Steiner

 

How Actual Life Requires that We Should Set about Solving Social Needs and Problems

The characteristic feature, then, to which the special form of the social question in recent times is directly traceable, may be expressed as follows: The modern life of industrial economy, grounded in technical science,—modern capitalism,—all this has acted in a sort of instinctive way, like a force of nature, and given modern social life its peculiar internal structure and method. But whilst men’s attention grew thus absorbed in all that technical industry and capitalism brought with them, it became at the same time diverted from other branches, other departments of social life,—departments whose workings [47]no less require direction by conscious human intelligence, if the body social is to be a healthy one.

I may perhaps be allowed to start by drawing a comparison, in order the better to describe what here, in any really comprehensive study of the social question, reveals itself as a powerful, indeed a main, actuating impulse. It must however be borne in mind, that this comparison is intended as a comparison only, used to help out the human understanding and give it the turn of thought needed for picturing what health in the body social implies. Accepting this point of view, then, if one turns to the study of that most complex of all natural organisms, the human organism, it is noticeable, that, running through the whole structure and life of it, there are three systems, working side by side, and each functioning to a certain extent separately and independently of the others. These three neighbour systems may be distinguished as follows: One system, forming a province all to itself in the natural [48]human organism, is that which comprises the life of the nerves and senses. It may be named, after the principal part of the organism where the nerve and sense-life is more or less centred,—the head-system. Second comes what I should like to call the rhythmic system, which, to arrive at any real understanding of man’s organisation, must be recognised as forming another branch to itself. This rhythmic system comprises the breathing, the circulation of the blood,—all that finds expression in rhythmic processes within the human organism. The third system, then, must be recognised as comprising all those organs and functions that have to do with actual matter-changes—the metabolic process. These three systems together comprise everything which, duly co-ordinated, keeps the whole human complex in healthy working order.

In my book, “Riddles of the Soul,” I have already attempted to give a brief description of this threefold character of [49]the natural human organism in a way that tallies completely with what scientific research has as yet to tell us on the subject. It seems to me clear, that biology, physiology, and natural science in general as it deals with man, are all rapidly tending to a point of view which will shew, that what keeps the whole complex process of the human organism in working order is just this comparatively separate functioning of its three separate systems, the head system, the circulation, or chest system and the metabolic system,—that there is no such thing as absolute centralisation in the human organism, and, moreover, that each of these systems has its own special and distinct relation to the outer world, the head system through the senses, the rhythmic or circulatory system through the breathing, the metabolic system through the organs of nourishment and organs of movement. What I have here indicated goes much deeper down to spiritual sources that I have tried to utilise for natural science. In natural-science circles themselves, [50]it is a fact not yet so generally recognised as might perhaps be desirable for the advancement of knowledge; but that merely means that our habits of thought, our whole way of picturing the world to ourselves, is not yet completely adapted to the inner life and being of nature’s workings, as manifested, for instance, in the human organism. People of course may say, “No matter. Natural science can afford to wait. She will come to her ideals bit by bit, and views such as yours will gain recognition all in good time.” But the body social cannot afford to wait, neither for the right views nor for the right practice. Here an understanding is necessary,—if only an instinctive one,—of what the body social needs,—and not merely an understanding amongst a handful of experts, but in every single human soul;—for every human soul takes its own share in the general working of the body social. Sane thinking and feeling, sane will and desires as to the form to be given the body social,—these are only to be developed, when one [51]comes to recognise,—even though only instinctively,—that, in order to thrive, the social organism, like the natural one, requires to be threefold.

Now, since Schäffle wrote his book on the structure of the social organism, all sorts of attempts have been made to trace out analogies between the organic structure of a natural creature,—a human being, say,—and of a community of human beings. People have tried to map out the body social into cells, network of cells, tissues and so forth. Only a little while ago, there was a book published by Méray, “World Mutations,” in which various natural science facts and laws were simply transferred to what is supposed to be man’s social organism. That sort of analogy-game has nothing whatever to do with what is meant here; and anyone who mistakes what is said above for just such another play upon analogies between the natural and the social organism, has plainly not entered into the spirit of these observations. The present comparison is not an [52]attempt to take some natural science truth and transplant it into the social system. Its object is quite different:—namely, to use the human body as an object lesson for training human thought and feeling to a sense of what organic life requires, and then to apply this perceptive sense to the body social. If one simply transfers to the body social something one thinks one has found out about the human body,—as is commonly done,—it merely shews that one is not willing to acquire the faculties needed for studying the social organism in the way one has to study the natural organism,—that is, as a thing by itself, with special laws of its own.

