IV. The Key Points of the Social Question in the Necessities of Life In the Present and the Future

Do you see how different everything would have become, where we would stand today, if personalities had emerged within the leading strata of humanity who had absorbed the proletarian demands, imbued them with social experience, with social knowledge, with such social experience, such social knowledge that could have been put into practice – and if from there the starting point could have been won for a transformation of social life, perhaps decades ago! For a healthy self-reflection, one must not spare oneself the task of recognizing what has been terribly neglected in this direction. This has been neglected because, in a sense, it was bound to be neglected, because the intellectual life of modern humanity was such that it simply did not suffice to provide such an understanding. And here we are faced with the first key point of the social question in the necessities of life in the present and the future.