The Renewal of the Social Organism
GA 24
3. Culture, Law and Economics
[ 1 ] In the present social movement there is a great deal of talk about social institutions, but very little talk about social and antisocial human beings. Very little regard is paid to the “social question” that arises when one considers that institutions in a community take their social or antisocial stamp from the people who run them. Socialist thinkers expect to see in the community's control of the means of production something that will satisfy the demands of a wide range of people. They take for granted that, under communal control of the economy, human relations will necessarily assume a social form as well. They have seen that the economic system along the lines of private capitalism has led to antisocial conditions. They believe that when this industrial system has disappeared, the antisocial tendencies at work within it will also necessarily come to an end.
[ 2 ] Undoubtedly, along with the modern private capitalist form of industrial economy there have arisen social evils—evils that embrace the widest range of social life; but is this in any way a proof that they are a necessary consequence of this industrial system? An industrial system can, in and of itself, do nothing beyond putting men into life situations that enable them to produce goods for themselves or for others in a more or less efficient manner. The modern industrial system has brought the means of production under the power of individual persons or groups. The achievements of technology were such that the best use could be made of them by a concentration of industrial and economic power. So long as this power is employed in the one field—the production of goods alone—its social effect is essentially different from what it is when this power oversteps its bounds and trespasses into the fields of law or culture. It is this trespassing into the other fields that, in the course of the last few centuries, has led to the social evils that the modern social movement is striving to abolish. He who possesses the means of production acquires economic power over others. This economic power has resulted in the capitalist allying himself with the powers of government, whereby he is able to procure other advantages in society, opposing those who were economically dependent on him—advantages which, even in a democratically constituted state, are in practice of a legal nature. This economic domination has led to a similar monopolization of the cultural life by those who held economic power.
[ 3 ] The simplest thing would seem to be to get rid of this economic predominance of individuals, and thereby do away with their dominance in the spheres of rights and spiritual culture as well. One arrives at this “simplicity” of social thought when one fails to remember that the combination of technological and economic activity afforded by modern life necessitates allowing the most fruitful possible development of individual initiative and personal talent within the business community. The form production must take under modern conditions makes this a necessity. The individual cannot bring his abilities to bear in business if in his work and decision-making he is tied down to the will of the community. However dazzling is the thought of the individual producing not for himself but collectively for society, its justice within certain bounds should not hinder one from also recognizing the other truth—collectively, society is incapable of giving birth to economic schemes that can be realized through individuals in the most desirable way. Really practical thought, therefore, will not look to find the cure for social ills in a reshaping of economic life that would substitute communal production for private management of the means of production. Rather, the endeavor should be to forestall evils that may spring up along with management by individual initiative and personal talent, without impairing this management itself. This is possible only if neither the legal relationship among those engaged in industry, nor that which the spiritual-cultural sphere must contribute, are influenced by the interests of industrial and economic life.
[ 4 ] It cannot be said that those who manage the business of economic life can, while occupied by economic interests, preserve sound judgment on legal affairs and that, because their experience and work have made them well acquainted with the requirements of economic life, they will therefore be best able to settle legal matters that may arise within the workings of the economy. To hold such an opinion is to overlook the fact that a sphere of life calls forth interests arising only within that sphere. Out of the economic sphere one can develop only economic interests. If one is called out of this sphere to produce legal judgements as well, then these will merely be economic interests in disguise. Genuine political interests can only grow upon the field of political life, where the only consideration will be what are the rights of a matter. And if people proceed from such considerations to frame legal regulations, then the law thus made will have an effect upon economic life. It will then be unnecessary to place restrictions on the individual in respect to acquiring economic power; for such economic power will only result in his rendering economic services proportionate to his abilities—not in his using it to obtain special rights and privileges in social life.
[ 5 ] An obvious objection is that political and legal questions do after all arise in people's dealing with one another in business, so it is quite impossible to conceive of them as something distinct from economic life. Theoretically this is right enough, but it does not necessarily follow that in practice economic interests should be paramount in determining these legal relations. The manager who directs a business must necessarily have a legal relationship to manual workers in the same business; but this does not mean that he, as a business manager, is to have a say in determining what that relationship is to be. Yet he will have a say in it, and he will throw his economic predominance into the scales if economic cooperation and legal administration are conjoined. Only when laws are made in a field where business considerations cannot in any way come into question, and where business cannot gain any power over this legal system, will the two be able to work together in such a way that our sense of justice will not be violated, nor business acumen be turned into a curse instead of a blessing for the whole community.
[ 6 ] When the economically powerful are in a position to use that power to wrest legal privileges for themselves, among the economically weak will grow a corresponding opposition to these privileges. As soon as it has become strong enough, such opposition will lead to revolutionary disturbances. If the existence of a separate political and legal province makes it impossible for such privileges to arise, then disturbances of this sort cannot occur. What this special legal province does is to give constant orderly scope to those forces which, in its absence, accumulate until at last they vent themselves violently. Whoever wants to avoid revolutions should learn to establish a social order that shall accomplish in the steady flow of time what will otherwise try to realize itself in one historical moment.
[ 7 ] It will be said that the immediate concern of the modern social movement is not legal relations, but rather the removal of economic inequalities. One must reply to such an objection that our conscious thoughts are not always the true expression of the real demands stirring within us. Our conscious thoughts are the outcome of immediate experience; but the demands themselves originate in far deeper strata that are not experienced immediately. And if one aims at bringing about conditions that can satisfy these demands, one must attempt to penetrate to these deeper strata. A consideration of the relations that have come about in modern times between industrial economy and law shows that the legal sphere has become dependent upon the economic. If one were to try superficially, by means of a one-sided alteration in the forms of economic life, to abolish those economic inequalities that the law's dependence on the economy has brought about, then in a very short while similar inequalities would inevitably result as long as the new economic order were again allowed to build up the system of rights out of itself. One will never really touch what is working its way up through the social movement to the surface of modern life until one brings about social conditions in which, alongside the claims and interests of the economic life, those of politics and law can be realized and satisfied upon their own independent basis.
[ 8 ] It is in a similar manner, again, that one must approach the question of the cultural life and its bearings on that of law and the economy. In the last few centuries the cultural life has been cultivated under conditions that allowed it to exercise only the smallest independent influence upon politics or the economy. One of the most important aspects of culture, education, was shaped by governmental interests. People were trained and taught according to the requirements of the state. And the power of the state was reinforced by economic power. If anyone were to develop his or her human capacities within the existing educational institutions, this depended directly on his or her economic station in life. Accordingly, the spiritual forces that were able to find scope within the political or economic spheres bore the stamp of these economic factors. Free cultural life had to forego any attempt to make itself useful within the political state. And it could influence the economic sphere only to the extent that economics had remained independent of state control. For a vibrant economy demands that competent people be given full scope; economic matters cannot be left to just anyone whom circumstances may have left in control. If, however, the typical socialist program were to be carried out, and economic life were to be administered on the model of politics and the law, the cultivation of the free spiritual life would be forced to withdraw from the public sector altogether. However, a cultural life that has to develop apart from civil and economic realities loses touch with real life. It is forced to draw its substance from sources not vitally linked to those realities. Over the course of time the cultural life makes of this substance a sort of animated abstraction that runs alongside real events without having any concrete effect upon them. In this way, two different currents arise within cultural life. One of them draws its waters from political rights and economics, and is occupied with their daily requirements, trying to devise systems to meet these requirements—without, however, penetrating to the needs of our spiritual nature. All it does is devise external systems and harness men into them, ignoring what their inner nature has to say about it. The other current of cultural life proceeds from the inner striving for knowledge and from ideals of the will. These it shapes to suit our inner nature. However, such knowledge is derived from contemplation: it is not the precipitate of practical experience. These ideals have arisen from concepts of what is true and good and beautiful, but they do not have the strength to shape the conduct of life. Consider what concepts, what religious ideals, what artistic interests, form the inner life of the shopkeeper, the manufacturer, or the government official, outside and apart from his daily practical life; and then consider what ideas are contained in those activities that find expression in his bookkeeping, or for which he is trained by the education that prepared him for his profession. A gulf lies between these two currents of cultural life. The gulf has grown all the wider in recent years because the kind of thinking that is quite justified in natural science has become the measure of our relationship to reality as a whole. This way of thinking seeks to understand the lawfulness of phenomena that lie beyond human activity and human influence, so that the human being is a mere spectator of what he comprehends in a scheme of natural law. And although he sets these laws of nature into motion in technology, he himself does no more than allow the forces that lie outside his own being and nature to be active. The knowledge he employs in this kind of activity has a character that is quite different from his own nature. It reveals to him nothing of what lies in cosmic processes with which human nature is interwoven. For such knowledge as this he needs a world view that unites both the human world and the world outside him.
[ 9 ] Anthroposophy strives for such knowledge. While fully recognizing all that scientific thinking means for the progress of modern humanity, anthroposophy sees that the scientific method framed for the study of nature is able to convey only that which comprehends the outer human being. It also recognizes the essential nature of the religious world views, but is aware that in the modern age these concepts of the world have become an internal concern of the soul, and not something applied in any way to the transformation of external life, which runs on separately alongside.
