Lecture 1
by Rudolf Steiner
given at Zurich, 3 February 1919
“The True Form of the Social Question.”
The
concept contained in the words “social question” is
something which thinking humanity has been occupied with for
decades, occupied because this question has not only become
urgent for the evolution of humanity, but it has become a
burning question. In particular, one may say that the terrible
war catastrophe which has broken over mankind during recent
years has thrown its dark light on the social question in
particular and its correlation to humanity's mobility in the
immediate present.
As
I wish to place the social enigma within the totality of
history of more recent times I need to address in my upcoming
lectures various things which are connected to the cause and
course of the terrible catastrophe of war. In these
introductory explorations, I only need to point out how,
already at the war's starting point, it is clear how the social
question works itself into every emotion of fear, clearly seen
in those present at the beginning of the war. Certainly, a lot
would have changed in 1914 when those who had encountered
difficult decisions here or there, would no longer have stood
under the fear of the question: ‘What will happen if the social
movement becomes increasingly pertinent?’ Much which has
crystallized out of this so-called war has sprung out of fear
on the one hand and under complete misunderstanding of some
leading personalities regarding the social question, on the
other. Things would have developed in a different way if this
fear and misunderstanding were not there. Then again, in the
course of the war we see how personalities, who are active
within the social movement, call for hope in themselves and
others to activate the actual possibility towards restoring
balance in the disharmony which has entered in such a shocking
way into people's lives. Now, because these tragic events have
infiltrated in a type of crisis, we see specific results have
been left in the conquered countries: the most urgent necessity
to take a stand towards the social question and to intervene in
the social demands appearing in the history of this time.
Out
of all of this, a thinking person viewing life at present, who
wants to become familiar with present day habits, can gather
how something appears in the social question which all members
of humanity have been occupied with for an extremely long time.
Just at this moment when, as we said, solutions to the social
question are promoted in these conquered countries, something
like tragedy is stored in the largest part of civilised
humanity.
By
looking at the spiritual efforts, at literature and anything
similar which for many decades have appeared within meetings
and in discussions with the intention of relating them to the
social question, it appears as an immense amount of human
labour in the minds of mankind. Never before has the social
question been approached with such liveliness as today. Today
the social demands are apparent in life itself. Despite all
efforts, penetrating thoughts, despite the best will being
shown in the last decades which have been instilled in
capabilities, it was still insufficient to deal with the social
question as it comes to the fore in its true form today when
placed before the life of the human soul. Something
unbelievably tragic is stored against the efforts of present
day humanity. Something on which humanity has been preparing
itself for such a long time, now met only those who one would
like to believe had authority, but for which they were
apparently quite unprepared.
For
those who weren't occupied with the social question from the
viewpoint of theoretical science, nor out of mere notions and
not from one sided party views in the last decades, those would
have discovered that the most powerful contradictions of life
in just these areas always come to light. Perhaps the following
is one of the most obvious contradictions in the areas of
social life which has come forward. Much has been heard in
discussion, much can be read by people whose lives are
orientated towards the modern social movement. When within the
midst of a discussion, standing within the will of a modern
workforce itself one always has the feeling: Yes, here various
things are discussed regarding many questions and various life
forces. There is an attempt to give one or the other impulse a
direction. However, in what one could call social will is
something completely different to what is spoken about.
Regarding any kind of event in life, no can one come to a
clearer feeling than this: a more or less greater role is
played by the subconscious, undeclared elements than what comes
to the fore through apparently clear concepts delivered in a
sober discussion. Here is the point where one can find the
connection and not doubt the attempt in approaching the social
question from a specific point of view.
