The Renewal of the Social Organism
GA 24
1. The Threefold Social Organism, Democracy and Socialism
[ 1 ] One of the significant issues that has been transformed by the catastrophe of the Great War is that of democracy. Anybody with an open mind for historical change ought to see that inevitably democracy must permeate the various nationalities completely. The worldwide catastrophe has also shown that the factions opposing democracy have no future. Everything anti-democratic has brought on its own destruction. Advocates of anti-democratic institutions should not forget what reality has demonstrated with torrents of blood.
[ 2 ] The question of how to make democracy a reality requires that adherents take a stand not previously possible in the same way. Before the social movement entered its present historical stage, it could still be considered in a different way. But now we must ask, “How can the social movement be incorporated into democratic life?”
[ 3 ] It is not just a matter of promoting vague political ideals or demands, nor of shaping political ideals as a result of that which one-sided interest groups understandably raise as demands. A true understanding of the social organism becomes more necessary with every passing day.
[ 4 ] The servants of capitalism were not alone in their apprehension when they considered the consequences of the social wave threatening to inundate contemporary life. In addition to a majority of self-centered individuals, a few honest persons recognized in the precise shape assumed by this wave a danger to true democracy. When spiritual life, even in practical affairs, comes to be seen as an ideological superstructure of economic life, how will a genuine unfolding of human individuality be possible? For it has become such a superstructure in the thinking of those who want to make a social form of life dependent upon humanity's adopting a materialistic view of history. If it does not make possible the free unfolding of human individuality, socialism will not be able to liberate culture from its capitalistic prison, but rather it will bring death with no hope of revival.
[ 5 ] If one judges the demands made by the social movement not in accordance with the interests that have resulted from its earlier stages, but rather as a historical necessity that is not to be avoided, a very grave question emerges: How can these demands of the movement be accomplished without suppressing human talent or creativity, the free unfolding of which determines the extent and future of human development? In a social order founded upon a capitalist economy, democratization was something entirely different from what it must be in an order imbued with social impulses.
[ 6 ] Ever more urgent is the need to seek possibilities of developing the life of the human spirit together with social impulses. One should not allow oneself to be hypnotized by the dogma: Socialism in the economy will generate, on its own, a healthy spiritual-cultural life as a superstructure. An economy standing alone without constant fertilization by a cultural life founded on free human individuality cannot continue to develop and becomes rigid. Only those immersed in such a dogma can fail to understand this. That quality of human individuality which must creatively influence and direct the social life has to be wrought from the very essence of human nature through impulses that economic life cannot produce. Economics are the foundation of human existence; but human spirit rises above it. Economic forces are confined within much narrower boundaries than human nature as a whole. As obvious as this may seem for the comprehension of the individual, it has not been assimilated by contemporary thinking. More and more, public opinion and, above all, public action reveal a trend of thought that resists this self-evident truth. Men become accustomed to certain conditions, and come to demand modes of existence that would seem impossible to them if they truly wanted to think about it. By deadening their sensibilities to this contradiction, they conceal it from themselves and are thus able to live with it.
[ 7 ] A significant fact of life reveals itself in this contradiction. Our innate powers of judgment and feeling, which should be developed through a healthy nurturing of cultural life, do not find their way into our modern social institutions. These institutions then smother the free development of the individual.
[ 8 ] This suppression makes itself felt from two sides: from that of the state, and from that of the economy. Consciously or unconsciously we fight against the oppression. Here lies the real cause underlying the social demands being raised. What lives in these demands is like a wave driven along the surface, hiding what really is at work in the depths.
[ 9 ] The rebellion against state oppression manifests itself in the aspiration of the people to true democracy; their revolt against an oppressive economy finds expression in their endeavor to structure economic life in a truly social way.
[ 10 ] For that which has developed over the last three to four centuries, humanity demands democracy. If democracy is to become a reality, then it must be built upon those forces in human nature that actually unfold themselves democratically. If nations would become democracies, then they must become institutions that permit human beings to bring into play that which governs relationships among all who have come of age. Every adult citizen must share equally in the regulatory process. Administration and representation must provide a climate in which a healthy consciousness of rights and responsibilities is allowed to unfold.
[ 11 ] Can such administration and representation also regulate the cultural life—life that must bring about the full development of individual human potential—if this development is not to wither and be thwarted to the detriment of social life? The premise for such a development is that it be tended in a milieu encouraging only such actions as have their source in the cultural life itself. Specific talent can be truly recognized and properly nurtured only by someone endowed with the same abilities. Emerging talent can be properly channeled only if a knowing guide acts from experience gained precisely in that realm of life into which he is to show the way. The proper nurture of a socially sound community requires individuals who, through their own experience, have acquired intimate knowledge of the various branches of life, and who have cultivated within themselves the ability to explain their experience to those who need to know. Think for a moment about the socially most significant branch of cultural life-schools on every level! Is it not true that development of individual human capacities and their preparation for life in a particular field can best be guided by that teacher who has personal experience in the field? Or can social renewal ever take place if the criterion for hiring such teachers is something other than their own individual capabilities? Democratic sentiments can relate only to that which each adult has in common with every other adult. It is impossible to find within democratic processes a regulatory function for matters that lie entirely within the domain of the individual. If true democracy is to become a reality, then one must exclude from its province everything that belongs in the domain of the individual. Within the province of democracy and the administrative establishments growing out of it, no impulse directing the free flow of individual human talent can arise. Democracy has to declare its impotence to provide such an impulse if it wants to be a true democracy. If a true democracy is to be formed out of the state that has existed heretofore, then one must remove from it and deliver to full self-regulation all those matters for which only the individual development of each particular person can manifest the right impulses. Such matters cannot be regulated just because a person is of age and is a citizen.
[ 12 ] The social relationships that every adult is competent to judge are the legal relationships between one person and another. At the same time, they represent conditions of life that can maintain their social character only because in democratic institutions they manifest the collective will—a composite of equal individual human wills working together. By contrast, the collective will cannot express what is to arise from individual human abilities; here institutions must function so as to allow the individual to achieve full expression. In away, the human being might be compared to a natural landscape. One cannot cultivate and manage an expanse of land without considering its different aspects. The nature of each part must be studied so that one can learn what it might produce. Thus, in the realm of culture, individual initiative based on individual capabilities must become socially effective; cultural life may not be determined through the will of all. Within the realm of culture this universal will becomes antisocial because it deprives the community of the fruits that individual human capabilities can provide.
[ 13 ] Thus self-administration of the cultural life is the only way to promote individual abilities. Only through self- administration will conditions exist that give rise not to a universal will that suppresses the fruitfulness of the individual for social life, but rather a condition in which individual human accomplishments can be taken up into the life of the whole for its benefit.
[ 14 ] Certain criteria will be established from within such a self-governing spiritual-cultural life whereby the right people may be put into the right positions, and immediate, vital trust can take the place of laws and regulations. Educators will not look to laws and regulations for their educational aims; instead, they will become observers of life and seek to learn, by listening to life, what it is they have to inculcate. It will be possible within the cultural sphere to avail oneself of persons who, through years of experience in practical life, are well versed in the ways of law and economics. In the cultural sphere, they will in turn encounter people with whom they can, through lively intercourse, exchange and reshape, their practical experience and bring it to educational fruition. On the other hand, administrators in the cultural sphere may occasionally feel the need to enter the arena of practical life in order to utilize and revitalize their own knowledge.
[ 15 ] If the structuring of the social organism is done in such a way that a self-governing cultural life can unfold within it, this will not destroy the vital unity of the organism; on the contrary, it will support and enhance it. Only the administration is articulated: in the life of the people, unity will be allowed to develop. One will no longer need to isolate oneself from life by encapsulating oneself within a rigid condition. A lively exchange can take place between the cultural organism and other branches of society. When tradition and public opinion is reshaped in the cultural life, the potential for vitality is far greater than in an inflexible system. The structuring of the social organism should, in the future, be based on real social facts, and these concrete forces should develop, through self-regulation, into something that is a source of a power that can leave us free.
[ 16 ] There should be no doubt that the economic and legal spheres can develop only when people are allowed to think and feel socially. Unbiased experience of present conditions should convince one that cultural life fused with the legal system cannot accomplish this. Anyone who has sound judgment and comprehends life in its fullness has difficulty being understood at present. He finds himself dealing with people whose souls do not resound with life experience in thinking and feeling; people whose educations in state-run schools have given them an abstract disposition, divorced from life. Those who believe they are the most practical, show the least practicality. They have achieved a certain routine in the narrow channel in which they function. They call this their practical sense and regard with arrogance anyone who has not tied himself to their routine, calling him impractical. But all the rest of their thinking, feeling, and willing is permeated with and ruled by abstractions inimical to life. Such personalities are made to flourish by state-governed education, which remains impervious to life-experience. All that can enter into this kind of education, allowed to act exclusively, is the abstract thinking and feeling that is accessible to every adult apart from any special experience. This is the reason why in so many quarters social needs meet with so little understanding. Even the origins of social sensibilities show themselves to be inadequate to the demands of the social organism. One thinks: many people are calling for a restructuring of society! Let one come to meet them, and create laws and ordinances. But the restructuring of society cannot be accomplished that way. Today's needs are such that their fulfIllment cannot be found in a temporary transfer of power. The “social question” has reached the surface of humanity's historical evolution, and will remain there now forever. It will demand new ways of thinking and feeling that presuppose a living intercourse between the cultural sphere and life as a whole. To socialize only to be done with it, once and for all, will not be possible. The effort has to be renewed constantly; or rather, social life will have to be subject to a constant process of socialization.
