PREFACE TO THE FOURTH GERMAN EDITION 1920
The challenges which contemporary society presents will be
misunderstood by those who approach them with utopian ideas. It is of
course possible to believe that any one of diverse theories, arrived
at through personal observation and conviction, will result in making
men happy. Such a belief can acquire overwhelming persuasive power.
Nevertheless, as far as the social question of the times is concerned,
it becomes irrelevant as soon as the attempt is made to assert it.
The following example, although seeming to carry this proposition to
an extreme, is nevertheless valid. Let us assume that someone is in
possession of a perfect, theoretical solution to the
social question. In spite of this, in attempting to offer it to the
public he becomes the victim of an unpractical belief. We no longer
live in an age in which public life can be influenced in this way.
People's minds are simply not disposed to accept the ideas of another
as far as this subject is concerned. They will not say: here is
someone who knows how society should be structured, so we will act
according to his opinions.
People are not interested in social ideas which are presented to them
in this way. This book, which has already reached a fairly large
audience, takes this phenomenon into consideration. Those who accuse
it of having a utopian character have completely misunderstood my
intentions. It is interesting to note that such criticism has come
principally from people who themselves indulge almost exclusively in
utopian thinking and are inclined to attribute their own mental habits
to others.
Truly practical people know from experience that even the most
convincing utopian ideas lead absolutely nowhere. In spite of this,
many of them seem to feel obliged to propound just such ideas,
especially in the field of economics. They should realize that they
are wasting their breath, that their fellow men will not be able to
apply such propositions.
The above should be treated as a fact of life inasmuch as it indicates
an important characteristic of contemporary public life, namely, that
our present notions concerning economics, for example, have little
relation to reality. How can we then hope to cope with the chaotic
condition of society if we approach it with a thought process which
has no relation to reality?
This question can hardly meet with favour as it requires the admission
that our thinking is indeed remote from reality. Nevertheless, without
such an admission we will not get to the bottom of the social
question. Only when we understand that this divorce of thought from
reality is a condition of the utmost seriousness for contemporary
civilization, can we become clear in our own minds as to what society
really needs.
The whole question revolves around the shape of contemporary spiritual
life. Modern man has developed a spiritual life which is to a very
large extent dependent upon political institutions and economic
forces. While still a child he is given over to a state educational
system, and his upbringing must correspond to the economic
circumstances of his environment.
It is easy to believe that this situation results in the individual
becoming well adjusted to contemporary life, that the state is best
qualified to organize the educational system and therewith the
foundation of public cultural affairs for the benefit of the
community. It is also easy to believe that the individual who is
educated according to the economic conditions of his environment and
who is then placed according to these conditions becomes the best
possible member of human society.
This book must assume the unpopular task of showing that the chaotic
condition of our public life derives from the dependence of spiritual
life on the political state and economic interests. It must also show
that the liberation of spiritual life and culture from this dependence
constitutes an important element of the burning social question.
This involves attacking certain wide-spread errors. For example, the
political state's assumption of responsibility for education has long
been considered to be beneficial for human progress. For people with
socialistic ideas it is inconceivable that society should do anything
but shape the individual according to its standards and for its
service.
It is not easy to accept a very important fact of historical
development, namely, that what was proper during an earlier period can
be erroneous for a later period. For a new era in human relations to
emerge, it was necessary that the circles which controlled education
and culture be relieved of this function and that it be transferred to
the political state. However, to persist in this arrangement is a
grave social error.
The first part of this book attempts to indicate this. Human culture
has matured toward freedom within the framework of the state, but it
cannot exercise this freedom without complete autonomy of action. The
nature which spiritual life has assumed requires that it constitute a
fully autonomous member of the social organism. The administration of
education, from which all culture develops, must be turned over to the
educators. Economic and political considerations should be entirely
excluded from this administration. Each teacher should arrange his or
her time so that he can also be an administrator in his field. He
should be just as much at home attending to administrative matters as
he is in the classroom. No one should make decisions who is not
directly engaged in the educational process. No parliament or
congress, nor any individual who was perhaps once an educator, is to
have anything to say. What is experienced in the teaching process
would then flow naturally into the administration. By its very nature
such a system would engender competence and objectivity.
Of course one could object that such a self-governing spiritual life
would also not attain to perfection. But we cannot expect perfection;
we can only strive toward the best possible situation. The
capabilities which the child develops can best be transmitted to the
community if his education is the exclusive responsibility of those
whose judgement rests on a spiritual foundation. To what extent a
child should be taught one thing or another can only be correctly
determined within a free cultural community. How such determinations
are to be made binding is also a matter for this community. The state
and the economy would be able to absorb vigour from such a community,
which is not attainable when the organization of cultural institutions
is based on political and economic standards.