It might again be thought, that this manner of depicting the social organism arises from the belief that it should be “built up” after some cut-and-dried theory borrowed from natural science. Nothing could be further from all that is here in question. What I am trying to shew is something very different. The present crisis in the history of mankind demands the development [53]in every single human being of certain faculties of apprehension, of which the first rudiments must be started by the schools and system of education,—like the first four rules of arithmetic. Hitherto, the body social received its older forms from something that never entered consciously into the life of the human soul; but in the future this force will cease to be active. Fresh evolutionary impulses are coming in, and from now on will be active in human life; and it is part of them, that every individual should be required to have these faculties of apprehension, just as each individual has long been required to have a certain measure of education. From now on, it is necessary that the individual should be trained to have a healthy sense of how the forces of the body social must work in order for it to live. People must learn to feel, that it would be unhealthy, anti-social, not to possess such sense of what the body social needs and to want to take one’s place in it.

One hears much talk to-day about “socialisation” [54]as the thing that the age needs. But this socialisation will prove no true cure but a quack remedy, possibly even a fatal one for social life, unless in men’s hearts, in men’s souls, there dawns at least an instinctive perception of the necessity for a threefold division of the body social. If the body social is to function healthily, it must regularly develope three organic divisions such as here described.

One of these three divisions is the economic life. It is the best one to begin with here, because it has obviously, through modern technical industry and modern capitalism, worked its way into the whole structure of human society, to the subordination of everything else. This economic life requires to form an independent organic branch by itself within the body social,—relatively as independent as the nervous and sensory system within the human body. Its concern is with everything in the nature of production of commodities, circulation of commodities, consumption of commodities.[55]

Next comes the life of public right,—political life in the proper sense. This must be recognised as forming a second branch of the body social. To this branch belongs what one might term the true life of the State,—taking “State” in the sense in which it was formerly applied to a community possessing common rights.

Whilst economic life is concerned with all that a man needs from Nature and what he himself produces from Nature,—with commodities and the circulation and consumption of commodities,—the second branch of the body social can have no other concern than what is involved in purely human relations, in that which comes up from the deep-recesses of the inner life and affects man’s relation towards man. It is essential to a right understanding of the composition of the social organism, that one should clearly recognise the difference between the system of “public right,” which can only deal from inner and purely human grounds with man-to-man relations, and the economic system, which is concerned [56]solely with the production, circulation and consumption of commodities. People must become possessed of an instinctive sense for distinguishing between these two in life, so that in practice the economic life and the life of “right” will be kept distinct;—just as, in man’s natural organism, the lungs’ function in working up the outer air keeps distinct from the processes going on in the nervous and sensory life.

As the third division, alongside the other two and equally independent, are to be understood all those things in the social organism which are connected with mental and spiritual life. The term “spiritual culture,” or “everything that is connected with mental and spiritual life,” is scarcely a term that accurately describes it in any way. Perhaps one might more accurately express it as “Everything that rests on the natural endowments of each single human being—everything that plays a part in the body social on the ground of the natural endowments, both spiritual and physical, of the individual.”[57]

The first function,—the economic one,—has to do with everything that must exist in order that man may keep straight in his material adjustments to the world around him. The second function has to do with whatever must exist in the body social because of men’s personal relations to one another. The third function has to do with all that must spring from the personal individuality of each human being, and must be incorporated as personal individuality in the body social.

The more true it is that our social life has of recent years taken its stamp from modern technical industry and modern capitalism, the more necessary it is, that the injury thus unavoidably done to the body social should be healed by bringing man, and man’s communal life, into right relation to these three systems of the body social. Economic life has, in recent times, singly and of itself, taken on quite new forms. And because it has worked all alone, unbalanced, it has asserted undue power and preponderance in human life. [58]The two other branches of social life have not until now been in a position to work themselves in this matter-of-course way into the social organism and become incorporated with it according to their own proper laws. Here man must step in, with the instinctive sense I spoke of, and set to work to evolve the threefold order, each individual working on the spot and at the spot where he happens to be. To attempt to solve the social problem in the way meant here, will leave not one individual without his task, now and in the days that are coming.

To begin with the first division of the body social, the economic life:—This is grounded primarily in conditions of Nature,—just as the individual man starts with special qualities of mind and body as the basis for what he may be able to make of himself by study, education and the teaching of life. This nature-basis sets a unique stamp on economic life, and through economic life on the whole organism of society. It is there, this nature-basis, and [59]no methods of social organisation, no manner of socialising measures, can affect it,—at least, not radically. One must accept this nature-basis as the groundwork of life for the body social,—just as, in educating an individual, one must take his natural qualities as groundwork,—how nature has endowed him in this or that respect, his mental and physical power. Every experiment in socialisation, every attempt at giving man’s communal life an economic form, must take this nature-basis into account. At the bottom of all circulation of commodities, of all human labour, and of every form of spiritual life too, there lies something primal, elementary, basic, which links man to a bit of nature. The connection between a social organism and its nature-basis is a thing that has to be taken into consideration,—just as one has to consider an individual in regard to his personal endowment, when it is a question of his learning something.—This is most obvious in extreme cases. Take, for instance, those parts of the earth, where the [60]banana affords man an easily accessible form of food. Here, it will be a question of the amount and kind of labour that must be expended to bring the banana from its place of origin to a convenient spot and deliver it ready for consumption; and this will enter into all considerations of men’s communal life together. If one compares the human labour, that must be exerted to make the banana ready for human consumption, with the labour that must be exerted in Central Europe, say, to make wheat ready for consumption, it is at least three hundred times less for the banana than for the wheat.