Here in Zurich and in other Swiss towns I have often spoken
about the question of spiritual science. From the standpoint of
spiritual scientific research, I have also approached the
social question for decades. If you hear about people who
consider themselves practical you can certainly doubt that a
convincing result will solve some relevant question out of
simple spiritual research. Only contradiction, which I have
pointed out in the striving within social life, drives away
this doubt. One sees how important personalities within the
social movement smile when the argument turns to people's
desire to find a solution for the social question out of this
or that spiritual effort; they smile because for them it is an
ideology, a grey theory. Out of thoughts, out of mere spiritual
life, so they think, nothing can be attributed towards the
burning social question of the present. However, if you look
more closely then it becomes obvious how the actual nerve, the
actual foundation for the modern-day proletarian movement does
not lie in what they are talking about, but it lies in their
thoughts.
The
modern proletarian movement is, perhaps like no other similar
movement in the world — when one looks more closely it strikes
you in the most imminent way — a movement born out of thoughts.
This I don't say purely out of consideration. If I'm permitted
to add a personal remark it would be this: For years I have
taught in an educational school among the most varied branches
of proletarian workers. I learnt to know what lives and strives
in the souls of the modern proletarian worker. From this I came
to recognise what lived in the labour unions in the most varied
occupations and range of professions. Thus, not only from the
point of view of theoretic consideration like in a clever play
of words do I want to express it, but as the result of a real
experience in life. Whosoever — this is so seldom the case in
leading intellectuals — has learnt to know the modern worker's
movement, where it is carried by the workers, will know what a
wonderful phenomenon this is, how a certain direction of
thought, a certain stream of thought has taken hold of these
souls. It is this which makes it so difficult today to take a
position regarding the social question, because such a small
possibility exists for the understanding, the mutual
understanding of the classes. The middle class has difficulty
in placing themselves into the souls of the proletarians, they
can hardly understand how it came about, one could call it,
that a still unknown mind with an elementary intelligence could
find a place such as this — be as it may towards this content
— that one can have human thought develop the highest measure
for an applied system, like the philosophy of Karl Marx.
Certainly, the philosophy of Karl Marx can be accepted by one
and rejected by another, perhaps on the same grounds as the
other. It may well be revised later for those observing social
life after the death of Marx and his friend Engels. I do not
wish to speak about the content of this philosophy at all. The
most important for me is the fact presented: there worked a
forceful thought impulse within the workforce, within the
proletarian world. Added to this, one can express it in the
following way: a practical movement, a pure philosophy of life
with universal human claims has never stood nearly as totally
alone based on a purely scientific thought as this modern
proletarian movement. It is to some extent the first of its
kind of movement in the world based purely on a scientific
basis. Nevertheless, if all of this is considered — I've
already indicated it — what the modern proletarian expresses
about his personal thoughts, desires and experiences seem
hardly important when considered through a penetrating
examination of life.
Many people have fiercely shown how this modern proletarian
social movement originated from the evolution of humanity
during the last few centuries. Vehemently it was shown how the
development of modern technology in particular, through the
development of the modern nature of machines, actually created
the proletariat in the modern sense; how through even the
forceful scientific turnaround of the new time, it created the
social question. Other sharp criticisms about the origin of the
social question I do not wish to repeat. However, it seems
important to me to characterize the present contradictions in
this modern proletarian movement. Certainly, it is important
that without the enormous turnaround, without the technical
revolution of the new age the modern social movement could not
have come to expression to such an extent. However intensively
as its origins are claimed out of purely scientific impulses,
out of economic powers, out of class clashes and out of class
struggles, what is obvious in social life today does not stand
as coming from mere scientific oppositions, mere scientific
forces if considered through penetrating soul observations of
the modern proletariat. Those who are familiar with a spiritual
scientific approach who considers all that is human, the
refinements and intimacies of soul life, even though these
carriers of the soul life are often not conscious, for them it
is clear that nothing which is technically or scientifically
created has an importance in today's social question but that
the facts are important which relate to the entirely different
interrelationships in life where some people are involved with
machines in the realm of big capitalist enterprises. Through
this placement something is awakened in these people that are
not directly related to what surrounds them and the economic
situation in which they are involved. What is awakened in them
is far more connected to the deepest lifetime habits of modern
humanity.