Even the schools which directly serve the state and the economy should
be administered by the educators: law schools, trade-schools,
agriculture and industrial colleges, all should be administered by the
representatives of a free spiritual life. This book will necessarily
arouse many prejudices, especially if the consequences of its thesis
are considered. What is the source of these prejudices? We recognize
their antisocial nature when we perceive that they originate in the
unconscious belief that teachers are impractical people who cannot be
trusted to assume practical responsibilities on their own. It is
assumed that all organization must be carried out by those who are
engaged in practical matters, and educators should act according to
the terms of reference determined for them.
This assumption ignores the fact that it is just when teachers are not
permitted to determine their own functions that they tend to become
impractical and remote from reality. As long as the so-called experts
determine the terms of reference according to which they must
function, they will never be in a position to turn out practical
individuals who are equipped for life by their education. The current
anti-social state of affairs is the result of individuals entering
society who lack social sensitivity because of their education.
Socially sensitive individuals can only develop within an educational
system which is conducted and administered by other socially sensitive
individuals. No progress will be made towards solving the social
question if we do not treat the question of education and spirit as an
essential part of it. An anti-social situation is not merely the
result of economic structures, it is also caused by the anti-social
behaviour of the individuals who are active in these structures. It is
anti-social to allow youth to be educated by people who themselves
have become strangers to reality because the conduct and content of
their work has been dictated to them from without.
The state establishes law-schools and requires that the law they teach
be in accordance with the state's own view of jurisprudence. If these
schools were established as free cultural institutions, they would
derive the substance of their jurisprudence from this very culture.
The state would then become the recipient of what this free spiritual
life has to offer. It would be enriched by the living ideas which can
only arise within such a spiritual environment. Within a spiritual
life of this nature society would encounter the men and women who
could grow into it on their own terms. Worldliness does not originate
in educational institutions organized by so-called
experts, in which impractical people teach, but only in
educators who understand life and the world according to their own
viewpoints. Particulars of how a free culture should organize itself
are outlined in this book.
The utopian-minded will approach the book with all kinds of doubts.
Anxious artists and other spiritual workers will question whether
talent would be better off in a free culture than in one which is
provided for by the state and economic interests, as is the case
today. Such doubters should bear in mind that this book is not meant
to be the least bit utopian. No hard and fast theories are found in it
which say that things must be this way or that. On the contrary, its
intention is to stimulate the formation of communities which, as a
result of their common experience, will be able to bring about what is
socially desirable. If we consider life from experience instead of
theoretical preconceptions, we will agree that creative individuals
would have better prospects of seeing their work fairly judged if a
free cultural community existed which could act according to its own
values.
The social question is not something which has suddenly
appeared at this stage of human evolution and which can be resolved by
a few individuals or by some parliamentary body, and stay resolved. It
is an integral part of modern civilization which has come to stay, and
as such will have to be resolved anew for each moment in the world's
historical development. Humanity has now entered into a phase in which
social institutions constantly produce anti-social tendencies. These
tendencies must be overcome each time. Just as a satiated organism
experiences hunger again after a period of time, so the social
organism passes from order to disorder. A food which permanently
stills hunger does not exist; neither does a universal social panacea.
Nevertheless, men can enter into communities in which they would be
able to continuously direct their activities in a social direction.
One such community is the self-governing spiritual branch of the
social organism.
Observation of the contemporary world indicates that the spiritual
life requires free self-administration, while the economy requires
associative work. The modern economic process consists of the
production, circulation and consumption of commodities. Human needs
are satisfied by means of this process and human beings are directly
involved in it, each having his own part-interest, each participating
to the extent he is able. What each individual really needs can only
be known by himself, what he should contribute he can determine
through his insight into the situation as a whole. It was not always
so, and it is not yet the case the world over; but it is essentially
true as far as the civilized inhabitants of the earth are concerned.
Economic activity has expanded in the course of human evolution. Town
economies developed from closed household economies and in turn grew
into national economies. Today we stand before a global economy.
Undoubtedly the new contains much of the old, just as the old showed
indications of what was to come. Nevertheless, human destiny is
conditioned by the fact that this process, in most fields of economic
endeavour, has already been accomplished. Any attempt to organize
economic forces into an abstract world community is erroneous. In the
course of evolution private economic enterprise has, to a large
extent, become state economic enterprise. But the political states are
not merely the products of economic forces, and the attempt to
transform them into economic communities is the cause of the social
chaos of modern times. Economic life is striving to structure itself
according to its own nature, independent of political
institutionalization and mentality. It can only do this if
associations, comprised of consumers, distributors and producers, are
established according to purely economic criteria. Actual conditions
would determine the scope of these associations. If they are too small
they would be too costly; if they are too large they would become
economically unmanageable. Practical necessity would indicate how
inter-associational relations should develop. There is no need to fear
that individual mobility would be inhibited due to the existence of
associations. He who requires mobility would experience flexibility in
passing from one association to another, as long as economic interest
and not political organization determines the move. It is possible to
foresee processes within such associations which are comparable to
currency in circulation.