Of course that is an extreme case. But similar differences in proportion to the nature-basis exist between the amounts of labour that are requisite in the other branches of production represented in the various social communities of Europe. The differences are not so marked as in the case of bananas and wheat,—still, they exist. Accordingly, it is inherent to the body economic, that the amount of labour-power [61]which man has to put into the economic process is proportionate to the nature-basis of his economic activities. Compare the wheat-yields alone:—In Germany, in districts of average fertility, the returns on wheat cultivation represent about a sevenfold to eightfold crop on the seed sewn; in Chile, the crop is twelvefold; in Northern Mexico, seventeenfold; in Peru, twenty fold. (See Jensen.)

The whole of this living complex of processes, that begin with man’s relation to nature, and continue through all that man has to do to transform nature’s products, down to the point where they are ready for consumption,—these processes, and these alone for a healthy social organism, comprise its economic system. In the social organism, the economic system occupies somewhat the same place as is occupied in the whole human organism by the head-system, which conditions the individual’s abilities. But this head-system is dependent on the lung-and-heart system; and in the same way the economic system [62]is dependent on the services of human labour. The head, however, cannot of itself alone regulate the breathing; and neither should the system of human labour-power be regulated by the forces that are operative within the economic life itself. It is through his interests that man is engaged in economic life, and these have their foundation in the needs of his soul and spirit.—In what way can a social organism most expediently incorporate men’s interests, so that on the one hand the individual may find in this social organism the best possible means of satisfying his personal interest, whilst being economically employed to the best advantage?—This is the question that has to be practically solved in the institutions of the body economic. It can only be solved, if these individual interests are given really free scope, and if at the same time there exists the will and possibility to do what is necessary to their satisfaction. These interests arise in a region outside the confines of the economic life. They grow up as man’s own being [63]unfolds its soul and physical nature. It is the business of economic life to make arrangements for their satisfaction. The only arrangement however that the economic life can make, are such as are limited to the delivery and exchange of commodities,—that is of goods which acquire their value from men’s wants. The value of a commodity comes from the person consuming it. And owing to the fact, that its value comes from the consumer, a commodity occupies quite a different position within the social organism from other things that have a value for man as part of that organism. Study the whole circle of economic life, putting aside all preconceptions,—the production, circulation and consumption of commodities going on within it. One observes at once the difference in character between the relation that arises when one man makes commodities for another, and that human relation that has its foundation in mutual right. One will not however stop short at merely observing the difference; one will follow it up [64]practically, and insist that economic life and the life of “right” should be kept completely separate within the body social. Institutions devoted to the production and exchange of commodities require men to develope forms of activity that are not immediately productive of the very best impulses for their mutual relations in “right.” Within the economic sphere man turns to his fellow because it suits their reciprocal interests. Radically different is the link between man and man in the sphere of “right.”

It may be thought perhaps, that the distinction which life requires between the two things is adequately recognised, if the institutions established for the purposes of economic life also make provision for the “rights” that are involved in the mutual relations of the people engaged in it. But such a notion has no root in reality. The relation “in right,” that necessarily exists between a man and his fellows, is one that can only be rightly felt and lived outside the economic sphere, on totally different [65]soil, not inside it. In the healthy social organism, therefore, there must be another system of life, alongside the economic life and independent of it, where human rights can grow up and find suitable administration. But the “rights” life is, strictly, the political sphere,—the true sphere of the State. If the interests that men have to serve in their economic life are carried over into the legislation and administration of the “rights” State, then these rights as they grow up will merely be an expression of economic interests; whilst, if the “rights” State takes on the management of economic affairs, it is no longer fitted to rule men’s “life of rights”; since all its measures and institutions will be forced to serve man’s need for commodities, and thereby diverted from those impulses which make for the life of rights.

A healthy social organism, therefore, requires, as a second branch alongside the body economic, the independent political life of the State. In the separate body economic, the forces of economic life itself [66]will guide men to such institutions as best serve the production and interchange of commodities. In the body politic, the State, institutions will arise, where dealings between individuals and groups will be settled on lines that satisfy men’s sense of right. This demand for complete separation of the “rights-State” from the economic sphere proceeds from a standpoint of reality. Reality is not the standpoint of those who seek to combine the life of rights and economics in one. The people engaged in economic life of course possess the sense of right, but they will only be able to legislate and administrate in the way “right” requires,—i.e., from the sense of right alone without any admixture of economic interests,—when they come to consider questions of right independently, in a “rights” State that takes, quâ State, no part in economic life. A “rights” State, such as this, has its own legislative and administrative bodies, both constructed according to those principles that ensue from the modern sense of right. It will be built up [67]on those impulses in human consciousness, which go to-day by the name of “democratic.” The legislative and administrative bodies in the economic domain will arise out of the forces of economic life. Such transactions as are necessary between the executive heads of the legislative and administrative bodies of “rights” and economics respectively, will be carried on pretty much as between the governments of sovereign states to-day. This co-ordination of the two systems will make it possible for developments in the one body to exert the needful influence on the other. This influence of the two spheres on one another is prevented, when one of them tries to develope within itself the element that should come to it from the other.