[ 17 ] The unsocial, often even antisocial, feelings of those who claim to be today's socialist thinkers, stem from the cultural life of an earlier era, especially as it is manifested in the educational system. This spiritual-cultural sphere alienated from life itself has called forth a twisted notion of spiritual life. Broad segments of the populace believe that the genuine human impulses reside within economic forms. According to them, cultural life is nothing but a “superstructure” with its foundations in the economy, an ideology arising from a particular mode of economic activity. This view has been adopted (consciously or unconsciously) by almost the entire working class, the bearers of the social demands of the age. This working class developed during an age in which spiritual culture has foregone the attempt to find a direction and a goal of itself; an age in which the outward social form this spiritual culture has adopted is the result of political and economic life. Only self-administration can rescue the spiritual-cultural life from its present condition. Yoked firmly to the economy by the capitalistic system and technology, the proletariat now believes that mere organization of economic life will necessarily bring about “by itself” the needed reforms in the legal and cultural domain as well. The working class was obliged to experience how modern cultural life had become a mere adjunct to political and economic life, and so they formed the opinion that all cultural life must be such an appendage.
If, in truth, they could see this dismal concept embodied within a social organism, it would be a bitter disappointment actually to discover that a cultural life arising from a social reform based on economic principles alone would lead to even more dire and pitiful conditions than the present ones. The proletariat will have to struggle through to the insight that the present situation cannot be improved through a mere reorganization of the economy, but only through separation of the cultural and legal spheres from the economic, thus creating a healthy threefold social organism. The proletarian movement will find the right track only when its members cease to reiterate, “Modern economic life created a cultural and a legal sphere which have an asocial effect; it is time for an economic change which, in turn, will generate from within itself brand new cultural and legal forms.” The proletarian movement will succeed only when its members can say, “Modern culture has led to an economic system that can be transformed only when both the cultural and legal spheres are separated from it and are released to their own administration.” For this modern cultural life has led to a situation in which everything non-economic is dependent on the economy: the healing processes can start only with the elimination of this dependency, and not with an even greater subjection. The fact that today's working class has been harnessed into the economic system has led to the notion that only economic reconstruction can cure the ailment. The day that sets the working class free from this superstition; the day that allows people to become aware of their own instincts and to recognize that cultural and legal life cannot function as an ideology born from the economic environment; the day the proletariat perceives that the calamity of the modern age lies precisely in the fact that such an ideology has emerged; that will be the day that brings the dawn awaited by many.
[ 18 ] An economy in which the state does not participate will be able to proceed from independent economic experience on the one hand and the support of particular individuals and economic groups on the other. Economic experience cannot play itself out in the sphere where the rights due every adult should come to the fore, but rather only in the sphere of the self-governing economic body. Recognition given a person because of work in a special field of the economy cannot be expressed in the structure of the state, where only that which is valid for all persons equally prevails, but rather only in the effect this person exerts upon other branches of the economy. Persons who belong to the same branch of the economy will have to unite with each other; they will have to form associations with those from other economic sectors. Through a lively intercourse between such associations and cooperatives the interests of producers and consumers will be able to organize themselves. In this way, economic impulses alone will be able to work within the economy.
[ 19 ] When blue collar and white collar workers meet with each other, they need only consider economic issues because legal matters will be dealt with separately under the state's jurisdiction. The blue collar worker can associate freely with the manager of the business, because only the division, on economic principles, of that which they have earned together will be allowed; there will be no economic compulsion resulting from the greater economic resources of the manager. The associative structuring of the economic body will place the blue collar worker's contractual relationship to the business manager in a totally different light. Up to now, he has been forced to fight against the interests of the business manager, but in his new associative role he will share in the fruits of production. Through the heightened awareness he has gained as a consumer, he will cultivate and profit by—rather than oppose—the same interest in production as the manager. This can never happen in an economy the aim of which is the profitability of capital assets; it can happen only in an economy that regulates the value of products on the basis of self-equilibrating processes of production and consumption within the social structure as a whole. A social partnership such as this is possible only if the interests of special professionals, consumers and producers can find expression in various self-subsisting associations and can come to agreements within the economic body as a whole. The special interests of the individual branches of industry give rise to the individual associations; determinations of economic value will arise out of the coalition of these associations, and in the central administrative body that will emerge from these economic interests.
An individual business cannot be socialized; socialization happens only when the production of economic value that a separate business contributes to the total economic life has no antisocial effect. As a result of such genuine socialization, the capitalist system will lose its harmful tendencies. (In my book, Toward Social Renewal, I have described how capital must function within a healthy three-fold organism.) It should be clear by now that one cannot “do away” with capital, since capital is nothing other than the means of production working for the community. It ii not capital itself that is harmful, but rather capital in private hands, especially if this private ownership is able to control the social structure of the economic body. But if society can be structured in the manner previously described, then capital can no longer have any antisocial influence. The beneficial social structure will always prevent the capital assets from being isolated from the management of the means of production. It will also put a stop to the attempts of those who strive only for capital assets, but shirk participation in the economic process. One could readily object that others who do participate would gain nothing, should the earning of nonparticipants be “divided up.” The objection has some validity, and yet it disguises the truth, for its validity has no significance for the structuring of the social organism. The harmfulness of the nonworking recipient of dividends is not that to a small degree they diminish the working man's earnings, but that the sheer possibility of someone being able to have income without working for it lends an antisocial aspect to the whole economic body. The economic body that blocks the possibility to derive income from dividends differs from the one that cannot block it just as human organisms, too, differ—the one is healthy and impervious in all areas to the invasion of a tumor; the other, through the accumulation of unhealthy elements, is beset by a tumorous growth.
[ 20 ] A healthy social organism requires, however, that certain measures unacceptable to contemporary economic prejudices growing out of the aforementioned associations be instituted. In a healthy social organism, capital goods and other means of production will have a one-time cost at the time of delivery. The producer will then be able to manage them, but only for as long as he can contribute to production by his management. The business will then have to be transferred to another not by sale nor by inheritance, but rather as a free gift to the one best able to manage it. It will have no sale value, and thus no value in the hands of an heir who does not work. Capital with independent economic power will work in the establishment of the means of production; it will dissolve itself instantly when the creation of the means of production is finished. Now, however, capital consists mostly of such “already established means of production.”
[ 21 ] The socially correct value of a piece of goods can only be determined by comparison with other goods. Its value must equal the value of all other goods needed by the producer to fulfill his own requirements, until the time when he can again produce a similar piece of goods. This he must do while considering all those requirements necessary in the interest of other people. (Herein must be included, for instance, the needs of his children and what he must contribute for the support of persons incapable of working, etc.) The institutions and provisions of a healthy economy must act in an intermediary capacity to guarantee the value of such goods. These institutions can only be created through a network of corporations that regulate production by considering consumption. The justification for these requirements is not the issue. The issue is the mediation between consumption and production based on economic experience and real economic relationships. If felt needs arise that cannot be borne by the economy as a whole, these needs will find no counter or reciprocal value in the goods produced by the person who feels those needs.
[ 22 ] An economy can be regulated in this way only when its development is based on mutually supporting measures taken by individual corporations. These measures must stem from expertise and concrete facts. Any incursion of democratic principles would necessarily have a detrimental effect upon the development of expert knowledge. Similarly, economic interests would have a detrimental effect upon everything that should emerge under the influence of democracy.
[ 23 ] The health of the social organism depends upon its articulation into three independent spheres: a spiritual-cultural sphere, a legal or rights-sphere, and an economic sphere. Far from dividing people into three social strata, the articulation will allow them to participate in all three spheres according to their interests as whole human beings. The separation will be such that in the cultural or legal spheres, for instance, no decision can be made concerning problems arising within the economy. In the unitary state, where the three systems are intertwined, an economic group will have the power to legalize its interests and declare them public rights. In the threefold organism this can never happen, because economic interests can play themselves out only within the economic cycle, and there will be no possibility of overflow into the legal sphere.
[ 24 ] The greatest possible guarantee that one sphere of the threefold organism cannot be violated by another lies in their union, effected by the total corporate body consisting of the delegates of the three central administrations and agencies. For these central administrative committees will have to deal with actual developments within their own spheres. They will not arrive at a situation where, for instance, the rights sphere or the cultural sphere would be impinged upon by the economic, because this would place them in opposition to the developments taking place in their several spheres. Should, however, the influence of one department over another become necessary, the factual basis for such influence can lie only in the sphere of corporate interest and not in the individual group's interest.
[ 25 ] No one should cherish the illusion that any social institution could ever create an “ideal situation.” What can be attained, however, is a viable, healthy social organism. Anything beyond that must be found through something other than social development. It is not the task of this articulation to guarantee “happiness,” but rather to find the living conditions needed by a healthy social organism. Within it, however, men must be able to seek what they need to lead a dignified human existence. Nor does the healthy physical organism create from within itself that culture which the soul alone can unfold from its own depths; but a diseased organism prevents the soul from doing so. Thus a healthy social organism can only provide the prerequisites necessary for all that human beings must nurture and develop through their own capabilities and needs.
[ 26 ] Anyone who descries as utopian or as mere ideology what reveals itself to be a guideline for social development, and wants to leave everything to evolution, resembles a person who becomes indisposed because he sits in an unventilated room and refuses to open a window while waiting for the stale air to renew itself.
