Lecture Five by Rudolf Steiner given in Berlin, 9 March 1922
“Anthroposophy and Social Science.”
My
dear venerated guests! Besides the introductory words I want to
say regarding today's task, I want to limit myself to essential
indications in the following lectures to details of the economic
life in its relationship to the area coming under discussion.
Social science can't be talked about today from only a
theoretical standpoint. Today — I mean at this very present
moment — one can only speak about such questions while the dire
situation of the economic life existing in the civilised world
is in the background. Into this desolate situation was also
added something which I set out in my
“Key Notes of the Social Question”,
after the temporary end of the terrible catastrophe of world war.
At
that time, I urged everyone to observe the social economic life
in relation to the present time of world development. It is
this economic life at present which is intimately intertwined
with that which moves in the entire circumference of the social
question. Yes, most people at present can hardly sense that the
social question can be separated from the economic question.
Yet my book
“Key Notes of the Social Question”
[See Die Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage]
enters into establishing clarity in relation to the area in
question here, where it will be pointed out how the economic
life within the social organism needs to establish its own
independent position, such an independent position within which
the same facts and indications acquire their form only
according to economic principles, economic opinions and
impulses. In this respect my book — I say it here in quite
frankly, because that is what matters most — contains an inner
contradiction. Only, this book is not to be regarded as a
theoretical book on social science. This book wants to give
suggestions above all to life practitioners; this book was
written out of observations of the European economic life over
decades. Because this book strives to be completely realistic,
a direct encouragement for practical activities — practical
action in the moment — it had to contain a contradiction. This
contradiction is namely nothing other than what permeates our
entire social life and consists in our social life being in the
course of modern time mixed up, chaotic; only viable if it
develops its individual branches from out of its own
conditions.
I
must speak about the threefold divisions of the social organism
which leads to the economic life becoming separated in a fully,
free way from the organised legal and state life as well as
from the spiritual life, so that the economic life becomes, for
those who stand within it, formed out of their personal actions
and initiatives. However, we presently live at a time in which
such a situation doesn't exist, in which the economic life
stands within the structure of the general social organism. We
live in a time in which contradiction is a reality. As a
result, a manuscript, which has aimed at being written out of
reality and is being offered with suggestions based on reality,
can bring about a contradictory turn; it could only come from
the standpoint of bringing the contradiction to clarity, and
with this clarity achieve relationships.
I
am thus in an unusual position today by giving this
introduction because in connection to what is based on
anthroposophical grounds, created with anthroposophical methods
of thought, founded on decades of realistic observation of
European economic relationships — it is in the widest circles
where it was first misunderstood in the worst possible way. I
can only say I fully understand these misconceptions which have
been given to these underlying intentions; these
misunderstandings are phenomena of our time. However, I must be
on the other side of the standpoint, that in overcoming these
misconceptions lies what we first have to strive for
sociologically, socially, and to this I would like to say a few
words to orientate us.
When my book
“Key Notes of the Social Question”
was first published, it took place in the middle of the European
development which was immediately followed by the terrible war
catastrophe. It was during the time preceded by the Versailles
treaty, a time in which value relationships in central and
eastern European states were essentially different. Not from
some cuckoo land cloud impulse was my “Key notes”
written down, but thought through from the immediate world
situation in such a way that I hoped to believe a large number
of people would find it, and on the basis of these suggestions
search further, then one could — namely from central Europe —
throw an impulse also into the economic development which would
lead to a significant, acceptable ascent which from then on and
up to today had been a continual waste on the economy and
social life in general. At that time you could say to yourself
that a person could think out of this complicated world
situation: Perhaps no stone will remain standing as he has
created into the thought structures of the
“Key Notes of the Social Question”
—; that these ideas would be made
up out of those who were there. Still, it could be grasped and
would perhaps have given quite a different result to what could
be fixed in a manuscript. It is not important that ideas are
presented in a utopian manner, that an image can be presented
as a social futuristic organism, but it comes down to people
discovering and understanding: real problems exist here,
directly in life; we have to deal with these problems out of
our expertise and see if we can handle these issues by finding
an ever wider understanding for them.
