THE
PROBLEMS OF OUR TIME
FOUR
LECTURES BY RUDOLF STEINER
LECTURE IV
THE
MAIN FEATURES OF THE SOCIAL QUESTION
AND THE THREEFOLD ORDER OF THE SOCIAL
ORGANISM
Open Lecture by Rudolf Steiner
LECTURE IV
Berlin. 15th September, 1919.
It
is beyond doubt that the War and all its terrible
accompaniments have given the social question a new aspect for
men to-day. True, this change is not recognized by a sufficient
number of people in the way one could wish; but it is there and
will become more and more significant.
The
members of the classes hitherto accustomed to lead and rule
will find themselves compelled by force of circumstances,
in dealing with the social question, to abandon limited ideas
and measures which deal with it piecemeal. They will be forced
to turn their thoughts and direct their will to the social
problem as the most important in the life of mankind, both
to-day and in the immediate future. While they will only
understand their times by adopting a wholly new conception of
their problem in all their thinking, feeling and willing, on
the other hand it will be necessary for the masses, the
proletariat, to achieve an essentially different attitude to
it.
For
more than fifty years the mass of the people have been
acquiring social and socialist ideas. Unless we have gone
through the last ten years with our eyes shut we must have
noticed what changes have come about inside the ranks of the
proletariat with regard to the social question. We saw what
form it took at the moment of the outbreak of the appalling
catastrophe we know as the World War. Then came the end of that
fearful disaster. The proletariat found itself in a new
position, no longer confined by a social order dominated, at
least in Central and Eastern Europe, by the old ruling powers.
It was itself called upon, to a considerable extent, to set its
hand to building a new form of social organization. And just in
face of this fact, wholly new in history, we experienced
something extraordinarily tragic.
The
ideas to which for years the proletariat had devoted itself
with its heart's blood proved inadequate when realization
became possible, and at this point occurred a great historical
opposition, even a conflict. The facts of world-history taking
place about us might have become the great instructors of
mankind.
They showed that the hitherto ruling classes had, during the
last three or four hundred years, developed no ideas which can,
or could, be any guide for all that was forcing its way out in
the economic and other social facts of human experience. The
remarkable thing was that those who had power to act in the
world of affairs had arrived at the state of letting them take
their own course. Their thoughts and ideas had become so
restricted that they could not stretch them to include the
facts, which had grown above their heads, out of reach. This
had been evident for some time, especially in the economic
life, in which protection and similar ideas had been
superseded by competition for a free market as the only
motive for regulation; in which ideas were active, not moulding
the economic life solely with regard to production,
distribution and consumption of goods, but unfailingly leading
to continual crises owing to the hazard of the “free
market.” He who will is able to see that since the social
impetus of these ungovernable facts had spread over the
great imperial states, the affairs of these states had acquired
their movement, susceptible to control neither by thought nor
by any efforts towards adjustment.
Man
should consider such things to-day, should be able to keep
before his spiritual eye to-day's necessity of looking more
deeply into human activities and of grasping such a thing as
the “Social Question” with more intensity of
purpose than is customary. It is, after all, obvious that ideas
have become inadequate for the developing facts, yet men will
not see it. Three or four hundred years of routine in business
and public affairs have accustomed them to account it practical
life and to regard anyone who sees a little further and can
judge of things through longer vision, as Utopian or
unpractical. I give you an illustration of this; for to-day,
when the destiny of the individual is so closely bound up with
the destiny of mankind, only examples drawn from personal
experience and honestly meant can be sufficient illustration of
the impulse and motives to be found in public life —
therefore I may be pardoned if I give you one of my own. It is
not intended in a personal sense. In the spring of 1914, in a
series of lectures I gave in Vienna on spiritual-scientific
subjects, I was forced, months before the outbreak of the
so called World War, in the presence of a small audience
(a bigger one might have laughed me to scorn) to sum up what
seemed to me the view we ought to hold about the social
development of the present conditions. I then said that for
anyone looking with open eyes at what was going on in the
public life of the civilized world, it appeared as infected by
a social tumour, a malignant social illness or cancer; and this
illness within our economic and. social life must express
itself in a terrific disaster.
Now
how was one regarded who, in the early spring of 1914, spoke of
an imminent catastrophe, from his observation of events
going on under the surface? He was “an unpractical
idealist,” not to say a fool. What I was then obliged to
say was a great contrast to what at that time, and indeed even
later, the so-called practical men were giving out —
those men who were not practical at all, only revolutionists
who scorned anyone who tried to comprehend the history of the
time from some knowledge of its underlying idea. What did these
“practical” men say? One such person, a Foreign
Minister of one of the Central European States, announced
to the enlightened representatives of the people that the
general relaxation of tension in the political situation was
making pleasing progress, so that they could be assured of
peaceful conditions - in Europe in the near future. He added
that the relations with St. Petersburg were the most friendly
possible. Thanks to the Government's efforts the Russian
Cabinet took no heed of the publications of the Press, and our
relations with St. Petersburg would continue friendly, as
before. Negotiations with England were expected to be concluded
in the near future on such a basis as to produce the best
possible relationships. What a difference between
“practical outlook” and “gloomy
theory!”