[ 27 ] The merger of cultural life and economics with the state would rob democracy of its real foundations. Anyone desiring genuine democracy will insist on granting the cultural and the economic spheres self-determination.
Die Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus, die Demokratie und der Sozialismus
[ 1 ] Unter den bedeutsamen Fragen, die in der Gegenwart, aus der Weltkriegskatastrophe heraus, die Umwandlung in ganz neue Formen durchmachen, ist die der Demokratie. Daß Demokratie restlos das Völkerleben durchdringen muß, sollte eine selbstverständliche Erkenntnis für alle sein, die einen offenen Sinn für das geschichtlich Gewordene haben. Die Weltkriegskatastrophe hat die Unmöglichkeit einer Weiterentwickelung alles dessen erwiesen, was der Demokratie widerstrebt. Alles Anti-Demokratische hat sich selbst in die Vernichtung hineingeführt. Für diejenigen, welche in irgendeiner Form an Wiederaufrichtung eines solchen Anti-Demokratischen denken, wird es sich nur darum handeln können, daß ihrer Einsicht das als Beweis aufgeht, was die Wirklichkeit mit Strömen von Blut bewiesen hat.
[ 2 ] Aber die Frage, wie ist Demokratie zu verwirklichen, fordert gegenwärtig eine Stellungnahme heraus, die in verflossenen Zeiten nicht in derselben Art da sein konnte. Bevor die soziale Bewegung in das geschichtliche Stadium eingetreten war, in dem sie heute ist, konnte man über Demokratie anders denken, als man es jetzt muß. Die Frage wird immer drängender: Wie kann die soziale Bewegung dem demokratischen Leben einverleibt werden?
[ 3 ] Es kann sich gegenwärtig wahrlich nicht darum handeln, in unbestimmten politischen Forderungen sich auszuleben und aus dem heraus, was einseitige Lebensinteressen dieser oder jener Menschengruppen als solche Forderungen in ganz begreiflicher Weise erheben, politische Ideale zu formen. Ein wirkliches Verständnis des sozialen Organismus wird mit jedem Tage notwendiger.
[ 4 ] Es waren nicht immer bloß die Knechte des Kapitalismus, in deren Seele die Sorge sich einnistete, wenn sie daran dachten, was werden soll, wenn die soziale Welle das neuzeitliche Leben überfluten werde. Neben den allerdings in der Mehrzahl sich geltend machenden Egoisten waren vereinzelte ehrliche Persönlichkeiten, die in der Form, welche diese Welle annahm, gerade eine Gefahr für den wahren Demokratismus sahen. Wie soll noch eine wahrhaftige Entfaltung der menschlichen Individualitäten möglich sein, wenn alles geistige Leben auch in der Lebenspraxis ein ideologischer Überbau des Wirtschafslebens wird, wie es ein solcher im Denken derjenigen geworden ist, welche die soziale Gestaltung des Lebens von der Durchdringung aller Menschen mit materialistischer Geschichtsauffassung abhängig machen? Denn ohne die freie Entfaltung der menschlichen Individualitäten möglich zu machen, wird eine sozialistische Lebensgestaltung die Kultur nicht herausholen aus ihrem kapitalistischen Gefängnis, sondern sie zum Absterben ohne die Aussicht auf Neubelebung bringen.
[ 5 ] Wer die Forderungen, welche in der sozialen Bewegung liegen, nicht nach den Interessen beurteilt, die sich aus seiner bisherigen Lebenslage ergeben, sondern wer vermag, in ihnen eine geschichtliche Notwendigkeit zu sehen, der nicht zu entgehen ist, vor den stellt sich mit größtem Ernste die Frage hin: Wie können diese Forderungen erfüllt werden, ohne zur Unterdrückung der individuellen menschlichen Begabungen zu führen, auf deren freier Entfaltung auch in der Zukunft alle Lebensentwickelung beruhen muß? In einer auf kapitalistische Wirtschafsformen gegründeten gesellschaftlichen Lebensordnung war Demokratisierung etwas anderes, als sie wird sein müssen in einer von sozialen Impulsen durchtränkten.
[ 6 ] Man wird das Bedürfnis immer drängender empfinden müssen, für das menschliche Geistesleben Entwickelungsmöglichkeiten zu suchen, die sich durchsetzen können neben den sozialen Impulsen. Man wird sich nicht durch das Dogma hypnotisieren lassen dürfen: Sozialismus im Wirtschaftsleben wird als Überbau von selbst ein gesundes Geistesleben hervorbringen. Einem solchen Dogma kann nur zustimmen, wer nicht begreift, daß ein auf sich selbst gestelltes Wirtschaftsleben ohne fortdauernde Befruchtung durch ein auf die freien Menschenindividualitäten begründetes Geistesleben nicht in fortschreitender Entwickelung erhalten werden kann, sondern in sich erstarren muß. Was aus der menschlichen Individualität heraus in das soziale Leben befruchtend eingreifen soll, muß aus der Menschenwesenheit durch Impulse herausgeholt werden, welche aus dem Wirtschaftsleben heraus sich nicht ergeben können. Die Wirtschaft bildet die Grundlage des Menschenlebens; aber das Menschenwesen ragt über das Wirtschaftliche hinaus. Die Kräfte des Wirtschaftslebens sind in engere Grenzen eingeschlossen als die Entfaltung der Gesamt-Menschennatur. So selbstverständlich auch dieses ist für das Begreifen des einzelnen Menschen, es ist diese Selbstverständlichkeit in dem neuzeitlichen Leben nicht verwirklicht; und es kommt immer mehr eine Denkungsart an die Oberfläche der öffentlichen Meinung und vor allem des öffentlichen Tuns, die dieser Selbstverständlichkeit widerstrebt. Die Menschen leben sie in Daseinsbedingungen ein und fordern Daseinsbedingungen, die, wenn sie sie wahrhaft überdenken wollten, ihnen unmöglich erscheinen müßten. Sie helfen sich dadurch, daß sie sich über den Lebenswiderspruch hinwegbetäuben, daß sie vermeiden, ihn sich zum Bewußtsein zu bringen.
[ 7 ] Eine bedeutungsvolle Lebenstatsache enthüllt sich aus diesem Widerspruch heraus. Die Urteils- und Empfindungskräfte, die in der menschlichen Persönlichkeit veranlagt sind und die in einer gesunden Pflege des öffentlichen Geisteslebens zur Entwickelung kommen müßten: sie finden nicht den Weg in die sozialen Einrichtungen, in denen der moderne Mensch lebt. Diese Einrichtungen erdrücken die freie Entwickelung des individuellen Menschen.
[ 8 ] Von zwei Seiten her macht sich diese Unterdrückung geltend. Von der Seite des Staates und von derjenigen des Wirtschaftslebens. Und der Mensch stürmt bewußt oder unbewußt gegen die Bedrückung an. In diesem Anstürmen liegt die wirkliche Ursache der sozialen Forderungen unserer Gegenwart. Alles andere, das in diesen Forderungen lebt, ist an die Oberfläche getriebene Welle, die verbirgt, was in den Untergründen der Menschennaturen waltet.
[ 9 ] Der Ansturm gegen die Bedrückung des Staates spricht sich aus in dem Streben nach wahrer Demokratie; der Ansturm gegen die Bedrückung des Wirtschaftslebens in dem anderen Streben, nach sozialer Gliederung des Wirtschafslebens.
[ 10 ] Für das, was seit drei bis vier Jahrhunderten zum modernen Staate geworden ist, fordert die Menschheit die Demokratie. Soll diese Demokratie wahrhaftige Tatsache werden, dann muß sie auf diejenigen Kräfte der Menschennatur aufgebaut sein, die sich wirklich demokratisch ausleben können. Sollen aus Staaten Demokratien werden, dann müssen diese Einrichtungen sein, in denen die Menschen zur Geltung bringen können, was das Verhältnis eines jeden erwachsenen, mündig gewordenen Menschen zu jedem anderen regelt. Und jeder erwachsene, mündig gewordene Mensch muß gleichen Anteil haben an dieser Regelung. Verwaltung und Volksvertretung müssen so gehalten sein, daß sich in ihnen auslebt, was aus dem Bewußtsein eines Menschen sich ergibt einfach dadurch, daß er ein seelisch gesunder, mündiger Mensch ist.