The economic life, then, is dependent on the one hand on those relations in “right,” which the State establishes between the persons and groups of persons engaged in economic work, just as, on the other hand, it is subject to the conditions of the nature-basis (climate, local features, [68]presence of mineral wealth, etc.). The bounds are thus marked out on either side for the proper and possible activities of economic life. Just as nature creates predetermining conditions, which lie outside the economic sphere, and must be accepted by the man at work in it as the given premises on which all his economic work must be based,—so everything in the economic sphere that establishes a “relation in right” between man and man, must, in a healthy social organism, be regulated by the “rights-State,” which, like the nature-basis, goes on alongside and independently of the economic life. In the present social organism,—as developed in the course of mankind’s historic evolution up till now,—economic life occupies an unduly large place, and sets the peculiar stamp that it has acquired from the machine-age and modern capitalism upon the whole social movement. It has come to include more than it should include in any healthy society. In the present day, trafficking to and fro within the economic circuit, [69]where only commodities should traffic, we find human labour-power, and human rights besides. At the present day, within the body economic, one can truck not only commodities for commodities, but commodities for human labour,—and for human rights as well, and all by the very same economic process. (By “commodity” I mean everything which through human activity has acquired the form in which it is finally brought by man to its place of destination for consumption. Economists may perhaps find this definition objectionable or inadequate; but it may be serviceable towards an understanding of what properly belongs to economic life.1)

When anyone acquires a plot of land by purchase, one must regard it as an exchange of the land for commodities for [70]which the purchase money stands proxy. The plot of land however does not act as a commodity in economic life. It holds its position in the body social through the “right” the owner has to use it. There is an essential difference between this right of use, and the relation of a producer to the commodity he produces. From the very nature of the producer’s relation to his product, it cannot possibly enter into the totally different kind of man-to-man relation created by the fact that someone has been granted the sole right to use a certain piece of land. Other men are obliged to live on this land, or the owner sets them to work on it for their living; and thus he brings them into a State of dependence upon himself. The fact of mutually exchanging genuine commodities, which one produces or consumes, does not establish a dependence that affects the man-to-man relation in the same kind of way.

To an unprejudiced mind it is clear, that a fact of actual life, such as this, must, in a healthy society, find due expression in [71]its social institutions. So long as there is simply an interchange of commodities for commodities in economic life, the value of these commodities is determined independently of the relations-of-right existing between individuals or groups. Directly commodities are interchanged for rights, the “rights relation” is itself affected. It is not a question of the exchange in itself; such an exchange is the inevitable life-element of the modern social organism, resting as it does on division of labour. The point is, that through this interchange of rights and commodities, “right” itself is turned into a commodity, when the source of “right” lies within the economic life. The only way of preventing this, is by having two sets of institutions in the body social,—one, whose sole and only object it is to conduct commodities in the most expedient manner along its circuit, the other regulating those human rights involved in commodity-exchange which arise between the individuals engaged in producing, trading and consuming. Such [72]rights are not distinct in their nature from any other rights that necessarily exist in all relations between persons, quite independent of commodity-exchange. If I injure or benefit my fellow-man by the sale of a commodity, it falls within the same social category as an injury or benefit due to some action or negligence not directly expressed in an exchange of commodities.

In the organisation of economic life, that familiarity with business, which comes from practical experience and specialist training, will give the point of view needed by the person at the head of affairs. In the “rights” organisation, the laws and administration will give effect to the general sense of right in the dealings of persons and groups with one another. The economic organisation will assist the formation of Associations amongst people who from their calling, or as consumers, have the same interests or similar requirements. And this network of Associations, working together, will build up the whole fabric of industrial economy, The economic organisation [73]will grow up on an associative basis, and out of the links between the Associations. The work of the Associations will be purely economic in character, and be carried on on a basis of “rights” provided by the rights-organisation. These Associations, being able to make their economic interests recognised in the representative and administrative bodies of the economic organisation, will not feel any need to force themselves into the legislative or executive government of the “rights-State” (as, for instance, a Landowners’ League, or Manufacturers’ Party, or a Socialist party representing an industrial programme), in order to effect there what they have no power to achieve within the limits of the economic life. If the “rights-State” again takes no part whatever in any branch of industrial economy, then the institutions it establishes will be such only as spring from the sense of right amongst its members. Although the persons who sit on the representative body of the rights-State may, and of course will, be the same as are taking an [74]active part in economic life, yet, owing to the division of function, economic life will not be able to exert such an influence on the “rights life,” that the health of the whole body social is undermined,—as it can be, when the state itself organises branches of economic life, with representatives of the economic world as state-legislators, making laws to suit economic interests.