Basically, something quite different has happened. On the one
hand theorists have all kinds of discussions regarding the
content of my book, discussions to which all manner of demands
are linked regarding its contents. Some theoreticians
misinterpreted what had been said completely, wanting to turn
it in a utopian sense by asking: How will this be, how will
that be? — ie: what one could actually expect. It turned out to
be a strange fact to me which took me by surprise because
precisely those practicing economists who work routinely within
the economic life, who know about this or that branch of
business and rejected what I had said, spoke about things in
their business which wasn't practiced in their business — that
these practitioners argue over the key points of the social
question and as a result, prove themselves to be abstract
theoreticians. This shows that one can have a routine practical
involvement in economic life — in the old sense; under the
newer relationships it can no longer be — these practitioners
were absolutely not in the position to what was being battered
here as also being related to problems of the economic life,
other than discussion points made in abstract theories; which
could raise doubts when you oppose practitioners and get
involved in their discussions because nothing concrete is
entered into but only completely trivial generalities are
repeated about the social question, if you question
someone.
The
other thing you could come across would be that at first those,
who on the whole are quite substantial practitioners, even
reject wanting to talk in this way about the possible form
which economic problems could take on. Going on from here, some
interest could be stimulated for instance in socialistic
circles; here the experience could be that what is wished for
is the least understood from that side and that everything
should be judged according to whether they fit into old party
templates or not. And so time passed by from when these
suggestions were thought about. The whole terrible
Valuta-misery came about which has to be considered in quite a
different way to how it is usually judged today.
With the first appearance of my
“Call to the German Nation and the Cultural World”
and then
“Key Notes of the Social Question”,
individual personalities immediately appeared who in their way are
quite honest about healing central European economic life, and said:
‘Yes, such proposals’ — they called them proposals
— ‘look quite
attractive, but it should first be asked how we can enhance the
Valuta.’ That was said during a time when the Valuta-misery
according to today's relationships, still existed in pure
paradise. Now it shows in such demands that tampering with only
external symptoms are wanted. It has little understanding that
Valuta relations battered on the surface show unhealthy
economic relationships, that with such a cure of a symptom the
evil is not addressed, and that it requires entering into much,
much deeper social economic conditions today if one wishes to
in some or other way arrive at speaking about problems
realistically, regarding the indications in my
“Key Notes of the Social Question.”
Now it has come about that what
I repeated in conclusion of lectures which I held in the end of
the “Key notes” at that time, had the call: people
have to wake up before it is too late — that this “too
late!” has come to the fore to a large degree today. We
are not at all in the position to resonate in the original
sense with the “Key notes” to understand them
because in the mean time chaos has broken into the economic
life where now quite other additions would be necessary and not
what was merely mentioned but what had to be spoken about
according to my conviction. One can hardly pass by a
characteristic common to our age if one wants to discuss the
most damaging aspect in today's economic life.
When I picked up the newspaper yesterday, I came across — and
it could today be one of the most important symptoms we find
everywhere, which our contemporaries express in single
sentences — I came across the article “Postponing the
resignation of Lloyd George until after the Genoa
Conference”. With this once again our daily situation is
announced because the characteristic of today is
“wait”. “We want to wait” — this has
actually become the ruling principle: wait until something
happens but you can't tell what it will actually be. This is
what is deeply embedded in the human soul today, on all
levels.
Now
I want to apparently — only apparently — introduce something
quite abstract: this is intended in a complete realistic way
because it indicates the forces working among us which have in
the course of human development gradually enabled us to arrive
at such a promising principle as “We want to wait”
and apply it to everything.
When we look back at ancient cultural development we find in
these old cultures, that factual thinking, in the sense as it
appeared in ancient times — you know this from my lectures I
held in the Philharmonic — can't be called purely
“scientific”. If one considers what stands in the
place of today's scientific thinking then you will know that
first of all, out of this thinking the economic life could not
have directly emerged. The economic life had to more or less
first become independent of human thinking, developed
instinctively — not meaning automatically — as exchange in
humanity. What wanted to be done in the economic life simply
developed out of practical life. People acted instinctively;
even expanded trade into this or that area but everything
happened more or less instinctively. Now, one can from some
point of view object according to today's understanding of
human freedom, human worth and so on, to the economic
conditions of olden times; all this would be good to be seen
from the other side, how the extraordinary symptoms of human
evolution, which even today can be instructive, for instance
appear in the way employees and employers — if you want to
apply a modern expression to olden times — lived in relation to
one another during ancient Greece, old Egypt and right over to
Asia. Today these things are taken in such a way that they
elicit the sharpest criticism; but, each such a criticism is
not historical and one must say: the conditions in the
corresponding epochs resulted from the feelings of humanity at
that time. This is what one needs to focus on.