[ 10 ] In order to arrive at its insights, spiritual science makes demands to which people are still little inclined, because in the last few centuries they have become used to carrying on their outer and inner lives as two separate and distinct existences. Thus the incredulity that meets every endeavor to bring spiritual insight to bear upon social questions. People remember past attempts that were born of a spirit estranged from life. When there is any talk of such things, they recall St. Simon, Fourier and others. The opinion is justified insofar as such ideas stem not from living experience, but rather from an artificial thought-construct. Thus they conclude that spiritual thinking is generally unable to produce ideas that can be realized in practical life. From this general theory come the various views that in their modern form are all more or less attributable to Marx. Those who hold them have no use for ideas as active agents in bringing about satisfactory social conditions. Rather, they maintain that the evolution of economic realities is tending inevitably toward a goal from which such conditions will result. They are inclined to let practical life more or less take its own course because in actual practice ideas are powerless. They have lost faith in the strength of spiritual life. They do not believe that there can be any kind of spiritual life able to overcome the remoteness and unreality that has characterized it during the last few centuries.
It is a kind of spiritual life such as this, nevertheless, that is the goal of anthroposophy. The sources it would draw from are the sources of reality itself. Those forces that hold sway in our innermost being are the same forces that are at work in external reality. Scientific thinking cannot penetrate down to these forces when it merely elaborates natural law intellectually out of external experience. Yet the world views that are founded on a more religious basis are no longer in touch with these forces either. They accept the traditions that have been handed down without penetrating to their fountainhead in the depths of human nature. The spiritual science of anthroposophy, however, seeks to penetrate to this fountainhead. It develops epistemological methods that lead down into those regions of our inner nature where the processes external to us find their continuation within human nature itself. The insights of spiritual science represent a reality actually experienced within our inmost self. These insights shape themselves into ideas that are not mere mental constructs, but rather something saturated with the forces of reality. Hence such ideas are able to carry within them the force of reality when they offer themselves as guides to social action. One can well understand that, at first, a spiritual science such as this should meet with mistrust. Such mistrust will not last when people come to recognize the essential difference that exists between this spiritual science and modern natural science, which is assumed today to be the only kind of science possible. If one can struggle through to a recognition of the difference, then one will cease to believe that one must avoid social ideas when one is intent upon the practical work of shaping social reality. One will begin to see, instead, that practical social ideas can be had only from a spiritual life that can find its way to the roots of human nature. One will see clearly that in modern times social events have fallen into disorder because people have tried to master them with thoughts from which reality constantly struggled free.
[ 11 ] Spiritual insight that penetrates to the essence of human-nature finds there motives for action that are immediately good in the ethical sense as well. The impulse toward evil arises in us only because in our thoughts and feelings we silence the depths of our own nature. Accordingly, social ideas that are arrived at through the sort of spiritual concepts indicated here must, by their very nature, he ethical ideas as well. Since they are drawn not from thought alone, but from life, they possess the strength to take hold of the will and to live on in action. In true spiritual insight, social thought and ethical thought become one. And the life that grows out of such spiritual insight is intimately linked with every form of activity in human life—even in our practical dealings with the most insignificant matters. Thus as a consequence of social awareness, ethical impulse and practical conduct become so closely interwoven that they form a unity.
[ 12 ] This kind of spirituality can thrive, however, only when its growth is completely independent of all authority except that derived directly from cultural life itself. Political and legal measures for the nurturance of the spirit sap the strength of cultural life, while a cultural life that is left entirely to its own inherent interests and impulses will strengthen every aspect of social life. It is frequently objected that humanity would need to be completely transformed before one could found social behavior upon ethical impulses. Such an objection does not take into account that human ethical impulses wither away if they are not allowed to arise within a free cultural life, but are instead forced to take the particular turn that the political-legal structure of society finds necessary for carrying on work in the spheres it has previously mapped out. A person brought up and educated within a free cultural life will certainly, through his very initiative, bring along into his calling much of the stamp of his or her own personality. Such a person will not allow himself to be fitted into the social works like a cog into a machine. In the end, however, what he brings into it will not disturb the harmony of the whole, but rather increase it. What goes on in each particular part of the communal life will be the outcome of what lives in the spirits of the people at work there.
[ 13 ] People whose souls breathe the atmosphere created by a spirit such as this will vitalize the institutions needed for practical economic purposes in such a way that social needs, too, will be satisfied. Institutions devised to satisfy these social needs will never work so long as people feel their inner nature to be out of harmony with their outward occupation. For institutions of themselves cannot work socially. To work socially requires socially attuned human beings working within an ordered legal system created by a living interest in this legal system, and with an economic life that produces in the most efficient fashion the goods required for actual needs.
[ 14 ] If the life of culture is a free one, evolved only from those impulses that reside within itself, then legal institutions will thrive to the degree that people are educated intelligently in the ordering of their legal relations and rights; the basis of this intelligence must be a living experience of the spirit. Then economic life will be fruitful as well to the degree that cultivation of the spirit has developed new capacities within us.
[ 15 ] Every institution that has arisen within communal life had its origin in the will that shaped it; the life of the spirit has contributed to its growth. Only when life becomes complicated, as it has under modern technical methods of production, does the will that dwells in thought lose touch with social reality. The latter then pursues its own course mechanically. We withdraw in spirit, and seek in some remote corner the spiritual substance needed to satisfy our souls.
It is this mechanical course of events, over which the individual will had no control, that gave rise to conditions which the modern social movement aims at changing. It is because the spirit that is at work within the legal sphere and the economy is no longer one through which the individual spiritual life can flow, that the individual sees himself in a social order which gives him, as an individual, no legal or economic scope for self-development.
People who do not see through this will always object to viewing the social organism as consisting of three systems, each requiring its own distinct basis—cultural life, political institutions, and the economy. They will protest that such a differentiation will destroy the necessary unity of communal life. To this one must reply that right now this unity is destroying itself in the effort to maintain itself intact. Legal institutions based upon economic power actually work to undermine that economic power, because it is felt by those economically inferior to be a foreign body within the social organism. And when the spirit that reigns within legal and economic life tries to regulate the activity of the organism as a whole, it condemns the living spirit (which works its way up from the depths of each individual soul) to powerlessness in the face of practical life. If, however, the legal system grows up on independent ground out of the consciousness of rights, and if the will of the individual dwelling in the spirit is developed in a free cultural life, then the legal system, strength of spirit and economic activity work together as a unity. They will be able to do so when they can develop, each according to its own proper nature, in distinct fields of life. It is just in separation that they will turn to unity; when an artificial unity is imposed, they become estranged.
[ 16 ] Many socialist thinkers will thus dismiss such a view: “It is impossible to bring about satisfactory conditions through this organic formation of society. It can be done only through a suitable economic organization.” They overlook the fact that those who work in their economic organization are endowed with wills. If one tells them this, they will smile, for they regard it as self-evident. Yet their thoughts are busy constructing a social edifice in which this “self-evident fact” is ignored. Their economic organization is to be controlled by a communal will. However, this must after all be the result of the individual wills of the people united in the organization. These individual wills can never take effect if the communal will is derived entirely from the idea of economic organization. Individual wills can expand unfettered if, alongside the economic sphere, there is a legal sphere where the standard is set, not by any economic point of view, but only by the consciousness of rights, and if, alongside both the economic and legal spheres, a free cultural life can find place, following only the impulses of the spirit. Then we shall not have a social order running like clockwork, in which individual wills could never find a lasting place. Then human beings will find it possible to give their wills a social bent and to bring them constantly to bear on the shaping of social circumstances. Under the free cultural life the individual will shall become social. When legal institutions are self-subsisting, these socially attuned individual wills shall yield a communal will that works justly. The individual wills, socially oriented and organized by the independent legal system, will exert themselves within the economic system, producing and distributing goods as social needs demand.
[ 17 ] Most people today still lack faith in the possibility of establishing a social order based on individual wills. They have no faith in it because such a faith cannot come from a cultural life that has developed in dependence on the state and the economy. The kind of spirit that does not develop in freedom out of the life of the spirit itself but rather out of an external organization simply does not know what are the spirit's potentials. It looks about for something to guide and manage it, not knowing how the spirit guides and manages itself if it can but draw its strength from its own sources. It would like to have a board of management for the spirit—a branch of the economic and legal organizations—totally disregarding the fact that the economy and the legal system can thrive only when permeated with the spirit that is self-subsistent.
[ 18 ] It is not good will that is needed in order to transform the social order; what is needed is a courage to oppose this lack of faith in the spirit's power. A truly spiritual view can inspire this courage, for such a spiritual view feels able to bring forth ideas that serve not only the inner needs of the soul, but also the needs of outer, practical life. The will to enter the depths of the spirit can become a will so strong as to suffuse every deed that one performs.