[ 11 ] Kann eine solche Volksvertretung und eine solche Verwaltung auch das Geistesleben regeln, das die volle Entfaltung der individuellen menschlichen Anlagen bewirken muß, wenn diese Entfaltung nicht zum Unheil des sozialen Lebens verkümmern und unterbunden werden soll? Diese Entfaltung beruht darauf, daß sie auf einem Boden gepflegt wird, auf dem nur so gehandelt wird, wie es sich aus den Impulsen des Geisteslebens heraus selbst ergibt. Spezifische Anlage wird nur von spezifisch entwickelter Anlage wirklich erkannt und richtig gepflegt. Und sie wird nur richtig auf den Weg in das Leben hineingewiesen, wenn der Weisende aus den Erfahrungen heraus handelt, die ihm die Erfahrung aus dem Lebenskreise heraus gibt, in den er weisen soll. Für die rechte Pflege eines sozial gesunden Gemeinschaftslebens sind Persönlichkeiten notwendig, welche einzelne Zweige des Lebens durch eine in diesen ausgebildete Erfahrung genau kennen, und die in sich den Sinn dafür entwickeln, innerhalb des Geisteslebens ihre Erfahrung zur Offenbarung zu bringen. Man denke an den sozial bedeutungsvollsten Zweig des Geisteslebens: an die Schule auf jeder Stufe. Kann denn die Entfaltung der individuellen Menschenkräfte und ihre Vorbereitung für das Leben auf einem bestimmten Gebiete gedeihlich nicht nur von einer Persönlichkeit besorgt werden, die individuelle Erfahrung auf diesem Gebiete hat? Und kann jemals etwas sozial Heilsames entstehen, wenn für die Stellung einer solchen Persönlichkeit an ihren Platz etwas anderes maßgebend ist als das Walten ihrer individuellen Fähigkeiten selbst? Was in der Demokratie sich auslebt, kann nur auf dasjenige sich beziehen, was jeder mündige Mensch mit jedem mündigen Menschen gemein hat. Es gibt keine Möglichkeit, durch dasjenige, was in der Demokratie sich ausleben kann, eine Regelung darüber zu finden, was ganz im Kreise des individuellen Menschenwesens liegt. Will man ehrlich und wahr die Demokratie durchführen, so muß man von ihrem Boden ausschließen alles, was in diesen Kreis gehört. Auf demokratischem Boden und innerhalb der Verwaltungseinrichtungen, die auf diesem Boden auswachsen können, kann kein Impuls entstehen, der richtunggebend sein darf für eine menschliche Betätigung, die frei aus der individuellen Begabung des Menschen fließen soll. Die Demokratie muß sich für unfähig zu einem solchen Impulse erklären gerade dann, wenn sie wahre Demokratie sein will. Will man aus dem bisherigen Staate eine wahre Demokratie herausgestalten, so muß man aus dieser alles dasjenige herausnehmen und es seiner vollen Selbstverwaltung überliefern, über das nur die individuelle Entwickelung des besonderen Menschen die rechten Impulse entwickeln kann, und das keine Regelung erfahren kann durch dasjenige, was in jedem Menschen einfach dadurch lebt, daß er ein mündiger Mensch geworden ist.
[ 12 ] Die sozialen Verhältnisse, über die jeder mündig gewordene Mensch urteilsfähig ist, sind die Rechtsbeziehungen von Mensch zu Mensch. Es sind dies zugleich diejenigen Lebensverhältnisse, die ihren sozialen Charakter nur dadurch erhalten können, daß sie in demokratischen Einrichtungen sich als ein Gesamtwille aus dem wirklichen Zusammenwirken der gleichen menschlichen Einzelwillen ergeben. Bei allem, was auf dem Boden der individuellen menschlichen Fähigkeiten erwachsen soll, kann nicht ein Gesamtwille in den Einrichtungen zum Ausdruck kommen; sondern diese Einrichtungen müssen solche sein, in denen die Einzelwillen sich voll zur Geltung bringen können. Der einzelne Mensch muß gewissermaßen wie eine Naturgrundlage sich verhalten können. Man kann nicht über eine Landfläche hin aus Bedürfnissen heraus, die abgesehen von den einzelnen Teilen dieser Landfläche gefaßt sind, diese bewirtschaften; man muß aus dem Wesen der einzelnen Teile kennenlernen, was sie besonders hervorbringen können. So muß auf geistigem Gebiete die auf den individuellen Fähigkeiten beruhende Einzelinitiative sich sozial auswirken können; sie darf nicht bestimmt werden durch den Inhalt eines Gesamtwillens. Dieser Gesamtwille muß unsozial wirken, denn er entzieht der Gemeinschaft die Früchte der individuellen menschlichen Fähigkeiten.
[ 13 ] Es gibt keinen anderen Weg, die Früchte dieser individuellen Fähigkeiten zur Entfaltung zu bringen, als ihre Selbstverwaltung. Innerhalb dieser Selbstverwaltung kann allein der Zustand eintreten, durch den nicht ein die Fruchtbarkeit der Einzelmenschen für das soziale Leben unterdrückender Gesamtwille entsteht, sondern durch den in das Gesamtleben die menschlichen Einzelleistungen zu dessen Wohle aufgenommen werden.
[ 14 ] Innerhalb einer solchen Selbstverwaltung werden sich aus dem Geistesleben heraus die Gesichtspunkte ergeben, durch welche die rechten Menschen an die rechten Stellen gebracht werden und durch welche an die Stelle von Gesetz und Verordnung das unmittelbar lebendige Vertrauen gesetzt werden kann. Den an der Volkserziehung beteiligten Personen werden solche Gesetze und Verordnungen keine Erziehungsziele weisen; dafür werden sie zu Beobachtern des Lebens werden und diesem abzulauschen suchen, was sie heranzubilden haben. Es wird die Tendenz entstehen können, im praktischen Leben stehende Personen, die in irgendeinem Zweige des Wirtschafts- oder Rechtslebens durch Jahre Erfahrung gesammelt haben, in die geistige Organisation aufzunehmen. In dieser werden sie die Menschen finden, mit denen, im lebendigen Verkehre, sie das praktisch Erfahrene in erzieherisch Fruchtbares werden umgestalten können. Andererseits werden in der geistigen Verwaltung stehende Personen den Antrieb empfinden, aus dieser Verwaltung zeitweise hinüberzutreten in das praktische Leben, um in diesem das Errungene lebenswirklich zu verwerten.
[ 15 ] Eine Gliederung des sozialen Organismus in der Art, daß in ihm ein sich selbst verwaltendes Geistesleben zur Entfaltung kommt, wird nicht die lebendige Einheit dieses Organismus zerstören, sondern, im Gegenteil, erst recht begründen. Gegliedert wird nur die Verwaltung; in dem Leben des Menschen wird die Einheit zur Entwickelung kommen können. Der Mensch wird nicht mehr nötig haben, in einem erstarrten Stand von dem Leben sich abzuschließen und einzukapseln. Ein Hinüber- und Herübergehen aus dem geistigen in die anderen Glieder des sozialen Organismus wird stattfinden können. Denn in dem Leben, das sich als Tradition und öffentliche Meinung in dem Geistesorganismus ausgestaltet hat, wird etwas weit Fruchtbareres liegen als in dem starren System, das sich herausbildet, wenn sich Menschen als Stand abgliedern. Die Gliederung des sozialen Organismus sollte in der Zukunft in dem Sachlichen liegen; und dieses Sachliche sollte durch seine Selbstverwaltung die Kraft entwickeln, die auch dann wirkt, wenn es nicht den Menschen tyrannisch in seine Netze einspannt.
[ 16 ] Es sollte nicht bezweifelt werden, daß ein soziales Wirtschafts- und Rechtsleben nur entstehen kann, wenn die Menschen sozial denken und empfinden können. Daß das bisherige mit dem Rechtsstaate verschmolzene Geistesleben dies nicht kann, sollte eine unbefangene Erfahrung der gegenwärtigen Zustände zeigen. Wer gegenwärtig aus dem vollen Leben heraus urteilt, wird schwer verstanden, denn er stößt auf die Seelenverfassung von Menschen, in denen nicht Saiten anklingen, die aus der Lebenserfahrung in Denk- und Empfindungsart gespannt sind, sondern auf solche, denen die Staatserziehung eine abstrakte, lebensfremde Art gegeben hat. Diejenigen Menschen, die sich für die am meisten praktischen halten, sind die am wenigsten praktischen. Sie haben sich in dem engen Lebensgebiete, in das sie sich eingesponnen haben, eine gewisse Routine erworben. Diese nennen sie ihren praktischen Sinn und sehen, aus dieser Seelenverfassung heraus, auf jeden mit Hochmut als einen unpraktischen Menschen, der in diese Routine sich nicht eingepfercht hat. In ihrem ganzen übrigen Denken, Empfinden und Wollen herrscht aber ein lebensfremdes, von abstrakten Richtungskräften getragenes Wesen. Ein solches Wesen wird großgezogen durch die im Staate verankerte Erziehung, in die nicht Lebenserfahrung einfließen kann, sondern nur das abstrakte Denken und Empfinden, die ohne spezielle Erfahrung auf irgendeinem Gebiete jedem mündig gewordenen Menschen durch die menschliche Natur eigen sein können, wenn sie einen Boden haben, auf dem nur sie wirksam sind. In dieser Tatsache liegt begründet, daß von vielen Seiten den sozialen Forderungen der Gegenwart ein solch geringes Verständnis entgegengebracht wird. Schon die Ausgangspunkte der sozialen Empfindungen zeigen sich den Forderungen des sozialen Organismus nicht gewachsen. Man denkt: viele Menschen fordern eine soziale Neugestaltung des Lebens. Man komme ihnen entgegen, meinen manche, und schaffe Gesetze und Verordnungen. Doch das soziale Neugestalten kann sich so nicht vollziehen. Die sozialen Forderungen der Gegenwart sind solche, die nicht in einer zeitweiligen Gewaltumwälzung ihre Erfüllung finden können. Die « soziale Frage » ist an die Oberfläche der geschichtlichen Entwickelung der Menschheit getreten, und sie wird von jetzt an immer da sein. Und sie wird eine Denk- und Empfindungsrichtung fordern, welche die volle Anpassung des Geisteswesens an das soziale Gesamtleben und die fortwährende Befruchtung dieses Geisteswesens aus den Impulsen des Gesamtlebens zur Voraussetzung haben werden. Man wird nicht sozialisieren können, damit dann sozialisiert sei, man wird immer von Neuem sozialisieren müssen; oder auch: man wird das Gesellschaftsleben im Zustande des Sozialisierens erhalten müssen.
