Twenty Articles From
The Newspaper:
The Threefold Social Order
The Roots of Social Life
In my book
Toward Social Renewal,
the comparison between the social organism and the natural human organism
is used as an analogy; at the same time it is pointed out how misleading
it is to suppose that concepts acquired from the one can simply be
transferred to the other. Anyone who forms a picture of the function of
the cells or of an organ of the human body, as natural science represents
them, and who then proceeds to look for the social cell or the social
organs in order to learn the construction and conditions of life in the
social body will very soon fall into an empty game of analogies.
It is
a different matter to point out, as in
Toward Social Renewal,
that by an intelligent study of the human organism one can train oneself
in the kind of thinking required for a real understanding of the working
of social life. Through such a training, one acquires the ability to
judge social facts not according to preconceived opinions, but to judge
them according to their own laws of existence. This above all is necessary
in our present times. People today are tied up tightly in their party
opinions regarding social judgment; and party opinions are not formed
on grounds that lie in the conditions of life and organic requirements
of the entire social organism, but by the blind feelings of particular
people or of particular groups. If the methods of judgment employed
in party programs were transferred to the study of the human body, it
would soon be seen that instead of assisting an understanding of it,
these methods are only a hindrance.
In an
organic body, the air that is inhaled must constantly be converted into
an unusable substance; oxygen must be converted into carbon dioxide.
Accordingly, there must be arrangements by which the changed and no
longer usable substance is replaced by a usable one. Anyone who now
brings to bear a judgment schooled by study of the human organism, and
applies it with common sense and without preconceptions to the study
of the social organism, will find that there is one system within this
social organism, the economic system, which, if functioning properly,
is constantly bound to produce conditions that must be counteracted
by other functions. Just as the organ system in the human body that is
designed to consume inhaled oxygen cannot be expected to make the oxygen
usable again, it should not be supposed that the economic circulation
itself can give rise to the functions needed for making good what it
is the business of this system to convert, out of life, into a
life-restricting product.
The
necessary counteraction can be supplied only by the separate working of two
other systems alongside the economy: a body of laws that determines its own
form out of its own proper nature, and a spiritual-cultural life growing
freely from its own roots, completely independent of the economic system
and the legal system. Only a superficial critic will say, “What,
then! Is the cultural life not to be bound in its pursuits by existing
legal relations?” Certainly it must be bound by them. However,
it is one matter if the people, who pursue the cultural life, are dependent
on the legal life; and quite another matter if the pursuit of the cultural
life rises on its own from the institutions of this legal sphere. The
idea of the threefold social order will be found to be one that makes
it very easy for objections that abide by preconceived notions; but
also that these objections fall to pieces when one thinks them through
to the end.
The life
of the economy has a lawfulness of its own. In following this lawfulness,
it creates conditions that destroy the social organism, if only this
law is at work. If, however, one tries to abolish these conditions by
means of economic measures, one then destroys the economic process itself.
In the modern economic process, evils have arisen through control of
the means of production by private capital. If one tries to exterminate
these evils by an economic measure, such as the communal control
of the means of production, one undermines modern industry. One can,
however, work against these evils, by creating alongside the economy
an independent legal system and a free life of the spirit. In this way,
the evils that result — and result continually —
from the economic life will be removed as they arise. It will not be
a case of the evils arising first and people having to suffer under
them before they disappear; rather, the other organic systems that exist
alongside the economic institutions will, in each instance, turn aside
the mischief.
The
party opinions of recent times have distracted men's judgment from
the laws of life in the social organism and have diverted it into the
currents of sectarian passion. It is urgently necessary that these party
opinions should undergo correction from a quarter in which one can learn
to be impartial. One can learn this through the study of conditions
which of their own nature elicit impartial judgment, and in which thinking
therefore becomes its own corrective. The human organism affords such
conditions.
Of course,
if only the conventional scientific concepts are applied as
correctives, they will not go far. In many respects, these concepts
lack the kind of force necessary to strike deep into the facts of nature.
Yet if one tries to keep to nature herself, and not merely to these
concepts of nature, one will be in a better position to learn
impartiality than one would be amid party views. Despite the good will
of many natural scientists, who have endeavored to overcome materialist
convictions, the usual concepts of natural science are today still strongly
imbued with materialism. A spiritual contemplation of nature will shed
this materialism; and spiritual contemplation of nature will
provide means for the kind of training in thought which, among other
things, makes it possible to comprehend the social organisms.
The idea
of the threefold social order does not simply borrow facts from natural
science and transplant them into the field of social life. It uses the
study of nature only as a way of gaining the ability to observe social
facts impartially. This should be kept in mind by those who learn about
the idea in a superficial fashion — the threefold idea talks of
a threefold division of social life in much the same way as one might
talk of a threefold division of the natural human organism. Anyone who
studies seriously the characteristics of the human organism will be
made aware that the one can-not be simply transferred to the other.
However, the method of study one is obliged to use on the human organism
will awaken the kind of thinking that will enable one to find his way
among the social facts.
Such a
method will be thought to remove all social ideas to the far-off region
of “gray theory.” It may perhaps be said that such an opinion
can only be maintained as long as one regards this “removal”
from outside. Then, certainly, everything that is seen indistinctly
at a distance seems gray. On the other hand, those things that are born
of more immediate passions will have color. Yet go nearer what seems
gray and one will find that something begins to stir which is not unlike
a sort of passion — but it speaks to all that is truly human,
that of which one loses sight when looking from the standpoint of parties
and group opinions.
There
is today a burning need to draw nearer to what is truly human. The
polemical postures of rival camps have done enough. It is time that one
comes to see that the damage cannot be undone with new rival camps, but
rather only by observing what history itself demands at this present moment
of humanity's evolution. It is easy to see evils and demand programs
for their abolition, but what is necessary is to penetrate
to the roots of social life. By healing these roots, healthy blossoms
and fruits can be brought forth as well.
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