Many more examples might be given to illustrate the view of, or
rather the insight into, the facts at the beginning of the
period which held such terrible things for humanity. It is very
instructive to let the facts speak: these practical men spoke
of peace and the next month's brought a peace in which the
civilized world occupied itself for several years in killing,
at a low estimate, ten to twelve million men and crippling
three times as many. I am not saying this to re-new a
sensation: it must be mentioned because we can see by this how
inadequate men's thoughts have become, that they are no longer
far-reaching enough to master facts. We shall only see these
events in the right light when we recognize in facts the
strongest indication that for the healing of our social
conditions what we need is not a small change in this or that
arrangement, but a vast alteration in thinking and learning:
not a trivial but a tremendous settling up with the old which
is too foul and decayed, to be allowed to mingle with what the
future may bring.
We
might say the same thing about the life of rights or the
economic life in detail as about the wider institutions of
mankind. Everywhere men's words betray that their
thoughts are inadequate to master facts. We may say that the
former leading and dominant class has the practical experience
but lacks the effective ideas necessary to the practice of
life. Opposed to these circles stands the great mass of the
proletariat which has educated itself in a rigorous school of
Marxian thought for half a century. It is not enough to-day
merely. to look round on the proletariat to find out how they
are thinking. It is comparatively extraordinarily easy to
refute logically what the masses and their leaders think about
economic institutions. That does not much matter: what does
matter is the historical fact that in their heart and soul lies
a sort of precipitate, formed out of the intensely active
thoughts which have been converted into a “proletarian
theory.” This theory, which might, after the break-down
of the old order have proved itself much more effective than it
has in actual practice, shows a peculiarity which is quite
comprehensible. For as a result of the way in which the social
evolution of mankind has moved under the influence of the
capitalist order and modern technical science during the last
three to four hundred years — especially during the
nineteenth century — the masses have been more and more
closely confined within the economic system, so confined that
each man was restricted to one small, limited piece of work.
This strictly limited piece of work was fundamentally all he
saw of the reality of the increasingly extending economic
life.
What wonder that the workman experienced, in the effect on body
and soul, that under the influence of technical science and
private capital, developed by the new life of economics,
he could not see the mainsprings which moved it. He might be
the “worker” in this life, but his social position
prevented him from looking rightly into its ordering, into the
way in which it was controlled. It is quite comprehensible that
as a result of such facts something grew up of which the fruits
are before us; certain subconscious impulses and demands of the
masses became a far-reaching socialist theory, really
fundamentally alien to economic and other social facts,
since the proletariat could gain no insight into the
actual driving forces behind the facts and simply had to accept
the one-sided ideas derived from Marx. So we find that in the
course of years, various things have eaten into the feelings of
the masses which may in reality be ever so deeply justified but
which, all the same, miss the facts. I should like to, give as
an example the enormous effect of one slogan, amongst others
poured out over the proletariat by its leaders. “In
future no production for the sake of producing —
production only, for consumption.” Certainly a remark to
the purpose, with the merit (rare in slogans) of being
absolutely true; but becoming an unreal abstraction, elusive,
when carried to its logical conclusion with practical sense and
real insight into economic conditions. The chief thing in
practice is “how things are made” — there is
no meaning in the clamour “produce only for
consumption” from a practical point of view. It calls up
in the soul the idea of how beautiful the economic life could
be if profit were ignored and consumption only were of
consequence! But there is no indication whatever in this phrase
as to how the structure of the economic life could be arranged
so as to give effect to what is expressed in these words. Many
other catchwords (of which we shall touch on some) have the
same defect. They often have their origin in deep truths yet,
when adopted as party slogans of the proletariat, have become
abstractions, just Utopian pointers to an indefinite future. If
we would be honest with the proletariat, we must say that this
unfortunate proletariat which is raising its just claims lives
as in a cloud of views which are theory, it is true, but remote
from the facts of life, because they have no contact with the
facts and are placed in an isolation from whence they can
survey only a single corner of life.
That is the conflict to which I would draw your attention
— on the one side the attitude of the ruling classes who
have power over the facts, but no idea how to use it to control
them: on the other, the proletariat with its acquired, abstract
ideas which have no correspondence with the facts.