[ 17 ] Aus den im bisherigen Geisteswesen, insbesondere im Erziehungs- und Schulwesen begründeten Richtungen ist das unsoziale, ja oft antisoziale Empfinden derjenigen entstanden, die gegenwärtig sich gerade als sozialistisch Denkende gebärden. Das lebensfremde Geistesleben hat eine verkehrte Anschauung über das Geistesleben selbst hervorgerufen. Weite Kreise denken heute, die wahren Impulse des Menschenlebens liegen in den Wirtschaftsformen; auch das Geistesleben sei bloß eine Art aus dem Wirtschafsleben sich ergebender « Überbau », eine Ideologie, die aus der Art des Wirtschaftens aufsteigt. Zu einer solchen Anschauung bekennt sich mehr oder weniger unbewußt oder bewußt fast das gesamte, die gegenwärtigen Zeitforderungen tragende Proletariat. Dieses Proletariat hat sie in einem Zeitalter entwickelt, in dem das Geisteswesen darauf verzichtet hat, sich Richtung und Ziel aus sich selbst heraus zu geben, in dem die äußere, soziale Ausgestaltung dieses Geisteswesens zu einem Ergebnis des Staats- und Wirtschaftslebens geworden ist. Dieses Geistesleben hat sich in einen Zustand gebracht, aus dem es nur durch seine Selbstverwaltung herauskommen kann. Das Proletariat, das durch Technik und Kapitalsystem ganz in das Wirtschaftsleben eingespannt ist, glaubt nun: eine bloße Umgestaltung des Wirtschaftslebens werde auch die notwendigen neuen Rechts- und Geistesformen « von selbst » erbringen. Dieses Proletariat hat erfahren müssen, daß das neuzeitliche Geistesleben zu einem Anhängsel des Staats- und Wirtschaftslebens geworden ist, und hat sich die Meinung gebildet: Jedes Geistesleben sei ein solches Anhängsel. Es würde, wenn es diese Anschauung in einem sozialen Organismus verwirklicht sähe, zu seiner allerbittersten Enttäuschung wahrnehmen müssen, daß ein Geistesleben, das aus einer sozialen Gestaltung hervorgegangen ist, die nur auf wirtschaftlicher Grundlage ruht, zu noch kläglicheren Zuständen geführt hätte, als die gegenwärtigen sind. Das Proletariat wird sich durchringen müssen zu der Erkenntnis, daß die gegenwärtige Lage nicht gebessert werden kann durch die bloße Umgestaltung des Wirtschaftslebens, sondern durch die Loslösung des Geisteswesens und Rechtswesens von dem Wirtschaftsleben in dem dreigliedrigen gesunden sozialen Organismus. Erst dann wird die proletarische Bewegung auf dem rechten Boden stehen, wenn sie nicht mehr sagen wird: Das neuere Wirtschaftsleben hat ein Geistes- und Rechtsleben erzeugt, die unsozial wirken; man muß ein anderes Wirtschaftsleben herbeiführen, das dann auch ein anderes Geistes- und Rechtswesen aus sich hervorbringen wird; sondern wenn es sagen wird: Das neuere Kulturleben hat zu einem Wirtschaftssystem geführt, das nur umgewandelt werden kann, wenn das neue das Rechts- und Geistesleben von sich loslöst und ihrer Selbstverwaltung übergibt, um auf diese Art auch zu seiner Selbstverwaltung zu kommen. Denn dieses neuere Kulturleben hat zur Abhängigkeit alles Nicht-Wirtschaftlichen vom Wirtschaftlichen geführt: in der Aufhebung dieser Abhängigkeit, nicht in einer noch größeren Abhängigkeit, liegt die Gesundung. Die Einspannung des modernen Proletariats in das bloße Wirtschaftsleben hat zu dem Glauben geführt, daß in einer Umgestaltung des Wirtschaftslebens allein die Gesundung liegt. Der Tag, der das Proletariat von diesem Aberglauben befreien wird, der seine Instinkte erkennen lassen wird, daß das Geistes- und Rechtsleben nicht eine aus dem Wirtschaftswesen geborene Ideologie sein darf, sondern daß das Unheilvolle der neueren Zeit eben darin liegt, daß eine solche Ideologie geboren worden ist: dieser Tag wird die Morgenröte bringen, auf die so viele Menschen warten.
[ 18 ] Ein Wirtschaftsleben, an dem der Staat nicht mitwirtschaftet, wird hervorgehen können aus den unbeeinflußten wirtschaftlichen Erfahrungen auf der einen Seite und aus den besonderen wirtschaftlichen Untergründen, auf denen das wirtschaftliche Leben von Personen und Personengruppen ruht. Wirtschaftliche Erfahrung kann nicht auf dem Boden sich ausleben, auf dem sich offenbaren soll, was in jedem mündig gewordenen Menschen liegt, sondern nur auf dem Boden des aus sich selbst sich gestaltenden Wirtschaftskörpers. Und die Geltung, die ein Mensch dadurch hat, daß er in einem besonderen Zweige des Wirtschaftslebens drinnensteht, kann sich nicht äußern in der Struktur des Staatslebens, in der sich verwirklichen soll, was für alle Menschen gleich gilt, sondern nur in der Wirkung, die von diesem Menschen ausgeht auf andere Zweige des Wirtschaftslebens. Die Menschen, die einem Wirtschaftszweig angehören, werden sich in sich zusammenschließen müssen; sie werden sich zusammengliedern müssen zu Assoziationen mit Menschen aus anderen Wirtschaftszweigen. Konsumtions- und Produktionsinteressen werden in dem lebendigen Verkehr solcher Assoziationen und Genossenschaften sich organisieren können. Im Wirtschaftskreislauf werden dadurch nur wirtschaftliche Impulse ihre Verwirklichung finden können.
[ 19 ] Der Handarbeiter wird dem Geistesarbeiter so gegenüberstehen, daß zwischen ihnen nur wirtschaftliche Fragen werden in Betracht kommen, weil das Rechtsverhältnis auf dem abgesonderten Rechtsboden seine Regelung findet. Ein freier Gesellschafter wird der Handarbeiter dem geistigen Leiter seines Betriebes sein können, weil nur die aus der Wirtschaftsgrundlage heraus sich ergebende Aufteilung des gemeinsam Erarbeiteten wird in Betracht kommen können und nicht ein wirtschaftlicher Zwang, der durch die wirtschaftlich bessere Lage des Arbeitsleiters hervorgerufen wird. Die assoziative Gliederung des Wirtschaftskörpers wird den Handarbeiter in Zusammenhänge des Lebens bringen, welche in sein Vertragsverhältnis zum geistigen Arbeitsleiter ganz andere Gesichtspunkte bringen werden als seine gegenwärtige Stellung, die ihn nicht zum Teilnehmer des Produktionsergebnisses, sondern zum Kämpfer gegen die Interessen seines Unternehmers macht. Der Handarbeiter wird aus den Erkenntnissen, die er gewinnt aus seiner wirtschaftlichen Lage als Konsument, das gleiche Interesse, nicht das entgegengesetzte, gewinnen an seinem Produktionszweige wie sein geistiger Leiter. Das kann sich nicht ergeben in einem Wirtschaftsleben, dessen Impuls die Rentabilität des Kapitalbesitzes ist, sondern allein in einem solchen, das die Werte der Erzeugnisse aus den sich ausgleichenden Konsum- und Produktionsverhältnissen der sozialen Gesamtheit regeln kann. Eine solche soziale Gemeinschaft ist aber nur möglich, wenn die speziellen Berufs-, Konsum- und Produktionsinteressen ihren Ausdruck finden in Assoziationen, die aus den einzelnen Zweigen des Wirtschaftslebens selbst hervorgehen und die in der Gesamtgliederung des Wirtschafskörpers sich miteinander verständigen. Aus den speziellen Interessen der einzelnen Wirtschaftszweige werden sich die Einzelassoziationen ergeben; in dem Zusammenschluß dieser Assoziationen und in dem Zentralverwaltungskörper, der sich aus den Wirtschaftsinteressen herausgliedern wird, werden die sozialen Impulse der Güterwertbildung liegen können. Man kann einen einzelnen Betrieb nicht sozialisieren, denn die Sozialisierung kann nur darin liegen, daß die Güterwertbildung, mit der ein einzelner Betrieb in dem Gesamtwirtschaftsleben drinnensteht, nicht unsozial wirkt. Durch eine in dieser Richtung liegende wahre Sozialisierung wird dem Kapitalsystem völlig diejenige Grundlage entzogen, durch die es als Privatbesitz schädlich wirkt. (Die besondere Gestaltung des Kapitalwesens in dem gesunden dreigliederigen Organismus habe ich in meinem Buche « Die Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage » geschildert.) Es sollte doch klar sein, daß man das Kapital nicht « abschaffen » kann, insofern es in nichts anderem besteht als in den für die soziale Gemeinschaft arbeitenden Produktionsmitteln. Schädlich wirkt nicht das Kapital, sondern seine Verwaltung aus den Privatbesitzverhältnissen heraus, wenn diese Privatbesitzverhältnisse die soziale Struktur des Wirtschaftskörpers von sich abhängig machen können. Geht diese Struktur auf die gekennzeichnete Art aus dem wirtschaftlichen Assoziationswesen hervor, dann wird dem Kapital jede Möglichkeit entzogen, antisozial zu wirken. Eine solche soziale Struktur wird stets verhindern, daß der Kapitalbesitz sich loslöst von dem Verwalten der Produktionsmittel und zum Strebensimpuls derer wird, die nicht durch Anteilnahme an dem Wirtschaftsprozeß ihr Leben gestalten wollen, sondern ohne Anteilnahme aus diesem heraus. Man kann allerdings einwenden, daß für diejenigen, die am Wirtschaftsprozeß mitarbeiten, nichts herauskommen würde, wenn man die Erwerbungen der Nichtarbeitenden « aufteilen » würde. Das besticht, weil es richtig ist, und es verhüllt doch die Wahrheit, weil seine Richtigkeit für die Gestaltung des sozialen Organismus keine Bedeutung hat. Denn nicht darauf beruht die Schädlichkeit der nichtarbeitenden Rentenbesitzer, daß sie ein verhältnismäßig Weniges den Arbeitenden entziehen, sondern darauf, daß sie durch die Möglichkeit, arbeitsloses Einkommen zu erzielen, dem ganzen Wirtschaftskörper ein Gepräge geben, das antisozial wirkt. Derjenige ganze Wirtschaftskörper ist etwas anderes, in dem arbeitsloses Einkommen unmöglich ist, als der andere, in dem ein solches erzeugt werden kann, wie ein menschlicher Organismus etwas anderes ist, bei dem sich an keiner Stelle ein Geschwür bilden kann, als ein solcher, in dem sich das Ungesunde in einer Geschwürbildung an einer Stelle entlädt.