If
history is only considered in this way, as it wants to do now
again in the newer time out of social science which says
results follow from what went before — processes always refer
to earlier causes — it indicates that forces of change and
evolution are not considered as being alive in reality, but are
being seen as mere cause and effect — one could call it the
sober, arid connection of cause and effect expressed at certain
points of its revolutionary development.
Take a single example in human development. For my sake let's
take, if we may call it ‘successive’ development, what happens
between birth and the first change of teeth. An enormous
transformation takes place in the human body. Just observe what
develops during this period of life. There is no obvious
straight line connecting cause and effect. Then again, we can
consider what happens between the seventh and fourteenth years,
fifteen years and so on, in order to follow a straight line of
development from cause to effect. Now again a revolutionary
formation in the human body takes place towards adolescence.
These changes are less obvious later but they are there. Just
like such things happen which ruin the repetition of
comfortable but inaccurate claims that Nature makes no jumps,
jumps that take place in single organisms, it does appear in
the historical evolution of humanity. In the time between the
middle of the 14th and 15th centuries up
to today you have quite powerful evolutionary processes taking
place in human consciousness itself.
Just as a single human organism becomes something different
after puberty than in the specific direction it had been going
before, just so the human social organism has become something
different after the elementary, underlying aspects have been
validated by not merely following the straight line of cause
and effect. Whoever wishes to observe history knows that before
present time, humanity reacted instinctively but that now we
enter our present time in full consciousness, it must be
approached with full awareness. Due to this the social movement
takes on a particular characteristic, expressed in a word which
does not characterise it intensively enough: proletarian class
consciousness. With this expression ‘proletarian class
consciousness’ one should take less into account that it points
to a necessary battle where proletarians get mixed up with
other classes but rather much more that the social instincts
which lived in the souls of the proletarians earlier, have now
been transformed into a social awareness. Earlier, class
instinct existed. Now the basis of the social movement is class
consciousness.
This class consciousness, one could say, is only superficially
indicated when one takes the wording: proletarian class
consciousness. What is hidden in this expression ‘proletarian
class consciousness’ is something quite different. It could be
said — when one wants to briefly characterise this serious fact
— within the relationships of historical occupations, for
example expressed in the handwork or other crafts of olden
days, lies specific social instincts which shone through human
souls and worked out of human souls. These instincts enabled a
process to be brought about between the way people thought,
felt and acted, what they treasured for their honour, their joy
and their aesthetic needs. This work itself gave something to
the people.
When people were introduced to machines, when they entered into
the totally impersonal mechanism of modern capitalism, it was
no longer clearly transparent how the remuneration for the
human performance was evaluated but monetary increase of
capital became most important, so people were driven on the one
side by the power of machines and on the other side into modern
capitalistic economic regulations, having been torn out of
their present day relationship to the world and life which gave
them something personal, something towards personal joy,
personal honour and personal will impulses. They were to some
extent placed on the pinnacle of the personal beside the
machine, within the purely objective, impersonal circulation of
goods and capital, which they did not basically care for on a
human personal level. However, the human soul always strives
for fulfilment, wants to unfold its entire circumference. The
workers, torn from their characterised other relationships in
life, were torn loose from a full human life and were urged to
reflect about human dignity, urged to recreate human
dignity.
So,
hidden behind what we called proletarian class consciousness in
modern history's evolution was actually a dawning, a
brightening up of a self-created human consciousness out of the
souls of the people. Steering the consciousness gave rise to
the question: What am I as a human being? What meaning do I
have as a human being in the world? — Experiencing this gave
the opportunity to proletarians while being positioned beside
machines denying humanity, next to capital denying
humanity.