If
we try to describe the genesis of all this in a few words,
taking note of active forces and impulses, more essentially
important than anything that has occurred hitherto in the
course of human history, we can only rightly estimate
expressions like “the lack of ideas in the practice of
our leaders” and “the unpractical theory of
the proletariat” if we have a feeling of the torrent
pouring in the present-day development of humanity with such
vigour and mutually destructive force. The existence of such a
contrast between the attitude of soul of the dominant classes
and that of the proletariat leads, and has led, to a deep
cleavage between the thinking, feeling, willing and actions of
the former and all the longings, wishes and impulses of the
latter. We do not even understand adequately what is the demand
of our age, of which we hear the first faint tone from the
proletariat. We may understand the form of the words when they
mention the theory of surplus-value, i.e., the theory
that we should produce only for consumption, or that of
transformation of private ownership into common property; but
what are they in reality as expression of their wishes and
ideas? Can they be regarded merely as a subject for logical
criticism by the leaders of the well-to-do? It is hard to find
a more naïve response than that of a director of some
company who hears the “surplus value” theory from
his work-people and answers that the surplus, made up of
banknotes, etc., is so small that, divided among them, there
would be no share for each worth having. I repeat, it is
hopelessly naïve to deal in this way with the theory of
“surplus value.” The
“calculation” of the directors is obvious and
incontrovertible, but that is not the real point. To try to
refute what are the actual words of the proletarian theory is
just like having a thermometer in a room to indicate the
temperature and applying a flame to the tube because it
registers too low a temperature to please us. By this temporary
expedient of tampering with the thermometer we do not occupy
ourselves with the root-cause of the trouble. To take
proletarian theory to-day and try to refute it is
simple-minded, for such theories are nothing really but to use
a classroom word — “indices” of something
lying much deeper. Just as a thermometer indicates the
temperature of a room, but does not produce it, so proletarian
theories are a sort of instrument by which we can
recognize the forces active in the social question from this
aspect, now and in the immediate future. In this we are much
too easy-going. The question has been regarded as purely
economic because it first meets us in the economic sphere,
based on the demands of the proletariat, hitherto entangled in
economic life during the epoch of private capitalism and
technical science: we have not seen lying behind the theories
all that is betokened by them concerning capital, labour and
goods. The workman experiences the whole sphere of human life
in the economic field; therefore the social question appears to
him entirely in an economic perspective.
Anybody who has the opportunity to acquire wider views is bound
to see how clearly three spheres of life are to be
distinguished, in which three fundamental aspects of the
social question present themselves. To have learnt through his
life's destiny not only to think about the masses or
have feelings concerning them, but to think and feel
with them, will have taught him to observe what is
seething in the soul-depths of their best members, even in the
phrases which run through all socialist theories - as their
keywords. What are these?
First we have the phrase “surplus value,” of which
I have already spoken. Association as man to man with the
proletariat is enough to show how deeply this phrase has sunk
into their hearts. It is this sinking-in that matters, not the
verification of any theory. Anyone who, like myself, has worked
in Berlin at the
`Workers' School founded by Wilhelm Liebknecht, while
decisive events were taking place within the social movements
of the new era, will know more about this question that I have,
touched upon, through practical life, than perhaps some captain
of industry does, especially if the latter should be —
how shall I phrase it inoffensively — a
revolution-profiteer, a superficial chatterer about revolution,
even as we had war-profiteers. “Surplus value” was
generally taken to mean something of this sort: the proletariat
works productively and produces goods of some kind: the
capitalist puts them on the market and gives the worker just
sufficient wage to keep him alive, in order that he may
continue to produce. Anything over and above this is
“surplus value.” As Walter Rathenau says —
although in social questions he falls into great errors
— it is true that this surplus value, divided,
would not improve the condition of the masses at all; but
through processes of calculation which float in space we do not
arrive at the facts; we must deal with this surplus value
correctly as to its social significance. Can it have as little,
real existence as Rathenau, for instance,
“accurately” reckons? In that case there would be
in Berlin no theatres, no high schools, no public school,
nothing of what we call cultural life, the life dealing
with the human spirit; since that, for the most part, is really
contained in the “surplus value.” It does not
really matter how this value is forced to the surf ace as
“goods” or “cash in circulation”: it is
in this catchword itself that we find expressed the whole
relation of our modern cultural life to the wide masses of the
people who cannot directly participate in it.
Anyone who has taught for years amongst the workers and has
taken the trouble to teach directly out of our common human
feelings, speaking as man to man, will know what a spiritual
education must be like if it is to be universally human and,
further, how the form of education will differ from our present
one, which has grown up during the last three or four hundred
years under the influence of an economic order based on private
capital and technical organization. If I may once again speak
personally, to illustrate the general fact — I was well
aware when I spoke to the workers, in lecturing or teaching,
that in their souls kindred strings were sounding and that they
were receiving a knowledge which they could absorb. But a time
came when the proletariat had to follow the fashion and share
in “education” — that education which was,
from a spiritual point of view, the outcome of the dominant
culture. They had to be taken to the museums and shown what had
developed out of the experience of the ruling middle classes.