A typical example of the fusion of the economic life with the rights-life was afforded by Austria. According to the constitution adopted by Austria in the eighteen-sixties, the representatives of the imperial assembly, the “Reichsrat,” of that compound territory, were elected from the communities representing the four branches of economic life:—the landed proprietors,—the chambers of commerce,—the towns, markets and industrial centres,—and the rural areas. Obviously, in this composition of the representative State-assembly, the first and only idea was, that of playing off the economic interests [75]against one another, in the belief that a system of political rights must be the outcome. No doubt the disruptive forces of her divers nationalities contributed largely to Austria’s downfall. But it may be taken as no less certain, that if an opportunity had been given for developing a system of “rights,” working alongside and outside of the economic one, it would, from the common sense of right, have evolved a form of society in which the different nationalities could have lived together in unity.

A person engaged in public life to-day usually turns his attention to things in it that are only of secondary consideration. This is because his habits of thought lead him to regard the body social as uniform in structure. As a uniform structure, there is no form of suffrage he can devise that will fit it; for the economic interest and the impulses of human rights will come into mutual conflict upon the representative body, however it may be elected; and the conflict between them will affect social life in a way that must result in severe [76]shocks to the whole organism of society. The first and indispensable object to be worked for in public life to-day must be the radical separation of economic life from the “rights” organisation. And as the separation becomes gradually established, and people grow into it, the two organisations will each in the process discover its own most appropriate method of selecting its legislators and administrature. Amongst all that at the present moment is clamouring for settlement, forms of suffrage, although they bear on fundamental issues, are nevertheless of secondary consideration.

Where the old conditions still exist, these can be taken as the basis from which to work towards the new separation of function. Where the old order has already melted away, or is in process of dissolution, there individuals and little groups of people must find the initiative to start reconstructing along the new lines of growth. To try in 24 hours to effect a transformation in public life, is recognised by thoughtful [77]socialists themselves as midsummer madness. They look to gradual opportune changes to bring about what they regard as social welfare. The light of facts, however,—must make it plain to any impartial observer, that a reasoning will and purpose are needed to make a new social order, and are imperatively demanded by the forces at work in mankind’s historic evolution.

These remarks will be regarded as “unpractical” by someone who regards nothing as practicable outside the narrow horizon of his customary life. Unless he can see things differently, any influence he may retain in any sphere of life will not tend to heal the disease in the body social, but only to make it worse. It was people of his way of thinking who helped to bring about the present state of affairs. There must be a reversal of the movement which has set in in leading circles, and which has already brought various departments of economic life (e.g., the postal and railway services, etc.), within the workings of the State. Its opposite must begin: a movement [78]towards the elimination of all economic activity from the domain of politics and State organisation. Thinkers, whose whole will and purpose, as they believe, is directed to the welfare of society, take this movement towards State control, started by the hitherto governing circles, and push it to its logical extreme. They propose to socialise all the materials of economic life, in so far as they are means of production. A healthy course of development, however, will give economic life its independence, and will give the political State a system of “right” through which it can bring its influence to bear on the body economic,—so that the individual shall not feel that his function within the body social gives the lie to his sense of right.

When one considers the work that a man does for the body social by means of his physical labour-power, it is plain that the above reflections are grounded in the actual life of men. The position which labour has come to occupy in the social order under the capitalistic form of economy, [79]is such, that is purchased by the employer from the employed as a commodity. An exchange is effected between money (as representing commodities) and labour. But in reality no such exchange can take place; it only appears to do so.2 What really happens is, that the employer receives in return from the worker commodities that cannot exist, unless the worker devotes his labour-power to creating them. The worker receives one part, the employer the other part of the commodity so created. The production of the commodity is the result of a co-operation between employer and employed. The product of their joint action is that which first passes into the circuit of economic life. For the product to come into existence, there must be a “relation in right” between worker and [80]“enterpriser”; but the capitalist type of economy is able to convert this “rights” relation into one determined by the employer’s superiority in economic power over the employed. In a healthy social order, it will be obvious that labour cannot be paid for, that one cannot set an economic value upon it comparable to the value of a commodity. The commodity produced by this labour first acquires an economic value by comparison with other commodities. The kind of work a man must do for the maintenance of the body social, how he does it, and the amount, must be settled according to his abilities and the conditions of a decent human existence. And this is only possible when such questions are settled by the political state, quite independently of the provisions and regulations made in the economic life.