I
do still believe that the entire consideration of the social
question is placed on another basis if one thinks that, while
the rest of humanity more or less out of the context of their
lives were not brought out of old instincts as radically and
revolutionarily and drawn into the modern consciousness, the
modern proletarian radically entered into a conscious
understanding of themselves, whereas before they had been
driven by instincts and human dignity for individuals in the
community.
The
arrival of consciousness in the soul of proletarians is
connected to all kinds of other things which appeared earlier
in human evolution. Its arrival coincides with certain steps in
human thought, with certain steps in human development.
Basically, the historical development of humanity is poorly
understood. The historical development of humanity is basically
always approached from one or other party. Whoever considers
humanity's development objectively often sees it as completely
different from how statements are made about this development.
One can also say that whoever looks at what presently enjoys
the most authority today, namely science, knows, anything
proven with absolute objectivity has developed out of a
previous element and clearly carries indications of its origin
which can in turn take on other forms. If you look at science
and its brilliant methods, at its endless conscientious
research, so suitable at penetrating the phenomena of nature,
then you see that the most pervasive statement it has to admit
to is that basically it is hardly appropriate for understanding
the deepest, most intimate human feelings and experiences, that
it has little to say about actual concerns of the human being
when he or she turns their gaze to self-knowledge and
mindfulness. Science itself has also to some extent torn itself
away from human beings. It no longer carries a personal
character and it no longer speaks about the spiritual,
super-sensory or eternal in human beings. If science does
mention it then it is clearly shown as is the fashion today,
that it neither has the corresponding methods nor the
corresponding ways to research it.
One
can look back to a time when the form of science within the
development of humanity was fully integrated in the religious
conception of life, with religious experience and scientific
observation. The two separated. What was once united split
around the same time when this revolution towards objectivity
started, the time of machines, when modern capitalism found
expression. At the time of this radical scientific change it
was also the time religious evolution came to a standstill and
did not want to cooperate with scientific developments. At the
time Giordano Bruno became criticized over Galileo Galilei
(heliocentrism), remnants remained of a withdrawal from
intimate human experiences and feelings which needed expression
about nature and the world as such. Humanity lost the belief
that knowledge could be penetrated with a religious glow, with
religious warmth. Today one is proud that science can remain
free from all that is blameworthy in religion. During this time
when science freed itself more and more from religion, wanting
to become free of the spirit, into this time came the
development of the proletarian consciousness, the apprehension
of the human consciousness through the Proletariat.
Proletarianism penetrated into modern thinking, into modern
intelligence, which can be grasped by human intelligence. It
founded a science which no longer had the impact to capture and
fulfil the whole human being. This resulted in the modern
Proletariat having a specific form. The spiritual awareness of
humanity, the spiritual consciousness of earlier classes which
existed in earlier times lost the impact and human
circumstances more or less were delivered to abstract science.
Thus, the Proletarians in this new time saw science in
opposition to their souls, science which did not instil trust
that something can come out of it as a most true, inner
spiritual reality living in the outer sensory, scientific
activity. This was the type of science the Proletarian
confronted, was set against. It lived into human beings. From
the spiritual evolutionary basis, something rose up and today
appears as a naturalness, as an absolute truth, which can only
be recognised in its true nature if you have the ability to see
what is happening in the soul of a person. An observer with
deeper insight is moved the most by the manner and way which
the modern Proletarian talk about actual spiritual affairs,
about customs, morality, art, religion, even about science
within evolution, that all of this is included by expressions
of ideals. This is the most moving. In particular, it is most
moving to know that the modern Proletarian clearly believes
that everything, from thought, artistic creativity and
religious experience actually arises out of the human soul as a
falsely created image, an ideology. The actual reality is
however scientific battles, economic causes; they represent
reality. The reflection within the soul is human evolution,
considered as ideological. At least this throws an impulse back
into the pure materialistic reality of economic events. Even
though it works back on economic events, it still has had its
origins developed out of economic events.