Then if men were honest they must have known (if not, they
invented all sorts of phrases about “popular
education” and the like) that there was no bridge between
the spiritual culture and education of the ruling classes and
the spiritual needs and longings of the proletariat. Art,
science, religion can only be understood if they issue from
circles with which one has some common social ground, so that
one can share their social feelings and attitude: not where
there is an abyss between those who are supposed to enjoy
culture, and those who can actually enjoy it. Here there
was a vast cultural lie, and nowadays no benevolent mask must
be spread over these things, but they must be brought into
clear daylight. The lie consisted in setting up
“People's High Schools” or “Educational
Schools” in which an education was to be shared by
the masses without any possible bridge over which it could pass
to them. The proletariat stood on one side of the abyss, looked
over it at the art, science, religion, ethics, which had been
produced by the leading classes, did not understand them, and
took them to be something which only concerned those classes, a
sort of luxury. There they saw the practical application of the
“surplus value” which they had talked about, but
they actually felt quite different from what was spoken in this
“thermometer” language about surplus value. They
felt: here is a spiritual life created by what we produce, by
our labour, from which, however, we are excluded!
This is the way in which we must approach the question of the
surplus-value, not theoretically, but as it really and vitally
exists in life. Then, too, we can see the essential problem of
the social question taken as a whole — its spiritual
side. We can see that, side by side with the rise of the new
technical science and new capitalist economics, arose an
intellectual life only capable of living within the souls of
men who were divided by a deep golf from the great masses to
whose ,education they gave inadequate attention and from which
they held aloof. The tragedy of it! The ruling classes discuss
these problems in well-warmed, mirrored rooms, speaking of
their brotherly love for all men, our duty to love all men, or
of the Christian virtues, while a fire warms them which is fed
with coals from the mines into which children of nine, eleven,
thirteen years of age are sent down. In the middle of the
nineteenth century this was literally so (things have improved
since then, not, through any merit of the ruling classes but
through the demands of the proletariat); these children went
down before sunrise and only came up again after sunset, so
that they actually never saw the sun the whole week
through.
We
are assumed to be agitating nowadays if we talk like this. Not
at all! We have to say these things to show how the cultural
life of the last few hundred years is separated from the real
life of men. People have talked in abstractions about morality,
virtue, religion, while their real practical life was in no way
touched by the talk of brotherliness, love of one's neighbour,
Christianity and so forth. Here, then, confronts us, as a
distinct aspect of the social question, the spiritual problem.
We stand before the whole sweep of the spiritual life
especially as it relates to men of the present age and the
immediate future in the realm of teaching and education. As a
result of the way in which the territories of dukes or princes
have been formed into single state-economics, the intellectual
life in its wider form has been absorbed by the State
organization. It is to-day a source of pride. that education
has torn itself away, as regards science, as regards
intellectual life generally, from its medieval association with
religion and theology. Proudly it is asserted and repeated:
“In the Middle Ages the intellectual and scientific
life were in leading-strings to religion and theology.”
Of course we do not want to have these times back; we must move
forward, not backward. We are living in different times: we
must not simply point in pride to the way in which intellectual
life was train-bearer to the Church in the Middle Ages.
Something different is demanded. Let us take an example not so
very far away.
A
very distinguished scientist, for whom I have great respect (I
do not mention these things in order to disparage people)
— the Secretary of the Berlin Academy of Sciences —
was speaking of the relation of this Academy to the State. He
said, in a well-considered speech, that the members of this
Academy regarded it as one of their highest distinctions to be
“the scientific bodyguard of the Hohenzollerns.”
That is only one example of what might be repeated a
thousand fold, bringing to our lips the question: “What
nowadays has taken the place of the Church which formerly used
intellectual life as its train-bearer?” Nor were things
so bad in the recent past as they must become, if such State
regulations were to be made as would favour the growth of that
appalling State-regulation of teaching which has arisen in
Eastern Europe and which has conclusively proved that it would
bring about the death of all culture. We must look not only
into the past, but above all into the future and assert that
the time has come when intellectual and spiritual life must
exist as a self-dependent part of the social organism
and must be under its own control.
When a thing like this is mentioned, we are met by all sorts of
prejudices, and we are reckoned mad if we cannot appreciate the
enormous blessings to be found in State-control of education.
But healthy conditions will never be found until education and
everything connected with instruction, including , the teachers
from the lowest form to the highest grade in the public
schools, passes from the control of the State into its own
control. That is one of the great objectives we must specially
aim at to-day.
