114. A Company to be Founded

It is necessary to found a bank-like institution that serves economic and spiritual endeavors in its financial activities, which are oriented towards the anthroposophically oriented worldview both in terms of their goals and their attitude. It should be distinguished from ordinary banking enterprises in that it not only serves the financial aspects, but also the real operations that are supported by the financial side. It will therefore be particularly important that loans, etc. are not granted in the way they are in ordinary banking, but rather from the factual point of view of the operation to be undertaken. The banker should therefore be less of a lender and more of a merchant who is in the know, who can realistically assess the scope of a transaction to be financed and make practical arrangements for its execution.

The main focus will be on financing such ventures that are likely to put economic life on a healthy associative footing and shape intellectual life in such a way that legitimate talents are placed in a position where they can express themselves in a socially fruitful way. What is particularly important is that, for example, enterprises that currently yield a good return are centered in order to support other enterprises with their help, which can only bear economic fruit in the future and above all through the spiritual seed that is now poured into them, which can only come to fruition after some time. It is necessary for the bank's officers to have an insight into how the view of life that comes with anthroposophy can be translated into economically fruitful action. To do this, it is necessary to establish a strict associative relationship between the bank's administrators and those who, through their ideal work, can foster an understanding of an enterprise to be brought into being.

An example: a person has an idea that promises economic fertility. The representatives of the ideology can evoke understanding for the social consequences. Their activity is financially supported by the amounts to be received, which at the same time are intended to support the economic and technical realization of the idea.

The main focus must be on supporting the centers of the anthroposophically oriented spiritual movement itself. The building in Dornach, for example, cannot support anything at first; nevertheless, it will bring a mighty economic return in later times. It must be made clear that anyone can support it materially, even if it means compromising their financial conscience, if they can see it as being materially fruitful in the long term.

The undertaking must be based on the realization that technical, financial, etc. activity can develop branches which, although they may temporarily produce favorable results for the individual entrepreneur, have a destructive effect in the context of the social order. Many of the latest undertakings were oriented in this way. They were capitalized, and it was precisely through their capitalization that the social order was undermined. Such endeavors must be confronted by those that arise from healthy thinking and feeling. They can be integrated into the social order in a truly fruitful way. However, they can only be supported by a social mindset inspired by anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.

It is true that an undertaking such as the one characterized here can initially only overcome the social-technical and financial possibilities of crisis and that it will face social difficulties as long as these, as the actual workers' question, still take the form that comes from the old mode of production, which is doomed to crisis. The workers involved in the new ventures will, for example, behave in the same way in wage differences as they do in relation to old-style ventures. However, one must not underestimate how quickly a company of the kind characterized here can have socially beneficial consequences if it is managed correctly. This will be seen. And the example will be convincing. If a project of this kind comes to a halt, then the workers involved will have their convictions with them when they get back on track. Only by aligning the interests of manual workers with the spiritual leaders of enterprises, through a way of thinking that affects all classes of people, can the forces of social destruction be counteracted.

The basic condition is that spiritual endeavors be intimately connected with all material ones. We cannot achieve such an orientation with the forces currently available in the anthroposophical movement because we do not have a practical enterprise in its bosom that has grown out of its own forces, except for the Berlin Anthroposophical Publishing House. But this alone is not enough to serve as a model, because its economic orientation is only the external expression of the power of spiritual science as such. Only those enterprises that do not have spiritual science as such as their content, but that have a content based on the spiritual-scientific way of thinking, can truly serve as models. A school as such can only be considered exemplary in this respect when it is financially supported by only those enterprises whose entire institution has emerged from spiritual-scientific circles. And the Dornach building will only be able to prove its social significance when the personalities associated with it have brought into being such enterprises that are self-supporting, provide the people who support them with the appropriate maintenance and then still leave so much that the deficit always demanded by a spiritual enterprise can be covered. This deficit is not really one at all. For it is precisely the fact that it arises that brings about the fructification of material enterprises.

You just have to take things really practically. That is not what the one who asks does: How, then, should one do a financial or economic enterprise in the sense of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science? That is simply nonsense. Because you don't do anything practical with mere thoughts. It is essential that the powers organized in the anthroposophically oriented spiritual movement itself undertake the enterprises, i.e., that bankers, factory owners, etc., join forces with this movement, that the Dornach building become the real center of a new entrepreneurial spirit. Therefore, no “social”, “technical” etc. “programs” are to be set up in Dornach either, but the building is to create the center of a way of working that is to become the way of working in the future.

Those who decide to give financial support to the Dornach enterprises must understand that we have now reached the point where supporting enterprises in the old sense means investing in the sterile, and that supporting one's money today means supporting future-oriented enterprises that alone are capable of withstanding the devastating forces. Short-sighted people who still believe that such things have never borne financial fruit will certainly not support the efforts in Dornach. Those who do support them must be far-sighted people who are truly capable of financial and economic judgment and who realize that continuing to muddle along in the old ways means digging a secure grave for themselves. These people alone will not follow in the footsteps of the destroyed livelihoods of the last four to five years. Working with companies in the same old way means nothing more than using up financial and economic reserves. Because even the reserves of raw material and agricultural production, which last the longest, are being used up. Their financial and economic fructification does not lie in the fact that they are there, but that the labor is possible through which they are supplied to the social organism. But this labor belongs entirely to the reserves. Everything for the future depends on a new spirit also getting the leading position for the individual enterprise.