[ 20 ] Ein gesunder sozialer Organismus macht aus den gekennzeichneten sozialen Assoziationsbildungen heraus allerdings Einrichtungen notwendig, vor denen die gegenwärtigen wirtschaftlichen Vorurteile noch zurückschrecken. In einem gesunden sozialen Organismus wird eine Summe von Produktionsmitteln dasjenige erschöpft haben, was sie kosten darf, wenn sie für den Betrieb fertiggestellt ist. Sie wird dann verwaltet werden können von dem Hersteller nur so lange, als er mit seinen individuellen Fähigkeiten wird dabei sein können. Dann wird sie überzugehen haben nicht durch Kauf oder Vererbung auf einen anderen, sondern durch kaufloses Übertragen an den, welcher wieder die individuellen Fähigkeiten für die Verwaltung hat. Einen Kaufwert wird sie nicht haben, folglich auch keinen Wert in den Händen eines nichtarbeitenden Erben. Kapital mit selbständiger wirtschaftlicher Kraft wird in der Herstellung von Produktionsmitteln arbeiten; es wird sich auflösen in dem Augenblick, in dem die Produktion der Produktionsmittel abgeschlossen ist. Das gegenwärtige Kapital besteht aber im wesentlichen gerade in « produzierten Produktionsmitteln ».
[ 21 ] Der sozial richtige Wert eines Gutes (einer Ware) kann sich nur im Vergleich mit anderen Gütern ergeben. Er muß gleich sein dem Wert aller anderen Güter, welche der Hersteller zur Befriedigung seiner Bedürfnisse braucht bis zu dem Zeitpunkte, in dem er ein gleiches Gut wieder hergestellt hat, unter Berücksichtigung derjenigen Bedürfnisse, die durch ihn bei anderen Menschen befriedigt werden müssen. (In die letzteren Bedürfnisse sind einzurechnen zum Beispiel die seiner Kinder, der Teil, den er zur Erhaltung erwerbsunfähiger Menschen zu leisten hat usw.) Daß ein solcher Güterwert zustande komme, muß durch die Einrichtungen eines gesunden Wirtschaftslebens vermittelt werden. Diese Einrichtungen können nur durch ein Netz von Korporationen geschaffen werden, welche aus den Erfahrungen der Konsumtion die Produktion regeln. Es kann selbstverständlich nicht von einer Beurteilung der Berechtigung von Bedürfnissen die Rede sein, sondern nur von einer durch die wirtschaftliche Erfahrung und die wirklichen wirtschaftlichen Verhältnisse gestützten Vermittelung zwischen Konsum und Produktion. Entstehende Bedürfnisse, die von der Gesamtheit eines Wirtschaftskreises nicht getragen werden können, werden keinen Gegenwert finden können in den Gütern, welche derjenige herstellt, der die Bedürfnisse hat.
[ 22 ] Nur ein solcher Wirtschaftskreislauf wird in dieser Art seine Regelung finden können, der aus den sich gegenseitig stützenden auf Sacherkenntnis und Sachunterlagen beruhenden Maßnahmen der einzelnen Wirtschaftskorporationen heraus entsteht. Jedes Hineinwirken einer Demokratie müßte unterdrückend auf das Ausleben der Sacherkenntnis wirken. Ebenso aber muß auf alles, was aus dem Einflusse der Demokratie hervorgehen soll, das Interesse des Wirtschaftlichen zerstörend wirken.
[ 23 ] In der Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus in ein selbständiges Geistesglied, ein ebensolches Rechtsglied und Wirtschaftsglied liegt die Gesundung dieses Organismus. Die Gliederung wird ja nicht so sein, daß sie die Menschen in drei Stände trennt, sondern so, daß ein Mensch mit seinen gesamtmenschlichen Interessen an allen drei Gliedern teil hat. Es wird die Trennung nur eben so vollzogen sein, daß zum Beispiel im Rechtsorganismus oder im Geistesorganismus nichts zu beschließen sein wird, was aus den Interessen des Wirtschaftskreises entspringt. Im Einheitsstaate, in dem die drei Glieder des Lebens ineinander verfließen, wird eine wirtschaftliche Gruppe ihre Interessen zum Gesetz, zum öffentlichen Recht machen können. In dem dreigliedrigen Organismus wird dies nicht geschehen können, weil wirtschaftliche Interessen nur im Wirtschaftskreislauf sich ausleben können und keine Möglichkeit besteht, sie in das Recht hinüberfließen zu lassen.
[ 24 ] Der Zusammenschluß der drei Glieder durch eine Gesamtkörperschaft, die aus den Delegierten der drei Zentralverwaltungen und Zentralvertretungen sich ergibt, wird die denkbar größte Gewähr dafür bieten, daß nicht das eine Gebiet durch das andere vergewaltigt werde. Denn diese Zentralverwaltungen und Zentralvertretungen werden zu rechnen haben mit dem, was sich in ihren Gebieten auf Grund sachlicher Maßnahmen ergibt. Sie werden nicht in die Lage kommen, zum Beispiel das Rechts- oder das Geistesleben von dem Wirtschaftsleben unberechtigt beeinflussen zu lassen, denn sie setzten sich dadurch in Widerspruch mit dem, was sachgemäß in jedem einzelnen Gebiete unabhängig von dem andern sich vollzieht. Ist eine Einflußnahme des einen Gebietes auf das andere nötig, so wird die sachliche Grundlage dazu nicht im Interessenkreise einer Gruppe, sondern nur in dem des ganzen Gebietes liegen können.
[ 25 ] Niemand sollte den Glauben haben, daß durch irgendeine soziale Einrichtung das entstehen könne, was er sich vielleicht als einen « Idealzustand » vorstellt. Was erreicht werden kann, ist der lebensfähige gesunde soziale Organismus. Was darüber hinausgeht, müssen die Menschen durch anderes finden als durch die soziale Gestaltung. Die Aufgabe dieser Gestaltung kann nicht darin liegen, das « Glück » zu begründen, sondern die Lebensbedingungen des gesunden sozialen Organismus zu finden. In einem solchen aber müssen die Menschen das suchen können, was sie zu einem menschenwürdigen Dasein nötig finden. Auch der natürliche gesunde Organismus schafft von sich aus nicht, was die Seele an innerer Kultur entfalten muß; ein kranker natürlicher Organismus verhindert sie daran. Und ein gesunder sozialer Organismus kann nur die Voraussetzungen schaffen für dasjenige, was die Menschen in ihm durch ihre individuellen Fähigkeiten und Bedürfnisse entwickeln wollen.
[ 26 ] Wer als Utopie oder Ideologie verketzert, was sich als Richtlinie für eine soziale Gestaltung ergibt, und alles der Entwickelung überlassen will, die durch sich selbst herbeiführt, was sein kann, der gleicht einem Menschen, der unpäßlich wird, weil er in einem Zimmer mit dumpfer Luft sitzt, und der nicht ein Fenster öffnen will, sondern abwartet, bis sich die dumpfe Luft « von selbst » zu einer frischen « entwickelt ».
[ 27 ] Wer wirklich Demokratie will, der kann an deren wahre Begründung nicht anders denken, als daß er der Selbstverwaltung zuteilt, was diese Begründung durch Verschmelzung mit dem Rechtsstaat unmöglich macht: das Geistesleben und den Wirtschaftskreislauf.
The threefold structure of the social organism, democracy and socialism
[ 1 ] Among the important questions that are currently undergoing a transformation into completely new forms following the catastrophe of the world war is that of democracy. The fact that democracy must completely permeate the life of nations should be a self-evident realization for all those who have an open mind for what has happened in history. The catastrophe of the world war proved the impossibility of the further development of everything that is opposed to democracy. Everything anti-democratic has led itself to destruction. For those who think in any way of re-establishing such an anti-democratic system, it can only be a matter of their insight being proved by what reality has proved with rivers of blood.