The
men who first showed me any friendliness when it came
actually to fitting the idea of the threefold organization into
the present age are those to whom we owe the first really free
“Einheitsschule” in Stuttgart. In connection
with the Waldorf-Astoria Factory, we are establishing the first
model “Einheitsschule,” based on the science
of pedagogy and teaching which has its origin in the true and
real knowledge of the growing human being. Social class and
rank make no real difference to him between the seventh and
fifteenth years — all human beings are at the same stage.
But to be able to teach and educate him means learning first to
understand him. As it fell to me to give the preliminary course
to the teachers working at the school, there came under my
notice certain things which are nowadays taken as a matter of
course. The serious significance of such an acceptation is not
realized. It has only developed fully in the last decades.
Since these things are the subject of practical life-work and
must form its experience, I may remark, on such an occasion as
this, that my comments on them arise from no irresponsible
youthful mind, I speak as one who has already reached the
sixties. I can remember how in days gone by the syllabus was
short: the subject of teaching was presented by means of
lectures, books and the experiences of men who had living ideas
of education, who were creative spiritually. But to-day we have
no short syllabus; instead, we have thick books which not only
direct us to take one subject in one year, another in another,
but tell us how to teach it. What should be the subject
of free instruction is to be — indeed is — a matter
of regulations. Unless we have a clear, adequate feeling of how
unsocial all this is, we shall not be ready to collaborate in
the real healing of mankind. Therefore, in the establishment of
a spiritual, intellectual life which is free and independent of
the State lies the first, central problem of the social
question. This is the first of the three self-dependent members
of the threefold organism which we have to set up. If we
represent these facts, pointing out how healthy it may be to
have no authority within the spiritual part of the social
organism save that of those who take some active part in it,
then the teaching of the future will be seen to have little
kinship with that of the present-day unitary State. The whole
of life will resemble a model republic. Teaching will be
created out of the spirit, to satisfy the demands of education,
not given according to the claims of regulations. We shall not
merely enquire what standard shall be set in the socialized
State for a pupil of thirteen or seventeen, but what lies
deeply in man himself, which we can draw out of him in such a
way that when these forces, liberated from the depths of his
being, are at his disposal, he will not be weak-willed or
crushed, as so many men are to-day, but will be equal to his
destiny and able to direct his forces with determination to the
tasks of his life. This points us to the first member of the
threefold social order.
To
give utterance to such thoughts as these brings questions,
objections, like the one I had to meet in a South German city.
I was answered in the discussion at the end of a lecture by a
secondary school teacher, somewhat in this wise:
“We Germans shall be a poor nation in the future, and
here is a man who wants to make the spiritual and
intellectual life independent: a poor people cannot pay
for that, there will be no money, therefore we shall have
to draw on the national exchequer and pay for education out of
the taxes. What becomes of independence then? How can we refuse
the right of the State to inspect, when the State is the source
of income?” I could only reply that it seemed strange to
me for the teacher to believe that what was drawn from the
Treasury as taxes grew there somehow or other, and would
not in future come out of the pockets of the “poor
nation.” What strikes me most is the lack of thought
everywhere. We need to develop a real practical thinking which
sees into the facts of life. That will give us practical
suggestions which can be carried out.
Further, just as on the one hand the spiritual life, in
education, etc., must become independent, so on the other
hand must the economic life. Now, two demands, rather
remarkably, have lately arisen from the depths of human nature,
the one for Democracy, the other for Socialism. They contradict
one another. Before the War the two contradictory impulses were
thrust into each other's company and a party was even founded
with the title “Social Democratic.” You might as
well talk of “wooden iron.” They are contradictory,
yet both are noble and honest demands of our times. Since then,
the catastrophe of the War has passed over us, with all its
consequences, and now there is a new form for the social
demands and a “democratic Parliament” is rejected.
When such a theoretical demand, entirely unaccompanied by
knowledge of the facts, with its catchwords of an
abstract kind, like “the seizure of political
power” or “the dictatorship of the
proletariat” and the like, is pushed forward, this
originates in the depths of socialist feeling, but it shows
that people have come to realize the contradiction between that
attitude and the democratic one. In future, we shall have to
take into account the realities of life, not be content with
catchwords: we shall realize that a socialist is quite right
when he feels there is something repellent about democracy. And
the democrat is right when he finds “the dictatorship of
the proletariat” an alarming prospect. What are the real
facts in this sphere?