[ 19 ] When one speaks of a spiritual view having its roots in life itself, many people take one to mean the sum total of those instincts that become a refuge when one travels along the familiar paths of life and holds every intervention from, spiritual spheres to be a piece of eccentric idealism. The spiritual view intended here, however, must not be confused with that abstract spirituality incapable of extending its interests to practical life, nor with that spiritual tendency which actually denies the spirit flatly when it considers the guidelines of practical life. Both these views ignore the way in which the spirit rules in the facts of external life, and therefore feel no urgent need to penetrate to its foundations. Yet only such a sense of urgency brings forth that knowledge which sees the “social question” in its true light. The experiments now being made to resolve this issue yield such unsatisfactory results because many people have not yet become able to see the true nature of the question. They see this question arise in economic spheres, and they look to economic institutions to provide the answer. They think they will find the solution in economic transformation. They fail to recognize that these transformations can only come about through forces that are released from within human nature itself in the revival of independent cultural and legal life.
Geistesleben, Rechtsordnung, Wirtschaft
[ 1 ] Innerhalb der gegenwärtigen sozialen Bewegung wird viel von sozialen Einrichtungen, wenig aber von sozialen und unsozialen Menschen geredet. Die « soziale Frage » findet kaum Beachtung, die sich erhebt, wenn man beachtet, daß gesellschaftliche Einrichtungen ihr soziales oder antisoziales Gepräge durch die Menschen erhalten, die in denselben wirken. Sozialistische Denker glauben, in der Verwaltung der Produktionsmittel durch die Gemeinschaften das sehen zu müssen, was die Forderungen weiter Volkskreise befriedigen werde. Sie setzen dabei ohne weiteres voraus, daß bei einer solchen Verwaltung das menschliche Zusammenwirken sich im sozialen Sinne gestalten müsse. Sie haben gesehen, daß die privatkapitalistische Wirtschaftsordnung zu unsozialen Zuständen geführt hat. Sie meinen, wenn diese Wirtschaftsordnung verschwunden sein werde, müssen auch deren antisoziale Wirkungen aufgehört haben.
[ 2 ] Sicherlich sind mit der modernen privatkapitalistischen Wirtschaftsform soziale Schäden im weitesten Umfange entstanden. Aber ist denn irgendwie erwiesen, daß diese eine notwendige Folge jener Wirtschaftsordnung sind? Nun kann aber eine Wirtschaftsordnung durch ihr eigenes Wesen nichts anderes bewirken, als daß sie Menschen in Lebenslagen bringt, durch die sie für sich und andere Güter in zweckmäßiger oder unzweckmäßiger Art erzeugen. Die moderne Wirtschaftsordnung hat die Produktionsmittel in die Macht einzelner Personen oder Personengruppen gebracht. Die technischen Errungenschaften ließen sich durch die wirtschaftliche Machtkonzentration am zweckmäßigsten ausnützen. Solange diese Macht sich nur auf dem Gebiete der Gütererzeugung betätigt, hat sie eine wesentlich andere soziale Wirkung, als wenn sie auf das rechtliche oder geistige Lebensgebiet übergreift. Und dieses Übergreifen hat im Laufe der letzten Jahrhunderte zu den sozialen Schäden geführt, auf deren Beseitigung die moderne soziale Bewegung dringt. Derjenige, der im Besitze der Produktionsmittel ist, erhält über andere eine wirtschaftliche Übermacht. Diese führte dazu, daß er in den Verwaltungen und Volksvertretungen die ihm helfenden Kräfte fand, durch die er sich auch andere gesellschaftliche Vormachtstellungen gegenüber den von ihm wirtschaftlich Abhängigen verschaffen konnte, die auch in einer demokratischen Staatsordnung einen praktisch rechtlichen Charakter tragen. Ebenso führte die wirtschaftliche Übermacht zu einer Monopolisierung des geistigen Lebens bei den wirtschaftlich Mächtigen.
[ 3 ] Es scheint nun das Einfachste zu sein, die wirtschaftliche Übermacht bei den Einzelnen zu beseitigen, um auch deren rechtliche und geistige Übermacht aus der Welt zu schaffen. Man kommt zu dieser « Einfachheit » des sozialen Denkens, wenn man nicht bedenkt, daß in der von dem modernen Leben gebotenen Verbindung von technischer und wirtschaftlicher Betätigung die Notwendigkeit liegt, im Betriebe des Wirtschaftslebens Initiative und individuelle Tüchtigkeit der Einzelnen zur möglichst fruchtbaren Entfaltung kommen zu lassen. Die Art, wie unter den modernen Bedingungen produziert werden muß, macht dies notwendig. Der Einzelne kann seine Fähigkeiten im Wirtschaften nicht zur Geltung bringen, wenn er in seiner Arbeit und in seinen Entschließungen an den Willen der Gemeinschaft gebunden ist. Möge der Gedanke noch so stark blenden: der Einzelne soll nicht für sich, sondern für die Gesamtheit produzieren; seine Richtigkeit innerhalb gewisser Grenzen sollte nicht verhindern, auch die andere Wahrheit anzuerkennen, daß aus der Gesamtheit heraus keine wirtschaftlichen Entschließungen stammen können, die sich in der wünschenswerten Art durch die Einzelnen verwirklichen lassen. Deshalb kann ein wirklichkeitsgemäßes Denken die Heilung sozialer Schäden nicht in einer neuen Gestaltung des Wirtschaftslebens suchen, durch die ein gesellschaftliches Produzieren an die Stelle der Verwaltung der Produktionsmittel durch Einzelne trete. Es muß vielmehr angestrebt werden, die Schäden, die bei dem Walten der Initiative und Tüchtigkeit der Einzelnen entstehen können, ohne Beeinträchtigung dieses Waltens zu verhindern. Das ist nur möglich, wenn die rechtlichen Beziehungen der wirtschaftenden Menschen nicht von den Interessen des Wirtschaftslebens beeinflußt werden, und wenn auch dasjenige, was für die Menschen durch das Geistesleben geleistet werden soll, von diesen Interessen unabhängig ist.
[ 4 ] Man kann nicht sagen, die Verwalter des Wirtschaftslebens können sich doch, trotz ihrer Inanspruchnahme durch die wirtschaftlichen Interessen, ein gesundes Urteil über die Rechtsverhältnisse wahren; und da sie aus ihren Erfahrungen und ihrer Arbeit die Bedürfnisse des Wirtschaftslebens gut kennen, so werden sie auch das Rechtsleben, das sich innerhalb des Wirtschaftskreislaufes entfalten soll, am besten ordnen können. Wer eine solche Meinung hat, der beachtet nicht, daß der Mensch aus einem gewissen Lebensgebiete heraus nur die Interessen dieses Gebietes entwickeln kann. Aus dem Wirtschaftsleben heraus kann er nur wirtschaftliche Interessen entwickeln. Soll er aus ihm auch die Rechtsinteressen entfalten, so werden diese nur verkappte Wirtschaftsinteressen sein. Wahrhaftige Rechtsinteressen können nur auf einem Boden entstehen, auf dem das Rechtsleben seine abgesonderte Pflege findet. Auf einem solchen Boden wird man nur nach dem fragen, was rechtens ist. Und wenn man im Sinne solcher Fragen Rechtsregelungen vorgenommen hat, dann wird, was so entstanden ist, auf das Wirtschaftsleben einwirken. Man wird dem Einzelnen keine Beschränkung aufzuerlegen brauchen in bezug auf die Aneignung der wirtschaftlichen Macht; denn diese Macht wird nur dazu führen, daß er seinen Fähigkeiten gemäß wirtschaftliche Leistungen vollbringt, nicht aber dazu, daß er durch sie rechtliche Vorteile erwirbt.
[ 5 ] Naheliegend ist der Einwand, daß die Rechtsverhältnisse sich doch in dem Verkehr der wirtschaftenden Menschen offenbaren, daß sie also gar nicht als etwas Besonderes außer dem Wirtschaftsleben erfaßt werden können. Das ist zwar theoretisch richtig, macht aber nicht notwendig, daß auch praktisch die wirtschaftlichen Interessen für die Regelung der Rechtsverhältnisse bestimmend seien. Der geistige Leiter eines Betriebes wird zu den Handarbeitern dieses Betriebes in einem Rechtsverhältnis stehen müssen; das bedingt nicht, daß er als Betriebsleiter bei Festsetzung dieses Verhältnisses mitzusprechen hat. Er wird aber mitsprechen und dabei seine wirtschaftliche Übermacht in die Waagschale werfen, wenn das wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeiten und die Regelung der Rechtsverhältnisse auf einem gemeinsamen Verwaltungsboden sich vollziehen. Nur wenn das Recht auf einem Boden geordnet wird, auf dem eine Rücksicht auf das Wirtschaften gar nicht in Frage kommen kann und das Wirtschaften gegenüber dieser Rechtsordnung keine Macht erringen kann, werden beide so ineinander arbeiten können, daß das Rechtsgefühl der Menschen nicht verletzt und die wirtschaftliche Leistungsfähigkeit nicht aus einem Segen für die Gesamtheit zu einem Unsegen wird.