Professionalism and objectivity could cause a general harmony of
interests to prevail in the associations. Not laws, but men using
their immediate insights and interests, would regulate the production,
circulation and consumption of goods. They would acquire the necessary
insights through their participation in the associations; goods could
circulate at their appropriate values due to the fact that the various
interests represented would be compensated by means of contracts. This
type of economic cooperation is quite different from that practised by
the labour-unions which, although operational in the economic field,
are established according to political instead of economic principles.
Basically parliamentary bodies, they do not function according to
economic principles of reciprocal output. In these associations there
would be no wage earners using their collective strength
to demand the highest possible wages from management, but artisans
who, together with management and consumer representatives, determine
reciprocal outputs by means of price regulation something which
cannot be accomplished by sessions of parliamentary bodies. This is
important! For who would do the work if countless man-hours were spent
in negotiations about it? But with person to person, association- to
association agreements, work would go on as usual. Of course it is
necessary that all agreements reflect the workers' insights and the
consumers' interests. This is not the description of a utopia. I am
not saying how things should be arranged, but indicating how people
will arrange things for themselves once they activate the type of
associative communities which correspond to their own insights and
interests.
Human nature would see to it that men and women unite in such economic
communities, were they not prevented from doing so by state
intervention, for nature determines needs. A free spiritual life would
also contribute, for it begets social insights. Anyone who is in a
position to consider all this from experience will have to admit that
these economic associations could come into being at any moment, and
that there is nothing utopian about them. All that stands in their way
is modern man's obsession with the external organization of economic
life. Free association is the exact opposite of this external
organizing for the purpose of production. When men associate, the
planning of the whole originates in the reasoning of the individual.
What is the point of those who own no property associating with those
who do! It may seem preferable to justly regulate
production and consumption externally. Such external planning
sacrifices the free, creative initiative of the individual, thereby
depriving the economy of what such initiative alone can give it. If,
in spite of all prejudice, an attempt were made today to establish
such associations, the reciprocal output between owners and non-owners
would necessarily occur. The instincts which govern the consideration
of such things nowadays do not originate in economic experience, but
in sentiments which have developed from class and other interests.
They were able to develop because purely economic thought has not kept
pace with the complexities of modern economics. An unfree spiritual
life has prevented this. The individuals who labour in industry are
caught in a routine, and the formative economic forces are invisible
to them. They labour without having an insight into the wholeness of
human life. In the associations each individual would learn what he
should know through contact with another. Through the participants'
insight and experience in relation to their respective activities and
their resulting ability to exercise collective judgement, knowledge of
what is economically possible would arise. In a free spiritual life
the only active forces are those inherent in it; in the same sense,
the only economic values active in an associatively structured
economic system would be those which evolve through the associations
themselves. The individual's role would emerge from cooperation with
his associates. He could thereby exert just as much economic influence
as corresponds to his output. How the non-productive elements would be
integrated into economic life will be explained in the course of the
book. Only an economic system which is self-structured can protect the
weak against the strong.
We have seen that the social organism can arrange itself into two
autonomous members able to support each other only because each is
self-governing according to its inherent nature. Between them a third
element must function: the political state. Here is where each
individual who is of age can make his influence and judgement felt. In
free spiritual life each person works according to his particular
abilities; in the economic sphere each takes his place according to
his associative relationship. In the context of the political
rights-state the purely human element comes into its own, insofar as
it is independent of the abilities by means of which the individual is
active in spiritual life, and independent of the value accrued to the
goods he produces in the associative economic sphere.
I have attempted to show in this book how hours and conditions of
labour are matters to be dealt with by the political rights-state. All
are equal in this area due to the fact that only matters are to be
treated in it about which all men are equally competent to form an
opinion. Human rights and obligations are to be determined within this
member of the social organism.
The unity of the whole social organism will originate in the
independent development of its three members. The book will show how
the effectiveness of capital, means of production and land use can be
determined through the cooperation of the three members. Those who
wish to solve the social question by means of some
economic scheme will find this book impractical. However, those who
have practical experience and would stimulate men and women to
cooperative ventures through which they can best recognize and
dedicate themselves to the social tasks of the day, will perhaps not
deny that the author is in fact advocating something which is in
accordance with the practical facts of life.
This book was first published in 1919. As a supplement I published
various articles in the magazine Dreigliederung des Sozialen
Organismus, which subsequently appeared as a separate volume
with the title In Ausführung der Dreigliederung des Sozialen
Organismus.
[Note 1]
In both of these publications much more emphasis is placed on the
means which should be employed than on the ends, or
objectives of the social movement. If we think
realistically we know that particular ends appear in diverse forms.
Only when we think in abstractions does everything appear to us in
clearly defined outlines. The abstract thinker will often reproach the
practical realist for lack of distinctness, for not being sufficiently
clear in his presentations. Often those who consider
themselves to be experts are in reality just such abstractionists.
They do not realize that life can assume the most varied forms. It is
a flowing element, and if we wish to move with it we must adapt our
thoughts and feelings to this flowing characteristic. Social tasks can
be grasped with this type of thinking. The ideas presented in this
book have been drawn from an observation of life; an understanding of
them can be derived from the same source.