4. Realistic Attempts to Solve the Social Questions on the Basis of a Spiritual-Scientific View of Life

GA 336/1919-02-14/p044 ·1919-02-14 · English HighHigh alignmentThis translation's paragraph count matches the German original — the locus maps cleanly to the same paragraph in DE.
Record: mixed sources. This volume draws on more than one kind of record (transcripts, notes, documents). Check the volume's own front matter before weighing a single passage. Evidence: «aufgezeigt anhand von bislang unveröffentlichten Vorträgen, Notizen und Dokumenten» (shown by means of previously unpublished lectures, notes and documents). Rudolf Steiner Verlag Gesamtverzeichnis 2022, volume subtitle. The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.

That is the great error of a certain radical socialism, that one believes that economic life could make people contented and happy if it followed its own laws. No, if it follows its own laws, then it will always end up in crisis-like conditions, which must be helped, and another system must intervene, just as the respiratory-pulmonary system must always intervene in the metabolic or head system to regulate it. Therefore, it is necessary to face reality: the laws of the constitutional state cannot run in the direction of economic laws. But because economic life requires constant correction, because otherwise it would consume people, it is precisely necessary that the laws of the constitutional state constantly limit, regulate, and correct mere economic life, just as metabolism is corrected by breathing. That is what matters.

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Cite: GA 336/1919-02-14/p044 · edition English