This settlement of labour conditions outside economics, pre-establishes a basis of value for commodities comparable to the basis already established by the conditions of nature. The value of one commodity, as [81]measured by another, is increased by the fact that its raw material is more difficult to procure; and, similarly, the value of a commodity must be made dependent on the kind and amount of labour which the “rights” system allows to be expended on its production.3

Thus economic life has its conditions fixed on two sides. On one, there is the “nature-basis,” which man must take as he finds it; on the other, will be the “rights-basis” which has to be created on the free and independent ground of the political State,—detached from economic life, and out of the common sense of right.

It is obvious, that in a social organism conducted in this way the standard of economic well-being will rise and fall with the amount of labour which the common sense [82]of right expends upon it. This however must be so in a healthy society. Only the subordination of the general economic prosperity to the common sense of right can prevent man from being so used up and consumed by economic life that his existence no longer seems to him worthy of his humanity. And it is this sense of an existence unworthy of human beings that is, in reality, at the bottom of the convulsions in the body social.

Should the general standard of economic well-being be too greatly lowered on the “rights” side, there is a way of preventing this, just as there is a way of improving the nature-basis. One can employ technical means to make a less productive soil more productive; and, if prosperity declines over much, the mode and amount of work can be changed. Only, such changes should not be a direct consequence of processes in the economic life; they must be the outcome of insight, arrived at on the free ground of “rights,” independent of economic life.[83]

There is, however, another element again, which enters into everything that is contributed towards the organisation of social life, whether by the economic life or by the “rights-consciousness.” This element comes from a third source: the personal abilities of the individual. This third domain includes everything from the loftiest achievements of the human mind to that element in all the works of men which comes from their bodily ability to render greater or less service to the body social. A healthy social organism must necessarily receive and assimilate whatever comes from this source in quite a different manner from what comes to it from the life of the State or that finds expression in the interchange of commodities. To absorb this element healthily into social life can only be done in one way, and that is, by leaving it entirely to men’s free receptivity and to the impulses which personal ability itself brings with it. What is performed at the promptings of personal ability, loses to a great extent the very groundwork [84]of its existence, when subjected to artificial influences from the State organisation or from the economic system. For the only true groundwork of such performances lies in that inherent force that finds its evolution through human performance itself. If again the way in which such individual performances are taken up into the body social directly depends on the economic life,—or if the State organises it,—there is then a check upon that free spontaneous receptivity, which is the only sound and wholesome channel for their reception. For the spiritual life of the body social, there is but one possible line of healthy evolution;—and it must not be forgotten, by what innumerable fine threads this spiritual life is connected with the evolution of all other individual potentialities in human life. What it does, must be the outcome of its own impulses; and those who receive its services must be closely bound up with it in sympathy and understanding. Such, as here sketched, are the requisite conditions for a sound [85]evolution of the spiritual life of the body social. What prevents them from being clearly perceived, is that people’s eyes are blurred through constantly seeing the spiritual life in great part fused and confounded with the political State system. The fusion has been taking place through several hundreds of years, and they have grown accustomed to it. They talk, it is true, about “freedom of knowledge” and “freedom of education”; but, all the same, they consider it a matter of course that the political State should have control of this “free” knowledge and “free” education. They do not see nor feel, how in this way the state is bringing all spiritual life into dependence on state requirements. The notion is, that the State provides the educational posts, and that the spiritual life then unfolds “freely” under the hands of the people who fill these State posts. Through long thinking in this way, people come to forget what an intimate connection there is between the inmost nature of man and the substance of the spiritual life growing [86]up within him, and how impossible it is for the growth of this spiritual substance to be really free, if it owes its place in the body social to any other impulses than those alone which proceed from the spiritual life itself. Science, with all that part of spiritual life which it affects, has received its whole cast from the fact of its management forming part of the State system in recent centuries. And not only so, but this fusion with the State has set its stamp on the substance of science as well. Of course, the results of mathematics or physics cannot be directly influenced by the State. But consider history and other subjects of general culture:—Have not they come to reflect the connection of their professional representatives with the State system?—to be an obedient mirror of State requirements?