[ 6 ] Wenn die wirtschaftlich Mächtigen in der Lage sind, ihre Macht zur Erringung von Rechtsvorteilen zu gebrauchen, so wird sich bei den wirtschaftlich Schwachen der Widerstand gegen diese Vorteile entwickeln. Und dieser muß, wenn er genügend stark geworden ist, zu revolutionären Erschütterungen führen. Ist durch das Vorhandensein eines besonderen Rechtsbodens das Entstehen solcher Rechtsvorteile unmöglich, so werden solche Erschütterungen nicht eintreten können. Was von diesem Rechtsboden aus fortwährend geschieht, wird ein geordnetes Ausleben der Kräfte sein, die sich ohne denselben in den Menschen ansammeln und zu gewaltsamen Entladungen führen. Wer Revolutionen vermeiden will, der muß an die Errichtung einer gesellschaftlichen Ordnung denken, durch die im Flusse der Zeit geschieht, was sich sonst in einem weltgeschichtlichen Augenblick vollziehen will.
[ 7 ] Man wird sagen, in der modernen sozialen Bewegung handelt es sich ja zunächst nicht um Rechtsverhältnisse, sondern um Überwindung der wirtschaftlichen Ungleichheiten. Auf diesen Einwand wird erwidert werden müssen, daß Forderungen, die in den Menschen leben, keineswegs immer durch die Gedanken richtig ausgedrückt werden, die das Bewußtsein von ihnen bildet. Diese bewußten Gedanken sind Ergebnisse desjenigen, was unmittelbar erfahren wird. Was aber die Forderungen hervorbringt, das sind tiefere Zusammenhänge des Lebens, die nicht unmittelbar erfahren werden. Wer an die Herbeiführung von Zuständen des Lebens denkt, durch die diese Forderungen befriedigt werden sollen, der muß in die tieferen Zusammenhänge zu dringen versuchen. Die Betrachtung des in der neueren Zeit bestandenen Verhältnisses zwischen Recht und Wirtschaft ergibt, daß das rechtliche Leben der Menschen in Abhängigkeit gekommen ist von dem wirtschaftlichen. Würde man nun darnach streben, die wirtschaftlichen Ungleichheiten, die im Gefolge dieser Abhängigkeit aufgetreten sind, in äußerer Art aus der Welt zu schaffen durch eine einseitige Änderung der Wirtschaftsformen, so müßten sich in kurzer Zeit ähnliche Ungleichheiten ergeben, wenn man den neuen Wirtschaftsformen wieder die Möglichkeit ließe, ihre Rechtsformen aus sich selbst zu schaffen. Nur wenn man Zustände des gesellschaftlichen Lebens herbeiführt, durch die neben den wirtschaftlichen Anforderungen und Interessen die rechtlichen selbständig erlebt und befriedigt werden können, wird man wirklich an das herankommen, was durch die soziale Bewegung sich an die Oberfläche des modernen Menschendaseins drängt.
[ 8 ] Und in der gleichen Art wird man an die Beziehungen des geistigen Lebens zum rechtlichen und wirtschaftlichen herantreten müssen. Unter den Verhältnissen, die sich im Laufe der letzten Jahrhunderte ergeben haben, konnte die Pflege des Geisteslebens aus sich selbst ihre Wirkung auf das politisch-rechtliche und das wirtschaftliche Leben nur in einem sehr beschränkten Maße ausüben. Aus den Interessen der staatlichen Rechtsmacht gestaltete sich einer der wichtigsten Zweige der Geistespflege: das Erziehungs- und Unterrichtswesen. Wie es den staatlichen Bedürfnissen entsprach, so wurde der Mensch erzogen und unterrichtet. Und zu der staatlichen trat die wirtschaftliche Macht hinzu. Wer innerhalb der bestehenden Unterrichts- und Erziehungseinrichtungen zur Entwickelung seiner Fähigkeiten als Mensch kommen sollte, der mußte dies auf Grund der wirtschaftlichen Macht, die sich aus seinem Lebenskreise heraus ergab. So wurden diejenigen geistigen Kräfte, die innerhalb des politisch-rechtlichen und des wirtschaftlichen Lebens sich betätigen konnten, in ihrem Gepräge völlig ein Abdruck dieses Lebens. Ein freies Geistesleben mußte darauf verzichten, seine Leistungen in das staatlich-politische Leben hineinzutragen. Und in das wirtschaftliche konnte es dies nur in dem Grade, als sich dieses noch von dem staatlich-politischen unabhängig erhalten hatte. Innerhalb der Wirtschaft offenbart sich ja die Notwendigkeit, den Fähigen zur Geltung kommen zu lassen, weil deren Fruchtbarkeit abstirbt, wenn der Unfähige, aber durch die Verhältnisse wirtschaftlich Mächtige, allein waltet. Würde aber die Tendenz vieler sozialistisch Denkenden verwirklicht, das Wirtschaftsleben nach dem Muster des politisch-rechtlichen zu verwalten, dann würde die Pflege des freien Geisteslebens völlig aus der Öffentlichkeit hinausgedrängt. Ein Geistesleben aber, das sich abseits von der politisch-rechtlichen und wirtschaftlichen Wirklichkeit entwickeln muß, wird lebensfremd. Es muß seinen Inhalt aus Quellen holen, die nicht lebensvoll mit dieser Wirklichkeit zusammenhängen; und es gestaltet diesen Inhalt dann im Laufe der Zeit so aus, daß er wie eine lebendig gewordene Abstraktion neben dieser Wirklichkeit einherläuft, ohne in ihr eine sachgemäße Wirkung zu erzeugen. Auf diese Art entstehen zwei Strömungen im Geistesleben. Die eine holt ihren Inhalt aus den von Tag zu Tag auftretenden Anforderungen des politisch-rechtlichen und des Wirtschaftslebens und sucht Einrichtungen zu treffen, die sich aus diesen Anforderungen ergeben. Sie dringt dabei nicht zu den Bedürfnissen der geistigen Wesenheit des Menschen vor. Sie trifft äußere Einrichtungen und spannt die Menschen in diese hinein, ohne dabei auf das hinzuhorchen, was die innere Menschennatur dazu sagt. Die andere geht von inneren Erkenntnisbedürfnissen und Willensidealen aus. Sie gestaltet diese so, wie das Innere des Menschen sie verlangt. Aber diese Erkenntnisse entstammen der Betrachtung. Sie sind nicht der Niederschlag dessen, was in der Praxis des Lebens erfahren wird. Und diese Ideale sind aus den Vorstellungen darüber entstanden, was wahr, gut und schön ist. Aber sie haben nicht die Kraft, die Lebenspraxis zu gestalten. Man denke, was abseits von seiner Lebenspraxis der Kaufmann, der Industrielle, der Staatsbeamte als seine Erkenntnisvorstellungen, seine religiösen Ideale, seine künstlerischen Interessen innerlich erlebt, und was an Ideen in derjenigen Tätigkeit enthalten ist, die in seiner Buchführung zum Ausdruck kommt, oder für die ihn Erziehung und Unterricht als sein Amt bedingend vorbereiten. Zwischen den beiden geistigen Strömungen liegt ein Abgrund. Er wurde in der neueren Zeit noch besonders breit gemacht dadurch, daß diejenige Vorstellungsart für des Menschen Verhältnis zur Wirklichkeit maßgebend wurde, die in der Naturwissenschaft ihre volle Berechtigung hat. Diese Vorstellungsart geht auf die Erkenntnis von Gesetzen an Dingen und Vorgängen aus, die außerhalb des Bereiches der menschlichen Betätigung und Wirksamkeit liegen. Dadurch ist der Mensch gewissermaßen nur der Zuschauer dessen, was er in den Naturgesetzen erfaßt. Und wenn er in der Technik die Naturgesetze zur Wirksamkeit bringt, so wird er nur der Veranlasser davon, daß geschieht, was durch Kräfte bewirkt wird, die außerhalb seines eigenen Wesens liegen. Die Erkenntnis, durch die er sich auf diese Art betätigt, trägt einen von seiner eigenen Natur verschiedenen Charakter. Sie offenbart ihm nichts darüber, was in den Weltvorgängen liegt, in die sein eigenes Wesen verwoben ist. Zu einer solchen Erkenntnis bedarf er einer Anschauung, die außermenschliche und menschliche Welt in eines zusammenfaßt.
[ 9 ] Nach einer solchen Erkenntnis strebt die moderne anthroposophisch orientierte Geisteswissenschaft. Sie anerkennt vollkommen die Bedeutung der naturwissenschaftlichen Vorstellungsart für den Fortschritt der neueren Menschheit. Aber sie ist sich klar darüber, daß was durch naturwissenschaftliche Erkenntnis vermittelt wird, nur den äußeren Menschen erfaßt. Sie anerkennt auch die Wesenheit der religiösen Weltanschauungen; aber sie wird sich bewußt, daß diese Weltanschauungen im Laufe der neuzeitlichen Entwickelung zu einer inneren Angelegenheit der Seele geworden sind, neben denen das äußere Leben abläuft, ohne von ihnen durch Menschen gestaltet zu werden.