The
other one is a fact connected to that shift in humanity's
evolution which I've often pointed out, of around the fifteenth
century, through which the soul constitution of civilised
humanity became something quite different. I've already said
outer history hardly points out that the collective soul
constitution of humanity has become something different. If we
ask ourselves how this human evolution relates to the economic
life, then we get the following answer. The time for
instinctive leadership as I've characterised, this time reached
into the epoch of the shift. With this shift intellectualism
arrived into the soul constitution; the drive to understand the
world purely through human mental logic. This drive, which
simply became a deep need in the human constitution, proved
itself so brilliantly in the field of natural science and in
that field which developed as a result: the field of technology
where in the most extraordinary way it has not celebrated
enough triumphs. However, this intellectualism — it was shown
in various arguments, which during this course have already
been dealt with — has shown itself as completely incapable of
understanding the phenomena of human life and human nature as
well as social relationships. With this intellectualism, this
intellectual orientation, the soul can be brought back in a
grandiose way to outer sense perceptible nature and its laws.
You can't intertwine the one with the other in this
intellectualism and while this intertwining goes on, get
organised and while organising yourself also enjoy life and
grasp spiritually permeated social relations. I would like to
say the following. The network of intellectual ideas is too
broad for what lies in social life. To think scientifically —
that, humanity learnt from this intellectualism. Everything has
been drawn into it, even theology. Intellectualism rules while
we observe and experiment with our entire scientific way of
thinking, and finally, what we have introduced into it which
can't fit between the lines of intellectualism, we see as not
scientific.
During this time intellectualism fell into the transition from
a purely instinctive economic life to one fuelled with human
thoughts. We may say that in the time when people didn't think
intellectually about the world, the economic life was directed
instinctively. When however, the time came when more and more
world economy and world traffic appeared, this tendency
required human beings to penetrate world economy and world
traffic with their thoughts. These thoughts only came from
intellectualism. As a result, everything which came from
economic thoughts — in mercantilism, physiocratism, in the
national economic ideas of Adam Smith, as in everything which
later appeared right up to Karl Marx — on the one side demanded
economic life, which was not merely instinctively mismanaged
but it was grasped with thoughts, however on the other side,
where thoughts could only come from intellectualism, all
economic observations would become thoroughly one-sided, so
that nothing could result from this economic observation which
could be seen as continuing to work in economic practice. On
the one hand you have the economic theorists who created axioms
from intellectual sentences — like for instance Ricardo, Adam
Smith or John Stuart Mill — and who now develop systems on the
basis of these principles on which they built a complete
self-contained mentality (Geistesart). On the other hand, the
economic practice needed and demanded penetration by the
spirit, but found no connection to what had continued to work
instinctively and as a result it fell into complete chaos.
So
these two streams became more and more common in recent times,
on the one hand were the economic theorists — without the
influence of economic practice; on the other hand the
practitioners with their old practices which had become a
continued routine and as a result let the economic life of the
civilised world fall into chaos. Obviously one must express
such things in a somewhat radical manner because then one will
really distinguish what works and what can be understood as a
problem.
If
one now wants to find, I might call it, a connection, a kind of
synthesis between economic thinking — which has gradually been
eradicated by practice — and this economic practice — then one
finds this connection at least in one of them. Recently a kind
of economic realism has developed; a kind of
economic-scientific realism which says that one can hardly find
general laws for economic life if economic facts are not
considered and events between single nations or groups are
looked at what has happened only in an external way, to find
guidelines for economic trade. From this basis has developed
the so-called social-political in economic law-making. This
means people gradually believed they have discovered through
mere observation of factual economic relationships in
connection with the permeating social connection that they
could find certain guidelines which could be brought to
expression in economic law-making; people now had, by taking
detours through the State, tried to actualize some of these
which had developed out of observation, but as a result it had
to be actually admitted that these foregoing observations of
real scientific economic laws could not at all emerge. Yes, we
are actually still basically in this situation today. Just when
one is in the situation of encountering decisive experiences, I
could call it social Ur-phenomena being judged in the right
way, then one sees the situation one is in.