We
must observe the economic life in its connection with the State
in the same way as we did the life of the mind and spirit. A
common idea of modern times, especially amongst people who
consider themselves advanced thinkers, is that the State should
more and more participate in industry. Post office, railways,
should be under State control, and its authority should be even
more widely extended. This is a very comprehensive
subject to touch upon in a few words; and since I must
limit myself to a short lecture, I must risk being charged with
superficiality in making these remarks, which are, however,
really to the point, and can be supported by countless
instances from modern history. They are far from being
superficial. This idea of the “advanced” thinkers
will reveal itself in its true form if we take socialism
seriously. Moreover, we can ascertain that true form if we so
regard a remark made by Friedrich Engels in one of his most
brilliant moments, in his book The Development of Socialism
from Utopianism to Science. There he says “If
we survey the State, in its present development, we find
that it includes management of branches of production and
control of the distribution of goods; but, inasmuch as it has
undertaken economic management, at the same time it controls
men.” The State laid down the laws according to which men
who stand within the economic life must act whether within or
outside of their economic activities. In future this must
become different.
Engels was quite right. It was his opinion that within the
sphere of economic production itself there should be no more
control of men: control should be limited to the production and
distribution of goods. A right view, but only half or
one-quarter of the truth: because the laws effective within the
economic sphere have hitherto coincided with the life of the
State, and if the State is removed as controller and manager of
economics, the economic sphere must have a place of its own,
not one from which men shall be ruled from a centre, but where
they will rule themselves democratically.
That means that these two impulses, democracy and socialism,
point to the fact that by the side of the independent spiritual
member of the social organism there must be two other separate
spheres, covering what remains of the function of the former
type of State. These two spheres are the control of economic
life and the domain of public rights, this latter
including everything on which a man is entitled to give
judgment when he is of age. What is the meaning of the demand
for democracy? It means that, as a matter of history, humanity
is becoming capable of deciding, in the sphere of the free
State and public rights, everything in which all men are equal,
every question on which any man who is of age can pronounce,
whether directly through a referendum, or indirectly by
representation. In future, therefore, we must have an
independent sphere of rights, which will take the place
of the old State built up of power and might. We can never have
a proper State based on law and right, unless the sphere of law
is limited to those matters on which every adult human being is
capable of judgment. There has been a good deal of talk on this
subject among the workers, though, once again, we can only take
their words as a social thermometer. There is a remark of Karl
Marx which has sunk deeply into their feelings: “It is an
existence unworthy of a human being when a worker must sell his
labour-power in the market, as if it were a
commodity: we pay for a commodity at its market price and
we pay for labour-power by means of wages which are the price
of this commodity, labour-power.”
This is a remark which has been significant in the development
of modern humanity, not so much through its actual content as
through the electrical effect it has had on the proletariat, an
effect of which the ruling classes can hardly form any idea.
What is at the bottom of it all? In the economic circuit,
i.e., in the production, distribution and
consumption of goods, which alone belong to this circuit,
the regulation of labour, according to amount, time and
character, etc., has been placed. We shall never have a healthy
condition of things in this sphere until the character,
amount and time of human work has been taken out of the
economic circuit, whether the work be physical or intellectual.
The actual regulation of labour-power does not belong to the
economic life, in which the economically stronger can impose
the type of work upon the economically weaker. The regulation
of work as between man and man, what one man does for another,
should belong to the sphere of law and right, where each adult
human being is on a level with every other. How much work one
human being has to do for another ought never to be decided on
economic grounds, but solely on principles which will develop
in the State of the future, the State of Rights as opposed to
the present State of Might.
Here again we meet with a mass of prejudices. It is a
commonplace nowadays to maintain that so long as the economic
order is settled by the conditions of a free market, so long
will it be natural for labour to depend on production and the
price of commodities. But if we imagine that things must always
go on as they do now, we are shutting our eyes to the different
demands which are growing up as history unrolls. In future we
shall see, for instance, how foolish it would be for men in
control of some industry to meet and, examining their accounts
for a certain year, to say: “We produced so much last
year. This year, to equal that total we shall need so many days
of rain, so many of sunshine, etc.” We cannot dictate to
Nature to accommodate herself to our prices; prices must be
subject to Nature-conditions. On the one side economic life is
bounded by natural conditions, on the other by the State of Law
or Rights, through which, as we have seen, labour has to be
regulated. Hours of work must be settled on purely democratic
grounds and prices will follow them, regulated according to
natural conditions, as is the case in agriculture. We have not
to consider alteration in a few minor details of the system: we
must change our whole way of thinking and learning. The unrest
created at present in our industrial life will never disappear
until labour-power is judged on an independent democratic
basis, when one adult human being stands over against his
fellow as equal and can, as free man, bring his work into the
independent economic life, in which agreements about
production will be made, not about work. This must be
understood.
I
can but touch on these things in the short time at my disposal.
I would gladly give a whole course of lectures to deal with
them, but that is impossible. I must just indicate what form
this third member, the economic life, must take in the
threefold social organism of the future.