[ 2 ] But the question of how democracy is to be realized currently demands a position that could not have been taken in the same way in past times. Before the social movement had entered the historical stage in which it is today, one could think differently about democracy than one must now. The question is becoming more and more urgent: how can the social movement be incorporated into democratic life?
[ 3 ] At the present time, it can truly not be a matter of living out vague political demands and forming political ideals out of what one-sided life interests of this or that group of people raise as such demands in a quite understandable way. A real understanding of the social organism becomes more necessary with each passing day.
[ 4 ] It was not always only the servants of capitalism in whose souls anxiety settled when they thought of what would happen if the social wave were to flood modern life. Alongside the majority of egoists, however, there were a few honest individuals who saw the form this wave was taking as a threat to true democratism. How can a true development of human individuality be possible if all spiritual life becomes an ideological superstructure of economic life, as it has become in the thinking of those who make the social organization of life dependent on the penetration of all people with a materialistic view of history? For without making the free development of human individualities possible, a socialist organization of life will not bring culture out of its capitalist prison, but will cause it to die without the prospect of revival.
[ 5 ] Whoever judges the demands that lie in the social movement not according to the interests that arise from his previous life situation, but whoever is able to see in them a historical necessity that cannot be escaped, the question arises before him with the greatest seriousness: How can these demands be met without leading to the suppression of individual human talents, on the free development of which all future life development must be based? In a social order based on capitalist forms of economy, democratization was something different than it will have to be in one imbued with social impulses.
[ 6 ] The need will be felt ever more urgently to seek possibilities for the development of human spiritual life that can assert themselves alongside social impulses. We must not allow ourselves to be hypnotized by dogma: Socialism in economic life will, as a superstructure, bring forth a healthy spiritual life by itself. Such a dogma can only be accepted by those who do not understand that an economic life left to its own devices without continuous fertilization by a spiritual life based on free human individuality cannot be maintained in progressive development, but must freeze in itself. What is to intervene from human individuality to fertilize social life must be drawn out of human nature by impulses that cannot arise from economic life. The economy forms the basis of human life; but the human being rises above the economic. The forces of economic life are enclosed within narrower limits than the unfolding of human nature as a whole. As self-evident as this is for the understanding of the individual human being, this self-evidence is not realized in modern life; and more and more a way of thinking is coming to the surface of public opinion and above all of public action that contradicts this self-evidence. People live it in conditions of existence and demand conditions of existence which, if they really wanted to reconsider them, would seem impossible to them. They help themselves by numbing themselves to the contradiction of life, by avoiding becoming aware of it.
[ 7 ] A significant fact of life is revealed by this contradiction. The powers of judgment and feeling which are inherent in the human personality, and which ought to be developed in a healthy cultivation of public spiritual life, do not find their way into the social institutions in which modern man lives. These institutions stifle the free development of the individual human being.
[ 8 ] This oppression asserts itself from two sides. From the side of the state and from that of economic life. And man consciously or unconsciously storms against the oppression. In this onslaught lies the real cause of the social demands of our present time. Everything else that lives in these demands is a wave driven to the surface that conceals what is at work in the subsoil of human nature.
[ 9 ] The onslaught against the oppression of the state expresses itself in the striving for true democracy; the onslaught against the oppression of economic life in the other striving, for the social organization of economic life.
[ 10 ] For what has become the modern state in the last three to four centuries, humanity demands democracy. If this democracy is to become a true fact, then it must be based on those forces of human nature that can truly live out their lives democratically. If states are to become democracies, then they must be institutions in which people can bring to bear what regulates the relationship of every adult human being who has come of age to every other human being. And every adult who has come of age must have an equal share in this regulation. Administration and representation of the people must be held in such a way that they reflect what arises from the consciousness of a person simply because he is a mentally healthy, mature person.
[ 11 ] Can such a representation of the people and such an administration also regulate the spiritual life, which must bring about the full development of individual human dispositions, if this development is not to be stunted and prevented to the detriment of social life? This development is based on the fact that it is cultivated on a ground where action is only taken as it arises from the impulses of spiritual life itself. A specific disposition is only really recognized and properly cultivated by a specifically developed disposition. And it is only correctly directed onto the path into life if the person giving the instruction acts on the basis of the experiences that experience gives him from the circle of life into which he is supposed to point. For the proper cultivation of a socially healthy community life, personalities are necessary who know the individual branches of life through the experience they have gained in them, and who develop within themselves the sense to bring their experience to revelation within the spiritual life. Think of the most socially significant branch of spiritual life: the school at every level. Can the development of the individual human powers and their preparation for life in a particular field not only be carried out successfully by a personality who has individual experience in this field? And can anything socially salutary ever come about if the position of such a personality in its place is determined by something other than the manifestation of its individual abilities? What is lived out in democracy can only relate to that which every responsible person has in common with every responsible person. There is no possibility of finding a regulation of what lies entirely within the sphere of the individual human being through that which can be lived out in democracy. If democracy is to be carried out honestly and truly, everything that belongs to this circle must be excluded from its soil. On democratic soil and within the administrative institutions that can grow out of this soil, no impulse can arise that can give direction to a human activity that should flow freely from the individual talent of man. Democracy must declare itself incapable of such an impulse if it wants to be true democracy. If a true democracy is to be formed out of the existing state, then everything must be taken out of it and handed over to its full self-government over which only the individual development of the particular person can develop the right impulses, and which cannot be regulated by that which lives in every person simply because he has become a responsible human being.
[ 12 ] The social relationships about which every person who has come of age is capable of judgment are the legal relationships from person to person. These are at the same time those living conditions which can only retain their social character by the fact that they arise in democratic institutions as an overall will from the real interaction of the same individual human wills. In everything that is to develop on the basis of individual human abilities, an overall will cannot be expressed in the institutions; rather, these institutions must be those in which the individual wills can fully express themselves. The individual human being must, so to speak, be able to behave like a natural basis. One cannot cultivate an area of land on the basis of needs which are conceived apart from the individual parts of this land; one must learn from the nature of the individual parts what they can produce in particular. Thus, in the spiritual field, individual initiative based on individual abilities must be able to have a social effect; it must not be determined by the content of an overall will. This general will must have an antisocial effect, for it deprives the community of the fruits of individual human abilities.<
[ 13 ] There is no other way to bring the fruits of these individual capacities to fruition than their self-government. Within this self-government alone can there be a state of affairs by which an overall will does not arise which suppresses the fruitfulness of individual human beings for social life, but by which individual human achievements are incorporated into life as a whole for its benefit.
[ 14 ] Within such a self-government, the points of view will emerge from the spiritual life through which the right people can be brought to the right places and through which directly living trust can take the place of law and regulation. The people involved in the education of the people will not be shown any educational goals by such laws and regulations; instead they will become observers of life and seek to glean from it what they have to educate. There will be a tendency to include in the spiritual organization people who have years of experience in some branch of economic or legal life. In this organization they will find the people with whom, in living contact, they will be able to transform their practical experience into something educationally fruitful. On the other hand, people in spiritual administration will feel the impulse to temporarily step out of this administration into practical life in order to utilize what they have achieved in a real way.
[ 15 ] A subdivision of the social organism in such a way that a self-governing spiritual life unfolds within it will not destroy the living unity of this organism, but, on the contrary, establish it all the more. Only the administration will be subdivided; in the life of man the unity will be able to develop. Man will no longer need to close himself off from life and encapsulate himself in a frozen state. It will be possible to pass back and forth from the spiritual to the other members of the social organism. For there will be something far more fruitful in the life that has developed as tradition and public opinion in the spiritual organism than in the rigid system that develops when people separate themselves as a class. In the future, the organization of the social organism should lie in the objective; and this objective should, through its self-government, develop the power that is effective even when it does not tyrannically ensnare people in its nets.
[ 16 ] It should not be doubted that a social economic and legal life can only arise if people can think and feel socially. An unbiased experience of present conditions should show that the spiritual life that has hitherto merged with the constitutional state cannot do this. Those who at present judge from the fullness of life find it difficult to understand, for they come up against the state of mind of people in whom there are no strings that are taut from life experience in the way of thinking and feeling, but rather those to whom state education has given an abstract, lifeless nature. Those people who consider themselves the most practical are the least practical. They have acquired a certain routine in the narrow sphere of life into which they have spun themselves. They call this their practical sense and, from this state of mind, look with pride on everyone as an impractical person who has not crammed himself into this routine. In all the rest of their thinking, feeling and willing, however, a being alien to life and borne by abstract forces of direction prevails. Such a being is brought up by the education anchored in the state, into which life experience cannot flow, but only abstract thinking and feeling, which, without special experience in any field, can be inherent in every person who has come of age through human nature, if they have a ground on which only they are effective. This fact is the reason why the social demands of the present are met with so little understanding from many sides. The very starting-points of social sentiment are not equal to the demands of the social organism. One thinks: many people demand a social reorganization of life. They are being met, some think, and laws and regulations are being created. But social reorganization cannot take place in this way. The social demands of the present are those that cannot find their fulfillment in a temporary upheaval of force. The "social question" has come to the surface of the historical development of mankind, and it will always be there from now on. And it will demand a direction of thought and feeling which will require the full adaptation of the spiritual being to social life as a whole and the continual fertilization of this spiritual being from the impulses of life as a whole. One will not be able to socialize in order to be socialized, one will always have to socialize anew; or also: one will have to maintain social life in a state of socialization.