You
all know that
Woodrow Wilson's
“fourteen points”
arrived at the dreadful chaotic point civilised life had
entered. What were these fourteen points actually? They were
basically nothing other than abstract principles of an
unworldly man, a person who knew little about reality, who
appeared in Versailles where he could actually have played an
important role. This man who was a stranger to reality wanted
to show the world how to get organised according to principles
founded on intellectualism. One only had to experience with
what inspiration civilised mankind hung on to these fourteen
points, however with the exclusion of a large part of the
central European population, they unfortunately also fell for
these fourteen points after a short period of time.
During 1917, by contrast, I tried to show individual central
European personalities who were interested but who were not
following it, but were either approached or brought to it, how
abstract, how unrealistic this was which wanted to be brought
into the social form, how so to speak everything which ruled in
the poor educational principles in modern civilisation was a
concentration of what this school master Woodrow Wilson had
introduced, and how the abstract principles — in a bad sense —
were received with enthusiasm. At that time, I tried to show
that a healing of the relationships could be entered into if
you take a stand in opposition to such abstract attitudes,
without excluding thoughts but which promotes realistic
thoughts in order to develop from a realistic basis. Then it
will not be a utopian invention — I would like to say the
Woodrow Wilson principles were the most condensed utopian,
utopianism already in its third potency, but one must be clear
about finding contemporary humanity in its real conditions in
order to discover impulses. Therefore, I gave up having to deal
with any utopian theory, refrain from even saying how capital,
how labour and suchlike must be formed; I gave at most some
examples for how one could think about forming the future
according to contemporary relationships. That was however only
as illustration to what should happen; because just as I have
spoken about the transformation of capital forces in my
“Key notes”, just so this transformation can be
fulfilled in a modified way. It is not important for me to
present an image of the future but to say from which
foundations, in a real way, one can now — not with
theoretically thoughts — come to an actual solution for the
so-called social question. It is not important to say that this
or that is the solution to the social question. I have already
had too many experiences in trying to find such a solution.
Already in the 1880's in pleasant Vienna all kinds of clever
people gathered nearly every afternoon after two o'clock. In
the course of one hour the social question was solved many
times! Those who considered the relationships of the present in
an unbiased manner, know very well that solutions which often
appear in thick books have much less worth than those
negotiated in comfortable Vienna with a stroke or two of the
pencil and fantastic words across a white tablecloth. That is
not the point and it was the worst mistake brought to me that
it should be something like that.
What I wanted to point out was the following. The solution of
the social problems can only be affected in a real way out of
itself; the result can't be solved through discussion but
through events and actions. Conditions first need to be
established to contain this activity, conditions I try to refer
to in my “Key notes” and in other sources. I'm
trying to show we need arrangements in our social organism
which makes it possible for a spiritual life to develop out of
its own conditions in which the spiritual life itself works;
that we need a second member, where only legal-state impulses
are at work, and besides that a third member, where only those
impulses work which come out of production and consumption of
goods, and lastly that it develops out of an associative
economic system, culminating in healthy pricing. In this way
the old class system will not be recalled. It won't be people
branching into an educational class, a defence class and a
nutritional class, but the modern human being has moved into
individuation and will not be divided into some particular
state.
What exists externally as an arrangement simply comes from the
forces in history's unfolding, which are separate from the
conditions out of which they are negotiated, to do something
for the spiritual life, the legal or state life and economic
life. Only when conditions are created which for instance the
economist can do purely out of economic impulses, which would
be modified by contemporary market trends, or should modify the
capitalistic relationships, only when such possibilities are
created among people will they develop something of a real
solution — which is in a continuous becoming — of what can be
called the social question.
It
is not important for me that the social question is solved
because I have to agree that the solution can't at any one
moment be given as something self-contained, while the social
problem from which it has originated is in a constant forward
flow. The social organism is something which becomes young, and
older, into which new impulses must flow, of which the
following can never be said: it has this or that form. If the
social organism is not so, that people sit together in one
parliament that mixes all interests together, where those
interested in economics make decisions about questions of the
spiritual life, legal life and economic questions and so on,
but when in a healthy social organism each individual sphere is
considered out of its own conditions, then the state life can
be placed on a realistic democratic foundation; then what is to
be said doesn't come from one person in one such a single
parliament, but it will emerge from continued ongoing
negotiations among individual branches of the social
organism.