[ 10 ] Um zu ihren Erkenntnissen zu kommen, stellt die Geisteswissenschaft allerdings Anforderungen an den Menschen, für die er zunächst aus dem Grunde wenig Neigung entwickelt, weil er sich in den letzten Jahrhunderten daran gewöhnt hat, in Lebenspraxis und inneres Seelenleben als in zwei voneinander getrennte Gebiete sich einzuleben. Aus dieser Gewöhnung heraus hat die Anschauung sich ergeben, die gegenwärtig jedem Bestreben Unglauben entgegenbringt, das aus geistigen Einsichten heraus über die soziale Gestaltung des Lebens ein Urteil gewinnen will. Man hat im Auge, was man als soziale Ideen erlebt hat, die aus einem lebensfremden Geistesleben heraus geboren sind. Man erinnert, wenn von solchen Ideen die Rede ist, an Saint Simon, an Fourier und andere. Die Meinung, die man über solche Ideen gewonnen hat, ist deshalb berechtigt, weil diese aus einer Erkenntnisrichtung heraus entwickelt sind, die nicht an der Wirklichkeit erlebt, sondern die erdacht ist. Und aus dieser Meinung ist die verallgemeinerte entstanden, daß keine Geistesart geeignet ist, Ideen hervorzubringen, die mit der Lebenspraxis so verwandt sind, daß sie verwirklicht werden können. Aus dieser verallgemeinerten Meinung sind die Ansichten entstanden, die in ihrer heutigen Gestalt mehr oder weniger auf Marx zurückweisen. Ihre Träger halten nichts von Ideen, die in der Herbeiführung sozial befriedigender Zustände tätig sein sollen, sondern sie behaupten, die Entwickelung der wirtschaftlichen Tatsachen müsse zu einem Ziele führen, aus dem sich solche Zustände ergeben. Man will gewissermaßen die Lebenspraxis ihren Gang gehen lassen, weil Ideen innerhalb dieser Praxis ohnmächtig seien. Man hat das Vertrauen in die Kraft des Geisteslebens verloren. Man glaubt nicht, daß es eine solche Art des Geisteslebens geben könne, welche die Lebensfremdheit des in den letzten Jahrhunderten zur allgemeinen Geltung gekommenen überwindet. Eine solche Art des Geisteslebens wird nun aber mit der anthroposophisch orientierten Geisteswissenschaft angestrebt. Diese sucht aus solchen Quellen zu schöpfen, die zugleich die Quellen der Wirklichkeit sind. Die Kräfte, die in der innersten Menschennatur walten, sind dieselben, die in der außermenschlichen Wirklichkeit tätig sind. Bis zu diesen Kräften steigt die naturwissenschaftliche Vorstellungsart nicht hinab, indem sie verstandesmäßig ihre an den äußeren Tatsachen gewonnenen Erfahrungen zu Naturgesetzen verarbeitet. Aber auch die auf mehr religiöser Grundlage ruhenden Weltanschauungen verbinden sich gegenwärtig nicht mehr mit diesen Kräften. Sie nehmen die Überlieferungen auf, ohne bis zu ihrem Ursprung im Menschen-Innern zu dringen. Geisteswissenschaft aber sucht bis zu diesem Ursprunge zu kommen. Sie entwickelt Erkenntnismethoden, durch welche in die Schächte des Menschen-Innern hinuntergestiegen wird, in denen das außermenschliche Geschehen sich in das Menschen-Innere fortsetzt. Die Erkenntnisse dieser Geisteswissenschaft stellen im Innern des Menschen erlebte Wirklichkeit dar. Sie drängen sich zu Ideen zusammen, die nicht erdacht sind, sondern die gesättigt sind von den Kräften der Wirklichkeit. Solche Ideen sind daher auch imstande, die Kraft der Wirklichkeit dann in sich zu tragen, wenn sie richtunggebend sein wollen für das soziale Wollen. Es ist begreiflich, daß man zunächst einer solchen Geisteswissenschaft gegenüber Mißtrauen hat. Man wird dieses Mißtrauen aber nur so lange haben, als man nicht erkennt, wie sie wesenhaft verschieden ist von der Wissenschaftsströmung, die sich in der neueren Zeit herausgebildet hat, und von der heute allgemein angenommen wird, daß sie die allein mögliche sei. Ringt man sich zur Erkenntnis dieser Verschiedenheit durch, dann wird man nicht mehr glauben, daß man soziale Ideen meiden muß, wenn man die sozialen Tatsachen praktisch gestalten will; sondern man wird gewahr werden, daß man praktische soziale Ideen nur aus einem Geistesleben heraus gewinnen kann, das seinen Weg zu den Wurzeln des Menschenwesens nehmen kann. Man wird durchschauen, wie in der neueren Zeit die sozialen Tatsachen deshalb in Unordnung gekommen sind, weil die Menschen mit Gedanken sie zu meistern suchten, denen die Tatsachen fortwährend sich entwanden.
[ 11 ] Eine Geistesanschauung, die in die Wesenheit des Menschen eindringt, findet da Antriebe zum Handeln, die unmittelbar im sittlichen Sinne auch gut sind. Denn der Trieb zum Bösen entsteht im Menschen nur dadurch, daß er in seinen Gedanken und Empfindungen die Tiefen seines Wesens zum Schweigen bringt. Werden daher die sozialen Ideen durch die hier gemeinte Geistesanschauung gewonnen, so müssen sie ihrer eigenen Natur nach auch sittliche Ideen sein. Und da sie nicht nur erdachte, sondern erlebte Ideen sind, so haben sie die Kraft, den Willen zu ergreifen und im Handeln weiterzuleben. Soziales Denken und sittliches Denken fließen für wahre Geistesanschauung in eins zusammen. Das Leben, das solche Geistesanschauung entfaltet, ist innerlich verwandt jeder Lebensbetätigung, die der Mensch auch für die gleichgültigste praktische Handlung entwickelt. Daher werden durch sie soziale Gesinnung, sittlicher Antrieb und lebenspraktisches Verhalten so ineinander verwoben, daß sie eine Einheit bilden.
[ 12 ] Solch eine Geistesart aber kann nur gedeihen, wenn sie in völliger Unabhängigkeit von Mächten sich entfaltet, die nicht unmittelbar aus dem Geistesleben selbst stammen. Rechtlich-staatliche Regelungen der Geistespflege benehmen den Kräften des Geisteslebens ihre Stärke. Dagegen wird ein Geistesleben, das ganz den in ihm liegenden Interessen und Impulsen überlassen wird, ausgreifen bis in alles, was der Mensch im sozialen Leben vollbringt. - Man wendet immer wieder ein, daß die Menschen erst völlig anders werden müßten, wenn man das soziale Verhalten auf die sittlichen Impulse bauen wollte. Dabei bedenkt man nicht, welche sittlichen Antriebe im Menschen verkümmern, wenn man sie nicht aus einem freien Geistesleben heraus erstehen läßt, sondern ihnen eine solche Richtung gibt, durch die ein politisch-rechtliches Gesellschaftsgebilde seine vorgezeichneten Arbeitsgebiete besorgen lassen kann. Ein im freien Geistesleben erzogener und unterrichteter Mensch wird allerdings aus seiner Initiative in seinem Beruf manches hineintragen, das einen von seinem Wesen bestimmten Charakter trägt. Er wird sich in das gesellschaftliche Getriebe nicht hineinfügen lassen wie das Rad in eine Maschine. Aber letzten Endes wird das Hineingetragene die Harmonie des Ganzen nicht verkümmern, sondern erhöhen. Was an den einzelnen Stellen des gesellschaftlichen Lebens geschieht, wird der Ausfluß dessen sein, was in den Geistern der Menschen lebt, die an diesen Stellen wirken.
[ 13 ] Menschen, die in einer von der hier gekennzeichneten Geistesart gebildeten seelischen Atmosphäre atmen, werden die von der wirtschaftlichen Zweckmäßigkeit geforderten Einrichtungen in einem Sinne beleben, der die sozialen Forderungen befriedigt. Mit Menschen, deren innere Natur sich nicht eins weiß mit ihrer äußeren Betätigung, werden Einrichtungen, die man glaubt, zur Befriedigung dieser Forderungen zu treffen, nicht sozial wirken können. Denn nicht Einrichtungen können durch sich sozial wirken, sondern sozial gestimmte Menschen in einer Rechtsorganisation, die aus den lebendigen Rechtsinteressen heraus geschaffen ist, und in einem Wirtschaftsleben, das in der zweckmäßigsten Art die den Bedürfnissen dienenden Güter erzeugt.
[ 14 ] Ist das Geistesleben ein freies, das sich nur aus dem heraus entwickelt, was es in sich selbst als Antriebe hat, dann wird das Rechtsleben um so besser gedeihen, je einsichtsvoller die Menschen für die Regelung ihrer Rechtsverhältnisse aus der lebendigen Geisteserfahrung heraus erzogen werden; und dann wird auch das Wirtschaftsleben in dem Grade fruchtbar sein, als die Menschen für dasselbe durch die Geistespflege tüchtig gemacht werden.