[ 17 ] The anti-social, indeed often anti-social sentiment of those who currently pose as socialist thinkers has arisen from the tendencies founded in the previous intellectual system, especially in the educational and school system. Spiritual life, which is alien to life itself, has given rise to an inverted view of spiritual life itself. Broad circles today think that the true impulses of human life lie in the economic forms; that spiritual life, too, is merely a kind of "superstructure" resulting from economic life, an ideology that arises from the way of doing business. Almost the entire proletariat, which bears the present-day demands, more or less unconsciously or consciously professes such a view. This proletariat has developed it in an age in which the spiritual being has renounced giving itself direction and goal out of itself, in which the external, social organization of this spiritual being has become a result of state and economic life. This intellectual life has brought itself into a state from which it can only emerge through its self-administration. The proletariat, which has been completely absorbed into economic life through technology and the capital system, now believes that a mere reorganization of economic life will also produce the necessary new legal and spiritual forms "by itself". This proletariat has had to learn that modern intellectual life has become an appendage of state and economic life, and has formed the opinion: Every intellectual life is such an appendage. If it were to see this view realized in a social organism, it would have to realize to its bitterest disappointment that a spiritual life which has emerged from a social organization resting only on an economic basis would have led to even more deplorable conditions than those we have at present. The proletariat will have to come to the realization that the present situation cannot be improved by the mere reorganization of economic life, but by the detachment of the spiritual and legal systems from economic life in the tripartite healthy social organism. Only then will the proletarian movement stand on the right ground, when it will no longer say: The newer economic life has produced a spiritual and legal life that has an anti-social effect; we must bring about a different economic life, which will then also produce a different spiritual and legal system; but when it will say: The newer cultural life has led to an economic system that can only be transformed if the new one detaches the legal and intellectual life from itself and hands it over to its own administration, in order to achieve its own self-administration in this way. For this newer cultural life has led to the dependence of everything non-economic on the economic: recovery lies in the abolition of this dependence, not in an even greater dependence. The inclusion of the modern proletariat in mere economic life has led to the belief that recovery lies solely in a transformation of economic life. The day that will free the proletariat from this superstition, that will make its instincts realize that the spiritual and legal life must not be an ideology born of economics, but that the disastrous thing about the modern age lies precisely in the fact that such an ideology has been born: that day will bring the dawn for which so many people are waiting.
[ 18 ] An economic life in which the state does not participate will be able to emerge from the uninfluenced economic experiences on the one hand and from the particular economic foundations on which the economic life of individuals and groups of individuals rests. Economic experience cannot live itself out on the ground on which is to be revealed what lies in every person who has come of age, but only on the ground of the economic body which forms itself out of itself. And the validity which a man has by virtue of his being in a particular branch of economic life cannot express itself in the structure of state life, in which is to be realized what is equally valid for all men, but only in the effect which emanates from this man on other branches of economic life. The people who belong to one branch of the economy will have to unite within themselves; they will have to form associations with people from other branches of the economy. Consumption and production interests will be able to organize themselves in the lively traffic of such associations and cooperatives. Only economic impulses will be able to find their realization in the economic cycle.
[ 19 ] The manual laborer will stand opposite the intellectual laborer in such a way that only economic questions will come into consideration between them, because the legal relationship will find its regulation on the separate legal ground. The manual laborer will be able to be a free partner to the intellectual manager of his enterprise, because only the division of the jointly produced goods resulting from the economic basis can be considered and not an economic compulsion caused by the economically better position of the labor manager. The associative organization of the economic body will bring the manual worker into contexts of life which will bring quite different aspects into his contractual relationship with the intellectual work leader than his present position, which makes him not a participant in the results of production but a fighter against the interests of his employer. The manual laborer will gain the same interest, not the opposite, in his branch of production as his spiritual leader from the knowledge he gains from his economic situation as a consumer. This cannot arise in an economic life whose impulse is the profitability of capital ownership, but only in one that can regulate the values of the products from the balancing relations of consumption and production of the social community as a whole. Such a social community is only possible, however, if the special professional, consumer and production interests find their expression in associations which emerge from the individual branches of economic life itself and which communicate with each other in the overall organization of the economic body. The individual associations will arise from the special interests of the individual branches of the economy; the social impulses of the formation of the value of goods will be able to lie in the union of these associations and in the central administrative body, which will be formed out of the economic interests. One cannot socialize an individual enterprise, for socialization can only lie in the fact that the formation of the value of goods with which an individual enterprise stands within the overall economic life does not have an anti-social effect. True socialization in this direction completely deprives the capital system of that basis which makes it harmful as private property. (I have described the special structure of the capital system in the healthy tripartite organism in my book The Key Points of the Social Question). It should be clear that capital cannot be "abolished" insofar as it consists in nothing other than the means of production working for the social community. It is not capital that is harmful, but its management out of private property relations, if these private property relations can make the social structure of the economic body dependent on themselves. If this structure emerges from the economic association system in the manner described, then capital is deprived of any possibility of having an anti-social effect. Such a social structure will always prevent the ownership of capital from detaching itself from the management of the means of production and from becoming the impulse of aspiration of those who do not want to shape their lives by participating in the economic process, but without participating in it. It may be objected, however, that nothing would come of it for those who participate in the economic process if the acquisitions of those who do not work were "divided up". This is captivating because it is correct, and yet it conceals the truth, because its correctness has no significance for the organization of the social organism. For the harmfulness of the non-working rent-holders is not due to the fact that they deprive the working people of a relatively small amount, but to the fact that, through the possibility of earning an unemployed income, they give the whole economic body a character which has an anti-social effect. That whole economic body is something different in which unemployed income is impossible than the other in which such an income can be produced, just as a human organism is something different in which an ulcer cannot form at any point than one in which the unhealthy discharges itself in an ulcer formation at one point.
[ 20 ] A healthy social organism, however, necessitates institutions from which the present economic prejudices still shy away, due to the social association formations characterized. In a healthy social organism, a sum of means of production will have exhausted what it is allowed to cost when it is ready for operation. It will then be able to be managed by the producer only as long as he can be there with his individual abilities. Then it will have to be transferred to someone else, not by purchase or inheritance, but by transfer without purchase to the person who again has the individual skills to manage it. It will have no purchase value, and consequently no value in the hands of a non-working heir. Capital with independent economic power will work in the production of the means of production; it will dissolve the moment the production of the means of production is completed. The present capital, however, consists essentially precisely in "produced means of production".
[ 21 ] The socially correct value of a good (a commodity) can only arise in comparison with other goods. It must be equal to the value of all other goods which the producer needs to satisfy his wants up to the time when he has produced an equal good again, taking into account those wants which must be satisfied by him in other people. (The latter needs include, for example, those of his children, the part he has to play in maintaining people who are unable to work, etc.) The fact that such a value of goods comes about must be mediated by the institutions of a healthy economic life. These institutions can only be created by a network of corporations which regulate production on the basis of the experience of consumption. There can, of course, be no question of judging the justification of needs, but only of a mediation between consumption and production supported by economic experience and real economic conditions. Emerging needs that cannot be borne by the whole of an economic circle will not be able to find an equivalent value in the goods produced by those who have the needs.
[ 22 ] Only such an economic cycle will be able to find its regulation in this way, which arises from the mutually supporting measures of the individual economic corporations based on factual knowledge and factual documents. Any interference by a democracy would have to have a suppressive effect on the realization of factual knowledge. In the same way, however, the interests of the economy must have a destructive effect on everything that is to emerge from the influence of democracy.
[ 23 ] In the threefold division of the social organism into an independent spiritual element, an equally independent legal element and an economic element lies the health of this organism. The division will not be such that it separates people into three estates, but such that a person with his total human interests participates in all three members. The separation will only be such that, for example, in the legal organism or in the spiritual organism nothing will be decided that arises from the interests of the economic circle. In the unified state, in which the three members of life flow into one another, an economic group will be able to make its interests into law, into public law. In the tripartite organism, this will not be possible because economic interests can only express themselves in the economic cycle and there is no possibility of allowing them to flow over into the law.
[ 24 ] The amalgamation of the three members in a single body, consisting of the delegates of the three central administrations and central representations, will offer the greatest conceivable guarantee that one area will not be violated by the other. For these central administrations and central representations will have to reckon with what arises in their areas as a result of factual measures. They will not be in a position, for example, to allow legal or intellectual life to be unjustifiably influenced by economic life, for they would thereby put themselves in conflict with what takes place appropriately in each individual area independently of the other. If it is necessary for one area to influence the other, the factual basis for this cannot lie in the interests of one group, but only in those of the whole area.
[ 25 ] No one should believe that any social institution can bring about what he may imagine to be an "ideal state". What can be achieved is the viable healthy social organism. What goes beyond that must be found by people through something other than social organization. The task of this organization cannot be to establish "happiness", but to find the living conditions of a healthy social organism. In such an organism, however, people must be able to seek what they find necessary for a humane existence. Even the natural healthy organism does not of itself create what the soul needs to develop in terms of inner culture; a sick natural organism prevents it from doing so. And a healthy social organism can only create the conditions for what people want to develop in it through their individual abilities and needs.
[ 26 ] Whoever heretizes as utopia or ideology what emerges as a guideline for social organization, and wants to leave everything to development, which by itself brings about what can be, is like a person who becomes unwell because he is sitting in a room with dull air, and who does not want to open a window, but waits until the dull air "develops by itself" into a fresh one.
[ 27 ] Those who really want democracy cannot think of its true justification other than by assigning to self-government what this justification makes impossible by merging it with the rule of law: intellectual life and the economic cycle.