In
this context my book was also a warning to finally stop the
fruitless arguments about the social question and to place it
on the foundation where the solution to the social questions
can be taken up every day. It was a call to the understanding
how to take what was abstract in thought and to really
translate this into thoughtful action. Added to this for
example the associations can serve the economic life. Such
associations are different from those which in recent times
have been established as socialization, and can be created
every day out of economic foundations. They are concerned with
those people who handle goods production, in the circulation
and consumption of goods — which every person is — to unite in
associations through which healthy pricing can develop. It is a
long way from knowledge of the subject and specialised
knowledge which have to be achieved by people linked to
associations, up to what doesn't come from legislation, also
not from results of discussions but results from experience,
which will give healthy pricing. Above all people have the
desire, the broad outline of what they want at the time and
which I am trying to present to you to discuss through these
introductory words, because the world is so schooled in
abstract thinking that one also takes this suggestion only from
the point of view of abstract thinking, which I'm only using as
an illustration, and discuss it for hours, while it should be
about really understanding how each day the members of the
social organism can be tackled in the way as indicated in my
“Key notes.”
Today it is not of importance to find theoretical solutions to
the social question but to search for conditions under which
people can live socially. They will live socially when the
social organism works according to its three members, just like
a natural organism under the influence of its relative
threefoldness also work towards unity.
You
see, it first has to be explained what is meant by such things.
When these things are spoken about, words are still required;
yet words need to be taken up according to their
intellectualised meaning which we attach to them today. These
are translated immediately into intellectual things which are
quite clearly not immersed in intellectualism. Therefore, in my
book I have spoken in such a way about capital and about the
natural foundations of production simply as ideas being thought
out. When we want to deal with things abstractly, we can create
definitions for a long time, and that has in fact happened.
Someone says with equal right: Capital is crystallized labour,
work which is stored up — and someone else says with the same
right: Capital is saved labour. You can do this with all
economic concepts if you remain within intellectualism. But
these are not all things which can be dealt with theoretically
only; we need to understand them in a lively form. If
practitioners do a lot for the benefit of their practice and
routine, cultivated out of the abstractions in these things,
they can achieve the following, which I want to explain through
a comparison.
I
look at Ernst Muller. He is small with completely childish
features and childish qualities. Twenty years later I look at
Ernst Muller and say that this is not Ernst Muller because he
is small and has childish qualities and quite a different
physiognomy. — Yes, if at that time I had formed a concept of
Ernst Muller and now want to attribute him with what at that
time I had met as his real being, then I'll be making a
terrible mistake. As little as people want to believe this, yet
it is the way people are thinking along economic routes. They
form thoughts and ideas about capital and labour and so on, and
they believe these ideas must always have the same validity. It
is not necessary to wait twenty years; you only need to go from
one employer to another, from one land to another to discover
the concept which you had created in one place is no longer
valid in another because a change has been brought about — like
in Ernst Muller. People don't recognise what exists when one
doesn't have mobile ideas moving within life.
This is what makes it possible that on an anthroposophical
foundation today's needs also find their expression in economic
institutions because Anthroposophy's nature involves flexible
ideas, which can teach you how you can provide your ideas with
forces of growth and inner mobility and that with such ideas —
as little as today's practitioners want to believe it — they
can dive into other kinds of reality, which are revealed in the
social life between one person and another, between one nation
to another, through to entirely what has become necessary now
in the artificially impaired world economy. One can therefore
rightly say it is not an external attempt made on
Anthroposophical grounds towards social ideas but to arrive at
social impulses.
I
still remember a time when many discussions took place about
these things. I always had to stress: I'm talking about social
impulses! — This upset people terribly. Obviously I
should have said: social ideas or social thoughts, because the
people only had thoughts in their heads about such things. That
I spoke about impulses angered them terribly because they
hadn't noticed I used “impulses” on this basis of
indicating realities and not abstract ideas. Obviously one had
to express oneself in abstract ideas.
Today it must again be grasped that a new understanding must be
found for what is called the social question. We live in
different relationships today than in the year 1919. Time is
moving fast, especially in economic areas. It is necessary that
even those very ideas which were considered at that time as
mobile, continue to be contained in the flow and that one's
observations of viewpoints stay within the spiritual
present.
Whoever wants to look at the reality of relationships within
the economic life knows they have essentially changed since the
writing of my “Key notes” and one can no longer
just use deductions as before. At least in the “Key
notes” one would find an attempt to search for this
method of social thinking in a realistic way, perhaps exactly
because this attempt has grown from the soil where realities
are always looked for, where one doesn't want to fall into
fanaticism or false mysticism — because this attempt is grown
out of accuracy on the wrestling ground of the anthroposophical
world view.
|