[ 15 ] Alles im sozialen Zusammenleben der Menschen an Einrichtungen Zustandegekommene ist ursprünglich das Ergebnis des von den Absichten getragenen Willens. Das Geistesleben hat in diesem Zustandekommen gewirkt. Nur wenn das Leben kompliziert sich gestaltet, wie es unter dem Einfluß der technischen Produktionsweise der neuen Zeit geschehen ist, verliert der gedankengetragene Wille seinen Zusammenhang mit den sozialen Tatsachen. Diese gehen dann ihren eigenen mechanischen Gang. Und der Mensch sucht sich im abgezogenen Geisteswinkel den Inhalt, durch den er seine seelischen Bedürfnisse befriedigt. Aus dem Gang der Tatsachen, über die der geistgetragene Wille der Einzelmenschen keine Gewalt gehabt hat, sind die Zustände geworden, nach deren Änderung die moderne soziale Bewegung strebt. Weil der im Rechtsleben und im Wirtschaftskreislauf arbeitende Geist nicht mehr der ist, in dem das Geistesleben des einzelnen Menschen seinen Weg findet, sieht sich dieser in einer Gesellschaftsordnung, die ihn als Einzelmenschen rechtlich und wirtschaftlich nicht zur Entfaltung kommen läßt. - Menschen, welche dieses nicht durchschauen, werden einer Anschauung, die den sozialen Organismus in die selbständig verwalteten Gebiete des Geisteslebens, des Rechtsstaates, des Wirtschaftskreislaufes gliedern will, immer wieder den Einwand entgegenhalten: dadurch werde die notwendige Einheit des gesellschaftlichen Lebens zerstört. Ihnen muß erwidert werden: diese Einheit zerstört sich selbst, indem sie sich aus sich selbst erhalten will. Denn das Rechtsleben, das aus der wirtschaftlichen Macht heraus sich entwickelt, untergräbt in seinem Wirken diese wirtschaftliche Macht, weil es von den wirtschaftlich Schwachen als ein Fremdkörper im sozialen Organismus empfunden wird. Und der Geist, der in einem Rechts- und Wirtschaftsleben herrschend wird, wenn diese seine Wirksamkeit selbst regeln wollen, verdammt den lebendigen Geist, der aus dem Seelenquell der einzelnen Menschen sich emporarbeitet, zur Ohnmacht gegenüber dem praktischen Leben. Wird aber in einem selbständigen Gebiet die Rechtsordnung aus dem Rechtsbewußtsein geschaffen und wird in einem freien Geistesleben der geistgetragene Einzelwille entwickelt, dann wirken Rechtsordnung und Geisteskraft mit der wirtschaftlichen Betätigung zur Einheit zusammen. Sie werden dies können, wenn sie in selbständigen Lebensgebieten ihrem eigenen Wesen nach sich ausbilden. Gerade in ihrer Absonderung werden sie den Zug zur Einheit annehmen, während sie aus einer künstlichen Einheit heraus gebildet, sich entfremden.
[ 16 ] Mancher sozialistisch Denkende wird eine Anschauung, wie die gekennzeichnete, mit den Worten abtun: Wirtschaftlich erstrebenswerte Zustände kann doch nicht die Gliederung des sozialen Organismus, sondern allein eine entsprechende wirtschaftliche Organisation herbeiführen. Wer so spricht, der beachtet nicht, daß in der wirtschaftlichen Organisation willenbegabte Menschen betätigt sind. Sagt man ihm dieses, so wird er lächeln, denn er findet es selbstverständlich. Und doch denkt er an eine gesellschaftliche Struktur, in der diese « Selbstverständlichkeit » keine Berücksichtigung finden soll. In der wirtschaftlichen Organisation soll ein Gemeinschaftswille walten. Der aber muß das Ergebnis der Einzelwillen der in der Organisation vereinigten Menschen sein. Diese Einzelwillen werden nicht zur Geltung kommen, wenn der Gemeinschaftswille restlos aus dem wirtschaftlichen Organisationsgedanken kommt. Sie werden aber unverkümmert sich entfalten, wenn neben dem Wirtschaftsgebiet ein Rechtsgebiet steht, auf dem keine wirtschaftlichen Gesichtspunkte, sondern allein die des Rechtsbewußtseins maßgebend sind; und wenn neben beiden ein freies Geistesleben Raum findet, das nur geistigen Antrieben folgt. Dann wird nicht eine mechanisch wirkende Gesellschaftsordnung entstehen, der auf die Dauer die menschlichen Einzelwillen doch nicht angepaßt sein könnten; sondern es werden die Menschen die Möglichkeit finden, die Gesellschaftszustände fortwährend von ihren sozialgerichteten Einzelwillen aus zu gestalten. In dem freien Geistesleben wird der Einzelwille seine soziale Richtung erhalten; in dem selbständigen Rechtsstaate wird aus den sozial gesinnten Einzelwillen der gerecht wirkende Gemeinschaftswille entstehen. Und die sozial orientierten Einzelwillen, organisiert durch die selbständige Rechtsordnung, werden sich gütererzeugend und güterverteilend im Wirtschaftskreislauf den sozialen Forderungen gemäß betätigen.
[ 17 ] Den meisten Menschen fehlt heute noch der Glaube an die Möglichkeit, von den Einzelwillen aus eine sozial befriedigende Gesellschaftsordnung zu begründen. Dieser Glaube fehlt, weil er aus einem Geistesleben nicht erstehen kann, das aus dem Wirtschafts- und dem Staatsleben heraus in Abhängigkeit sich entwickelt hat. Eine Geistesart, die nicht in Freiheit aus dem Leben des Geistes selbst sich entwickelt, sondern aus einer äußeren Organisation heraus, die weiß eben nicht, was der Geist wirklich vermag. Sie sucht nach einer Leitung für ihn, weil sie nicht gewahr wird, wie er sich selbst leitet, wenn er nur die Kraft aus seinen eigenen Quellen schöpfen kann. Sie möchte die Leitung des Geistes als eine Nebenwirkung der wirtschaftlichen und rechtlichen Organisation entstehen lassen und beachtet nicht, daß Wirtschaft und Rechtsordnung nur leben können, wenn der sich selbst folgende Geist sie durchdringt.
[ 18 ] Zur sozialen Neugestaltung gehört nicht nur ein guter Wille, sondern auch der Mut, welcher dem Unglauben an die Kraft des Geistes sich entgegenstellt. Diesen Mut kann eine wahre Geistesauffassung beleben; denn sie fühlt sich fähig, Ideen hervorzubringen, die nicht allein einer inneren Seelenorientierung dienen, sondern die, indem sie entstehen, schon die Keime der praktischen Lebensgestaltung in sich tragen. Der Wille, in geistige Tiefen hinunterzusteigen, kann ein so starker werden, daß er in allem mitwirkt, was der Mensch vollbringt.
[ 19 ] Wenn man von einer im Leben wurzelnden Geistesauffassung spricht, so wird man von vielen auch so verstanden, als ob man die Summe der Impulse meinte, zu denen ein Mensch gedrängt wird, der sich in ihm gewohnten Lebensbahnen bewegt, und der jedes Eingreifen von geistiger Seite her in das Gewohnte für eine idealistische Verschrobenheit hält. Die hier gemeinte Geistesanschauung soll aber weder mit der abstrakten Geistigkeit verwechselt werden, die ihre Interessen nicht in die Lebenspraxis hinein zu erstrecken vermag, noch mit derjenigen Geistesrichtung, die eigentlich den Geist sofort verleugnet, wenn sie an die praktische Lebensorientierung denkt. Diese beiden Vorstellungsarten werden nicht gewahr, wie der Geist in den Tatsachen des äußeren Lebens waltet; und sie fühlen daher kein rechtes Bedürfnis, in dieses Walten bewußt einzudringen. Nur ein solches Bedürfnis aber ist auch der Erzeuger derjenigen Erkenntnis, welche die « soziale Frage » in dem richtigen Lichte sieht. Die gegenwärtigen Lösungsversuche dieser « Frage » erscheinen deshalb so ungenügend, weil vielen noch die Möglichkeit fehlt, zu sehen, was der wahre Inhalt der Frage ist. Man sieht die Frage auf wirtschaftlichen Gebieten entstehen; man sucht nach wirtschaftlichen Einrichtungen, die Antworten sein sollen. Man glaubt, in wirtschaftlichen Umgestaltungen die Lösung zu finden. Man erkennt nicht, daß diese Umgestaltungen nur durch Kräfte kommen können, die in dem Aufleben des selbständigen Geistes- und Rechtslebens aus der Menschennatur heraus befreit werden.
Spiritual life, legal system, economy
[ 1 ] Within the contemporary social movement, there is much talk of social institutions, but little talk of social and antisocial people. Little attention is paid to the "social question", which arises when one realizes that social institutions receive their social or antisocial character from the people who work in them. Socialist thinkers believe that in the administration of the means of production by the communities they must see that which will satisfy the demands of large sections of the people. They presuppose without further ado that in such an administration human cooperation must be organized in a social sense. They have seen that the private capitalist economic order has led to unsocial conditions. They believe that when this economic order has disappeared, its anti-social effects must also have ceased.
