself. Only the assertion of the tax rate and the use of the tax will be subject to legal regulation. On the other hand, the associations that arise from the professions and from the interaction between production and consumption will be responsible for collecting taxes from the individual economic sectors. Prof. v. Heck appropriately emphasizes: “The most difficult task that the future threatens us with is the distribution of the enormous, unprecedented tax burden that peace will impose on us.... These taxes cannot be raised without the most serious interference in economic life. Therefore, even if Steiner's ideas were implemented, each economic group would have to ensure representation in the legislative in order to defend itself against excessive burdens. This “most difficult task”, however, can be solved precisely by separating legal and economic life in such a way that people's sense of justice does not revolt against the solution. For if the interests of an economic group are represented in a parliament based on democracy, it will always turn out that the economically powerful groups impose measures on the less powerful that contradict their sense of justice. Within the formation of a parliamentary majority, such an effect of the democratic principle is unavoidable. The situation is different when the distribution of the burdens to be borne by economic life among the individual economic sectors is effected by the appropriate negotiations of the characterized associations. In this case, all non-objective, merely democratic parliamentarization must be eliminated and the distribution must result as a consequence of the interdependence of the economic sectors. The latter aspect is completely absent from Professor von Heck's train of thought. Otherwise he would not have been able to write at another point: “How are scientists and doctors to have special expertise in ecclesiastical matters, and farmers, merchants and artisans in large-scale industry?” The threefold order is supposed to ensure that this necessarily limited expertise does not have socially harmful effects. The interested parties endowed with a common expertise come together in the associations. In the discussions within the associations, individual interests assert themselves in an objective way, not in a subjective way as in a democratic parliament. And from the objectively emerging necessities, people will have to limit their interests not according to their subjective demands, but according to the appropriate judgment of those who are qualified to judge in the relevant field. Only the regulation of all those human relationships for which every mature person is capable of judgment then remains for the “right-wing parliament”.

Regarding “workers' rights,” Prof. v. Heck says that I leave it to the legislative body as an economic matter. He overlooks the fact that through threefolding the employment relationship should precisely cease to be an economic matter. Work, like geographical, climatic and other conditions of economic life, should be a prerequisite for economic life, not a link in the economic cycle itself. To me, integrating labor into the social organism in this way appears to be a requirement of present-day human consciousness. And one should not oppose the fulfillment of this demand because in the previous social organism the employment relationship was more or less based on purely economic foundations.

Prof. v. Hecks's rendering of the “restriction of ownership” of the means of production is also quite inaccurate. In my “Key Points of the Social Question”, the origin and administration of the means of production are once again linked to the intellectual achievement of man, from which they always originate, and from which the development of economic forms in modern times has separated them.

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powerful measures. It will be able to do so through its own power or by making compromises. The formation of parliamentary majorities always makes it possible to assert and suppress interests in an unobjective manner. The situation is different when the administration of economic life is separated from that of legal life. Then no resolutions can be passed on the legal ground that have effects in economic life that disadvantage any group of people. For everything that happens in economic life must be based on the negotiations of the designated associations. In these negotiations, the expertise of one organization can be confronted with that of another; and the unobjective, merely democratic parliamentarization can be eliminated. Someone might say that what is being sought here could also be achieved if the main negotiations in the “judicial parliament” were transferred to the committees and if experts from the individual economic fields were consulted. It seems to me that this would only be a half-measure. Whatever good it can do should show how the desired goal can be achieved only by separating economic administration from the legal organization. Prof. von Heck always has the “three parliaments” in mind. Therefore, he does not fully appreciate the advantages that an administration emerging from the economic interest groups can have over a “parliamentary representation” of these interests. Such an administration would emerge in its lower instances from the needs of the individual branches of industry and consumer groups. It would develop in an appropriate and organic manner from the lower instances and ultimately culminate in a central administrative body.