The peculiar stamp thus acquired by our present-day mental conceptions, in which the scientific turn of thought predominates over every other, is just what makes them a mere ideology as they affect the working-class. [87]The workers have observed, how men’s thoughts acquire a certain character, arising out of the requirements of state life,—a State life that suits the interests of the ruling classes. It was a reflection of material interests, and of the war of interests, that the worker saw when he looked into his thoughts. Thus there arose in him a sense that all spiritual life whatever was ideology, a mirrored image of the economic order of affairs. Such a view of things works havoc with men’s spiritual life. But its blighting effects will cease, once it becomes possible for them to feel that in the spiritual domain there reigns a reality that transcends material outward life and bears its own substance within itself. No such sense of a spiritual reality can, however, possibly arise, unless the spiritual life is free within the body social to expand and govern itself according to the impulses inherent in it. Only those, who have their part in a spiritual life thus freely expanding and freely governed, can represent it with that strength [88]and vigour which shall ensure it its due place within the body social. Such an independent position within human society is indispensable for art, science and a philosophy of life, with all that goes with these. The freedom of one cannot prosper without the freedom of all. Although in their substance mathematics and physics may not be influenced directly by State requirements, yet how they are applied, the estimate people form of their value, the effect their pursuit has upon the rest of spiritual life, all these and many other points are determined by State requirements, whenever some of the branches of spiritual life are under State control. It is one thing, when the teacher of the lowest grade in the school follows the line along which the State impells him; it is another, when he takes his line from a spiritual life that rests on its own independent footing. Here again, social democracy has done no more than take over a habit of thought and conventions inherited from the ruling classes. Social democracy [89]sets before itself as an ideal the incorporation of spiritual life in a social structure based on a system of industrial economy. But, were its aim attained, it would be only a further step along the same road that has led to the present depreciation of spiritual life. It was a right feeling, but a one-sided one that found expression in the socialist maxim: “Religion is a man’s private affair”; for, in a healthy society, all spiritual life must in this sense be a private affair, so far as concerns the State and economic life. Only, social democracy does not relegate religion to the sphere of private affairs with any idea of thus establishing its status as spiritual wealth, and giving it a position within the social order where it may attain to a higher and more worthy development than under the State’s influence. No; it’s idea in so doing is, that the resources of the body social should only be used to cultivate what it needs for its own existence, and that the religious kind of spiritual wealth does not come under this head. This is not the way in which [90]one branch of spiritual life can prosper, singled out as an exemption from public life, whilst all the rest remain in bondage. The religious life of mankind in this new age will go hand in hand with emancipated spiritual life in every form, and grow to a force able to bear up the souls of the men of the new age.

It is a matter for the soul’s own free demand, how the spiritual life is received into men, no less than how it comes forth from them. Teachers, artists and others will find, that they have an altogether different influence, and are able to awaken an understanding amongst the public for what they are creating, when they themselves have a place in the social order which has no direct connection with any legislature or government, but only with such as arise from impulses that lie in the course of the spiritual life itself; when too they are appealing to people, who are not simply under compulsion to labour, but for whom an autonomous and independent political State also ensures the right to leisure,—leisure [91]which awakens the mind to an appreciation of spiritual values. Here one will very likely be told by someone, that his own “practical experience,”—of which he has a great opinion,—convinces him, that if this notion were carried out,—if the State made definite provision for leisure hours, and if school attendance were left to people’s own sense, it would simply mean that people would spend all their leisure in the public house and relapse into a state of brute ignorance. Well, let such “pessimists” wait and see what will happen when the world is no longer under their influence. Their line of action is all too often prescribed by a subtle feeling, a secret voice, that whispers in their ear, how they themselves like to spend their leisure hours, and the steps that were necessary to ensure themselves having a decent education. Of the free spiritual life, of its power to fire and kindle, when left to itself within the body social,—of this such persons naturally take no account. They know the spiritual life in bondage only, and so it has no [92]power to kindle any spark within themselves.

Both the political State and the economic system will obtain from the body spiritual, when under its own self-administration, that steady inflow from the spiritual life, of which they are in need. Practical training too for economic life will for the first time fully develope its full possibilities, when the economic system and the body spiritual can co-operate in freedom. People will come with a suitable training into the economic field and will put life into all they meet with there, through the strength that comes from spiritual endowment set free from restraint. And people, who have won their experience in the economic field, will find their way into the spiritual organisation, and help to fertilise what there needs fertilising.

The effect within the political State of spiritual abilities being left free, will be the growth of sane and sound views, such as are needed in this field. The man who works with his hands will be able to feel [93]contented with the place his own labour fills in the body social. He will come to realise that the body social cannot float him, unless his hand-work has the guidance requisite for its organisation. He will acquire a sense of the solidarity of his own labour with those organising forces which he can trace to the development of personal talent. The political State will afford him a ground on which he can establish the “rights” that secure to him his share in the proceeds of the commodities he produces; and he will freely allot to the spiritual property, from which he benefits, a portion sufficient to keep it productive. There will be a possibility for producers in the spiritual field, too, to live on the proceeds of their work. What anyone chooses to do in the matter of spiritual work, will be nobody’s affair but his own; but for any service he may render to the body social he will be able to count on willing recompense from people to whom spiritual goods are a necessity. Anyone, who is not satisfied with the recompense he receives [94]under the spiritual organisation, must have recourse to one of the other fields, either to the political state, or to economic life.

Into the economic life pass those technical ideas which originate in the spiritual life. Their origin is in the spiritual life, even although they proceed directly from persons belonging to the State or to the economic world. In the spiritual life originate all those ideas and organising capacities that enrich the life of the State and of industrial economy. For everything thus supplied to both these fields of social life from the spiritual source, the recompense will either, as in the other cases, be raised through voluntary recognition on the part of those who directly draw from this source, or else it will be regulated by the “rights” that gradually become built up in the political sphere. What the political State itself needs for its own maintenance, will be raised by a system of taxation, which will be the outcome of a harmonious co-ordination of the claims of economic [95]life, on the one hand, and those of the “rights-consciousness” on the other.