[ 2 ] Certainly, the modern private capitalist economic system has caused social damage on the broadest scale. But is it somehow proven that these are a necessary consequence of this economic order? By its very nature, however, an economic system can do nothing other than place people in situations in life through which they produce goods for themselves and others in an expedient or inexpedient manner. The modern economic order has placed the means of production in the power of individuals or groups of individuals. The technical achievements could be utilized most expediently through the concentration of economic power. As long as this power is only exercised in the field of the production of goods, it has a substantially different social effect than when it spills over into the legal or spiritual sphere of life. And in the course of the last few centuries this encroachment has led to the social damage which the modern social movement is pressing for the elimination of. He who owns the means of production gains an economic superiority over others. This led to the fact that he found in the administrations and people's representations the forces that helped him, through which he could also obtain other social supremacies over those economically dependent on him, which also have a practically legal character in a democratic state order. Economic supremacy also led to a monopolization of intellectual life among the economically powerful.
[ 3 ] It now seems to be the simplest thing to eliminate the economic supremacy of individuals in order to eliminate their legal and intellectual supremacy. One arrives at this "simplicity" of social thought if one does not consider that in the combination of technical and economic activity offered by modern life lies the necessity of allowing the initiative and individual ability of individuals to develop as fruitfully as possible in the operation of economic life. The way in which production must be carried out under modern conditions makes this necessary. The individual cannot bring his abilities to bear in economic activity if he is bound in his work and in his decisions to the will of the community. However dazzling the thought may be: the individual should not produce for himself, but for the whole; its correctness within certain limits should not prevent us from recognizing the other truth, that no economic decisions can originate from the whole which can be realized in the desirable way by the individual. Therefore, a realistic way of thinking cannot seek the cure for social damage in a new organization of economic life, through which social production takes the place of the management of the means of production by individuals. Rather, the aim must be to prevent the damage that can arise from the exercise of the initiative and efficiency of individuals without impairing this exercise. This is only possible if the legal relationships of people engaged in economic activity are not influenced by the interests of economic life, and if what is to be achieved for people through spiritual life is also independent of these interests.
[ 4 ] It cannot be said that the administrators of economic life can, in spite of their being taken up by economic interests, maintain a sound judgment of legal relationships; and since they know the needs of economic life well from their experience and their work, they will also be able to best organize the legal life that is to unfold within the economic cycle. Those who hold such an opinion do not take into account that a person can only develop the interests of a certain area of life from within that area. From economic life he can only develop economic interests. If he is also to develop legal interests out of it, these will only be economic interests in disguise. Genuine legal interests can only develop on ground where legal life is cultivated separately. On such a ground, one will only ask about what is right. And if legal regulations have been made in the sense of such questions, then what has arisen in this way will have an effect on economic life. There will be no need to impose restrictions on the individual with regard to the appropriation of economic power; for this power will only lead him to perform economic services according to his abilities, but not to acquire legal advantages through them.
[ 5 ] The obvious objection is that the legal relations are revealed in the intercourse of economic men, that they cannot therefore be grasped as something special apart from economic life. Although this is theoretically correct, it does not necessarily mean that economic interests are also decisive for the regulation of legal relationships in practice. The intellectual manager of a business will have to have a legal relationship with the manual workers of this business; this does not mean that he, as the manager of the business, has a say in determining this relationship. However, he will have a say and use his economic superiority in the process if economic cooperation and the regulation of legal relationships take place on a common administrative basis. Only if the law is organized on a basis on which there can be no question of consideration for the economy and the economy cannot gain any power over this legal system will the two be able to work together in such a way that people's sense of justice is not violated and economic efficiency is not turned from a blessing into a blessing for the whole.
[ 6 ] If the economically powerful are able to use their power to gain legal advantages, resistance to these advantages will develop among the economically weak. And when this resistance has become sufficiently strong, it must lead to revolutionary upheavals. If the existence of a special legal basis makes it impossible for such legal advantages to arise, such upheavals will not be able to occur. What continually takes place from this legal basis will be an orderly acting out of the forces that accumulate in people without it and lead to violent discharges. Whoever wants to avoid revolutions must think of the establishment of a social order through which happens in the flow of time what otherwise wants to take place in a world-historical moment.
[ 7 ] You will say that the modern social movement is not initially about legal relations, but about overcoming economic inequalities. To this objection it will have to be replied that demands which live in men are by no means always correctly expressed by the thoughts which consciousness forms of them. These conscious thoughts are the results of what is directly experienced. But what brings forth the demands are deeper connections of life that are not directly experienced. Whoever thinks of bringing about states of life through which these demands are to be satisfied must try to penetrate into the deeper connections. An examination of the relationship between law and economics in modern times shows that the legal life of mankind has become dependent on the economic life. If one were now to strive to eliminate the economic inequalities that have arisen in the wake of this dependence in an external way by a unilateral change in economic forms, similar inequalities would have to arise in a short time if the new economic forms were again given the opportunity to create their own legal forms. Only if one brings about conditions of social life through which legal requirements and interests can be experienced and satisfied independently alongside economic requirements and interests will one really come close to what is forcing its way to the surface of modern human existence through the social movement.
[ 8 ] And one will have to approach the relationship of spiritual life to legal and economic life in the same way. Under the conditions that have arisen in the course of the last centuries, the cultivation of intellectual life could only exert its effect on political, legal and economic life to a very limited extent. One of the most important branches of the cultivation of the humanities, education and teaching, developed from the interests of the state's legal power. People were educated and taught in accordance with the needs of the state. And economic power was added to that of the state. Those who were to develop their abilities as human beings within the existing teaching and educational institutions had to do so on the basis of the economic power arising from their circle of life. Thus those spiritual forces which were able to work within the political-legal and economic life became in their character completely an imprint of this life. A free intellectual life had to refrain from bringing its achievements into state-political life. And it could only do so in economic life to the extent that the latter was still independent of state-political life. Within the economy, the necessity of allowing the capable to come to the fore is evident, because its fertility dies off if the incapable, but economically powerful by virtue of the circumstances, rules alone. If, however, the tendency of many socialist thinkers to administer economic life according to the political-legal model were to be realized, then the cultivation of free intellectual life would be completely pushed out of the public sphere. But an intellectual life that has to develop apart from political-legal and economic reality becomes alien to life. It must draw its content from sources that are not vitally connected with this reality; and it then shapes this content in the course of time in such a way that it runs alongside this reality like an abstraction that has come to life, without producing an appropriate effect in it. In this way two currents arise in spiritual life. The first draws its content from the demands of political, legal and economic life that arise from day to day and seeks to make arrangements that result from these demands. It does not penetrate to the needs of man's spiritual being. It makes external arrangements and forces people into them without listening to what the inner human nature has to say. The other is based on inner needs for knowledge and ideals of will. It shapes these in the way that the person's inner nature demands. But these insights come from contemplation. They are not the reflection of what is experienced in the practice of life. And these ideals have arisen from ideas about what is true, good and beautiful. But they do not have the power to shape the practice of life. Consider what the merchant, the industrialist, the civil servant, apart from his practical life, experiences inwardly as his ideas of knowledge, his religious ideals, his artistic interests, and what ideas are contained in the activity which is expressed in his bookkeeping, or for which education and teaching prepare him as a condition of his office. There is an abyss between the two intellectual currents. It has been widened in more recent times by the fact that that mode of conception which has its full justification in natural science has become decisive for man's relation to reality. This mode of conception is based on the recognition of laws of things and processes which lie outside the sphere of human activity and effectiveness. As a result, man is to a certain extent only a spectator of what he perceives in the laws of nature. And when he brings the laws of nature into effect in technology, he only becomes the initiator of what is brought about by forces that lie outside his own being. The knowledge through which he acts in this way has a character different from his own nature. It reveals nothing to him of what lies in the world-processes in which his own being is interwoven. For such knowledge, he needs a view that combines the extra-human and human worlds into one.
[ 9 ] Modern anthroposophically oriented spiritual science strives for such knowledge. It fully recognizes the importance of the scientific way of thinking for the progress of modern humanity. But it is clear that what is conveyed through scientific knowledge only grasps the outer human being. It also recognizes the nature of religious world-views; but it realizes that in the course of modern development these world-views have become an inner matter of the soul, beside which external life proceeds without being shaped by them through human beings.
