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

I am well aware that what I have to say in the first third of my remarks today will be somewhat uncomfortable, perhaps even incomprehensible, even boring, for some people. But anyone who does not recognize the seriousness of the first link in the social question, the spiritual social question, will not be able to contribute anything to the emergence from the chaos and confusion of the present. We must unreservedly admit that the intellectual life that has been brought up by the upper classes of human society, that this intellectual life, as it was formed, was not up to the facts. Even today, the legacy of this intellectual life is still far from being equal to the facts. Let us take a look at what has actually happened. It has often been emphasized, and rightly so, that the newer proletarian movement has emerged in the course of human development through newer technology and through the capitalist economic order. Of course, nothing should be said against this emphasis on true facts. But as true and correct as these facts are, there is another fact that people would rather deny. It is just as true, just as correct, and, above all, it is actually more important than anything else for what has to happen today: Perhaps three or four hundred years ago, with the advent of modern technology and soul-destroying capitalism, the process of what could be called the modern, more scientifically oriented worldview began.