In
this economic sphere there must not be, as in the past, control
of capital, of land, of means of production (which incidentally
is control of capital) and of labour: we may only admit
control of the production, distribution and consumption of
goods. And how is the essential fact of an economic life which
is to be based only on knowledge of facts and on practical
ability — this “settling of prices”
— to be achieved? It must not be decided by the chances
of a free market as has been the case hitherto in both
national-economy and world- economy. By means of the
Associations which will come into being to suit the
circumstances existing between the various branches of
production and consumption — Associations which will be
composed of men whose position is justified by their knowledge
of facts and practical ability — we shall obtain
organically and rationally what is nowadays attained through
crises in the chances of a free market. In the future, when a
decision as to the kind and character, of human labour has to
be made in the Rights State, it will happen in the economic
life that a man will receive in return for his product enough
exchange-values to supply his needs until he can produce
another such product. To give a rough superficial example, I
might explain that, supposing I produce a pair of boots, I must
be able, through the mutually-fixed values, to get as much
goods in exchange for my boots as I shall require for my needs
until I have made another pair. There will have to be
arrangements within the society for supplying the needs
of widows, orphans, the sick, of education, etc., but the
actual regulation of prices in this way — and that alone
will be the task of the economic organization — will
depend on the formation of Corporations (whether elected, or
nominated from the Associations formed among the various
branches of production combined with the Associations of
consumers) whose business it will be to get at true prices in
real life.
This can only be achieved if the whole economic life (not
planned after a Möllendorff scheme, but in a living
fashion) is so ordered that, for instance, notice is taken of
actual conditions. Say that some particular article shows a
tendency to become too expensive: that means that it is too
scarce. Workmen must be diverted to that branch of production,
through some form of agreement, in order to produce more of it.
If some article is too cheap, factories must close down and the
workers be transferred to other factories.
“It is all very difficult,” people reply when we
mention this sort of thing to-day: but they should realize that
to reject it as difficult, and to prefer to play about with
minor improvements in social conditions, means to
preserve present conditions as they are. What I have said shows
you that, as a result of the Associations created simply
out of the economic life, economic life can be made
self-dependent, controlled only by the economic forces
themselves instead of being under the aegis of the State:
and in such a way that within this self-dependent control the
initiative of the individual will be maintained as much as
possible. This cannot be done by a planned economy, by the
establishment of a common organization of the means of
production, but only by the Associations belonging to such free
branches of production and their agreement with the consumers'
Associations.
It
would be a terrible mistake to push to extremes the State
control which has hitherto been under the direction of the
ruling classes, and extend “Corporations” over the
whole life of the State, using the framework of the State for
the purpose, a procedure which could but undermine all
connection between such a planned economy and the economic
forces outside it. The Associations, on the other hand, as part
of the Threefold Organization, would aim particularly at
maintaining the free initiative of those engaged in industry
and at keeping open everything which unites a closed economic
circuit with other economic circuits without.
Many things would look very different — for example,
something I can only indicate by an analogy. Socialist doctrine
demands “the abolition of private property” and
“transformation of private possessions into
communal, property” — mere unmeaning words,
which can signify nothing to a man with practical knowledge of
affairs. Yet they might have a meaning — which I can
describe to you in pictorial fashion. We are very proud
nowadays, for instance, of our philosophers, and in one
way they do think fairly accurately, that is, where
intellectual or spiritual work is concerned. In the material
sphere they do not manage to think in the same healthy way. In
the matter of intellectual possessions it is realized that what
is produced in that realm by anyone is his own work, he has to
be present. Nobody talks of its being produced by some common
economy or corporate industry. Everything here must be left to
the individual, for we get the best result when he is present
with his faculties and talents at the work, not when he is cut
off from it; but from a social aspect we think that thirty
years or less after his death the spiritual product should no
longer be the property of his heirs, but of any person who can
best make it accessible to the community. That seems natural to
us, because we do not value spiritual product as anything
peculiar. But we make no effort, in the case of material
property, to treat it in the same way, and see that it should
only remain private as long as a man is in contact with it with
all his faculties. When this is no longer the case it should
pass over — not to the community (which has no real
being) bringing fearful corruption in its train, but to the man
who could in his turn by use of his faculties put it to the
best use for the community.
It
is easy enough to see clearly if we think impartially. We have
undertaken to found a school for Spiritual Science, the
Goetheanum, at Dornach, near Basel, in Switzerland. This has
been its title ever since the world became
“Woodrow-Wilsonized” and it became necessary
for Germany's spiritual life-treasure to be boldly displayed
before the world. A very different thing, this, from ordinary
Chauvinism — a Goetheanum in a foreign country as the
representative of German spiritual life. Further, it is
being built, and it will be controlled, by those who have the
capacities to call it into being; but to whom will it belong
when these people are no longer among the living? It will not
pass by inheritance to anyone, but to those who can control it
best in the service of humanity. Actually it belongs to nobody.