Alongside the political sphere and the economic sphere in a healthy society, there must be the spiritual sphere, functioning independently on its own footing. The whole trend of the evolutionary force of modern mankind is in the direction of this threefolding of the social organism. So long as the life of the community could be guided in all essentials by the instinctive forces at work in the mass of mankind, so long there was no urgent tendency towards this definite separation into three functions. At bottom, there were always these three distinct sources; but in a yet dim and dully conscious social life they worked together as one. Our modern age demands conscious co-operation on the part of man, and that he should take his place open-eyed in the workings of the body social. This new social consciousness must, however, be directed from three aspects, if it is to shape men’s life and conduct healthily. It is this [96]threefold line of evolution towards which modern humanity is striving in the soul’s unconscious depths; and what finds outlet in the social movement is but the stormy light cast up from the fires below.

At the end of the eighteenth century, under different circumstances from those in which we are living to-day, there went up a cry from the hidden depths of human nature for a re-formation of human social relations. Through all the scheme of the new order ran like a motto the three words, Fraternity, Equality, Liberty. Of course, no one with an unprejudiced mind and normal human feeling for the realities of human evolution can fail to sympathise with all that these three words imply. But still, in the course of the nineteenth century there were keen thinkers who were at pains to point out the impossibility of realising the three ideas of brotherhood, equality and freedom in any homogeneous and uniform order of society. It seemed to them clear, that these three impulses must contradict one another in social life, if [97]carried actually into practice. It was, for instance, very cleverly demonstrated, that if the impulse towards equality were realised there would be no possible room for that freedom which is so inherent in every human being. And whilst one cannot but agree with those who see the contradiction between them, yet at the same time, one’s human sympathies must go out to all and each of these three ideals in itself!

These three ideals appear contradictory, until one perceives the necessity for establishing a threefold order of society; and then their real meaning for social life first becomes apparent. The three divisions must not be artificially dovetailed together and centralised under some theoretical scheme of unity, parliamentary or other. They must be one living reality. Each of the three branches of the body social must centre in itself; and the unity of the whole will first come about through the workings of the three, side by side and in combination. For in actual life it is the apparent contradictories that make up a unity. Accordingly, [98]one will come to comprehend what the life of the body social is, when one fully perceives the part played by these three principles of brotherhood, equality and freedom in a real, workable form of society. It will then be recognised, that men’s co-operation in economic life must rest on that brotherhood that springs out of the Associations. The second system is that of “common rights,” where one is dealing with purely human relations between one person and another; and here one must strive to realise the idea of equality. Whilst in the spiritual field, which stands comparatively alone within the body social, it is the idea of freedom that needs to be realised. Seen in this way, these three ideals reveal their value for real existence. Thy cannot find their realisation in a chaotic stream of social life, but only in the threefold working of a healthy social organism. No social state, constructed on an abstract centralised scheme, can carry freedom, equality and brotherhood pall mall into practice. But [99]each of the three branches of the body social can derive its strength from one of these ideal impulses; and then all three branches will work fruitfully in conjunction.

Those people who, at the end of the eighteenth century, first demanded the recognition of these three ideas, Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood, and those who took up the cry again later on,—they had already a dim sense of whither the forces of human evolution were tending in modern times. But they had not got beyond belief in the onefold State. And in the onefold State these ideas involve a contradiction. They pinned their faith to the contradiction, because, deep-down in the sub-conscious depths of their souls, there was this striving towards the threefold order of society, in which their trinity of ideas can actually achieve a higher unity. To lay hold on those evolutionary forces, which through the growth of mankind all through these latter times, are working towards the threefold order,—to make of [100]them a conscious social will and purpose,—this is what is demanded of us at the present day in unmistakeable language by the hard facts of the social situation.[101]

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1Author’s Note. For the purposes of life, what is wanted in an explanation is not definitions drawn from theory, but ideas that give a picture of a real live process. As used in this sense, “commodity” denotes something that plays an actual part in man’s life and experience. Any other concept of it either omits or adds to this, and so fails to tally exactly with what really and truly goes on in life. ↑

2Author’s note. It is quite possible in life for a transaction not only to be interpreted unreally, but also to take place unreally. Money and labour are not interchangeable values, but only money and the products of labour. Accordingly, if I give money for labour, I am doing something that is unreal. I am making a sham transaction. For in reality I can only give money for the product of labour. ↑

3Author’s Note. The “rights of the matter” becomes the axiomatic basis for all economic activity under this relation of labour to the “rights” system; and the associations will have to accept these as a given premise in economic life. What this does, however, is to make economic organisation dependent upon man, instead of man being dependent upon the system of economics. ↑

Rudolph Steiner