This statement about spiritual life living in the modern
proletarian question was something far more real than what is
thought. Why have art, customs, morality, religion and the
spiritual life of the modern Proletarian become an ideology?
Because earlier ruling circles presented a science which no
longer wanted to uphold a living relationship with the actual
spiritual world, a science which no longer pointed to an
impulse directed at actual spirituality. Such a science can at
most lead to abstract concepts of natural laws. It can lead to
nothing other than seeing the spiritual as an ideology. It
produces methods which are only suitable on the one side for
the purely objective, non-human nature and within human life
only as economic events. When the modern proletarian had to
take over this direction of science, his gaze was as if
conquered by a mighty suggestive power which can only be linked
to such a science; the economic life. He now started to believe
that this economic life could be the only reality because for
him from a civil class, science becomes the directive as the
only truth for his economic life.
This was an unbelievably critical element because this gave the
proletarian movement its actual characteristic impulse. One can
see how old instincts within this proletarian movement were
still present, even in the last decades of the 19th
Century. One still finds in some proletarian programs such
items of discussion on the awareness of man's worth, the
preoccupation of rights leading to such real worthiness. Since
the nineties we see under the influence of this impulse which
I've just mentioned, how the Proletarians and their learned
advocate glances appear as a powerful persuasive force linked
to economic life. They no longer believed a spiritual or soul
element from elsewhere needed to enter as an impetus into the
realm of the social movement. They believed that only through
the development of the un-spiritual, economic life void of soul
could a sense of man's worth be brought about. They aimed at
revolutionizing economic life to such a degree that all the
harm resulting from egoism of single workers in private
enterprise would be taken from them and single employers doing
justice to the demands of human worth from the side of the
employees made impossible. Thus, the Proletarians considered
the only salvation to be the transfer of all private property
towards a means of production in a communal business or else a
common ownership. In addition, this depended basically upon
people deviating their gaze from any spiritual or soul
elements, regarding the spiritual as mere ideology when there
was a purely scientific method, firmly established, which could
be steered towards a pure economic process.
A
very peculiar fact now transpired, showing how many
contradictions lay in this modern proletarian movement. The
modern Proletarian believed that the economy itself had to
develop in such a way as to finally become a full human right.
To acquire human rights as it appeared to him, was what he
fought for. However, within his aspiration something appeared
which could never have originated if it came only out of
economic life. This is an important, penetrating fact of
discourse at the centre of various forms of the social question
arising from life's necessities of present day humanity which
was believed to have come out of economic life itself, but
which did not originate from economic life but developed much
more during the gradual evolution of the old serfdom of bodily
possession during the feudal times leading up to the modern
proletarian worker. Just as the circulation of goods,
circulation of money, the nature of capital, possession, the
nature of land and grounds and so on has developed something
out of modern life which cannot be expressed clearly by the
modern Proletarian, it is nevertheless clearly experienced as
the actual foundation of social will. It is like this: the
modern capitalistic economic order basically only knows about
its goods within its areas of circulation. It knows about
building wealth of goods within the economic organism. It is
within the capitalistic organism of the newer age where it has
become goods, but the Proletariat feels it may not be goods.
However, if he focuses scientifically on economic life he can't
say anything but: “It is goods.” That is in other
words his own labour.
When a person realizes where the basic impulse of the social
movement comes from, with his subconscious experiences through
his instincts as a modern Proletariat, a disgust grows towards
this idea that labour is sold to the employee just like goods,
this disgust grows because his labour is dependent on supply
and demand, it comes down to disgust for the labour commodity
as the actual basic impulse of the modern social movement, when
this is impartially considered and not penetrated and radically
spoken about adequately as socialistic theories then the point
is reached which gives rise to the urgent, nay burning question
regarding the social movement.