[ 10 ] In order to arrive at its insights, however, spiritual science makes demands on man for which he initially develops little inclination for the reason that he has become accustomed over the last few centuries to living in life practice and inner soul life as two separate areas. This habituation has given rise to a view that currently expresses disbelief in any endeavor that seeks to gain a judgment on the social organization of life from spiritual insights. One has in mind what one has experienced as social ideas born out of a spiritual life alien to life. When we speak of such ideas, we are reminded of Saint Simon, Fourier and others. The opinion that one has gained about such ideas is justified because they are developed from a direction of knowledge that is not experienced in reality, but is conceived. And from this opinion has arisen the generalized opinion that no kind of mind is capable of producing ideas that are so related to the practice of life that they can be realized. From this generalized opinion have arisen the views which, in their present form, more or less point back to Marx. Their proponents think nothing of ideas which are to be active in bringing about socially satisfactory conditions, but maintain that the development of economic facts must lead to a goal from which such conditions result. To a certain extent they want to let the practice of life take its course, because ideas are powerless within this practice. One has lost confidence in the power of spiritual life. It is not believed that there can be such a kind of spiritual life that overcomes the alienation from life that has become generally accepted in recent centuries. However, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is now striving for such a kind of spiritual life. It seeks to draw from sources that are also the sources of reality. The forces that are at work in the innermost human nature are the same forces that are at work in extra-human reality. The scientific mode of conception does not descend to these forces by intellectually processing its experiences gained from external facts into laws of nature. But even the worldviews based on a more religious foundation no longer connect with these forces. They take up the traditions without penetrating to their origin within man. Spiritual science, however, seeks to reach this origin. It develops methods of cognition through which it descends into the shafts of the human inner being, in which the extra-human events continue into the human inner being. The insights of this spiritual science represent reality experienced within the human being. They coalesce into ideas that are not conceived, but are saturated with the forces of reality. Such ideas are therefore also capable of carrying the power of reality within them if they want to give direction to social will. It is understandable that one is initially suspicious of such spiritual science. But one will only have this distrust as long as one does not recognize how it is essentially different from the current of science that has developed in more recent times, and which is generally assumed today to be the only possible one. If one struggles to recognize this difference, then one will no longer believe that one must avoid social ideas if one wants to shape social facts practically; rather, one will become aware that one can only gain practical social ideas from a spiritual life that can take its path to the roots of human nature. One will see through how in recent times social facts have become disordered because people have tried to master them with thoughts from which the facts have continually slipped away.
[ 11 ] A spiritual view that penetrates the essence of man finds impulses to act that are also directly good in the moral sense. For the impulse to evil arises in man only by silencing the depths of his being in his thoughts and feelings. Therefore, if the social ideas are gained through the spiritual conception meant here, they must by their own nature also be moral ideas. And since they are not only conceived ideas, but experienced ideas, they have the power to seize the will and to live on in action. Social thinking and moral thinking merge into one for a true spiritual view. The life that develops such a spiritual view is inwardly related to every life activity that man develops even for the most indifferent practical action. Therefore, social attitude, moral drive and practical life behavior are interwoven in such a way that they form a unity.
[ 12 ] Such a way of thinking, however, can only flourish if it develops in complete independence from powers that do not originate directly from spiritual life itself. Legal-state regulations of spiritual cultivation deprive the forces of spiritual life of their strength. On the other hand, a spiritual life that is left entirely to the interests and impulses within it will reach into everything that man accomplishes in social life. - It is repeatedly argued that people would first have to become completely different if social behavior were to be based on moral impulses. In doing so one does not consider what moral impulses atrophy in man if they are not allowed to arise out of a free spiritual life, but are given such a direction through which a political-legal social structure can have its predetermined areas of work taken care of. A person educated and taught in a free spiritual life will, however, bring into his profession many things on his own initiative that have a character determined by his nature. He will not allow himself to be inserted into the gears of society like a wheel into a machine. But in the end, what he brings to the table will not diminish the harmony of the whole, but enhance it. What happens in the individual places of social life will be the outflow of what lives in the spirits of the people who work in these places.
[ 13 ] People who breathe in a spiritual atmosphere formed by the kind of spirit characterized here will animate the institutions demanded by economic expediency in a sense that satisfies social requirements. With men whose inner nature is not at one with their outer activity, the institutions which are believed to be made to satisfy these demands will not be able to have a social effect. For it is not institutions by themselves that can have a social effect, but socially minded men in a legal organization created out of the living interests of right, and in an economic life that produces in the most expedient manner the goods that serve the needs.
[ 14 ] If the spiritual life is a free one, which develops only out of what it has in itself as impulses, then the legal life will flourish all the better, the more insightfully men are educated for the regulation of their legal relations out of the living spiritual experience; and then the economic life will also be fruitful to the degree that men are made capable for the same through the cultivation of the spirit.
[ 15 ] Everything that comes about in the social coexistence of human beings in terms of institutions is originally the result of the will borne by the intentions. Spiritual life has worked in this coming into being. Only when life becomes complicated, as has happened under the influence of the technical mode of production of the new age, does the will borne by thought lose its connection with the social facts. These then take their own mechanical course. And man seeks for the content through which he satisfies his spiritual needs in the withdrawn mental angle. From the course of facts, over which the spirit-born will of individuals had no power, have come the conditions which the modern social movement strives to change. Because the spirit working in legal life and in the economic cycle is no longer the spirit in which the spiritual life of the individual finds its way, the latter finds himself in a social order which does not allow him to develop legally and economically as an individual. - People who do not see through this will repeatedly object to a view that seeks to divide the social organism into the independently administered areas of spiritual life, the rule of law and the economic cycle, saying that this destroys the necessary unity of social life. To them it must be replied: this unity destroys itself in that it wants to preserve itself by itself. For legal life, which develops out of economic power, undermines this economic power in its work, because it is perceived by the economically weak as a foreign body in the social organism. And the spirit that becomes dominant in a legal and economic life, when these want to regulate their own effectiveness, condemns the living spirit, which works its way up from the wellspring of the soul of the individual, to powerlessness in the face of practical life. If, however, the legal order is created in an independent area from the legal consciousness and if the spirit-born individual will is developed in a free spiritual life, then the legal order and the spiritual power work together with the economic activity to form a unity. They will be able to do this if they develop in independent spheres of life according to their own nature. It is precisely in their separation that they will take on the trait of unity, while formed out of an artificial unity they become alienated.
[ 16 ] Some socialist thinkers will dismiss a view such as the one described above with the words: Economically desirable conditions cannot, after all, be brought about by the subdivision of the social organism, but only by a corresponding economic organization. Whoever speaks in this way does not take into account that in the economic organization people are active who are endowed with will. If you tell him this, he will smile, for he takes it for granted. And yet he is thinking of a social structure in which this "self-evidence" should not be taken into account. The economic organization should be governed by a common will. But this must be the result of the individual wills of the people united in the organization. These individual wills will not come to fruition if the will of the community comes entirely from the idea of economic organization. They will, however, unfold in an undiminished way if, alongside the economic field, there is a legal field in which no economic aspects are decisive, but only those of legal consciousness; and if, alongside both, there is room for a free spiritual life that follows only spiritual impulses. Then a mechanically operating social order will not arise, to which individual human wills could not be adapted in the long run; instead, people will find the possibility of continually shaping social conditions from their socially oriented individual wills. In the free spiritual life the individual will will receive its social direction; in the independent constitutional state the socially-minded individual wills will give rise to the justly-working community will. And the socially oriented individual wills, organized by the independent legal system, will produce and distribute goods in the economic cycle in accordance with social demands.
[ 17 ] Most people today still lack the belief in the possibility of establishing a socially satisfactory social order on the basis of individual wills. This belief is lacking because it cannot arise from a spiritual life that has developed in dependence on economic and state life. A way of thinking that does not develop in freedom out of the life of the spirit itself, but out of an external organization, does not know what the spirit is really capable of. It seeks guidance for it because it does not realize how it guides itself when it can only draw strength from its own sources. It wants the guidance of the spirit to emerge as a side effect of the economic and legal organization and does not take into account that the economy and legal system can only live if the spirit that follows itself permeates them.
[ 18 ] Social reorganization requires not only good will, but also the courage to oppose disbelief in the power of the spirit. This courage can be enlivened by a true conception of the spirit; for it feels capable of producing ideas that not only serve an inner soul orientation, but which, as they arise, already carry within them the seeds of the practical shaping of life. The will to descend into spiritual depths can become so strong that it contributes to everything a person accomplishes.
[ 19 ] When one speaks of a conception of the spirit rooted in life, it is also understood by many as if one meant the sum of the impulses to which a person is urged when he moves within the familiar paths of life, and who considers any intervention from the spiritual side in the familiar to be an idealistic eccentricity. However, the view of the spirit meant here should not be confused with abstract spirituality, which is unable to extend its interests into the practice of life, nor with that school of thought which actually denies the spirit immediately when it thinks of the practical orientation of life. These two conceptions do not realize how the spirit rules in the facts of external life; and they therefore feel no real need to penetrate consciously into this rule. Only such a need, however, is also the generator of that knowledge which sees the "social question" in the right light. The present attempts to solve this "question" appear so inadequate because many still lack the possibility of seeing what the true content of the question is. The question is seen to arise in economic areas; people are looking for economic institutions that are supposed to be answers. The solution is believed to be found in economic transformations. It is not recognized that these transformations can only come through forces that are liberated from human nature in the revival of independent spiritual and legal life.