Social thought in economics will bring into being the things
which are necessary for health in the future. I have dealt more
fully with the circulation of private property in my
Three fold Commonwealth, where I have shown how the
social organism must be divided into three members, separate
but co-operating as such:
(a) The spiritual organization with control of itself on the
basis of a free spiritual life.
(b) The organisation of the State with political rights
and with democratic control based on the judgment of every
grown-up person.
(c) An economic life placed under the control only of
individuals, who have shown themselves expert and competent,
and their Associations and Corporations.
All
this seems so new that once when I was talking of it in
Germany, someone objected that, I was dividing the State (which
must be a unity) into three parts. I could only ask in reply
whether I should be dividing a horse into parts if I said it
must stand on its four legs? Or is a horse a unity only if it
stands on one leg? Just as little can one expect that the
social life should be an abstract unity, if such a unity could
exist at all. We must not in the future allow ourselves to be
hypnotized by the abstract idea of the “unitary
State”; we must see that it must be divided into three
members on which it can be supported — into a free
spiritual sphere controlling itself, an organization of rights
with democratic legislation, and an economic organization
with expert and competent economic control.
One-half of a great truth was uttered more than a hundred years
ago in Western Europe, in the words: “Liberty, Equality
and Fraternity,” three ideals which were capable of being
graven deep into the hearts and souls of men: but it was not
fools or madmen who maintained in the nineteenth century that
these ideals were really contradictory, that where absolute
equality rules, neither freedom nor fraternity can exist. These
objections were sound, but only because they were made at a
time when men were obsessed by the idea of the so-called
“unitary State.” Directly we free ourselves from
the hypnotism of this idea and can understand the necessity for
the threefold social organism we shall speak
otherwise.
I
hope you will allow me in closing, to sum up in a comparison
what I fain would discuss at greater, length. I have only been
able to give an outline sketch of what I meant: I know I have
but hinted at what needs a comprehensive description to
be understood; but in conclusion I should like to point out
what a hypnotic effect the “unitary State” idea has
had on men, and how they have let the unitary State be
dominated by the three great ideals of “Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity.” We shall have to change that idea.
At present people look on the Unitary State as a sort of
divinity. In this, their attitude is like Faust's attitude
towards the sixteen-year-old Gretchen. It is like the lessons
which Faust gave to the child Gretchen, suited to her years,
but usually regarded by philosophers as something highly
philosophical. There Faust says, “The
All-enfolding, the All-upholding, folds and upholds
he not thee, me, Himself?” (Faust, Part I, Scene
XVI) This is almost the same view as of the Unitary State.
Men are hypnotized by it as by an idol of unity and cannot see
that this unitary picture must become threefold for the health
of mankind in the future. Many a manufacturer would be only too
glad to speak to his work-people about the State as Faust
speaks to Gretchen: “The all-enfolding, all-upholding
State, does it not enfold and uphold you, myself,
itself?” — only he would have to clap his hand over
his mouth lest he should say “myself” too loudly!
The necessity of the threefold ordering must be realized,
especially amongst the workers, but that will only be when
their eyes are opened to the need. In future it will not be the
cry of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” with all
the contradictions involved in these ideals. They will hold
sway, but the independent spiritual life will be the domain of
“Liberty” for there it is justified.
“Equality” will be the rule in the democratic
State, where all grown men will be equal in rights; finally,
“Fraternity” will hold dominion in the
economic life, independently controlled, supporting and
sustaining everyone. Thus applied to the three divisions
of the social organism the three ideals no longer contradict
each other.
And
now, though we look in agony at what has happened at
Versailles, seeing in it the starting-point of much misery,
poverty and pain, yet we can still hope. Things external can be
taken from us, yet if we have the vigour to reach back over the
years in which we were false to our own past to the Goetheanism
of the period at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries when Lessing, Herder, Schiller, Goethe and others
were active in other spheres: if we have the vigour to reach
back in our time of need, in the strength of our own inner
being, to the great glories of Central Europe, then, in spite
of the stress of our times, will peal forth from Central Europe
the complement to the half-truth of “Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity” which rang out a hundred years ago,
the other half — perhaps in external dependence, but
certainly in inner freedom and independence —
Liberty in the Life of the Spirit.
Equality in the democratic Life of Rights.
Fraternity in the Economic Life.
In
these words we can sum tap what men must think and say and feel
if they are to comprehend the Social Question in its entirety.
May it be received and grasped by many, many minds, so that
what is only a question to-day may be the practice of
to-morrow.
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