In
olden times, there were slaves. An entire person was sold as
goods. In serfdom, a little less of a person was sold, but
still nearly the whole person. Capital became the power which
made people a form of goods, namely labour. A method needs to
be found for dividing the rest of the circulation of goods with
labour as goods. Humanity will only realize what hides behind
this fact when the economy is not considered through persuasion
but through quite another method, when applied to the human
being itself, is understood, not out of economy but quite something
different flowing in a way which distances the human worker away
from the nature of goods. People must realise — and here
spiritual scientific research is available as a basis —
that the belief is wrong that through the consideration of only
the economic system which only fits the scientific method, the
way can be found of how the labour of individuals can become
members of the social organism. Only when the understanding is
reached that labour belongs to the economic system as much as
processes in the lung-, heart- and circulatory systems are the
same as in the nerves and head system, then one is on the same
track. The nervous system and senses centralised in the head is
an independent member of the human organism. The lung and heart
system are also independent members. Similarly, with the digestive
system. These things can be studied more precisely in my book
“Riddles of the Soul”
(Von Seelenrätseln).
It is characteristic of the human organism
that through their correct development and processes they are
not centralised but exist beside one another and work freely
together. If one can't understand the human organism in this
all-inclusive, penetrating way, then one could through science,
which has not been renewed and needs spiritual science to
reform it, not understand the social organism correctly. Today
it is believed that the human organism is centralised, while it
is in fact threefold.
In
the same way, the social organism is threefold. Today the
powerful persuasion considered as the economic system, is only
one member. Another member which needs to come out of this is
an understanding of the function of human labour in the entire
structure of the social organism. The two systems need to exist
side by side. The attribute linked to goods by the labour force
is wrongly given by modern thinking. This narrow minded, modern
thinking which needs to place the third independent member into
the social organism, the spiritual life, is made into a mere
ideology. The theoretical view that spirituality is mere
ideology, is the most harmless. The important element is that
people who have the point of view that the spirit is not rooted
at the base of all things in reality, but that it's only an
ideology, can't be the real spiritual impulse. Such a person
has no interest in his spiritual life allocating his true role
in the world. By examining the more modern necessities of life
in the proletarian consciousness then one finds no possible
insight in the three aspects of the social organism. It was
lost to them. Nationalization was striven for because it was
believed to be the only social organization which could conquer
everything. Spiritual scientific awareness may reveal a wider
horizon as even today in this burning time of appointed leaders
it is often given with reference to the social question. It
needs to be pointed out that what is, is really needed is the
necessity to renew thinking, the necessity to not only develop
a scientific way of observing social life which is being
substituted by traditional science but that it is necessary to
recreate a science, a new way of thinking which will become a
reality in the social organism, in human consciousness. This
will have to lead to so much unhappiness in modern times being
removed from consciousness. Those who do not work theoretically
but out of life itself, as I believe they have done so during
this hour, are also dispatched and made harmless by those who
call themselves practical, by saying: ‘Oh, from such
theoretical things nothing advantageous comes into the world.’
These people who practice practicality for life, who are the
real members of abstractions, these people whose practice is
nothing other than the limitation of their senses by the
narrowest boundaries, these have caused a multitude of bad luck
and catastrophes lately. If they are able to economise further
in all party directions, misfortunes will not come to an end
but will spread out immensely. The real life-practitioners must
maintain their proper positions in the public sphere and speak
about developmental possibilities in the spatial and temporal
social organism as in the case of every single human being.
These real life-practitioners who speak out of a deeper reality
are the ones upon whom we may depend. They are the ones who do
not need to disbelieve their own knowledge. However, as
practical people, also socialistic life practitioners, they see
their suffering and their regret on the other side with only
the belief that it will lead nowhere else other than to the
depletion of life. Those who as life practitioners want to work
out of the spirit, strive out of reality towards viable
reality.
Regarding the sense in which solutions can be found to the
question I attempted out of newer habits of today and revealing
their true form, how attempts at finding solutions could be
proven on the basis of an examination of the reality of social
life and the community's structure of humanity, I will allow
myself to speak about, the day after tomorrow.
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